CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Ghost Mine

Two days later the Sterns and the Hansons came down to the airstrip to see the boys off. Professor Stern promised to send the bearskin to Valley View as soon as it was cured. “It will make a nice trophy to spread out in front of your fireplace,” he told Sandy.

“I think I’ll donate it to our local boys’ club,” Sandy said.

“And every time a new fellow joins up, he’ll have an excuse to tell what a big hero he is,” Jerry joked.

Sandy laughed. “I bet I looked like a big hero up in that tree all right.”

Russ Parker appeared in the doorway of the plane. “All revved up and ready to go. You fellows set?”

The boys said their last goodbyes and climbed into the cabin.

Mrs. Stern waved and yelled, “Thanks again for refilling my freezer.”

“We’ll eat it up the next time we come,” Jerry said.

Parker slammed the door and bolted it, then went forward to the cockpit. “Fasten your safety belts,” he ordered. The little plane took off smoothly and climbed over the bay. Through the window next to him, Sandy caught a last glimpse of the twin domes of the Russian church and the ancient sea wall with its great iron rings where the fur traders used to tie up their ships. The sun sparkled on the blue water and glinted briefly off the metal oil tanks of the U.S. naval base far across the bay. Parker leveled off at 10,000 feet and set a northeast course.

Sandy unbuckled his seat belt and went up front to the cockpit. “How long will it take to fly to Cordova?” he inquired.

“With this tail wind no more than two hours,” Parker said. “We should be landing a little after ten. Your dad and the professor want to fly back to Juneau this afternoon.”

Sandy nodded. “From there we’re taking a commercial airline back to Seattle.”

Parker put the ship on automatic pilot and turned sideways in the seat. “Not driving back down the highway?”

“No. Professor Crowell decided the trip was too rugged in the winter. He’s leaving his dogs up here until spring. Anyway, Jerry and I have to get back to school, so we were planning to fly back in any case.”

Listening to the conversation with one ear, Jerry looked up from the book he was reading. “Hey, Sandy, back in Valley View the guys are just steeling themselves for a session with Miss Remson in English Four. Isn’t that great? And here we are three thousand miles away and two miles in the air. Think we’re safe from her?”

“Sure,” Sandy said. “And Miss Remson would probably be just as glad if you stayed that far away from her.”

Parker pointed out a range of mountains just visible on the northwest horizon. “Too bad you don’t have time to visit the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.”

“That’s an interesting name. What is it?”

“Before Mount Katmai erupted in 1912 it was a fertile farm region. Then the whole top of the mountain blew off—two cubic miles of rock vaporized into thin air. One hundred miles away in Kodiak they had to shovel the dust and ashes off the roof tops.”

Sandy whistled. “That’s as bad as having an H-bomb drop in your back yard.”

“Maybe worse,” Parker said grimly. “Then the entire floor of the valley erupted into little fumaroles, or volcanic potholes, that spewed out molten sand. Thousands of them. That’s where they got the name Ten Thousand Smokes. Today there are only seven of them that are still active, but the valley is a desert wasteland.”

Sandy squinted through the windshield, imagining he could see a thin ribbon of smoke rising from one of the peaks. “What happened to old Mount Katmai? Is it still active?”

“Well, the experts think it’s still boiling way down inside. There’s a big lake in the crater now, but it never freezes. I’ve heard it’s warm enough to swim in.”

Jerry, who had come forward to listen to the story, was wonderstruck. “Why, I bet you could land a plane on the lake and find out,” he said.

“It’s a thought,” Parker agreed, not too enthusiastically. “Maybe some day I’ll try it.”

For the remainder of the trip, he captivated the boys with other tales about the big land, and almost before they knew it they were approaching Cordova. The traffic was light and the tower gave them immediate clearance to land.

A quarter of an hour after the plane touched down, they were on their way to town in the auto of a radio technician who was going off duty. Russ Parker remained at the field to give the Norseman a thorough inspection before the afternoon flight to Juneau. “We’ll take off about one, I guess,” he told them as they were leaving.

The considerate radio man dropped them off in front of the old-fashioned hotel where Dr. Steele had said they would be staying. The clerk at the desk informed them that the geologists were still registered, but that he had not seen them since the previous morning.

“Are you certain they didn’t come back when you were off duty?” Sandy asked him.

“Positive,” the clerk declared. “The chambermaid said their beds haven’t been slept in.”

Sandy looked at Jerry helplessly. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait for them.”

The clerk gave them a passkey to one of the two adjoining rooms occupied by Dr. Steele and his party. When they entered the room, the boys were surprised to see that the geologists hadn’t even started to pack. Clothing, books and toilet articles were scattered everywhere.

Jerry looked at his wrist watch. “We’re never going to take off for Juneau at one o’clock at this rate. It’s after eleven now. Are you sure you didn’t get the days mixed up, Sandy? Maybe your father wasn’t expecting us until tomorrow.”

A little seed of fear began to grow inside of Sandy. “No, he said the third. Professor Crowell told Russ he wanted to fly to Juneau today, too. I can’t understand it, Jerry. If Dad didn’t expect to be here when we got back from Kodiak, he would have left word for us. Anyway, they couldn’t have been planning to make any overnight trips. They didn’t take razors, toothbrushes or anything; my dad shaves every morning even when he’s on a fishing trip miles from civilization. I don’t like it, Jerry.”

