CHAPTER THREE

A Mysterious Intruder

The little caravan headed north on the Alaska Highway about 12:20 P.M. Professor Crowell, Dr. Steele and Lou Mayer led the way in the big station wagon, which was loaded down with scientific equipment and supplies. Sandy, Jerry and Tagish Charley followed in a surplus U.S. Army six-by-six truck. The boys and the Indian all rode in the roomy cab, with Sandy at the wheel. The back of the truck, roofed with a heavy canvas top, had been converted into a comfortable compartment for the professor’s seven prize huskies. Here, also, were the big dog sled, a pyramidal tent, sleeping bags, cooking utensils and a Coleman stove.

As Professor Crowell pointed out, there were tourist camps and aid stations all along the highway, but sometimes it was more convenient to set up one’s own camp at the side of the road. Particularly in winter, travelers had to be prepared for emergencies.

Both vehicles were equipped with heavy-duty tire chains on all wheels, plus oversized snow tires, and they rode smoothly and firmly across the hard-packed snow surface of the highway.

As the afternoon deepened into an early dusk, the temperature plummeted, and the chill penetrated the cab of the truck, even though the heater was going full blast. Sandy doubled up his hands into fists inside his mittens and wriggled his feet inside his fur-lined boots to stimulate his circulation.

“I’m warm as toast except for my fingers and toes,” he said.

Jerry fingered his nose gingerly. “My old schnozzola is getting numb.”

Tagish Charley, who was taking his turn at the wheel, patted his stomach. “Belly say soon time to stop and eat.”

Jerry yawned and looked at the dashboard clock. “Three-thirty,” he announced. “We’ve been on the road for about three hours. How far have we come?”

Sandy studied the speedometer. “A little over one hundred and ten miles.”

“That’s pretty good,” Jerry said. “We’re averaging almost forty per.”

A little while later they passed a river, and now Charley turned the headlights on. Out of nowhere, it seemed, thousands of tiny snowflakes swirled suddenly into the yellow cones of light.

“It’s snowing!” Jerry exclaimed.

Sandy surveyed the wilderness on both sides anxiously. “I’d hate to spend the night out here in a blizzard.”

“We stop soon,” Charley assured him.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when they rounded a curve and came upon a little settlement set back in a clearing in a pine grove. It consisted of two large quonset huts and three small log cabins. The warm glow of lights in the small windows of the buildings gave Sandy a feeling of well-being. The station wagon slowed down, tooted twice with its horn and swerved off the highway into the circular drive that had been plowed up to the entrance of the main building. As the truck’s headlights swept across the front of the other larger quonset hut, they could see that it had big sliding doors that allowed one entire wall to open up like an airplane hangar. And as the lights probed the interior of the hut, they could make out a neat two-engine plane mounted on skis. The brief glimpse also revealed a big bulldozer plow and other snow-fighting machinery.

“Road crew,” Charley told the boys. “They good fellers. We eat good, drink good and sleep good.”

“You were so right, Charley,” Jerry said later, as he pushed himself away from the big plank table after sharing a hearty meal of roast lamb, fried potatoes, home-made rolls and apple pie with Superintendent MacKensie and his maintenance gang. “I never ate so good.” He polished off a pint mug of milk that was half cream and sighed. “Or drank so good either.”

Superintendent MacKensie, a big florid-faced man, tugged at one side of his blond handlebar mustache. “Here now, you’re not finished, are you?” he asked.

Jerry patted the round swell of his stomach. “If I ate another mouthful, I’d burst, sir.”

“That’s a shame,” MacKensie said solemnly. “Now Cooky’s feelings will be hurt and he’ll make you wash the dishes.”

A swarthy giant of a man at the far end of the table pounded the planks with hamlike fists. “By gar, I weel!” he roared in mock anger. “You no like Frenchy’s cooking?”

Everyone laughed as Jerry looked around uncertainly.

Dr. Steele patted his mouth with a napkin. “As Jerry so aptly put it, Frenchy, ‘We never ate so good.’”

“We’re happy you enjoyed it, Doctor,” Superintendent MacKensie said. “Now if you’d like to go into the other room and toast your feet by the hearth, I’ll have one of the lads stir up that fire in your cabin.”

“An excellent suggestion,” Professor Crowell agreed.

With the exception of a half dozen men of the road crew who had some tasks to attend to, they all retired to the large, comfortably furnished recreation room where an enormous stone fireplace almost covered one wall. Sandy, Jerry and Lou Mayer sat cross-legged directly in front of the blazing logs, on a thick bearskin robe that was spread-eagled on the floor.

“Man!” Jerry whispered in an awed voice, lifting the huge head and inspecting the gleaming fangs that were still frightening even in death. “I think if I ever ran into one of these babies I’d just roll over and die before he laid a paw on me.”

Lou Mayer poked one of the clawed forepaws with his toe. “Well, it’s a sure bet you’d die if he ever _did_ lay one of those paws on you. They’re as big as dinner plates.”

Superintendent MacKensie, slouched in an old-fashioned rocker, sucked his pipe gravely. “I’ve seen them kill a horse with one swipe.”

“You’ve _seen_ them?” Sandy asked.

MacKensie smiled reminiscently. “As a matter of fact _that_ fellow did kill my horse. I was hunting with a party up on Kodiak Island. I blundered around a rock right into the beggar. He rose up on his hind legs, caught my horse with one blow in the choppers and that was it. I managed to jump free. Then I pumped five shots into him. They might as well have been darts. He would have got me for sure if the guide hadn’t dropped him with a brain shot.”

