THE STRANGE LANDING
"I don't like the way the Rolls-Royce is acting," Bruce grumbled through
his telephone to Barney, for, though they were not four feet apart, not a
word could they hear, so great was the din of their two powerful engines.
"Same here," answered Barney. "Old Major ought to have given us more time
to try 'em out. Brand new."
"Barren Lands far away. Forced to land in tree-tops. Good-night!"
After that there came only the monotonous roar of the engines. The
Major's orders had been "Due north by west," and now, though they had put
fully two hundred miles between themselves and the last sign of
civilization, they were still holding to their course. They also had been
directed to fly as low as was safe. Three times the Major had barked an
order into the receiver; always to circle some spot, while he swept the
earth with a binocular as powerful as could be used in an airplane. Three
times he had given a second order to resume their course.
"He seems to be looking for something," Barney said to himself, and at
once he began wondering what it could be. Mines of fabulous wealth were
said to be hidden away in the hills and forests over which they were
passing--rich outcroppings of gold, silver and copper. Perhaps the Major
was trying to locate them from the air. Here and there they passed over
broad stretches of prairie, the grass of which would feed numberless
herds of cattle. Perhaps, too, the Major was examining these with an eye
to future gain. Then, again Barney thought of the illegal wireless
station and he idly speculated on how it could be so important now that
the war was over. There was little to do but think as they scudded away,
now racing a cloud, then plunging through the masses of vapor, to
reappear suddenly in the sunshine beyond. Barney had always keenly
enjoyed watching the land slip by beneath him as he flew, but on this
journey there was the added joy of sailing over lands unknown. His
reflections were suddenly cut short by a strange jarring rattle from the
Rolls-Royce. Instantly the thunder was cut in half, as also was their
power. Bruce had stopped the big motor. If now something went wrong with
the Liberty, they must make a forced landing. This, with the level
stretches of prairie giving place to rough, rolling swells covered with
scrub timber, was not a pleasant thing to think of and even less pleasant
to attempt.
The sun, sending a last yellow glow across the land, sank from sight, and
soon the moon, with silvery light and black bands of shadow, was playing
strange tricks with the stolid world beneath them.
All day, when duties permitted, Bruce had kept an eye open for a cabin
hidden among the pines. Now he shouted through the telephone to Barney;
"What'll I do if I catch a square of light below?"
Barney knew he was thinking of the boy, Timmie, and La Vaune's money he
carried into the woods. A square of light, of course, would have been a
cabin window.
"Kill your engine if you see a chance to light, and explain later," he
shouted back.
But no square of light appeared, and soon the thought of it was driven
from their minds, for, of a sudden, the plane shuddered like a man with
a chill. It was the second engine. Bruce threw off the power. Then,
with a sput-sput-sput, started it again. Once more came the shudder.
Again he tried with no better results. Half its power was gone;
something was seriously wrong. He turned to the other engine. It would
not start at all. Here was trouble. They were passing over ridge after
ridge, and all were roughly timbered. Surely, here was no
landing-place. And if the second engine stopped altogether,--Bruce's
heart lost a beat at thought of it.
He gave the engine more gas and headed the plane upward. She climbed
slowly, sluggishly, like a tired bird, but at length the keener air told
him they were a safer distance above the earth.
"Better chance to pick a landing-place from here," thought Barney.
They had scarcely reached this higher level when the engine stopped. No
efforts of the pilot availed to start it. His companions silently watched
Bruce's mute struggles. The Major, a perfect sport, sat stoically in his
place. Barney, knowing that suggestions were useless, also was silent. So
they volplaned slowly downward, every eye strained for a safe
landing-place. They knew what a crash would mean at such a place. Loss of
life perhaps; a wrecked plane at least, then a struggle through the woods
till starvation ended it. They were four hundred miles from the last
trace of white man's habitation.
They had come down to three thousand feet when it became evident that
only rough ridges lay beneath them. No landing-place here, certainly.
They could only hang on as long as possible in the hope the ridges would
give way to level ground. Bruce thanked their luck for the wide-spreading
wings which would impede their fall.
A moment later he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge
higher than any they had passed over. Here then was the end, he thought.
But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those rocks by a
hundred feet and just beyond Bruce gasped and looked again.
"A miracle!" murmured Barney.
"Or a mirage," whispered Bruce.
Before them lay a square of level land, green,--in the moonlight. All
about the square the land was black with trees, but there was a landing
place. It was as if their trip had been long planned, their coming
anticipated, and that a level field was cleared for them.
It was only a matter of moments till they were bumping along over the
ground. Soon they were standing free from their harnesses and silently
shaking hands.
Barney was the first to speak.
"Say, do you know," he said, "we're in somebody's wheat-field!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed the Major.
"See for yourself," The boy held before their astonished eyes a handful
of almost ripened heads of wheat.
