CHAPTER FIVE

Christmas in the Wilderness

“Dad,” Sandy began haltingly as they walked slowly back to the barracks, “Professor Crowell is in some kind of trouble, isn’t he?”

Dr. Steele was evasive. “You mean because of that man who broke into our cabin? What makes you think that had anything to do with the professor?”

Sandy looked earnestly into his father’s eyes. “That was no ordinary thief, Dad. He was after something in Professor Crowell’s notes and papers.” His face became even graver. “Maybe they’re after you, too.”

Dr. Steele tried to laugh it off, but his mirth was hollow. “Aren’t you becoming a little melodramatic, Son?”

“You don’t fool me for a minute, Dad. I know that whatever’s going on is probably top-secret government business and you can’t tell me what it’s all about. But I do think it’s only fair to tell me whether or not you or the professor or Lou Mayer are in any danger.”

Dr. Steele appeared to think it over very carefully. Finally, he sighed. “Yes, I guess you’re right. I brought you boys along, so I don’t suppose I have any right to keep you completely in the dark. The fact is we _are_ in danger—all of us. I had no right to expose you boys—especially Jerry—to this kind of thing, but I thought at first we could deceive _them_ into believing that this was just a routine geological survey. I was wrong. They’re far too clever.” His mouth tightened. “Maybe the best thing to do would be to send you and Jerry back home.”

“Dad!” Sandy looked hurt. “Not on your life. If you’re in any kind of trouble, I’m sticking with you until you’re out of it.”

Dr. Steele frowned. “I wish I could tell you more about this, Sandy, but I’m bound by an oath of secrecy. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“I trust you, Dad.”

“As for Jerry James, I think it’s only fair for you to tell him what I’ve told you and let him decide whether he wants to continue on with us.”

“I’ll ask him,” Sandy agreed. “But I know what he’s going to say right now.”

They were almost at the front door of the barracks now. “One more thing, Dad,” Sandy said. “Tagish Charley. I like him an awful lot. You don’t think that he—”

“That he’s the one who ransacked our cabin last night?” the doctor finished for him. “The same thought flashed through my mind, too. I just can’t believe it, though. Charley’s been with the professor for years; he’s like one of the family. Still—” his face went grim—“we don’t really know—and we can’t afford to take chances.”

Superintendent MacKensie greeted them as they entered the building. “Your wagons are all set to roll,” he announced.

Sandy took his friend aside just before they left the station and repeated what his father had said, offering Jerry the choice of going back to Valley View.

“I ought to slug you,” the husky, dark-haired boy roared, his black eyes flashing, his square jaw jutting out defiantly, “for even thinking I’d back out on you when you were in trouble! What kind of a guy do you think I am?”

“Take it easy, Buster.” Sandy threw his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I told Dad that’s exactly what you would say.”

They made good time all that morning, and a little after one o’clock they reached Fort Nelson. Here they ate lunch with the Game Commissioner, an old friend of Professor Crowell’s. Later, while the station wagon and truck were being refueled, the boys accompanied Tagish Charley down to the Indian village on the banks of the frozen Nelson River. Charley went straight to the house of the headman in the village, and they talked earnestly and excitedly in an Indian dialect for some time.

On the way back to the truck, he told the boys: “That man know everything go on in province. He say many strangers pass this way. They say they French trappers, but they speak strange tongue and never sell any furs.”

“Did he say how many?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe six.”

Jerry clapped his mittened hands together. “And there are five of us. Those aren’t bad odds.”

“In a fair fight,” Sandy corrected him. “But from what I’ve heard and seen of these guys, they probably have no idea of fighting fair.”

The sun went down early, but this night was clear and the sky was full of stars, so they drove on for quite a while after dark. At five-thirty they came to a weather station near Lake Muncho. It was a small place, manned by three technicians, and although the five guests really crowded their quarters, the weathermen were very hospitable.

“You chaps are lucky,” the man in charge told them. “This high-pressure area should be with us for the rest of the week. You’ll have fine weather all the way to Alaska.”

“Gosh,” said Jerry, when he saw the small pine tree trimmed with tinsel and colored balls and lights that stood in one corner of the shack’s main room. “I almost forgot—this is Christmas Eve.”

“It doesn’t seem like it, somehow,” Sandy said, feeling a slight twinge of homesickness. “Not without Mom’s turkey dinner and presents and Christmas carols.”

“Christmas isn’t turkey and presents and chimes,” Professor Crowell observed. “It’s what you feel in the heart.”

“You’re right, sir,” Sandy admitted. Then he grinned. “I guess Jerry and I are still kids at heart.”

“That’s as it should be,” the professor said. “It’s one of the things I admire most about you Americans—your boyish exuberance. You’re always looking for an excuse to give a party. I think it’s one of the reasons why you have so many national holidays.”

