UNDER AN ARCTIC MOON
“I couldn’t stay awake,” Corporal Thalman said bitterly, in explanation
of Moonshine Sam’s escape. “I was the only one to stand the watches,
because I couldn’t trust any of the Eskimos to stick to their post. It’s
a wonder he didn’t kill me while I was helpless.”
“But I thought he wanted to stay with us for protection from the
vengeance of Mistak,” Corporal McCarthy said impatiently. “How was he
acting up to the time you fell asleep?”
“He seemed to change his mind,” replied the other officer. “I recall him
mumbling about the gallows, and about knowing he’d be hung if he was
taken back by the police. I think he intends either to try to rejoin
Mistak, or make his way south alone.”
“Well,” Corporal McCarthy’s voice was expressive of an inward,
suppressed rage, “we’ll have to bring him back! If we don’t Mistak will
kill him.”
Quickly, the Corporal gave his instructions. He and Corporal Thalman
were to set out after Moonshine Sam as soon as they had eaten. Dick,
Sandy and Toma were to remain in camp, and as soon as Constable Sloan
and Sipsa came in with the searching parties, the boys were to report to
them the escape of the outlaw and pass on orders for their aid in
retaking the prisoner.
A half hour later, the two Corporals departed from the village of igloos
with a day’s provisions, and a camp stove, packed on their backs. Not
long after they had gone the searching parties straggled in, discouraged
and half frozen from the blizzard which they, too, had been caught in.
Alone among the Eskimos, the three boys treated their frost bites with
snow and alcohol rubs, fed themselves on musk-ox steaks, and when again
fairly comfortable, became impatient at inaction. It was far worse to
sit in idleness than to get out and do something.
“Let’s go hunting,” suggested Dick.
“That’s better than sitting here in this igloo waiting for something to
happen,” Sandy rejoined. “I believe I’d go crazy in this awful silence
if I had to sit around and wiggle my thumbs.”
Toma seemed willing enough to stay behind and take care of things in the
absence of the boys, and so Dick and Sandy started out without him,
carrying only their rifles and hunting knives, for they dared not go far
away from camp. They knew that, while they had weathered one brief
blizzard, they could not expect to be so fortunate next time.
Looking for musk-oxen, the boys climbed the high moraine east of the
base camp and followed the top of the ridge southward until they reached
an arm of the glacier on the other side.
They had gone upward of two miles when they came suddenly upon the print
of a sealskin Arctic boot in the snow. The boys stopped and studied the
track.
“This can’t be made by any of the policemen, or Sipsa either,” said Dick
with bated breath. “They all had snowshoes.”
“And it can’t be Mistak either,” Sandy observed. “He’d be traveling on
snowshoes too.”
The boys looked at each other significantly.
“Then it’s just about got to be Moonshine Sam,” Dick spoke slowly.
Again they bent over the boot track.
“You can see it was made before or during the blizzard,” Dick said.
“It’s partly drifted full of snow. Let’s look for other tracks.”
Several feet away from the first, on the other side of a long, low,
snowdrift they found the next track. It was raised up out of the snow,
the wind having sucked away the loose flakes all around it. Another and
another they found, as the trail grew hotter, but the tracks seemed to
have been made by a person wandering aimlessly here and there.
“I’m certain it’s Moonshine Sam now,” Dick breathed. “His tracks show
how crazily he was going, blinded by the storm.”
Hastening on, the boys presently came to fresher footprints, made,
obviously, after the wind had laid. The tracks were now sunken in deep
snow, revealing how, from lack of snowshoes, the man had floundered
along.
They had followed the fresher tracks for about half a mile, when to
their surprise another trail, made by snowshoes, joined and followed the
first.
“I wonder who that could be,” Sandy spoke.
“Well, it’s only one man, so it can’t be the policemen, unless they’ve
divided up. I hardly think they’d do that.”
“Maybe it’s Mistak or some of his men,” was Sandy’s conjecture. “Don’t
you think we’d better go back?”