Jerry’s face turned pale under its perpetual tan. “Sandy, you don’t think those enemy agents...?” He left the sentence unfinished.

Before Sandy could reply, the telephone on the stand between the twin beds jangled harshly. The boys looked at each other hopefully.

“Maybe that’s Dad calling.” Sandy threw himself across one of the beds and picked up the receiver eagerly. But it was Russ Parker phoning from the airfield.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” Parker said, “but I just found out that your dad and his friends chartered a plane yesterday morning to fly out to McCarthy. That’s an old ghost town near the abandoned Kennecott copper mine. When they didn’t show back last night, the authorities figured they had been forced down somewhere with engine trouble. Search planes have been combing the area all morning, but there’s no sign of the plane, crashed or otherwise.”

“What do you think we should do, Russ?” Sandy asked in a tight voice.

“I dunno. I sort of thought we might fly out that way ourselves and have a look.”

“That’s a good idea, Russ. Jerry and I will be out as soon as we can hitch a ride. Thanks for calling.” He slammed down the receiver and related the latest development to Jerry. Minutes later they were on their way.

As they swooped low across the small ghost town of McCarthy, Parker banked the plane sharply and indicated the unblemished expanses of white around the town. “No one has set down here since before the last snow,” he said.

“Is there anywhere else they might have landed?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe up at the mine proper. We’ll fly up that way and have a look.”

“Imagine having a ghost town up here,” Jerry marveled. “I thought they were exclusive to the old American West. It’s kind of spooky, everyone packing up and leaving a place. Almost as if it was haunted.”

“Ghost towns are haunted in a sense,” Sandy said. “By poverty and hunger. They’re towns that build up around mines and have no other livelihood. If the mines close down they’re doomed.”

“Any community that puts all its eggs in one basket runs the risk of becoming a ghost town,” Parker put in.

“Why did the Kennecott mine shut down?” Sandy asked curiously.

“The ore just ran out,” Parker said. “Here we are now.”

Below them Sandy saw a sprawling shedlike structure that seemed to be hanging on the side of a hill. “That’s the main building,” Parker said. “See those long wires that look like trolley cables? They used to send the ore down from the shafts by cable car. Then it was loaded on trains and shipped to Cordova to be put on ships.”

On a level plateau below the Kennecott mine, they spotted the long twin ski marks of a plane. There were two sets, one set almost parallel to the other.

“No doubt about it,” Parker said. “A plane landed here recently. And it took off again.” He brought the Norseman’s nose up and began climbing.

“But if they took off again, where _did_ they go?” Sandy was sick with fear. The idea of his father lying badly injured—or worse—in the wreckage of a crashed plane terrified him. “If—if they had cracked up, the search planes would have found them by now, wouldn’t they?”

Parker chewed thoughtfully on his underlip. “I would think so. Unless they wandered outlandishly far off course. But there isn’t any reason why they should have. The last two days and nights have been perfect for flying.” Ominously, he added, “But we can’t discount that possibility altogether. There’s so much territory to cover even with an air search that a small plane might be missed. In Canada they insist that private planes follow well-traveled routes like the Alaska Highway instead of flying the beam, for that very reason. If you have to make a forced landing, there’s a better chance you’ll be found promptly.”

“Listen,” Sandy implored the pilot, “let’s land here and look around. Maybe we’ll find a clue or something to show where they went.”

Parker shrugged. “Sure, if it’ll make you feel any better. But if they were here, they definitely took off again.”

Parker landed the Norseman smoothly, cutting across the ski tracks of the other plane. He taxied to the far end of the clearing, turning her about in position for a take-off, then cut the engines. The plane settled heavily in the snow.

“Looks pretty deep out there,” Parker estimated. “We better dig out snowshoes from the baggage compartment.”

They had landed about a quarter of a mile away from the main building of the mine, and because of the boys’ inexperience on snowshoes it was a slow walk.

“I feel just like a duck,” Jerry grumbled as he brought up the rear, flopping along in the clumsy, webbed footgear. “Overgrown tennis rackets, that’s all they are.”

“You’re not supposed to try and walk the way you do in shoes,” Sandy instructed him. “You just shuffle along.”

At last they stood beneath the big ramshackle structure. It _was_ spooky, Sandy had to admit to himself, just as Jerry said. Once this building had been the nerve center of a booming industry, buzzing with activity and life. Now it stood on the hillside, gaunt, decaying and silent. Before many more years it would become a rickety skeleton.

He shuddered as Parker led them up on the moldy loading platform and into the tomblike dampness of the shed. “We can go on up to the main building through here. There are stairs right inside.” They passed through a doorway into a room illuminated only by the slivers of daylight that penetrated the cracked boards.

Suddenly, Russ Parker did an about-face and began talking. “Well, here we are.” Only he seemed to be talking to someone in back of them.

Sandy whirled quickly and saw that the doorway was blocked by a huge man wearing a stocking cap and a plaid mackinaw. His face was hidden in shadow. But the big Lüger pistol in his right hand was very plain to see.