CHAPTER XV

OVER THE RAPIDS

On the day following her experience with Jim and the foxes, Joyce Mills once more took to the trail with her dog team. And a dangerous trail it proved to be.

She wanted time to think. And what better opportunity could be afforded? Well tucked in, half buried in caribou robes, with the wind at her back and her toboggan sled gliding over the snow, and with Dannie, the leader, choosing his own course, her mind had little to do but wander at will.

Her thoughts were for the moment on that strange brownish-black rock her father called pitchblende. He had found samples and had sent them south on the airplane.

“Will they contain radium?” she asked herself. “Much radium?”

Her father had told her a little about the wonders of radium. “A grain,” he had said, “one thirty-second part of an ounce, is worth more than thirty thousand dollars. In a year all the operators in the world produced less than nine grams. Yet a single half gram owned by a great hospital has sent many a poor soul, stricken with the deadly cancer disease, back to his loved ones in perfect health. The healing qualities of radium is one of God’s great gifts to man. Think what it would mean to find a fresh and richer supply of this life-restoring mineral?”

She had thought, and had thrilled to the very core of her being.

So she dreamed on and on and, like many another, all unaware of impending danger, enjoyed the drowsy comfort of the passing hour.

Suddenly she was shocked from her dreaming, for her dog team, breaking away from a leisurely trot, sprang away across the snow like a pack of hounds in full cry.

Her first thought was, “They are after a snowshoe rabbit. But Dannie! I hoped he was better trained than that.”

So he was. Next instant she knew the cause of this terrific speed and her cheek blanched. The outlaw buffalo, the very one who had before brought her into great peril, was upon their trail. With a mad bellow, with white frost pouring from his nostrils like smoke, he charged straight on.

They were on the lake’s ice. No trees to climb here. Speed was their only chance. How fast was a buffalo? Could he outrun a dog team? She was to know.

The team’s speed for the moment saved her. As the buffalo charged down a treeless slope, he fell behind them. One instant more, and he was on their trail.

“What if the sled tips and I am thrown out?” she asked herself with a shudder.

But the thought of what might happen was crowded out by that which was happening. The buffalo was gaining. There could be no question about it.

“He has shortened the distance between us by ten yards,” she told herself.

She caught the gleam of his terrifying horns, heard his deep, guttural bellow; then, dragging her eyes away, she shouted bravely:

“Now! Dannie! Now! _Ye! Ye! Ye!_ Now, Grover! Now, Ginger! _Now! Now! Now! Ye! Ye! Ye!_”

The splendid creatures responded to her call that was half plea, half command, by a fresh burst of speed. But was it enough? She dared not look back. They sped on across the white waste.

Moments passed, agonizing moments they were. Urging her dogs to their utmost, she still refrained from looking behind. If she looked her heart might fail her.

“The way out!” she repeated to herself over and over. “What can be the way out?”

What indeed? She might, if there was time, call upon her dogs to pause in their mad rush. They might face about and trust their fates to a battle. That these fine fellows would fight she did not question.

“But what chance?” Her voice was choked with a dry sob. “Hindered by the harness, they could never win.”

Dark to the left on the horizon a clump of tamarack showed.

“Too late! We’ll never make it. We—”

Then suddenly, as upon that other occasion, a curious thing happened; a rifle cracked.

This time the result was different. It was as if an avenging God had said: “It is enough.” The girl heard a dull thud and, looking fearfully about, saw the outlaw buffalo lying upon the snow. A bullet had brought his mad career to an end.

Instinctively the dogs slowed down. The girl’s eyes searched the low hills for her benefactor. He was nowhere to be seen.

A moment passed into eternity; another and yet another. In all that great white world not a living creature moved.

Seized by a strange new fear, she spoke to her dogs and once more they sped away. Ten minutes later they were back on the trail they had followed in the beginning. And this, she discovered by a study of snowshoe prints, was the trail of her father and his companion.

Once more she settled back in peace. But not for long. This was to be a day of days in her life.

* * * * * * * *

Drew Lane followed hot on the trail of his message. Curlie Carson was warming up his plane for one more journey in the land of great white silence when a small, fast monoplane circled above the field for a landing.

This little ship of the air caught Curlie’s eye at once. And why not? It was painted a vivid red.