“Not on your life we’re not going back!” Dick said determinedly. “We’ve
been lucky enough to strike a hot trail, and believe me, we’re going to
stick to it. But I do wish we could get in touch with the policemen.
Look around, Sandy, and see if you can’t see someone.”
But a careful scanning of the bleak snowfields failed to disclose any
sign of life.
“We’ll have to keep on alone I guess,” Dick said finally.
Once more they started out on the double trail, their senses on the
alert for a sight or sound of those they followed.
Fresher and fresher became the trail, for the man on snowshoes was
rapidly overtaking whoever he pursued, provided that was what he had
been doing, and according to signs the man in boots had increased his
pace to a floundering run as if he wanted to get away from someone.
The boys came to the brow of a long incline, slanting to a level tundra,
and down the slope saw two men, surprisingly close.
“Sit down, Sandy,” Dick whispered. “Don’t let either of them see us.”
Dropping down in the snow, the boys watched an interesting chase. The
man on snowshoes was rapidly overtaking another who plunged along
hampered by sinking at every step.
Sandy clutched Dick by the arm and said hoarsely, fearfully: “That man
in front is Moonshine Sam—sure enough.”
“And you can bet the fellow on snowshoes is Mistak,” came back Dick
confidently.
“They’re going to fight!” exclaimed Sandy. “What if someone’s killed?”
“We can’t help it, Sandy. It’s their fight. We’re risking our lives if
we try to stop it, without killing one of them ourselves, and you know
we couldn’t kill in cold blood. Oh, if the policemen were only here!”
Tensely the boys watched the two draw nearer together. When a hundred
yards separated them, Moonshine Sam turned, shook his fists over his
head, and let out a loud yell. Then he started back. The man was going
to fight now that he was in a corner.
Mistak carried only a spear as a long distance weapon. The boys divined
that he and his band had long since run out of ammunition for the few
firearms they possessed.
Dick and Sandy held their breath as they saw the white Eskimo draw back
his arm and pose for a throw. An instant Mistak bent backward, still as
a statue, then his body and arm snapped forward simultaneously, like a
catapult. The spear shot forward in a low arc toward Moonshine Sam, half
as swift as an arrow.
Moonshine Sam fell flat in the snow none too soon, and the whizzing
weapon buried itself in the snow a few feet beyond him. Like a flash
Moonshine Sam leaped to his feet, wheeled and ran for the spear, pawing
frantically in the snow, he at last found the buried spear.
Mistak was making for the other outlaw at a spraddling run, as Moonshine
Sam aimed the spear to throw it back. But he had a running target that
was purposely bobbing up and down and zig-zagging.
Then the spear flashed through the moonlight, a streak of potent death,
but the white outlaw was not an expert spear thrower. The weapon missed
Mistak by several feet.
“They’re going to close in,” Dick whispered, burying his fingers into
Sandy’s arm in his excitement.
Both outlaws obviously had drawn knives now. Moonshine Sam must have
stolen one before he escaped from the igloo. They circled warily. First
one then the other advanced, Mistak moving more swiftly on his
snowshoes, though his footwork was ponderous enough.
Moonshine Sam finally ceased trying to outmaneuver his opponent, and
stood stolidly, knee deep in the snow—waiting.
Then Mistak struck, like a flash. But Moonshine Sam was not so inexpert
with a knife as he was with a spear. The white outlaw parried Mistak’s
swift thrust and sent him reeling backward, almost falling when one
snowshoe caught on its mate. But the white Eskimo quickly regained his
feet, and began to circle again for an opening.
For several minutes Mistak kept Moonshine Sam turning about, then he
rushed in again. The knives clashed and held. It was strength against
strength now as each outlaw strove to bring his knife downward for a
fatal thrust. Weaving and straining, sometimes locked together as still
as statues, the outlaws struggled, while the perspiration came out and
froze on the faces of the hidden boys.
