<h2 id="c10"><span class="small">CHAPTER X</span> <br/>ON THE YUKON</h2>
<p>To follow the trail of the outlaw of the air
for the first four days was but to trace out
his sled-tracks in a wilderness that was trackless
save for the footprints of caribou, wolf and
bear. But once he had reached the Yukon, all
this was changed. There were three trails to
choose from. Which had he taken? The one
to the left which led up the river, the one to
the right, down the river; or the one which
led straight before them up one of the branches
of the mighty Yukon? The last trail, less
traveled than the others, led away toward the
Arctic Ocean.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</div>
<p>“He may have taken the down-river trail,
for that would carry him farther and farther
from communication with the outside world,”
said Jennings, as he searched in vain to distinguish
his track from those of scores of other
travelers.</p>
<p>“Might have taken the up-river trail,” he
went on. “He’d be in some danger of getting
caught by a message sent on ahead but since
the telegraph wires are down the message would
have to be sent by radiophone, so he could listen
in and take up some branch and over the hills
if he needed to.”</p>
<p>“You don’t think he’d go straight ahead,
up the branch?” said Curlie.</p>
<p>“Why should he?” the miner looked at him
in surprise. “Up that trail for fifty or a
hundred miles you’ll find Indian huts and miners’
cabins here and there. After that you’ll
find nothing but a blind trail that grows steeper
and steeper. There’s no food to be had save
wild game and little enough of that. Why
should he go up there?”</p>
<p>“Might run up there for a blind and live
with an Indian for a time.”</p>
<p>“If he did we’d trap him like a rabbit in a
hollow stump!” declared the miner emphatically.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</div>
<p>“Well, since we don’t know which way to
go and it is getting dark,” suggested Joe, “I
move that we make camp right here.”</p>
<p>This suggestion was acted upon and some two
hours later Curlie might have been seen nodding
over his radiophone boxes. His companions
were fast asleep but he had remained
up with the receiver clamped over his head in
the rather forlorn hope that the outlaw would
let slip some fragment of message which might
reveal his whereabouts.</p>
<p>“Fact is,” he told himself, “that in spite of
all the evidence against it, I still have a sneaking
feeling that the Whisperer is a real person,
a girl, and that she’s up here somewhere in the
white wilderness. I—I sort of hope that
sooner or later she’ll whisper some more secrets
to me.”</p>
<p>In this hope, for the night at least, he was
doomed to disappointment. No whispered
secrets came to him from out the air.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</div>
<p>A message came, however, a message which
set his mind at work. He had fallen quite
asleep when he was suddenly wakened by a
voice in his ear. He recognized at once the
voice of the government official who had dictated
that other message regarding the band of
smugglers caught operating on Behring Straits.</p>
<p>The message itself to him was unimportant,
or at least for the time it seemed so. It gave
more definite details of the evidence procured
and stated one fact that was most important:
The big man, the one higher up, the brains of
the smugglers, had not been apprehended. Indeed,
it was not even known who he was. It
was thought that he might be at this moment
in Alaska, but where? This question could not
be answered.</p>
<p>The message had proceeded to this point.
Curlie had maintained a drowsy interest in it,
when he sat up with a sudden start, all awake.</p>
<p>The message had been broken in upon by a
powerful sending set which was much nearer
to Curlie than was that of the government man.</p>
<p>“Got—gotta get him,” he mumbled as his
slim fingers caressed his radio-compass coil.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</div>
<p>“There! Got him! That’s it!”</p>
<p>He was not a moment too soon, for not only
had the message ceased but the interruption as
well.</p>
<p>“Huh!” he grunted, scratching his head.
“Huh! Up there. Wouldn’t have believed it.
Why, good gracious, it can’t be! Yet I couldn’t
have missed it. How that man travels! Two
hundred miles! And no trail to speak of.
Probably none at all.”</p>
<p>For a moment he sat in a brown study. Then
he suddenly shook his fist toward the north.</p>
<p>“We’ll get you now, old boy!” he exclaimed.
“We’ll get you! You’re breaking trail for us.
We’ll follow that trail if it takes us right out
on the ice-floes of the Arctic and we’ll get you,
just as Jennings says, like a rabbit in a hollow
tree. That is,” he said more soberly, “if there
doesn’t come a heavy snow.”</p>
<p>The man, so the radio-compass had said, had
taken the trail which led straight away toward
the Arctic Ocean.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</div>
<p>Then for a long time Curlie sat staring at
the knob of his tuner. He did not see the knob.
He did not see anything. He was concentrating,
reasoning, thinking hard, trying to put a lot of
facts together and make them fit.</p>
<p>So the master-mind of the smugglers had
not been caught. What if the outlaw of the
air proved to be that man. Why might he not?
That would explain why he was so continually
breaking in upon the message regarding it.</p>
<p>“And that,” he whispered, leaping to his feet
and dashing out of the tent in his excitement,
“that would explain why he appears so eager
to frustrate all of Munson’s plans to keep in
touch with the outside world by radiophone.
Munson assisted in breaking up the smuggler
band. If the outlaw is their leader, there is
nothing he would not do to wreak revenge.</p>
<p>“And—and”—he breathed hard because of
the thoughts that came trooping into his mind mind—“that
might explain the man’s change of plans.
The very night that Munson sent his message
telling of his supply of food on the shore of
the ocean this outlaw, who probably listened in,
turned about and started straight north, to—to
where?”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</div>
<p>Dashing back into the tent, he unfolded a
map. For a moment with strained attention he
studied it.</p>
<p>When he straightened up it was to whisper,
“Yes, sir! That’s it! Flaxman Island! His
present course will bring him straight to Flaxman
Island and Munson’s food supply.”</p>
<p>He sat down again. “Now,” he asked himself,
“once he arrives there, what will he do?
Will he winter there, living upon the explorer’s
supplies and thus save himself from prison, or
will he, out of revenge, destroy the supplies?
If he stays and lives on the supplies, what will
happen if Munson comes ashore with his band?
Huh, some interesting problems there!”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</div>
<p>“Interesting and foolish,” he told himself
as he dropped into another mood. “All imagination,
I guess. Suppose there’s nothing to it.
Probably he’s not the king of smugglers at all,
but just a plain mischief-maker of the air.
When he caught Joe’s message to me, that night
when we fought the wolves, he knew he was
being pursued and turned back. Now he’s
hiding out till the storm blows over. Possibly
knows where there is a native reindeer herder
up there at the end of the stream and over the
hills!</p>
<p>“Well, old top,” he again shook his fist toward
the north, “you might just as well come
out of your hole. The storm isn’t going to blow
over. Your little cabin of false dreams is going
to be wrecked by it, and that before many
days.”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</div>
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