A STRANGE TRAIL
Eagerly, the policeman and Toma examined the knife that Dick had found,
which had, without a doubt, once reposed in Sandy McClaren’s sheath.
Yet, after the first flush of excitement had worn off, they all realized
that the clue was a very inadequate one. In itself it could not lead to
Sandy. Only it served as an added incentive for them to search more
diligently for some more definite trace of the lost boy.
As they circled slowly, getting farther and farther from camp, the snow
continued to present a hard crust which had registered no record of the
feet that had passed over it under the impenetrable shroud of the polar
darkness.
But their patience was rewarded when Toma found a bit of bearskin with
the long hair adhering to it. Upon examining the fur closely, they saw
that it had been slashed from a larger piece of fur with a knife.
“It might have been cut from Sandy’s trousers,” ventured Dick.
“That’s possible,” rejoined Corporal McCarthy, “but we just found what
seemed to be Sandy’s knife. What did he cut the fur with?”
Neither Dick nor Toma could answer that question, and at the time it did
not seem important enough to worry about. Close to a hundred feet from
where they had spied the first bit of bearskin, they found another
fragment of the same kind of fur. It, too, had been obviously cut with a
knife.
“Now I know Sandy has cut off these bits of fur to mark the way he
went,” Dick cried excitedly. “Let’s hurry on and see where the next one
is.”
After progressing nearly a quarter mile across the crusted snow, they
had picked up nearly twenty bits of fur similar to the first one Toma
had found, and were certain something more tangible would soon turn up.
Then the trail of fur fragments disappeared and was replaced by the
imprint of several snowshoes, as they at last reached soft snow.
All three bent to examine the tracks. There were three pair of snow-shoe
tracks and one pair of small boot tracks.
“The boot tracks are Sandy’s, I’m pretty sure,” was Corporal McCarthy’s
confident statement. “The snow-shoe tracks must have been made by those
who captured him, unless someone picked up his trail after the moon came
up.”
Hastening onward, they followed an unbroken trail for nearly a half
hour, when they again were discouraged upon reaching more crusted snow
upon which the trail vanished. But not long were they at loss. Running
ahead a short distance, Dick stooped and picked up something which he
waved triumphantly to Toma and the Corporal. It was another bit of
bearskin.
“Sandy’s started marking his trail again!” Dick called.
“I’m getting so I’m not so sure just who has been leaving these
markers,” Corporal McCarthy said. “That knife we found back there makes
me wonder if it’s really Sandy who has dropped those pieces of fur.”
“Why, who could it be then?” Dick asked incredulously.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” was the policeman’s enigmatic reply. “But in the
meantime you two fellows be ready to obey orders.”
Wondering what the Corporal was hinting at, Dick started out to find
more of the trail markers. About every fifty or a hundred feet they
found them, so that there was no doubt as to the fact that they were
going right.
Corporal McCarthy cautioned them to keep their eyes open now, for they
had reached the end of the level snow and were among some large
snowdrifts formed by huge boulders that had lodged the snow. Directly
over their heads loomed the long upward slant of the high moraine which
had so long served them as a landmark. However, they were in a part of
the country unfamiliar to them, and so did not know what to expect.
Added to this the moonlight deceived the eyes, and made it difficult for
them to tell a boulder from a living body.
“Be prepared for an ambush,” the Corporal instructed Dick and Toma.
“Mistak hasn’t taken Sandy all this distance for nothing. He knew we
would follow.”
But minute after minute passed and there was no sign of Mistak or his
band, nor of Sandy, with the exception of the clear prints of the
snowshoes leading in and out and around the drifts and boulders. Like so
many ghosts the three trailers hurried on in the pale moonlight, their
snowshoes making scarcely no sound at all in the feathery drifts.
Suddenly, there broke upon the icy air a mocking laugh. The three
stopped dead in their tracks, mouths agape.
“What was that?” whispered Dick.
“Him sounded like bad spirit,” Toma’s voice was subdued from sudden
fright.
Corporal McCarthy said nothing, but his hands tightened on his rifle
while he searched every black shadow with probing eyes.
Shaken by the eerie sound, they prepared to go on again, when once more
the mad laugh pealed out, vindictive, vengeful and subtlely mocking.
“It must be a mad man,” quavered Dick.
“Nonsense,” grated the policeman. “It’s some of that devilish Mistak’s
work. Anyway the sound came from ahead of us. Unlimber your rifles,
lads, we’re going to see some action, I think. If I’m lucky enough to
get a bead on Mistak, I’ll never get him to Canada alive, mark my word.”
