CHAPTER XIV

DREW LANE ON THE WING

During that week there had been no cessation of activities in the two camps where the search for rich mineral was in progress. Since it had been found that the report on the radium-bearing pitchblende must be delayed for some time, there was nothing for it but to go out in search of other prospects.

The entire group at Joyce’s camp, her father, Jim, Lloyd and Clyde, worked like beavers. Lloyd had gone to get the thawer. He had returned in four days.

“I miss him more than I dreamed I would,” Joyce had told herself on one of these days. “He seems to confide in me. And that, I guess, is the sort of friend a girl needs.”

Indeed, for a quiet man he had told her much. On that evening before he flew away to Fort Resolution, he had spoken of his life, his struggles, his hopes, his fears. He had entered the world war as a boy soldier, only sixteen. He had carried stretchers through it all, had brought many a poor wounded soldier to safety. In time he, too, had been dropped by a shell. His recovery had been slow. But he had come back.

“And now,” he told her earnestly, “I must make good; for my mother’s sake I must! She is the grandest of women; gave me as a boy to her country without a murmur, and allowed them to keep me four years. Four years. You don’t know what that means—to a mother.”

Ah, yes, Joyce had missed Lloyd. But now he was back. They were all back. Lloyd’s steam-thawer had been going for three days. What success had come to him? Would there be gold on that ancient river bed?

She was thinking of all this as she stood bare-headed in the starlight on a glorious Arctic night. Then the night claimed her. The moon was not up. But the stars! Every one of them seemed a spark of fire fallen upon a curtain of midnight blue velvet.

“They burn, but they do not consume,” she thought, as she moved slowly up the hill toward the place where the white foxes played. “Stars are like our love for our fellow men and God. They light the world, but do not destroy.”

She had come close to her watching place at the back of a cluster of scrub spruce trees, when a voice close beside her drawled:

“What are you all doing up here by your lonesome?”

It was Jim, the Kentucky mountain boy. Her first impulse was one of anger. Why should he intrude upon her privacy? This lasted but for a space of seconds. The night, the stars, the yellow lights from the cabins below, together with Jim’s appealing southern drawl, changed her impatience.

The rebuke that came to her lips remained unuttered. Instead, she held up a hand for silence, then pointed toward the clump of trees. Then together they crept forward.

“There! There they are!” she whispered low.

“Foxes!” he whispered back. “Cunnin’ little critters!”

After that for ten minutes, with the golden firmament swinging overhead and the foxes frisking in the starlight, they watched in silence.

The foxes were more playful than ever. Joyce had hung some pieces of caribou fat and shreds of white fish out for the snow-buntings and bluejays. Some of these bits were within reach of the foxes when they stood on their hind feet and clawed upward. Others were hung higher. The lower ones soon vanished. It was truly wonderful to see the antics they went through in their attempts to reach the others. They leaped, they clawed. They did everything but stand upon one another’s shoulders. When none of these availed, they sat on their haunches and, pointing noses at the tempting morsels, sang their white fox song.

“As if that would do any good!” Joyce chuckled.

“Singin’ for their supper,” drawled Jim.

One thing puzzled Joyce. To-night there were only two foxes. Always before there had been three. The small one was not there. Where could he be?

“Perhaps he overslept,” she told herself. But she was a trifle worried. These little wild playmates had become very dear to her heart.

Frightened, suddenly, by the slamming of a door down below in one of the cabins, the two foxes scampered into their holes, leaving Joyce and Jim alone with the night.

“They’ve gone in for the youngster, I guess,” Joyce laughed.

“The youngster?”

“Always before there have been three. The other was only a cub, or would you say a kitten? He is the cutest thing you ever saw.”

After that, having turned about to seat themselves on the hard packed snow and to gaze away toward the great white world and the blue dome above it, they communed in silence.

A faint glow appeared on the margin of that sea of white. The arc of a golden circle appeared. Moving in solemn majesty, the moon rose to clothe their world in purple shadows.

“This,” whispered the girl, “is moonlight in the great white world.”

“Do you know,” said Jim, and there was a deep seriousness in his tone, “a time like this makes me certain that thar’s more to life than that thar we see. We don’t live to fret and fuss a little, to hunt gold and find it and be rich fer a little spell, or not to find it and be poor as p’ison. We don’t just shuffle off. That’s not the end of it.

“Look at those stars, that moon. Don’t they tell you things?”

“Yes.” Her voice was low, musical. “Yes, Jim, they do.”

