On the Yukon Trail Read online

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  _The Radio-Phone Boys Stories_

  On the Yukon Trail

  _By_ JAMES CRAIG

  The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago

  _Printed in the United States of America_

  Copyright, 1922 by The Reilly & Lee Co. _All Rights Reserved_

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I The Whisper from Afar 9 II On Arctic Feathers 18 III A Clue 27 IV Joe Missing 36 V Dangerous Business 44 VI The Battle Cry 51 VII Revenge for a Lost Comrade 58 VIII A Watch at the Side of the Trail 66 IX Who Is This Whisperer? 73 X On the Yukon 80 XI A Moving Spot on the Horizon 88 XII A Bad Follow Up 95 XIII Saved by a Whisper 103 XIV A Strange Sight 113 XV Curlie Vanishes 120 XVI A Strange Steed 128 XVII A Knotty Problem 138 XVIII A Mysterious Attack 145 XIX Ships That Pass in the Night 154 XX "We Have Met with Disaster" 163 XXI A Tense Situation 170 XXII A Mad Dream 179 XXIII "A Bear! A Bear!" 186 XXIV A Wild Mix-Up 193 XXV The Wild Stampede 199 XXVI The Sparkle of Diamonds 206 XXVII Diamonds and Other Things 214

  On the Yukon Trail

  CHAPTER I THE WHISPER FROM AFAR

  Curlie Carson sat before an alcohol stove. Above and on all sides of himwere the white walls of a tent. The constant bulging and sagging of thesewalls, the creak and snap of ropes, told that outside a gale was blowing.Beneath Curlie was a roll of deerskin and beneath that was ice; aglacier, the Valdez Glacier. They were a half day's journey from the cityof Valdez. Straight up the frowning blue-black wall of ice they had madetheir way until darkness had closed in upon them and a steep cliff of icehad appeared before them.

  In a corner of the tent, sprawled upon a deerskin sleeping-bag, lay JoeMarion, Curlie's pal in other adventures.

  "Lucky we've got these sleeping-bags," Joe drawled. "Even then I don'tsee how a fellow's going to keep warm, sleeping right out here on the icewith the wind singing around under the tent." He shivered as he drew hismackinaw more closely about him.

  Curlie said nothing. If you have read the other book telling of Curlie'sadventures, "Curlie Carson Listens In," you scarcely need be told thatCurlie Carson is a boy employed by the United States Bureau of SecretService of the Air, a boy who has the most perfect pair of radio ears ofany person known to the service.

  In that other adventure which had taken him on a wild chase over theocean in a pleasure yacht, he had had many narrow escapes, but this newbit of service which had been entrusted to him promised to be even moreexciting and hazardous.

  He had been sent in search of a man who apparently was bent on destroyingthe usefulness of the radiophone in Alaska; his particular desire seemingto be to imperil the life of Munson, a great Arctic explorer, byinterrupting his radiophone messages. This man was known to be possessedof abundant resources, to be powerful and dangerous. He had a perfectknowledge of all matters pertaining to the radiophone and was possessedof a splendidly equipped sending and receiving set. By moving this setabout from place to place, he had succeeded in eluding every governmentoperator sent out to silence him. Already he had done incalculable damageby breaking in upon government messages and upon private ones as well.

  Just at this moment, Curlie sat cross-legged upon his sleeping-bag. Withhead and shoulders drooping far forward, as if weighed down by theradiophone receiver which was clamped upon his ears, he appeared halfasleep. Yet every now and again his slim, tapered fingers shot out togive the coil aerial which hung suspended from the ridge pole of the tenta slight turn.

  "I don't see how we are going to get the rest of the way over thisglacier!" grumbled Joe. "That wall looks straight up; slick as glass,too. How y' ever goin' to get three sleds and eight hundred pounds ofjunk up there? Ought to have taken the lower trail. What if it is threetimes as far? Good trail anyway."

  "Leave that to Jennings," murmured Curlie.

  "Oh! Jennings!" exclaimed Joe. "Mebby he doesn't know so much. He's beengone too long already. What's that package he took with him? Gave us theslip already, maybe. Might be just a frame-up to keep us from making goodtime."

  "Jennings looks all right to me," persisted Curlie.

  He gave the aerial another turn.

  "Well, anyway!"--

  "Sh"--Curlie held up a warning finger. His nose was wiggling like arabbit's when he eats clover. Joe knew what that meant; Curlie wasgetting something from the air.

