CHAPTER XII

CURLIE SLEEPS ON THE RIVER

Time passed, as time has a way of doing. There was much to be accomplished and Curlie Carson’s slim shoulders bore their full share of the burden.

Always in the back of his mind as he labored one thought remained to urge him on. He was working not for himself alone but for the glory of his company. The men who toiled with him and those in the office in far away Winnipeg were, he knew right well, worthy of his most loyal endeavors.

“Loyalty. That’s the great word,” John Mansfield, the President of the Company, had said to him. “Loyalty to a proper cause or a deserving group of human beings; that is the greatest driving power this old world will ever know.”

Curlie believed he spoke the truth. He rejoiced in the knowledge that, come what might, his loyalty and his most earnest endeavor would never be overlooked, discounted or disregarded.

So Curlie worked untiringly as millions have done before and other millions will do in the years that are to come.

All one’s life may not be spent in the unravelling of mysteries and hunting adventure. This Curlie knew full well. His work? Was there adventure in that? Very little. Piloting a six-passenger airplane over the Mackenzie River route is about as exciting as driving a bus in New York. Curlie carried a load of freight, beef, eggs, coffee, calico and a score of other items from Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan. He answered an emergency call from Resolution. A Catholic Sister was rushed to the hospital at Edmonton.

At Edmonton he took on two cases of eggs, a case of oranges, a package of phonograph records, one missionary and two “Udson’s Bay’s Men” (as the native Canadians call them), and sailed away straight for the shore of the Arctic Ocean. He was there on the second day and, after a night’s sleep, was ready for the return journey.

It was during this return journey that one or two questions that had been puzzling him were, in a way, answered.

At Fort Chipewyan he lay over for a few hours to await the passing of a snowstorm. He did not tarry long enough. The storm was traveling south. It was making but fifty miles an hour. He was doing better than a hundred. He had not been in the air an hour when he realized that he could not reach McMurray without running into that storm.

“That means I can’t see to land,” he grumbled to himself. Jerry was not with him. “Have to sleep on the river.”

Sleeping on the river is not as bad as it sounds. Here and there along the river, trappers’ cabins are to be found. The inhabitants of these cabins are for the most part known to the pilots. And any weary bird-man is sure of a hearty welcome there. The coffee pot is ever on the fire and a pan of beans rich in bacon fat ready for warming. There is an extra bunk in the corner to which the stranger is welcome. But, for the most part, the pilot prefers rolling up in his eight-foot-square eiderdown robe and sleeping on the floor of his cabin. This is what is known as “sleeping on the river.”

It may appear strange that out of the three possible cabins on this section of the river Curlie chose to come to earth before the one occupied by the rough and ready little world war hermit who had in so strange a manner defied him when a pigeon had been tracked to his window.

“Oh, it’s you, me lad!” the scrawny little man exclaimed, as Curlie climbed from the cockpit. “Sure it’s sorry vittals I be ’avin’, but such as they be, y’ are welcome.”

“Ptarmigan!” exclaimed Curlie. “Nothing better than that!” A brace of these birds hung by the cabin door.

“And can y’ eat ’em?”

“Sure. Why not? They’re fine.”

“Every man to ’is taste. Sure I’ve fed ’em to me dorgs until they’ve grown feathers, they ’ave. But it’s the birds ye shall ’ave, roasted with bacon fat fer seasonin’.”

Curlie could not complain of his birds, nor of the coffee he drank.

“That,” he said, “is the best coffee I’ve had for a month!”

“An’ I wouldn’t doubt it!” exclaimed the little man. “Learned ’ow t’ brew it from a bloomin’ Australian bushman in th’ bloody war; right in th’ trenches.

“Ye see,” he went on, warmed by his own beverage and cheered by kind words, “I were in th’ signal service. Bein’ small, I was set to carin’ fer pigeons an’ sendin’ ’em away with messages a-hangin’ from their laigs or their necks.

“And y’ know, son, ’avin’ ’em always with ye like yer bloomin’ dorgs, makes ’em seem like yer bloomin’ pals. D’ ye understand that?”

“Yes,” Curlie replied, “I understand.”

“An’ ye know, son, if it weren’t fer ’avin’ one of them pigeons under me arm in a cage made of wood, I’d not be trappin’ foxes now.”

“No?” Curlie sat up. “Tell me about it.”

He did tell Curlie. And for Curlie that story held a special interest. It was no great story as stories go; just the account of one little underfed Irish boy soldier lost in a forest in No Man’s Land, with a leg half torn away by a shell, and a plain, drab carrier pigeon kept safe by the boy’s shielding body. The boy scribbled a note to his pals in camp, then released the pigeon that he might bear the message home.

“They found ’im safe,” he ended quite undramatically. “They found th’ message an’ after that th’ ’eathen enemy’s guns was silenced, an’ then they found me, too.

“’T’ain’t much of a story, son. But ye’ll not be thinkin’ me soft when I tell ye as ’ow them carryin’ pigeons seems like the truest friends I ever had.”

“No,” said Curlie huskily, “I surely will not.”

Before Curlie left the cabin next morning he heard a sound that bore a suspicious resemblance to the coo-coos he was accustomed to hear on his uncle’s farm when the pigeons were waking to greet the sunshine.

“I believe this little chap kept that bird for a pal,” he told himself. “And he might have done worse than that—a whole lot worse, yes, a whole lot worse.”