Crouching, so as to make use of every bit of shelter, they now moved
slowly forward, holding their breaths for a repetition of the cackle of
laughter. The very boulders themselves now seemed to be moved in the
deceptive moonlight under their imaginative eyes.
And again they heard the laugh—ahead of them yet. On and on they crept,
a dew of perspiration standing out on their foreheads, and freezing
there in tiny drops. But not a sign of any person or thing did they
actually see. Only the frequent peals of wild laughter urged them
fearfully on, like a will-o’-the-wisp in some frozen swamp.
The boulder strewn snow presently gave way to treacherous gashes in the
ground made by the erosion of some age-old glacier. Clambering and
sliding in and out of these precipitous gullies, they kept on after the
elusive laughter.
Long since they had given up following the snowshoe tracks. The laughter
of a man—even a mad man was much more tangible than footprints. But had
it not been for the grim, fearless policeman, Dick and Toma would have
turned back.
An end to their reckless advance came in a very unexpected manner.
Clambering out of a steep gully, they found themselves at the edge of a
trackless expanse of soft white snow, apparently as level as a floor and
just as solid footing. The laughter had not been repeated for some time
before they negotiated the last glacier gash, and they were beginning to
wonder if their ghostly guide had deserted them.
It was Toma who saw it first—the form of a human being sitting erect
against a snow bank across the white level of snow.
“Look. Somebody there!” Toma whispered.
“It—it must be a dead man,” faltered Dick.
“Not on your life,” gritted Corporal McCarthy. “See him move. That
fellow’s tied and that fellow is Sandy McClaren!”
Dick’s eyes suddenly testified as to the accuracy of the policeman’s
statement. “Sandy!” he almost shrieked, starting to run toward him.
But the iron hand of Corporal McCarthy dragged him back as if he had
been merely a pillowful of feathers.
“Look out there!” cried the Corporal. “This is a trap you can bet and
we’ll go slow.”
Sandy apparently was gagged, for though he had begun to wriggle, he made
no sound with his mouth except an almost inaudible gurgle.
Corporal McCarthy was pawing in the snow for something. Dick finally saw
what he was after—a stone. The policeman finally found one that was
quite heavy. He raised this above his head and to Dick and Toma’s
amazement, threw it out upon the snow between them and Sandy.
The boys expected the stone to bound and roll a little way, but to their
horror, as the stone struck it disappeared and, following it, more than
twenty square feet of snow caved downward with a rustling hiss and
disappeared into a fathomless black void.
Dick’s gasp of dismay was followed by a piercing voice from the shadows
of the boulders behind them. It was the voice that had done the
laughing, but this time it did not laugh but cried out in an expression
of rage and disappointment.
Corporal McCarthy’s rifle was at his shoulder when the sound reached his
ears, but there was nothing to shoot at—only the ghastly moonlight of
the polar night, and the inky shadows. The policeman raised his rifle
and shook it.
“Beat you that time—you half-breed devil!” his big voice pealed out
across the desolate wastes. “And I’m praying you’ll come down here and
fight it out where I can get a bead on you.”
But there was no answer, and a moment later the Corporal turned back to
the boys.
“Clever trap,” he explained in an undertone. “But I had my suspicions,
and as soon as I saw Sandy out there in plain sight, I knew there was a
nigger in the fence. That was a snow bridge we came pretty near busting
through. Wind built it up across this gorge. Now we’ve got to get at the
boy.”
Calling across the chasm, they explained to Sandy that they must find
some other place to cross over to him. Hurriedly making their way to the
left along the treacherous brink, which for many yards was bridged by
the frail snow drift, they finally came to a narrow place and one by one
leaped over with their snowshoes in their hands. It took them but a few
moments to strap on their snowshoes again and run to Sandy. In a trice
they had slashed his bonds and yanked the gag from his mouth.
With a joy they could not express, Dick and Sandy embraced, whereupon
Sandy’s story came tumbling from his lips by fits and starts.