  Curlie started as the first word came to him--a whisper. He had heardthat whisper many times before. For many days it had been silent. Now shewas speaking to him again, that mysterious phantom girl of the air.

  As he eagerly pressed the receivers to his ears, he caught, faint as ifcoming from afar, yet very distinctly, the whispered words:

  "Hello - Curlie - I - wonder - if - you - are - listening - in -to-night. You - are - on - your - way - north. I - wanted - to - tell -you - the - man - you - are - after - is - on - the - Yukon - Trail -coming - south. He - started - yesterday. You - may - meet - him - Curlie- but - be - careful. It - is - big - Curlie - and - awful - awful -dangerous."

  Cold beads of perspiration stood out upon the tip of Curlie's nose as thewhisper ceased.

  He had measured the distance. The girl was a thousand miles away to thenorth. So that was it? The man he had been sent to track down by means ofthe radio-compass was coming south over the trail. They would meet. Hewondered how and where. There were wild, desolate stretches of tundra andforest on that trail. Inhabited only by Indians and wolves, these offeredfitting background for a tragedy. Whose tragedy would it be?

  "We might wait for him," he mused, "but, no, that wouldn't do. He mightturn back. Then all that time would be lost. No, we must press on. Wemust get off this glacier at once."

  In spite of his optimism, this glacier bothered him. He had taken thistrail at the suggestion of Jennings, a man who had gone over the trailduring the gold rush of '98 and who had offered to go with them nowwithout pay. He had, as he expressed it, been called back by the "lure ofthe North," and must answer the call. Curlie had decided to accept hisassistance and advice. Now he wrinkled his brow in thought. Had he made amistake in the very beginning?

  Just then, as if in answer to his question, Jennings, a short,bro
ad-shouldered person with keen, deep-set blue eyes and droopingmoustache, parted the tent-flaps and entered.

  "What? Not turned in yet?" His eyes showed surprise.

  "Had to see that you got back safe," smiled Curlie. He made a mental noteof the fact that Jennings had not brought back the package he had carriedaway. Only a light axe swung at his belt.

  "Well, that's kind and thoughtful," said Jennings. "But we'd better getinto them sleepin'-bags pronto. Got a good stiff day to-morrow. Make goodprogress too or I'm no sourdough-musher."

  Fifteen minutes later, Curlie having buried himself deep in the hairydepths of his sleeping-bag, had given himself over to a few moments ofthought before the drowsy quiet of the tent lulled him to repose.

  The sleeping-bags, in spite of Joe's forebodings, proved to be all thatone might ask. With nothing but a square of canvas between hissleeping-bag and the ice, and with the temperature at thirty below, cladonly in his pajamas Curlie felt quite as comfortable as he might havefelt in his own bed back home.

  "Wonderful thing, these bags," he thought dreamily. His thought about thefuture, the day just before him, was not quite so reassuring. They hadcome to ridges of ice on the surface of the glacier just at nightfall.There were many of these ridges. Dogs without sleds could climb them, butup their slopes they could not pull a pound. A man climbed them withdifficulty. His feet slipping at every attempted step, he was constantlyin danger of being dashed to the bottom. How were they to pack eighthundred pounds of equipment and supplies over these seeminglyunsurmountable barriers?

  Yet he dreaded to think of turning back. That meant four days of travelto reach a point which, straight over the glacier, was but twenty milesbefore them.

  "Ho, well," he sighed at last, "let to-morrow take care of itself.Perhaps Jennings really knows a way. He doesn't look like afour-flusher."

  With that his mind turned for a moment to the girl, the Whisperer. Thoughhe had never seen her, he had come to think of this Whisperer as a realperson. And indeed she must be, for, times without number, in the SecretTower Room back there in the city, in the wireless room on the yacht, inthe tent on the trail, her whisper had come to him. Always it told of thedoings of one man, the man he had been sent after. But what sort ofperson? He had pictured her to himself as a small, dark, vivacious girlwith snapping black eyes. Yet that was only a piece of fancy. He knewnothing about her save the fact that she seemed always near the man henow was seeking. He wondered vaguely now whether he would meet her uponthis trip. He tried to imagine the cabin, the lonely trail or the deepforest of the north where he might meet her.

  "Probably never will," he told himself at last. "Probably will always bejust a whisper."

  In the midst of his revery he fell asleep.