“Do you know,” he went on after a moment, “we mounting folks is ignorant folks, I reckon. Not much larnin’ amongst us. But we sit a heap. And we think a heap. And when we see a thing or get told something we just naturally gotta try to think it plumb through to the end.

“Do you know?” He was looking away once more. “When I look away at them thar stars, hit reminds me a heap of my old Kentucky home away up on Poundin’ Mill Creek that flows into Clover Fork of the Cumberland River.

“Way back yonder—” His voice was like the low strum-strum of a banjo. “Back yonder’s a cabin whar I’ve set many’s the night, listenin’ to the tree toads sing and some old bull frog croakin’, and seem’ the lightnin’ bugs streakin’ across the air. Then I’d see the mountings all settin’ in a row like a lotta plumb big folks settin’ by the hearth a-whisperin’. And I’d see the stars a-comin’ down close to listen. And it was plumb pretty, Miss Joyce. Plumb pretty. Mighty nigh the prettiest picture I most ever seed.

“But, Miss Joyce,” he leaned forward, “’t’ain’t no prettier nor this here up here. And, you know,” he hesitated, “you know, somehow you sort of fit into it all. Plumb queer now, ain’t it?”

“Yes, Jim, it is.” Joyce felt a strange thrill run through her being. It was strange that she, a girl who had spent all her life in a great city, should fit into a picture such as this. She was grateful for the compliment.

After that, for a long time, they sat in silence, listening to the faint, all but inaudible sounds of an Arctic night and watching the world that seemed so new, so fresh, so ready for those who were good and kind and true. Can souls speak, though no words be uttered? Who knows? Joyce wondered, but did not speak.

It often happens that we go from joy to sorrow in a single hour. So it was with Joyce. Her hour with Jim had been one of transfiguration. To go from communion with a human companion to seek a four-footed friend might seem the imperfect ending of a perfect hour. But who can understand the heart of a girl?

Joyce was still wondering about the half-grown white fox. Why had he not come out to play?

She was not long in finding the answer. As they stepped into the moonlit playground of her little white friends, Jim’s keen eyes discovered a dark object. It was a steel trap. And in the trap was the baby white fox, quite dead.

“Who could have done that!” Joyce exclaimed, all but in tears.

“Some trapper.”

“But there are no trappers here; that is, I have seen only one.” She recalled the stranger she had followed by mistake.

“We’ll leave him a message,” said Jim.

Springing the jaws of the trap, he caught it by its chains, then crashed it so violently against the rocks that it flew in bits.

“No right to set it so close to our camp!” he grumbled, throwing it down.

“They say that Indians read signs. Well, there’s my sign.” Selecting an untouched circle of snow, he placed there an imprint of his large moccasin.

“And this,” said Joyce, placing her foot close to his, “is mine.”

At that, without another word, they turned to make their way down the hill.

It was when he was about to leave her at her cabin door that Jim spoke again.

“Thar’s somethin’ been on my mind for a long time, Miss Joyce. I—”

“The stolen films,” flashed through the girl’s mind. “It was Jim. He stole them. He wants to confess. But I can’t let him now—”

“Please, Jim,” she broke in hurriedly, “not to-night. Tell me some other time, but not now.”

“All right, Miss Joyce.” And he was gone into the night.

Joyce stood there alone, allowing the cool night air to fan her hot temples. She was troubled. Had she done wrong? Should she have allowed the mountain boy to make his confession?

“I couldn’t,” she told herself at last. “This has been a golden hour. How could I have it ruined? Another time will do as well.” At that she turned and entered the cabin.

* * * * * * * *

Strangely enough, at this very hour in their far away cabin, another group was discussing the stolen films.

After long thought Johnny had decided that it was his duty to tell the men of his camp the story of the stolen films and of the men who at that moment were using their hard-earned leads for profit.

“Old Timer,” Scott Ramsey was saying to Sandy, as they sat beside the roaring fire, “do you think it would be too hard on those fellows to move right in and file on their land the moment they make a strike?”

“Not one whit!” Sandy’s chair came down with a bang. “Trouble nowadays is, too many folks have vague ideas of what’s honest and what isn’t. Get wrong notions, lots of them, when they’re in school. Steal ten dollars, that’s wrong; but snitch another chap’s toy pistol, that’s sport. That’s the way they look at it. It’s all wrong.

“Lots of young football fellows think it’s being bright to carry home souvenirs, napkins, salt-shakers, silver from a restaurant. It’s wrong! Hew to the line, I say.

