Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net






                       _A Mystery Story for Boys_




                                 _The_
                             SHADOW PASSES


                                  _By_
                              ROY J. SNELL


                          The Reilly & Lee Co.
                                Chicago

                             COPYRIGHT 1938
                                   BY
                          THE REILLY & LEE CO.
                         PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I The Silver Fox                                                    11
  II Blackie’s Story                                                  32
  III Fat and Furious                                                 38
  IV The Capture of Old Silver                                        53
  V Johnny Fights for Fun                                             68
  VI Smokey Joe’s Blue Bears                                          77
  VII A Strange Battle                                                85
  VIII The Stormy Petrel’s First Prize                                98
  IX Fate Lends a Hand                                               103
  X A New World                                                      111
  XI The Fall of Red McGee                                           119
  XII A Ptarmigan Feast                                              128
  XIII The Shadow                                                    141
  XIV A Voice in the Fog                                             147
  XV A Roar from the Deep                                            158
  XVI Looming Peril                                                  166
  XVII Trapped                                                       174
  XVIII Five Rounds and a Friend                                     181
  XIX Ordered Below                                                  189
  XX A Battle in the Dark                                            194
  XXI Wall of Glass                                                  201
  XXII Dreams                                                        209
  XXIII In the Blue Bear’s Cave                                      216
  XXIV Overtaking a Shadow                                           225
  XXV “Bill” Returns                                                 233




                           THE SHADOW PASSES




                               CHAPTER I
                             THE SILVER FOX


“And then I saw it—the Shadow.”

The speaker’s eyes appeared to snap. Johnny Thompson leaned forward in
his chair. “It glided through the fog without a sound.” The voice droned
on, “Not a sound, mind you! We had a small boat with powerful motors. I
stepped on the gas. Our motors roared. We were after that shadow.”

“And then?” Johnny Thompson whispered.

“For all I know,” the black-eyed man murmured, leaning back in his chair,
“we might have cut that shadow square in two. Anyway, that’s the last we
saw of it for that day.

“But think of it!” he exclaimed after a second’s pause. ”Think of the
thing just disappearing in the fog like that!”

He was a romantic figure, this man Blackie. The boys of Matanuska Valley
in Alaska loved this gathering of an evening about the red-hot stove in
the store. And no part of the evening’s entertainment was ever half so
thrilling as Blackie’s stories.

“It was spring then,” Blackie added, “late May, when the salmon run was
on.”

“It was a whale after salmon, that shadow,” someone suggested.

“No, sir!” Blackie fairly shouted. “It was too fast for a whale! Some
sort of Oriental craft, I shouldn’t wonder. Though how they’d make it go
without a sound is beyond me.

“Ah well,” he sighed, “I’ll be rid of these by spring.” He kicked at the
crutches beside his chair. “Then I’ll be after ’em again, those bloomin’
Orientals and their gliding shadows.”

“You going back into the Coast Guard Service?” Johnny asked eagerly.

“I sure am!” Blackie agreed heartily. “Boy! That’s the life! A speedy
boat with two or three airplane motors in her hull, a good crew, plenty
of gas, the wide open sea and enough trouble to keep your eyes open day
and night. Man! Oh, man!”

“Take me along,” Johnny suggested impulsively.

“Me too!” put in Lawrence, his slim, bright-eyed cousin.

“What do you know about boats?” Blackie asked.

“Plenty,” was Johnny’s prompt reply. “Been on ’em all my life, power
boats on the Great Lakes, Carib Indian sailboats in the Caribbean,
skin-boats way up north. It’s all the same.

“And Lawrence here,” he added after a brief pause, “he knows about
motors.”

“I—I was assistant mechanic in an airplane hangar for a season,” Lawrence
agreed modestly.

“Well, it—might—be—arranged,” Blackie replied slowly. “Don’t know about
pay. You sort of have to be on regular for that. But up here in the
north, things can’t always be done according to department regulations.
Anyway, it’s worth thinking about.”

“Thank—oh, thank you,” Lawrence stammered. Johnny knew how he was feeling
at that moment. He, Johnny, had met adventure in many climes. Lawrence
had lived a quiet life. Really to sail on a coast guard boat in search of
Orientals suspected of stealing salmon, smuggling or spying off the
Alaskan shores, to chase gray shadows that pass in the fog! Worth
thinking of? Well, you’d just know it was!

Johnny was still thinking of all this when two hours later, he crept
beneath the blankets in the small log cabin room occupied by Lawrence and
himself.

“That would be great!” he was telling himself. In fancy, he allowed his
mind to wander. Bristol Bay, a hundred and fifty miles wide and a hundred
and fifty long, fishing boats on the water, canneries on the shore and
back behind all this in the fog somewhere, beyond the three-mile line,
great dark bulks that were Oriental ships. Why these ships? No one knew
exactly. “Spying out our shore-line,” some said, “stealing our salmon,”
said others. And perhaps they were smugglers. It was known that these
ships carried smaller crafts that could be lowered to the water. “Could
do anything, go anywhere, these small boats,” Johnny assured himself.