“Powerful beasts,” Professor Crowell acknowledged. “The Roman Emperor Nero used to pit bears against lions in the arena. And frequently they killed the lions.”

“It’s a lucky thing we did bring all those guns along—” Jerry began, than caught himself as Sandy and Lou Mayer stiffened visibly. “Well, it’s a good idea with mankillers like this running loose,” he finished lamely.

Superintendent MacKensie laughed. “So you expect to do some hunting while you’re up north, do you?” he said to Professor Crowell. He turned to Dr. Steele. “Of course, the customs officials plugged up the barrels of your weapons, didn’t they?”

“Yes, they did,” Dr. Steele said emphatically. Speaking directly to Sandy and Jerry, he explained. “You see, the Canadians don’t want visitors to shoot up their game preserves, and quite rightly so. When we cross the border into Alaska, the officials will remove the seals from the barrels. Do you _understand_?”

“Yes, sir,” Sandy mumbled, looking quickly away into the embers. He was stunned. _Those automatics weren’t plugged up._ He had never heard his father deliberately tell a lie before.

Unaware of the tension that had mushroomed up, MacKensie stretched. “I’d better be getting back to the radio shack and see what’s come in from the weather stations on this storm. If she looks bad, I’ll have to keep a crew on alert. Any time you gentlemen feel like sacking in, go to it. Your cabin should be warm now. It’s small, but cozy. There are six bunk beds, so it won’t be too crowded.”

“Where’s Charley?” Sandy asked, suddenly aware that the Indian was not in the room.

“Right after supper he went outside to get your dogs bedded down,” one of the crewmen told him.

Professor Crowell smiled. “He treats them like children, and they love it. Actually, though, all those huskies need for a bed is a soft snowdrift.”

“They like to sleep in snow?” Jerry asked incredulously. “Don’t they freeze?”

“No, once they tuck in their paws and stick their noses under their tails, they’re ready for anything. Have you noticed their coats? Double thick. Underneath that heavy outside fur there’s a short woolly undercoat. The fact is they’re probably more comfortable sleeping outside than next to a roaring fire.”

Lou Mayer held his hands up to the flames. “We have nothing in common.”

After MacKensie left, the other maintenance men began to drift off to bed. The snow was coming down very hard, and they faced the prospect of a long, hard day battling the drifts.

About nine o’clock, Sandy yawned and stretched. “What do you say we turn in, pal?” he said to Jerry.

“I’m with you,” Jerry replied promptly.

The boys looked inquiringly at the older men. “You two run along,” Dr. Steele told them. “We’ll finish our pipes first.”

Sandy and Jerry dug their mackinaws and mittens out of a heap of clothing on the long table in the vestibule and slipped on their boots.

“It’s only a hundred-yard walk,” Sandy admitted, “but at thirty below zero it’s worth the trouble.”

“Amen,” Jerry agreed, wrapping his wool muffler around his lantern jaw.

The boys stepped out the back door of the big hut and followed the path leading back to the cabins. Ten feet away from the building, the wind-whipped grains of ice and snow closed in on them like a white curtain, blotting out their vision. If it had not been for the clearly defined path, they would have been helpless.

“You could get lost in your own back yard in this stuff,” Jerry gasped. “Yipes!” he shouted as he blundered off the path into a snowdrift. “Where’s the St. Bernards?”

Sandy took his arm and guided him back on the path. Finally, a dark outline with a faint square of light in the center of it loomed up before them.

“Here we are,” Sandy shouted above the wind. “Home at last.”

“If only the boys back at Valley View High could see us now,” Jerry yelled in his ear. “Wouldn’t it be something to drop that Pepper March out here some night? Boy! Or better yet, let’s drop him into a den of those Kodiak bears.”

Sandy laughed. “I don’t know which of the two is more ornery. He might scare them off.”

They reached the cabin door, and Sandy leaned against it and pushed it open. They staggered inside and slammed it shut behind them. The interior of the one-room shack was dark, except for the logs burning low and evenly on the open hearth.

Sandy blinked to accustom his eyes to the dimness. “I could have sworn there was a light in the window as we came along the path.”

“Probably the reflection of the flames on the panes,” Jerry suggested.

“Yeah. Well, let’s light a lamp.” Sandy took several steps toward a table silhouetted against the firelight, then stopped suddenly. “Hey!” he said in a startled voice, nudging an object on the floor with his boot. “What’s this junk spread all over the floor? Looks like somebody was breaking up house. I wonder—” He broke off as a dark shape materialized from the shadows in the far corner of the cabin and seemed to glide toward him. At the same time, he heard Jerry’s excited shout in his ear.

“Sandy! There’s somebody in here. Hey, look out!”

Sandy Steele, without even a consciousness of what he was facing, reacted with his athlete’s instinct and reflexes. Crouching low, he braced himself solidly, and as the figure loomed up before him, he threw a hard body block at the middle of it. His shoulder hit a solid form and he heard a soft grunt of pain and anger. As his arms grappled with the intruder, he realized for the first time that it was a man. His fingers brushed rough wool, and then he felt the steel fingers at his throat.

“Get help, Jerry!” he bellowed, just before the wind was pinched off in his throat. Then he took a hard, numbing blow at the back of his neck and felt himself falling ... falling ... falling ... into blackness.