“If those young fellows think it was a sporting proposition to filch those negatives and make prints from them and then come up here with them to hunt gold, they’re wrong.

“But say!” he demanded suddenly, “how’d they get them?”

“That,” replied Ramsey slowly, “is just what I don’t know.

“You see,” he went on thoughtfully, “after I’d taken the airplane trip and snapped the pictures and had them developed and enlarged, I was low on funds. I showed the pictures to a geologist and he said the thing looked good.

“While I was searching for a partner with money, I asked permission to store those films in a vault, the vault of the people I had worked for in Winnipeg.

“When I found you in Edmonton, I had the pictures, but not the films. One set of pictures was enough. The films, I thought, were safe.”

“But how did you find out they had the films?” Sandy asked, turning to Johnny.

“I ran onto a photographer I knew in Edmonton. Always did like to be around where you smelled developer and hypo, so I stuck around. He showed me some defective enlargements he was about to throw away. I knew right away that they were the same as some we were planning to use. After that it was a fairly simple matter to trace the men who had engaged him to make the enlargements. The thing that surprised me most was that two of my best friends, an old man and his daughter, are working with those three young men.”

“You can’t get information through them?” Scott asked.

“I can, but I won’t,” said Johnny.

“Right enough!” exclaimed Sandy. “I honor you for it.”

“The thing I can’t understand,” said Sandy after a time, “is, how did they get hold of those films if they were in a vault?”

“That _would_ bear looking into,” agreed Ramsey. “I’ll write a letter to-night. Old Benny Brooks is still with the company, or was the last I knew. I’ll write and ask him.” He did. But even in the days of the airplane, mail is a trifle slow in the North. And in the meantime the search for that elusive wealth that lies hidden in the rocks and beneath the snow went on.

* * * * * * * *

It was about this time that Curlie Carson, on returning from his trip to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, received a telegram that set his head whirling.

“_Am on my way by fast plane. Big business._” This is the way the message ran. It was signed “_Drew Lane_.”

This telegram, together with a paragraph in a back number of the Edmonton daily paper, gave him what appeared to be a solution of the mystery which the “Gray Streak” had created. The article was captioned:

“Mail plane stolen from Chicago Airport.”

In brief, this new story told of the theft of a powerful biplane from beneath the very nose of her pilot. Having taken on his load of air mail, this pilot had stepped into the office to discuss his routing with his chief. Then, according to the story, the look-out in the tower, who checked the numbers of all planes coming and going, had seen some one resembling the pilot enter the plane and take off.

“The strangest part of the whole affair,” the story went on to say, “is that, after a somewhat prolonged conversation, the real pilot returned to the spot where his plane had stood, and it was gone. It is assumed by the police that the man who stole the plane, having studied the dress and mannerisms of the pilot, had been able to imitate him so perfectly that the look-out, who knew him well, had not discovered the fraud.

“In the meantime,” the article concluded, “Where is the stolen biplane? And where is the half-ton of mail, some of which is reported to be of great value, that was the airplane’s cargo?”

“Where indeed?” Curlie said after reading the article through twice. “Unless here in the wilds of the Northwest? Where else in the world could a great biplane be hidden? And where else could they refuel without being caught?

“Let me see.” He scratched his head. “It was six days ago that I wrote Drew Lane telling him of the mysterious ‘Gray Streak.’ Plenty of time for him to get his keen mind at work on that Chicago airplane case, to arrive at some very natural conclusions, and then to get himself assigned to the task of hunting down this ‘Gray Streak.’

“So,” he drawled slowly, “I am to have some assistance in the solution of this great mystery.”

Was he glad Drew Lane was on his way north? Ah, yes, to be sure he was. Who would not be? Drew Lane was the sort of chap any one would be glad to greet once again. But was Curlie glad that some one else was likely to beat his time in solving a great mystery? Of this he could not be sure.

“And yet,” he told himself after a few moments of sober thought, “at such a time as this, when the rightful possessions of many are endangered, when the efficiency of the air service that has done so much for this barren land is threatened, it is one’s duty to set his personal hopes aside and to welcome the aid of any who may assist in bringing the malefactors to justice. So, welcome, Drew Lane, old top! Our arms are open wide.

“And one thing is sure,” he added after a moment’s reflection, “there never was a truer sport, a braver cop, nor a better pal than Drew Lane!

“Brave! Why he’d drop right down upon them from the air if need be.”

How near this last came to being prophecy, he was, in time, to know.