Briefly, it was this: About half way to Moonshine Sam’s igloo, following
the beaten path, he had heard stealthy footsteps coming toward him. In
the gloom he could see nothing, and so he had stopped, waiting for some
sign that the person was a friend or an enemy. Then, without warning, a
smothering fur robe had been thrown over him and he was lifted up in
strong arms and carried away. At a distance from the igloos far enough
so that his cries for help would not bring his friends, Sandy’s captors
had put him on his feet, and taken off the robe. They then had taken his
knife away from him and had thrown it away. Sandy had then been
compelled to accompany the men on foot. When his eyes had grown
accustomed to the dimly starlit night, he had managed to recognize
Mistak among the three, and had found out that they were leaving bits of
fur behind them to mark their trail. Sandy had not been able to fathom
their purpose in leaving such a plain trail, nor had he been fully aware
of the nature of the cunning trap laid by Mistak when the outlaw had
left him bound and gagged against a snowdrift, after a long roundabout
journey among a network of deep gorges.
“I didn’t know what it was all about till I saw you three stop out there
in front of me, and throw that stone,” Sandy concluded. “I guess I made
a pretty good bait for that trap.”
“I pretty near went right on after you, too,” shivered Dick, recalling
their narrow escape, “but Corporal McCarthy was wise enough to see
through it.”
“Well, let’s be getting back to camp,” the policeman interrupted them.
“We’re a lot farther from home than we ought to be. If a storm catches
us before we get in there’s no telling whether we’ll ever get back.”
“I’m sure beginning to wish it really was home we were going back to,”
groaned Sandy. “In two days I’ve only had one chunk of walrus meat to
eat.”
“Buck up, Sandy,” Dick replied cheerfully, as they set out on the back
trail. “We’ll be back at camp before you know it.”
But Dick was wrong. Before they were on the trail an hour, a bank of
clouds that had been hovering in the north, spread out fan-like across
the stars and presently the moon was blotted out as if some giant hand
had taken it from the sky.
With not even the stars to light their way, the four travelers stumbled
blindly along, until Corporal McCarthy ordered them to halt.
“We can’t keep on like this,” said the Corporal grimly. “We’ll get so
far off the back trail that we’ll never find our way back. The only
thing we can do is build an igloo and wait for the moon to come out
again. Let’s hope a storm don’t come up.”
After blundering about in the darkness, which was so thick they could
cut it with a knife, they finally located a drift which was solid enough
and large enough for the cutting of snow blocks for an igloo. It was a
poor snow house they erected largely by their sense of touch, but it
served the purpose. Hovering inside their makeshift shelter they waited
silently for the clouds to disperse, praying for fair weather to
continue.
Yet the supreme power that governed the capricious whims of the mighty
ice cap seemed deaf to their supplications for a half hour after the
igloo had been completed the temperature began to fall alarmingly. A
wind sprang up out of the northeast, just a whisper at first, like the
vast, mournful sigh of a melancholy spirit, then rapidly it grew louder,
by gusts and fits, until a thirty mile an hour gale was sweeping the
snow wastes with the fury of a stampeded lion. The wind sought out every
niche and cranny in the hastily erected igloo, and through the heavy
garments of the shivering refugees it cut like so many tiny knives.
Futilely, they tried to stop up the holes where the wind seeped in while
the gale laughed and howled and whistled, as if in mad glee at the
discomfiture it was causing the shivering mortals.
In the grip of the terrible cold, the four kept from falling into that
dreadful drowsiness which signals death by freezing, by beating
themselves and each other with their numbed arms. The fur rims of their
parkas became heavy with icicles formed by moisture from their mouth.
Their eyelashes froze together from the watering of their eyes. With
each breath it seemed red hot irons had been thrust down their throats
and liquid fire loosed in their lungs. For extreme cold has much the
same sensation of extreme heat.
Two hours they fought a losing fight, then the capricious gods of the
north changed their minds and the wind began to lay. Almost
imperceptibly at first, each gust a little weaker than the last, until
finally, they all crept out of the igloo to find a vast silence
pervading the ghostly land. Cold and pale, the Arctic moon now lighted
their way, for the clouds had been herded southward by the passing polar
wind.
The temperature had risen a little when all four set out on the return
trail, now almost blotted out save where the wind had struck it squarely
and had blown the loose snow away around the packed snowshoe tracks.
In his weakened condition Sandy had almost succumbed to the cold, and
part of the way they had to carry the gritty young Scotchman.
Thus they stumbled into the village of igloos hours later, lungs burning
from the frost, bodies numb and prickling in a dozen places.
No more had they arrived than they found their troubles were not over.
Corporal Thalman met them with disturbing news, as soon as they had
stumbled into an igloo and lighted an oil heater.
Moonshine Sam had escaped during the storm!