<h2 id="c9"><span class="small">CHAPTER IX</span> <br/>WHO IS THIS WHISPERER?</h2>
<p>“What does it mean?” puzzled Joe, as
Curlie reported the Whisperer’s message. “Did
he listen in last night when I was calling for
help? And was he frightened by that?”</p>
<p>“Might have,” said Curlie, “but anyway
you couldn’t help that. You were in a mess
and had to be helped out.”</p>
<p>For a moment the two boys were silent. Then
Curlie spoke again:</p>
<p>“Might not be that at all. I listened in on
a message last night. It was from Munson, the
explorer. It was not broken in upon as his
others have been. There may have been something
in that message which caused the outlaw
to turn back.”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</div>
<p>“Well, anyway,” he exclaimed, “whatever
the cause is, we’ll go out and after them the first
thing after dawn. Is everything all right;
sled fixed and dogs doctored up?”</p>
<p>“Everything’s fine as silk.”</p>
<p>“All right then, let’s have some chow. After
that we’ll turn in. Luck doesn’t go with any
one person forever. Why, even to-morrow we
might catch up with our outlaw friend.”</p>
<p>“Hardly that,” smiled Joe. “We’ve got
forty or fifty miles of unbroken trail to make
before we really get on the scent at all. By
that time, traveling on a hard-packed trail as
he is, he’ll have a big lead on us. There are
probably forks and crosses in the trail a hundred
miles or so farther on, so we’ve got a real task
ahead of us. We’ll have to be sly as foxes to
catch him now.”</p>
<p>“I suppose that’s so,” Curlie sighed, “but
we’ll get him, see if we don’t.”</p>
<p>“Say!” exclaimed Joe suddenly, “who is
this whispering friend of yours anyway?”</p>
<p>“Don’t know,” said Curlie, scratching his
head.</p>
<p>“Ever seen her?”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</div>
<p>“I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“How’s she come to be traveling with this
man anyway?”</p>
<p>“Can’t say.”</p>
<p>“Mighty queer, I’d say.”</p>
<p>“I’d say as much myself. Queer and interesting.
I may as well admit that I am as
much interested in coming up with the Whisperer
as I am in catching this outlaw.”</p>
<p>“Well, we won’t do either if we don’t eat and
turn in,” said Joe as he reached for the frying
pan.</p>
<p>Joe’s prophecy that they would not at once
catch up with the man they sought, proved
correct. The first two days they struggled
forward through soft snow, over a trackless
wilderness. Then they came upon the campsite
of the outlaw, his last camping place before
he turned back.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</div>
<p>To Curlie this was a thrilling moment. It
was the first earthly sign he had ever seen of
this strange pair, the outlaw and the Whisperer.
Heretofore he had followed only the trackless
trail of the air. Now he had footprints of a
man and of many dogs to go by. The mark
of the camp, though three days old, was as
fresh as if it had been abandoned but two hours
before. There had been no snowfall. There
was never a breath of wind in that forest.</p>
<p>“As long as his trail is not joined by any
other,” Jennings told the boys, “we can follow
it with our eyes shut. We could do that three
months from now. There might be four feet
of snowfall, but on top of it all there would
be the depression made in the first two feet of
snow. There is never any wind to move the
snow about, so there’s your trail carved in
the snow, permanent as marble till the spring
thaw comes.”</p>
<p>“But when he comes to the Yukon River
trail?” suggested Curlie.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s going to be harder.” The miner
wrinkled his brow. “But we’ll find a way to
track him—the way he hitches his dogs, track
of his sled. There’s always something if you
are sharp enough to see it.”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</div>
<p>Curlie examined the marks of the camp very
carefully. It was evident that the man knew
as much about making an Arctic camp as did
Jennings. The square made by the tent floor
showed that he had spread down a canvas floor
and the heaps of spruce twigs tossed all about
told that he had bedded the place down before
he spread out his blankets or sleeping-bags.</p>
<p>“Two teams,” was Jennings’ comment, “and
eight or nine dogs to the team. Fine big fellows
too. Shouldn’t wonder if they were
Siberian wolf hounds.”</p>
<p>One thing Curlie made a secret search for:
footprints. There were enough of one sort.
The broad marks of a man’s foot clad in
moccasins or Eskimo skin-boots were everywhere
present. What he sought was the mark
of a smaller foot, a much smaller foot, the foot
of the Whisperer. But though he examined
every square yard of trampled ground around
the camp, and though he ran ahead of the dogs
for two miles after resuming the trail, he saw
no trace of a woman’s footprint.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</div>
<p>“Looks like he drove one dog team and led
the other,” he told himself. “Looks as if—”</p>
<p>For the first time he began to doubt the
existence of the Whisperer.</p>
<p>“Can it be,” he asked himself, “that the
outlaw and the Whisperer are one? Does he
change his voice and pretend to give me tips
when he is in reality only leading me on?”</p>
<p>In his mind he went back over the times
when the Whisperer had broken in on the silence
of the night. There had been those two times
when he had been listening in at the Secret
Tower Room, back there in the city (told about
in “Curlie Carson Listens In”). There had
been two times when he had caught her whisper
out over the sea.</p>
<p>“That time,” he told himself, “she told me
he had gone north. Why should this man keep
me informed of his own doings? He ought to
know that I’d report it; that someone would
follow him if I didn’t.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</div>
<p>“No,” he told himself, “there must be a
real Whisperer. The girl must exist. She’s
somewhere up there on the trail ahead of us.
And yet,” he reasoned, “if she is there, where
are her tracks?”</p>
<p>Again he began convincing himself that she
did not exist, that it was all a hoax invented
by the mind of this clever outlaw. The more he
thought of it the more sure he became that this
was true. The more sure he became of it the
more his anger grew.</p>
<p>“To be shamed, to be tricked, deceived,
buncoed by the man you are pursuing!” he
exploded. “That is adding insult to injury!”</p>
<p>With the plain trail stretching straight out
before them, they now traveled far into the
night, traveled until dogs and men were ready
to drop. Only then did they turn to the right of
the trail and set their weary muscles to the
task of making camp.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</div>
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