"Then what's happened?" demanded the Major. "Have you gone due south by
west instead of north by west?"
"Unless my compass lied, and it has never done so before, we have gone
north by west since we started, and we are--or ought to be at this
moment--four hundred miles from what the white man calls civilization."
"Well," said the Major, "since we are here, wherever that is, I suggest
that we unpack our blankets and get out of the man's wheat-field, whoever
he may be. The mystery will keep until morning."
This they proceeded to do.
A clump of stubby, heavy-stemmed spruce trees offered them shelter
from the chill night wind, and there, rolled in blankets, they
prepared to sleep.
But Bruce could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and
sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that
last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So
he lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This
wheat-field now? Had he really been misdirected by the compass on the
plane? To prove that he had not, he drew from his pocket a small compass,
and placing it in a spot of moonlight, took the relative direction of the
last ridge over which they had passed and the plane in the wheat-field.
He was right; the compass had been true. They were four hundred miles
northwest of the last mile of track laid on the Hudson Bay Railroad, deep
in a wilderness, over which they had traveled for hours without sighting
a single sign of white man's habitation. Yet, here they were at the edge
of a wheat-field.
What was the answer? Had some Indian tribe taken to farming? With the
forests alive with game, the streams with fish, this seemed impossible.
Of a sudden, the boy started. It was, of course--
The sudden snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back
with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the
rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows.
Wolves, grizzlies, some unknown terror, perhaps?
Then, in another second his eyes bulged. In an open space, between two
spruce trees, where the moon shone brightly, had appeared for a moment a
patch of white. Then, amid the crashing of small twigs, the thing was
gone. In childhood, Bruce had been told many stories of ghosts and
goblins by his Irish nurse. He had never overcome his dread of them. But
it was with the utmost difficulty that he suppressed a shout. Then he
laughed softly, for the crackling twigs told him he had seen a creature
of flesh and blood, no ghost. He chuckled again and far in the dark a
hoot-owl seemed to answer him and his company was a source of comfort.
Yet, here was, after all, another problem: What was this white-coated
creature? Of all the wild things of the forest, none was white save the
Arctic wolf. It was doubtful if he roamed so far south, especially in
summer, and besides, this creature was too large and heavy to be a wolf.
Bruce thought of all the animals he knew and gave it up. It might have
been a cow. Cows in this wilderness did not seem more improbable than a
wheat-field, but the creature had been too light of tread for that.
Could it have been an Indian dressed in white, tanned deerskin? He was
inclined to take this for the right solution, and wondered if he should
awaken his companions. He could not tell what danger threatened. Finally
he decided to let them sleep. He would keep watch. The three of them
could do no more.
Once more his mind turned to the problem of the wheat. What was it that
he had just concluded? Oh, yes, Timmie! Why might not Timmie have camped
here and planted this wheat? But twelve years? How had he lived? Whence
had come the seed wheat? There were a hundred questions connected with
such a solution. Ah, well, morning would tell. There would be a cabin
somewhere on the edge of the field and they would eat. Eat? For the first
time Bruce realized that he had not eaten for hours; was very hungry.
Securing some malted-milk tablets, carried for emergency rations, he
dissolved them in his mouth. A wonderfully soothing effect they had.
Propping himself against the trees, he closed his eyes for a second, and
before he could pry them open again, he, too, was fast asleep.
When he awoke it was broad daylight and his companions were
already astir.
"Did you fellows wake up last night?" he asked, rubbing his eyes
sleepily.
Barney and the Major shook their heads.
"Then you didn't see it?"
"See what?"
"The white thing."
Barney stared. The Major's face was noncommittal.
Bruce told them of his experience.
"He's been seeing a ghost," declared Barney, with a laugh.
"On the contrary," said the Major slowly, "I think he hasn't. There are
white creatures in the Arctic; just such ones as he has described. I have
seen them myself. No, not white bears, either. But I have never seen them
this far South. I will not say now what I think Bruce saw but I will say
I do not think it was an Indian."
"Look!" exclaimed Barney suddenly in a whisper.
He pointed to a thin column of smoke that was rising over the tree-tops,
to the left of the wheat-field.
"Listen!" whispered Bruce. "Somebody's chopping wood." The freshening
wind brought the sound of the axe plainly to their ears. A second later
they heard the distant laugh of a child.
"Come on," said the Major, throwing his roll of blankets at the foot of a
tree. "Where there's children there's no danger. Maybe they'll have
hot-cakes for breakfast!"
A moment later found the three of them stealing silently through
the forest.
What they saw as they peered into the clearing brought them up standing.
A man wielded an axe before a cabin. He was tall and strong,
smooth-shaven and clean. No Indian, but a white man. His clothing was of
white-tanned buckskin. The cabin was of logs, but large, with a
comfortable porch and several windows. The panes of the windows seemed
near-glass. It was impossible to tell, from where they stood, whether the
two laughing children who played by the door were white or half-breeds.