“In the name of all that’s good!” he cried, when he saw Drew Lane spring with his pilot from the cockpit. “You don’t expect to do detective work up here in that fire wagon, do you?”

Drew laughed as he gripped Curlie’s hand. “What does color matter? It’s speed that counts. She’s the fastest thing in the air. Let me get sight of those robbers in that lumbering old mail truck and you’ll see something pretty. The Red Knight of Germany won’t be in it with me.

“But tell me.” He sobered. “You’ve seen this gray outlaw of the air. Do you think it could be the plane that was stolen in Chicago?”

“Y—e—s,” Curlie said slowly. “It could be. Same type of plane and all that. But—”

“But what?”

“Nothing. At least not a thing that’s tangible. Just a fancy, I suppose. I found a mitten in my room. It was made from the pelt of a Siberian wolf-hound.”

“For John’s sake!” Drew Lane stared. “What’s that to do with an outlaw plane?”

Curlie told him of the carrier pigeon, of the copied message, and of the theft in the night.

“That,” agreed Drew when he had ended, “may have a bearing. At least we’ll not forget it. But, as for me, I stick to the theory that this outlaw is driving the stolen mail plane. There were valuable papers on board, being transferred from one city to another. Owners have offered a large reward. And say!” he exclaimed, “why couldn’t those fellows be trying to collect the reward through carrier pigeons?”

“Wrong end to,” Curlie objected. “If they were doing that the pigeons would be sent in a crate to the persons paying the reward. Then the plan would be to have them released with the reward in thousand dollar bills attached to them.”

“That’s right. Well, we’ll see.”

Drew then changed the subject. “You’re off for the North?”

“In an hour.”

“I’ll trail you.”

“How far?”

“Until I get a hunch to sail away on my own.”

“Which won’t be long,” Curlie grinned, and then led him away for a cup of coffee.

* * * * * * * *

In the meantime, strange and terrible things were happening to Joyce and her friends. With her team she had left the lake and had traveled two miles into the low hills when, on rounding the point of a ridge, she sighted her father.

Quite close at hand, he was bending over a rocky ledge that hung above a rushing cataract. “A dangerous position,” she told herself. “One step and—”

To her great consternation, at that instant she saw him throw up a hand—then plunge downward.

There is a section to the north and east of Great Slave Lake where the surface of the land is one heap of gigantic rocks. The land falls off to the west so rapidly that the streams are little more than cascades playing continually over giant stairways. It was into one of these unnatural streams that her father had fallen.

Even as Joyce stood looking, too terrified to move, Clyde Hawke, a powerful swimmer, plunged in after her father. So swift was the water, however, that he was three yards behind in the mad race for life.

Never very strong, Newton Mills, now prematurely old, offered little resistance to the wild torrent that appeared determined to carry him to destruction. One fortunate instance, for the moment, saved him. An overhanging snag caught at his stout jacket. It held for a space of seconds. Before the stout canvas gave way, he had secured a tight grip on the snag. Ten seconds more, and the brave young westerner, swimming with one hand, had gripped the older man by the arm and was struggling to bring him ashore.

The battle seemed all but won when, without warning, the snag gave way to cast them once more upon the mercy of the torrent.

To Joyce, who had made her way to the brink of the stream and stood ready to lend a hand, all seemed lost.

The last vestige of hope left her when, with a cry of horror, she saw them, tight in one another’s grip, disappear beneath the ice of the pool that lay beyond the rapids.

“They’re gone! Gone!” she sobbed.

But what was this? Beyond the narrow stretch of ice was a second chain of rapids less precipitous than the first. Poised on a rock at the very center of the rapids, she had seen a lone pelican waiting for fish. Now, as if disturbed, he rose and went flapping away.

“Can it be—”

Plunging headlong over rocks and treacherous ice, she made her way to this second space of open water. She was just in time to lean far over and grip Clyde by the collar of his coat. Then, securing a hold upon a stout willow bush, she clung with the grip of death. Not one life, but two, depended upon her strength and endurance. Clyde Hawke still retained his grip upon her father. Together they had passed beneath the ice and had come out on the other side.

Ten minutes of heart-breaking battle with the elements, and they had won. Or had they? True, her father lay upon the snow beside the exhausted youth who had risked his life to save him; but he neither moved nor spoke. Was he dead? She could not be sure.