“Nothing shy about us Canadians when it comes to a party either,” one of the weathermen put in. He turned to his two partners. “Let’s show these Yanks a real Christmas party. What do you say?”

There was a chorus of “ayes.”

After a hearty meal of tinned ham, fried potatoes and frozen candied yams, topped off by a flaming plum pudding, they gathered in a tight circle about the little fireplace and sipped hot cider and nibbled marshmallows toasted in the winking embers. About nine o’clock the weathermen picked up a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program of Christmas carols on their shortwave radio and piped it through a big hi-fi speaker over the fireplace.

“This is more like it,” Jerry sighed contentedly, stuffing himself with marshmallows and roasted nuts, staring at the lights twinkling on the Christmas tree and listening to the strains of “Silent Night.”

Dr. Steele grinned mysteriously. “And who knows, maybe Santa will find you boys even up here. Better pin up your stockings before you go to bed.”

There were only two extra cots at the weather station, so the boys, Lou Mayer and Tagish Charley bedded down in their sleeping bags around the fireplace. Just before he turned in, Charley fed the dogs and let them run for a while on the deserted highway. Then he penned them in on the big front porch of the weather station.

Sandy fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, and the next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming into his eyes. Yawning, he sat up and looked around. Tagish Charley and Lou Mayer were already up and off somewhere. Only Jerry was still asleep, curled up in his sleeping bag like a hibernating bear.

Sandy’s eyes widened as they came to rest on the little Christmas tree in the corner. Beneath it were piled assorted boxes wrapped in gaily colored tissue and tied with tinseled ribbon. He leaned over and shook his friend.

“Hey, Jerry, wake up!”

Jerry snorted and opened his eyes, heavy-lidded with sleep. “Whazza matter?” he mumbled.

Sandy grinned. “Looks like Santa was here while we were asleep. C’mon, get up.”

Sandy rolled out of his sleeping bag, put on his trousers, shirt and boots and went over to the tree. Kneeling down, he read the tags on the packages: “‘_To Sandy from Dad_,’ ‘_To Jerry...._’ Hey! There’s something here for everybody.”

He looked up and saw his father, Professor Crowell and Lou Mayer standing in the doorway that led into the tiny kitchen. They were all smiling broadly.

“Well, don’t just sit there,” Dr. Steele said. “Pass them around.”

As Sandy had observed, there was something for everyone. An intricate chronometer wrist watch that told the days of the month and even the phases of the moon for Sandy; a candid camera for Jerry; a gold fountain pen for Lou Mayer; and a fine steel hunting knife with a silver inlaid handle for Tagish Charley. Professor Crowell, with genuine Yuletide spirit, gave a set of ivory chessmen he had bought from an Indian at Fort Nelson to the three weathermen. They, in turn, presented the professor and Dr. Steele each with a pair of fine snowshoes.

After they had burned the wrappings in the fire, Sandy remarked rather sadly, “Gee, Dad, now I wish I hadn’t left your present back home. But Mom said we’d save all the gifts till we got back.”

Dr. Steele put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Sandy, the best present you could ever give me is just being here.” He reached for Jerry with his other arm. “That goes for you too, Jerry.”

Right after breakfast, they said goodbye to their new friends and headed north again. They drove into Watson Lake, just across the border in Yukon territory, about two o’clock. Watson Lake was one of the largest towns along the Alaska Highway. In addition to a Mountie station and an R.C.A.F. base, there was an airstrip for commercial airlines and accommodations for putting up passengers overnight. They drove straight out to the air force base, where the sentry ushered them through the gate with a snappy salute as soon as Professor Crowell identified himself.

“The old prof really rates in these parts, doesn’t he?” Jerry mused, as they drove through the precisely laid-out checkerboard streets past neat log-cabin barracks to the HQ building.

They were even more impressed by the reception the professor received from the Base Commander, an old friend he had worked with in World War II.

“You’re just in time for Christmas dinner,” the Commander told them happily. “Roast turkey with all the trimmings.”

Jerry rubbed his stomach gleefully. “This stands to be the best holiday season of our lives, Sandy. Wherever we go people give us Christmas dinners.”

The geologists decided to stop over at Watson Lake and get an early start the next morning for the long, grueling uphill drive over the divide.

“What is the divide?” Jerry asked.

“A high shelf on the continent that determines the direction of water drainage,” Dr. Steele explained. “In the case of North America, it’s the Rocky Mountains. All the rivers and streams on one side of the Rockies run in a generally easterly direction; on the other side they flow to the west.”

“Will we have any trouble driving up those mountains with all this snow and ice?” Sandy inquired of the R.C.A.F. Commander.

“Well, it’s a pretty tortuous route,” the officer admitted. “But the ascent is fairly gradual. With chains you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Of course, if it should snow again, that would be another matter.”

“We’ll get an early start,” Professor Crowell told them. “About six A.M.”