CHAPTER XVIII

FLUTTERING FROM THE CLOUDS

And then the most astounding thing happened.

At Fort Smith, which lies on the way north from Chipewyan, Curlie received a message instructing him to proceed without delay to Resolution.

In defending his dogs from an infuriated bull moose a trapper had been badly injured. It was necessary to carry him at once to the hospital at Edmonton.

“No pursuit of the ‘Gray Streak’ this trip,” said Curlie as he hurriedly gulped down his coffee and prepared for flight.

“Absolutely not,” agreed Jerry.

The thing they saw enacted that day will never seem completely real to Curlie. “More like a moving picture drama,” he has said many times.

The day was one of mixed weather. One hour the sky was clear. The next it was filled with scudding clouds. There were times in between when it was half sky and half clouds.

It happened during one of these clearing spells. Their plane was bumping along like a bob-sled over the clouds, with the sky clearing, and fine chances of reaching Resolution in time for dinner when suddenly Jerry nudged Curlie, then pointed silently to the edge of a silver-lined cloud.

There, Curlie made out clearly enough, just emerging was the “Gray Streak.”

“Of all the luck!” Curlie groaned.

But what was that glint of red in the distance? For the first time in his life Curlie thought he knew how a gray-backed old pike must feel when some red lure is drawn through the water at a distance.

“Is it Drew Lane?” he asked himself. “Or is it some strange trick played on me by the sun?”

Now he thought he saw it. And now it was gone. A small cloud appeared to hide it. The cloud moved on. It was not there, that red speck. But yes, there it was, a little larger. Or was it?

Between keeping an eye on his own instruments and that elusive spot of red, he completely lost sight of the “Gray Streak” until once more Jerry nudged and pointed.

Curlie looked, then groaned aloud

“Going to land! What rotten, rotten luck!”

“Absolutely!”

It was true that the “Gray Streak” was circling for a landing, equally true that Curlie had sworn to do all within his power to bring that outlaw’s career to an end. And yet, he did not swerve one inch from his course. How could he? He had orders. This time they must be obeyed to the letter. A man’s life depended upon it.

And then came the moving picture drama which was after all not drama at all, but life—life so pulsating and real that Curlie was to start from his sleep with a cry of surprise and pain on many a night thereafter.

The “Gray Streak” had been sighted at a position some five miles before them. It was landing almost directly beneath the airway they followed. Indeed, it was coming to rest on the surface of the river.

The red spot Curlie had seen, or thought he had, was off at right angles to their course. A large cloud had blotted out that spot until Curlie was all but directly over the “Gray Streak,” which by this time had come to rest on the river, when there emerged from that cloud a large red spot which could no longer be mistaken for other than Drew Lane’s red racer of the air.

“What luck!” Curlie fairly shouted. “What luck for good old Drew Lane! He will—”

He broke off to stare. He was close enough now to make out a human figure clinging to the upper surface of the red plane.

“Drew!” His breath came quick. “It can’t be the pilot. It must be Drew. But why—why would—”

Again he gasped. The figure that at this distance seemed so tiny, slipped from the plane to shoot downward.

Ten seconds of suspense, then a sigh of relief. A parachute had unfolded. Together the figure and the parachute drifted into a cloud.

“Going after them single handed,” was Curlie’s conclusion. “Good old Drew! He hunts alone. And, like the Mounties, he gets his man. He—”

At that instant, for the first time in all his flying career, Curlie Carson all but lost control of his plane. A dip, a side twist, three wild heartbeats, and he was himself again and his plane went thundering on.

Yes, he had all but gone into a tailspin, and that with his motor thundering at its best. But who could blame him? The parachute he had seen a few seconds before, bearing his good friend Drew Lane safely toward the earth, had suddenly come fluttering out of the clouds. Borne on by the wind, it drifted aimlessly. Drew Lane had vanished.

“It’s the end!” Curlie thought, with a gulp.

Filled with rage, once his plane had righted itself, he felt himself consumed by a desire to disregard all orders; to drop to earth and engage the “Gray Streak” in a battle to the death.

But, guided by a more sober counsel, he thundered straight on toward Resolution. Duty had called. He must obey.