At last the two men broke away from each other for a brief second, but
this time Moonshine Sam didn’t wait for Mistak to attack. He lunged
forward out of the snow and caught the white Eskimo by his knife, arm
and waist. Three times the attacking outlaw’s knife flashed up and down
in the moonlight, and the boys knew Mistak had been wounded. Then the
clenched two rolled to the snow, struggling like fiends. Minute after
minute they fought, Mistak now handicapped by his snowshoes instead of
aided by them. At last the white Eskimo was pinned upon his back and
Moonshine Sam’s knife began slowly to descend against the strength of
the outlaw leader’s left hand clutching the knife wrist.
With the end almost in sight, the boys heard a distant shout, and
looking north of them, saw four men bearing down the slope.
“The police! The police!” cried Dick, as he got to his feet and began
shouting and waving to them.
Two of the four men ran toward the struggling outlaws, but they were too
late to stop the impending tragedy. Moonshine Sam’s knife found its
mark, and he arose, shaking the snow from his clothes, leaving a still
form in the snow.
It was not until then that the victorious outlaw discovered the two
policemen descending upon him. With a startled shout, he started to run
away, then aware that he could never get away alive, he shook his fists
defiantly at his pursuers, and with a hoarse yell, plunged his knife
into his own breast.
“He’s beaten the law!” exclaimed Dick, horrified by this grim justice of
the frozen north. “Come on, Sandy, let’s go down and join the
policemen.”
They found Corporals McCarthy and Thalman inspecting the two silent
forms on the tundra when they arrived on the scene of the battle. Both
outlaws were dead beyond a shadow of doubt.
“Well,” Corporal McCarthy looked up from the silent face of Mistak, “the
game is over, and for once, the mounted got licked—but it took death to
do it,” he concluded grimly, briefly ordering that two graves should be
hollowed out in the snow, and the bodies interred.
Dick and Sandy found a little later, that the two who had accompanied
the Corporals were the last of Mistak’s band, an Indian and an
Eskimo—both with their hands tied behind them. The corporals explained
that they had run across them starving in an igloo, after they had
deserted Mistak. The outlaws had given up without a struggle, morosely
accepting a fate they considered less terrible than that which the awful
northland might have dealt out to them.
Though the shadow of the recent tragedy darkened their spirits, it was
an infinitely relieved party that set out on the trail back to the
supply base. With every step that carried them further from those still
forms in their snow graves, their hearts grew lighter.
On the way back they sighted Constable Sloan and Sipsa, and hailed them
with the tragic news. The two joined them on the return journey, and
already the talk was of the trip back to God’s country in the spring.
“Lordy, how glad I am it’s all over,” Sandy grew steadily more cheerful.
“My, what I can tell Uncle Walter when I see him again!”
“About all I’m going to be interested in,” Dick broke in, “for a few
days, after we get back to your uncle’s post, is going to be good, roast
turkey, with sage dressing—pumpkin pie—apple sauce—nice brown pan
gravy—stewed cranberries—coffee with sugar and cow’s cream—chocolate
pudd——”
“Stop!” Sandy’s exclamation expressed how his stomach rebelled against
such fruitless tantalization. “If you say another word about food, I’m
going to die right here of starvation.”
Dick slapped Sandy on the back and laughed, then arm in arm they went on
together.
* * * * * * * *
The last of the long night passed slowly but steadily away, and the
spring came to gladden the hearts of Dick and Sandy.
March 4th they saw the sun again, and never did they greet the rising of
that great orb with such heartfelt joy.
A day later they started southward, Sipsa and the other Eskimos
accompanying them to the mainland, which they reached safely in kayacks.
Leaving all camp paraphernalia that they did not need, with the Eskimos,
they left the children of the north happy and sorry to see their white
friends go. Dick and Sandy, too, felt a pang in their hearts as Sipsa’s
smiling face vanished out of their ken, probably never to be seen again.
But as they left the Arctic behind them, under the spring sun, all
feelings of regret at parting were replaced by one great and growing
joy—they were going home!