LOST ON THE FROZEN STEPPES.
Yelping and tugging at leash, the hounds were given the scent at the
shore point where the ship's boat had been found. It was decided to let
them run free, and to follow the fierce trailers in the biplanes.
Thus it was that Henri was compelled to take on an extra passenger in
his machine, no other than the handler of the dogs, who alone could be
depended upon to bring the animals to heel if the men pursued should be
brought to bay. As luck would have it, the additional weight was that of
a little man, who could have been wrapped twice, and some over, in
Strogoff's coat.
All three of the officers were armed to the teeth with modern repeating
rifles, taken from the supply on the dispatch boats, and supremely
confident of their ability to cope with the estimated small party,
however desperate, which they expected to encounter.
The dogs, too, were allies that would make a goodly showing if it came
to a clash in close quarters.
The young aviators had been impressed by the sergeant that their
business was solely that of pilots.
"Let anything happen to you," he said, "and my day of self-forgiving
would never come. Besides, I am now accountable to Colonel Malinkoff for
your safety on the ground, the same as you are responsible for mine when
you get me on high. Understand?"
"We get you, sergeant," was Billy's reply; "you have our promise not to
butt into any shindy where we are not invited."
"Turn them loose," was the sergeant's order to the little man, who was
struggling to restrain the leaping hounds.
Two streaks of brown and yellow flashed across the plain.
"All aboard!" shouted Strogoff.
There was a scramble into the biplanes, and a lightning-like getaway.
The hounds were already far afield, but nothing on two feet or four, on
wheel or keel, can stay ahead of an aeroplane, and the scampering
animals were overhauled in a jiffy, and the pilots holding to low speed
to even up the chase.
Along a marshy stretch of ground the dogs seemed at fault, going at
zigzag, but ever returning to the spot where first the scent was lost.
The little man, crouching behind Henri in the biplane, requested the
pilot to descend forthwith, and as it was simply a 'round and 'round
operation to keep in sight of the baffled hounds, there was really
nothing else to do but stop.
Billy had already anticipated the situation, and had started to volplane
even before his chum had set the planes for landing.
The master of the hounds, whom Strogoff addressed as Petro, was forced
to literally drag his canine charges away from their persistent
adherence to the one spot on the high side of the marsh.
Lowiez, he of the keen eye, had been doing some scrutinizing on his own
account, and read an explanation by certain marks on the flinty ground.
Addressing the sergeant, he briefly disposed of the puzzle:
"Horses here not long since; the men we have been trailing went no
further on foot. That is why these beasts are out of the running."
"Cossacks, I'll be bound," exclaimed Strogoff.
"On that theory, sergeant," continued Lowiez, "we have two surmises, one
that the band was on the way to the nearest army command, and the other
that they were free riders and traveling as the wind listeth. In either
event, does our service extend so far?"
"The arm of the Russian police system," proudly declared Strogoff, "has
no limit within the realm of the Czar. And, too, our special mission is
backed by both civil and military authority."
"As you will," conceded Lowiez; "it is needless to state that I am with
you to the death."
Turning to Petro, the sergeant said:
"As the dogs can no longer be of use, and as it is practically
impossible to safely carry them in the aircraft, I must bid you back
with them to the dispatch boats, which had orders to await, for a period
of three days, our return."
Without comment, the master of hounds faced about and started on his
long march, with the dogs capering at his heels.
"Well, we have a roving commission now."
Strogoff had his field glasses glued to his eyes, and taking in the
range of open country. The powerful binnacle, however, showed him
nothing of interest. It was a dreary outlook at best.
"Fly east, fly west, fly south," he repeated--"a choice broad enough for
an empire maker. It is well that we know what is behind us. Are we
prepared for a longer journey, my pilot?"
"We can easily do three hundred miles with our petrol supply," assured
Billy, who had just completed inspection of the tanks in both machines.
"There are two days' rations in the lockers," volunteered Henri.
"So far, so good," commented Strogoff; "there is no use standing here
cooling our heels. Let's be off!"
For three hours the aviation party was continuously on the wing,
traveling a southwesterly course, a trying experience owing to the
frigid atmosphere and the cramped position maintained.
Toward evening another stop was in order. A bivouac must be established
for the night. The aviators had been hoping against hope that a
settlement would be reached, where, at least, the privilege of a
shakedown before a peat fire would be accorded.
It was a bitter disappointment to Strogoff that fortune had not favored
him in these long hours of vigilant outlook with a sight or sign of the
horsemen he was pursuing. Almost a monomania with him was that one
overwhelming desire to lay his hands upon the arch-plotter Ricker.
The truth was, he had no fixed idea when to quit, and now was so far
beyond his reckoning that he did not know how to back out.
When that night the weary four sat huddled together and blanketed to the
ears on the frozen plain, Lowiez, who since his first venture and rebuke
had offered no remonstrance, suggested that the early morning ought to
see them well on the way to the Vistula, and then homeward bound.
"We won't get anywhere, sergeant," asserted Billy, upholding Lowiez, "if
we wait until the petrol's all gone--and another day without filling,
that will be exactly the condition."
"Have it over, then, as you will. If you know the way, take it."
Strogoff had spoken, and resignedly.
When they slept, or how long, none of the party could have told, at
first awakening. Their disturbance it was that filled the full measure
of mind.
Billy was picked for the initial shock. He opened his eyes against the
nose of a horse! That a Cossack was looking at him from higher up did
not serve, either, to reduce his pulse rate.
A prod with a lance put Henri in the line of sitting up and taking
notice, and similar applications hastened wakefulness on the part of
both Strogoff and Lowiez.
"Filimonoff!"
This cry of recognition from Lowiez.
One of the greatest of all Cossacks--Michail Filimonoff, of whom the
boys had heard so much in Galicia--the man "who sits his horse like a
Petrograd bank clerk, but leads like the devil."
The Don chieftain, a little to the rear and apart from the other
horsemen, gravely inclined his head, when convinced by the uniform that
the speaker was a fellow countryman.
Strogoff, too, had once seen the noted free lancer at the staff
headquarters of Duke Nicholas, and he followed the lead of his comrade
in proclaiming the name.
He then stepped forward to address the Cossack leader, telling him in a
torrent of words how and why he had come to grief as a lost man in these
frozen steppes.
Filimonoff shook his head. "None of this company," he gravely advised,
"has seen those whom you seek. It may have been Nikita, who rode this
way, I am told, not long since. But I did not meet him, and I do not
know that he had prisoners."
Out of the chief's address the boys singled the word "Nikita."
"Tell him," requested Billy, looking to Strogoff, "that Nikita took us
into the brotherhood."
The sergeant turned a gaze of anxiety upon the young aviator, as if in
fear that his mind had been affected by overstrain.
"Tell him," repeated the boy, in form of earnest demand.
Strogoff then complied, but in apologetic manner.
If the big policeman had any further doubt of the propriety of his
statement as interpreter it did not stay with him long.
Billy and Henri capped the climax by a joint display of the amulets they
carried, and every lance in the Cossack company was raised, including
that of the leader.
Filimonoff beckoned the boys to his side, having dismounted to give them
greeting.
Said Strogoff to Lowiez:
"The next thing we know those lads will be taking lunch with Duke
Nicholas. They started in on familiar terms with a commanding officer at
Warsaw the second day I knew them, and have already worked on through to
a prince of the desert!"
But by the grace of it all, the pilots were given their bearings and
carried the policemen passengers out of the barren maze.