Time restored strength to the plucky Clyde Hawke. Then together they carried Newton Mills to a sheltered crevice among the rocks. After gathering dry twigs and branches, they built a roaring fire.

“It’s the only thing that will save him,” Clyde explained. “Home is too far away.”

Joyce removed her warm fur parka. Then she walked a short distance up the hill. When she returned Clyde had stripped off her father’s clothing and, after chafing his limbs, had dressed him in her parka. As she came up her father’s eyes opened and he murmured hoarsely: “That was close, awful close!” Then his eyelids fell.

With the hatchet from his belt Clyde cut off spruce branches and built them a shelter. Sheltered by the three walls of boughs and warmed by the fire, they soon were as comfortable as they might have been in the cabin.

When her splendid mind had regained its full powers, Joyce sprang up and cried:

“The dog team!”

She had left the dogs, she hardly knew where. And the toboggan sled was lined with caribou-skin robes.

“I will go for them.” She stood up. “As soon as you are dry enough to be safe, we can take him home in the sled.”

“When you’re back I’ll be O.K.,” Clyde said simply.

A hurried search showed her the dogs curled up in a low run where the sled had tangled in the willows. “Good old pups!” she murmured, as she gulped down a sob.

Two hours after dark they arrived at camp from an expedition that had threatened to be the most disastrous in the entire history of the enterprise. Newton Mills was still unconscious. Would he recover? Who could say?

By great good fortune they found Punch Dickinson there with his plane. He had arrived late and was prepared to stay all night. Although night flying is, as a rule, off the program of Arctic flyers, he agreed in this extremity to go to Resolution for the doctor.

A little more than two hours later, there came the thunder of the motor and Punch was back with medical aid.

“It’s the shock and exposure,” was the doctor’s verdict. “With care he should pull through.”

“He’ll get the care right enough,” said Jim Baley. “He ain’t one of them sorry old men. He’s a king. That’s what he is. We’ll stick with him if we don’t never find narry a bit of radium nor gold.”

“Come to think of it,” Punch Dickinson started up from his place by the fire, “I’ve a message for you. Report on your pitchblende I guess.”

He drew two envelopes from his pocket.

“Curious thing happened.” He seemed ill at ease. “You know two bags of samples went down; both of them pitchblende? Well, some way the tags were torn off and there’s no way of telling which sample belongs to which outfit. I—I’m sorry it came out that way. But up here I guess you’re all friends in the same game. Luck for one is luck for all.”

“Luck for one, luck for all?” Joyce wondered as her mind went over the words.

“What’s to be done?”

Clyde, the westerner, scratched his head. “Guess we get first look,” smiled Lloyd Hill, putting out a hand for the envelopes.

“Seems that it might be a case of sending down more samples,” he murmured as he tore open the first envelope.

“I’m sorry some one blundered,” Punch apologized. “I know how hard it is to get samples. I—”

“Just a minute.” Lloyd Hill held up a hand. “Looks as if it hasn’t made any difference. The reports are almost identical; same amount of copper, same nickel, same cobalt and—”

“Radium! Radium!”

Instantly the word was on every tongue. “Just a trace,” said Lloyd reluctantly. “Not enough to make the slightest difference. In other words, we lose, all of us; the other fellows, too.”

“Oh!” The cry that escaped the girl’s lips was a cry of pain. Her father had hoped much from his radium rock. She had hoped, too. She had dreamed. Johnny Thompson had dreamed. They were all friends together. And all had lost.

“And now this!” she whispered as she turned to hide a tear that would not stay. “Now father is desperately ill. If he recovers I must tell him this. And we hoped so much!” Truly this was her darkest hour.

The air of the cabin suddenly seemed oppressive. Throwing on a coat, she wandered out into the night. As she stood there bathing her hot temples in the cool night air, a figure moved silently toward her.

“You find gold? Mebby yes? Mebby no?”

It was the Indian, he of the traps. He had found his broken trap, she felt sure of that. As she looked he seemed to leer at her in a mocking manner. Then he passed on into the night.

The look on that man’s face disturbed her. Many things troubled her. She was tired, needed rest.

“I must sleep,” she told herself.

The doctor was to remain, at least for the night. Her father was in good hands. Creeping away to her small room, she disrobed in the dark and was soon fast asleep.