The appearance at that door of a neatly-dressed Indian woman seemed to
settle that question.
The three men had gone half-way across the narrow clearing, before the
man, looking up from his work, saw them. Instantly his face blanched.
With a quick step backward, he reached for a rifle that stood by the
door. Then the arm fell limp by his side.
"Well, you've come!" he said in a lifeless tone. "I could have
killed you, one or two of you, but I won't. I may be a thief, but
not a murderer. Besides, there are probably more of you back there
in the trees."
"On the contrary," smiled the Major, "we are only three. We are not
armed. So you see you might easily kill us all. But why you should want
to, and why you expected us, when the last thing we thought to do was to
land in your wheat-field last night, is more than I can guess."
"Landed?" The man's face showed his bewilderment.
"I know," exclaimed Bruce impulsively, "I'll explain. You're
Timmie--Timmie--" he hesitated. "Well, anyway, that's your first name. I
know all about you--"
Again the man's trembling hand half-reached for the rifle.
"Then--then you have--come for me," he choked.
Bruce, realizing his mistake, hastened to correct it.
"You're mistaken," he said quickly. "We haven't come for you in the
way you mean. You won't need to go a step with us unless that is your
wish. Timmie, we're here to help you; to tell you that you were
forgiven long ago."
"Is--is that true?" The man faltered. "The logging company?"
"The partners are dead. Their only heir, La Vaune, forgives you."
"And the Province, the Red Riders?"
"The Province forgot the case years ago."
"Thank--thank God!" The man choked, then turned to hide his face. He
faced them again in a moment and spoke steadily. "I've got the money here
in the cabin, every cent of it. God knows I didn't mean to do it. But the
temptation was too great. And--and once I had done it, I was afraid to go
back. I would have died in prison. How did you come? Are you going back?
Will you take the money to the little girl, La Vaune?"
"We're going farther," smiled Bruce, happy in the realization of what all
this meant to the maid in the camp. "We're going on. We flew here and
will fly back--or try to." "And we'll be more than glad to return the
money," he wished to add, but remembering that he would not have that to
decide, he ended, "La Vaune is no little girl now, but quite a young
lady. She needs the money, too. And--and," he laughed sheepishly, "she's
rather a good friend of mine."
Timmie drew his hand across his eyes, as if to brush away the vision of
long years. Then, with a smile, he said briskly:
"Of course, you'll have breakfast? We're having hot-cakes."
"What did I tell you?" chuckled the Major, slapping Barney on the back.
Eager as the visitors were to hear the strange story of this man of the
wilderness, they were willing that breakfast should come first.
As they stepped upon the porch, the keen eye of the Major fell on some
white and spotted skins hanging over a beam. A close observer might have
noticed a slight nod of his head, as if he said, "I thought so." But the
boys were following the scent of browning griddle-cakes and saw neither
the skins nor the Major's nod.
But Barney, missing a familiar pungent odor that should go with such a
breakfast in a wilderness, hurried back to the plane to return with a
coffee pot and a sack of coffee.
Within the cabin they found everything scrupulously clean. Strange
cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the
translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when
they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering
stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column of
steam toward the rafters.
With memories stirred by draughts of long untasted coffee, it was not
difficult for Timmie to tell his Story.
"When I left the settlement," he began, as he turned his mooseskin,
hammock-like chair toward the open fireplace, and invited his guests to
do likewise, "I struck straight into the wilderness. I had a little food,
a small rifle and fishing-tackle. To me a summer in the woods with such
equipment was no problem at all. I meant to go northwest for, perhaps,
two hundred miles, camp there for the summer, then work my way back by
going southwest. I would then be far from my crime and would be safe.
That is what I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I began to
think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to be back. But
it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers, creeping through
underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the
awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got through the summer, living on fish,
game and berries. You see, I had become terribly afraid of the Red
Riders--the mounted police. I had heard that sooner or later they always
got a man. I was determined they would not get me.
"At last, snow-fall warned me to prepare for winter. I was in this valley
that day, and I've been here ever since. If I had ever got any pleasure
from that stolen money, which I haven't, I would have paid for that
pleasure a hundred times that first winter. Fortune favored me in one
thing: the caribou came by in great droves, and, before my ammunition was
exhausted, I had secured plenty of meat. But at that, I came near dying
before I learned that one who lives upon a strictly meat diet must
measure carefully the proportions of lean and fat. Someway, I learned.
And somehow, starving, freezing, half-mad of lonesomeness, I got through
the winter, but I am glad you did not see me when the first wild geese
came north. If ever there was a wild man, dressed in skins and dancing in
the sun, it was I."
"But the wheat?" asked Barney. "How did that happen?"
"I am coming to that," smiled his host. "Early that spring," he
continued, passing his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away the
memory of that terrible winter, "the Indians came. They came from the
Dismal Lake region. Driven south by forest fires, they were starving. I
had a little caribou meat and shared it with them; that made them my
everlasting friends."
"And you got the wheat from them?" interposed Barney.
"Hardly. I doubt if they had ever seen a grain of wheat.
"Well, we lived together that summer. But I am getting ahead of my story.
Shortly before they arrived, I noticed some strange-looking caribou in
the clearing. I had no ammunition, so could not shoot them. Anyway, they
were skin-poor and would be of little use to me. But they seemed
strangely tame, coming close to my cabin at night. They were company, and
I was careful not to frighten them away. One night, in the moonlight, I
caught a glistening flash from the ear of the oldest doe. Then, too, I
noticed that one of them had unnaturally short antlers. A closer look
told me that these antlers had been cut off.
"Then came the wonderful discovery: these were not caribou, but reindeer
escaped from some herd in Alaska.
"Right then I decided to capture and use them. I would put them in
pound until their rightful owners came for them, which would be
never." He smiled.
"Well, I tried making a lasso of caribou skin. For a long time I could
not come near enough to reach them with the lasso. But one night, while
they rested, I crept up to them and my lasso caught one by the antlers.
Then there was a battle, and all the while I was thinking that now I
should have milk, butter and cheese, meat and clothing. And then there
was a snap; the skin-rope broke and away went the reindeer--and my hopes.
"I then hit on the plan of building a corral and driving them into it.
This was a pretty big job for one man, but with trees lining both sides
of a narrow run, where the deer went to drink, I managed to weave willow
branches into the spruce trees and make a stout barrier. Well--one
morning, I found myself with six reindeer in pound--a bull, three does, a
yearling and an old sled-deer. Not long after, the herd was increased by
four fawns.
"By good luck, just at this time, the Indians came. They were all for
killing the reindeer, but I stopped that. We fed, as I said before, on
my caribou meat, and then came the wild-fowl and the streams opened up
for fishing.
"It was fortunate that the Indians came. They helped me to build corrals,
big enough to give the reindeer plenty of pasturage and pretty soon they
were fat and sleek."
"Pardon me," interrupted the Major, "but were some of the reindeer
white?"
"Two of them were milk-white. And now I have many of them running free in
the forest."
Barney grinned, and Bruce poked him in the ribs. "My ghost," he
whispered.
"The wheat," said the host, "was no great mystery, after all. The bank
cashier had put into the money-sack two samples of wheat and one of beans
which he wanted to have tried in this north country. I have tried them;
with what luck, you can see. I don't need to fence my reindeer now, for
in winter when the moss is buried deep under the snow I turn them in on
stacks of wheat hay. Finally when the Indians went back North the
following winter they left me a wife, as you see." He smiled toward his
dusky mate, who was industriously scouring a copper griddle.
There was silence for some time. Then the Major spoke:
"The thing that interests me is how you manage to keep up your standards
of neatness and cleanliness."
"It is not so hard," said Timmie. "I came of a good old Scotch family.
When I was a boy my mother taught me that 'cleanliness is next to
godliness,' and I made up my mind that--well, that I would at least be
clean. That was all there was left for me to be, you know."
"I think you may call yourself both," said the Major stoutly. "You have
paid well for your mistake by twelve years of exile, and as for the
money, we'll take that back with us."
Timmie smiled. "I'll be happy for the first time in twelve years when
it's gone," he said.
"I say, Major," exclaimed Bruce, "I've been thinking of those white
reindeer. Don't you suppose that solves the problem of Peary's white
reindeer?"
There was a peculiar twinkle in the Major's eye, as he asked: "How do you
make that out?"
"Well, there had been reindeer in Alaska for twenty-five years when Peary
discovered his on the eastern coast of our continent. There are many
white ones among the domestic herds, and they are constantly wandering
away, or being driven away, by packs of wolves. If they wandered this
far, might they not easily have gone on to the other side of the
continent?"
"Possibly. Possibly," The twinkle in the Major's eye grew brighter, but
he said no more. Presently he rose and stepped outside.
"Say!" exclaimed Barney, "I feel like turning right around and
going back."
Bruce knew that he was thinking of La Vaune's money. "But we can't," he
sighed. "It's not our plane nor our expedition. We're bound by agreement
to go on. Besides, there's no real need of going back. La Vaune's all
right for the winter. I arranged for her at my old college at Brandon;
she will attend the academy and help in the dining-room."
"Well, then," said Barney, "I guess it's us for union-alls and at
those engines."
They were soon at their task. But, as Bruce worked that day, he thought
often of the mysterious twinkle he had seen in the Major's gray eyes, as
he spoke of the white reindeer. Who was this Major, anyway? And where
were they going? The Major alone could tell, and apparently he had no
intention of doing so.