“And the Shadow, that mysterious gray form that goes streaking through
the fog. What could it be?

“Ah, well,“ he settled deeper among the blankets. “It’s a long time till
spring, and here, right in Matanuska Valley is exciting adventure
aplenty.”

As if reading his thoughts, Lawrence murmured dreamily, “We’ll go after
him again tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “tomorrow.”


“Lawrence! Look! There he is!” Johnny pointed excitedly up the glistening
expanse of frozen river. Tomorrow had come. They were on the river.

“Wh—where?” Lawrence whispered.

“You don’t have to whisper.” Johnny laughed low. “He’s way up there. I
can scarcely see him with the glass. Here! Take it. See that pool of
water on the right side?”

“Yes—yes, I see.” Lawrence took the field glasses.

“At this end of that pool. I saw him move. Look quick!”

For a space of ten seconds Lawrence studied that pool. “Yes,” he
exclaimed at last, “he _is_ there! I saw him move over to the right.”

“Lawrence!” Johnny’s voice was tense with emotion. “I’m going after him!”

Johnny bent over to tighten a skate strap. “Here! Give me the bag. You
follow me, but not too fast. You can keep the glasses. I won’t need
them.”

“Al—all right, Johnny. Be careful! You—”

But Johnny was away. Skating from the hips, scarcely lifting a foot from
the ice, he appeared to glide without effort over the glass-like surface
of the river.

The boy’s spirits rose. They were “after him again.” And “he” was a grand
prize indeed.

“If only we can get him,” Johnny was thinking. “If we only can.”

The distant future quite forgotten, Johnny was living intensely in the
glorious present. Lawrence followed slowly. He, too, was a skillful
skater. The river at this point was frozen solidly. No need for thought
here. At once his mind was busy with memories of the not-too-distant past
and plans for the future.

Life for him had been strange. Eight months before he had been on the
broad, dry prairies of the Dakotas. Now he was skating on the Matanuska
River in Alaska. Nor was this just an adventurous winter trip. The
Matanuska Valley was his home and would be, he hoped, for years to come.
Six miles back and up a half mile from the river was their claim and the
sod-covered log cabin they called home.

“We are pioneers!” he whispered to himself. “Pioneers!” he repeated
softly. How he loved that word. How much it meant to them all; freedom,
new life, fresh hope and in the end a home all their own. “And paid for,”
he declared sturdily.

Yes, when the government had announced a resettlement project in this
rich valley and the Lawsons who had been driven from their farm home by
drouth and dust heard of it they had joined up. And here they were:
father, mother and son, with cousin Johnny thrown in for good measure.

“Been here six months,” Lawrence thought. “Got a little start. And next
year!” Ah, yes, next year. His face sobered. So much depended on the
future. And they needed so many things.

“We’ll not go in debt,” his father had insisted stoutly. “Not for a
single thing we can do without.”

But now the boy’s mind came back with a snap to the immediate present. As
he looked ahead he saw nothing of Johnny. For a second his heart
fluttered. Had his good pal come upon an unsuspected air-hole? Had he
gone through? Was he, at this moment, caught by the swift current,
shooting along rapidly beneath the ice?

“You have to know your river,” an old-timer had said to them. “Every foot
of it.” Did Johnny know it well enough, or—

Of a sudden he let out a low, happy laugh. Some distance ahead, showing
among the branches of a fallen fir tree, he had caught a glimpse of
Johnny’s plaid mackinaw.

“He—he’s all right,” he breathed. “Just getting a look.”

Johnny was now within a hundred yards of that dark pool, where, he hoped,
their prize still lurked.

“He must see him with the naked eye,” Lawrence murmured as he glided into
the shadow of a shelving bank. Here, steadying himself with one hand, he
held the glass to his eyes with the other.

Then, with hand trembling so it seemed the glass would drop, he
exclaimed, “Man! Oh, man! It’s a silver fox and a beauty! If only he gets
him! If he does!”

They were hunters, these boys. “Strange hunters!” some might say. “No
guns! No traps!” This valley was alive with rich, fur-bearing animals.
With guns and traps one might reap a winter’s harvest. Without guns or
traps how was it to be done! This had been the question uppermost in
their minds some weeks before. In the end they had found the answer, or
thought they had. And a strange answer it was.

They had arrived, this little family of four homesteaders, along with
hundreds of others in the Matanuska Valley, too late in the spring to
clear land and raise a crop. They had been obliged to content themselves
with a large garden and an acre of potatoes.

Such potatoes as those had been! “We’ll sell two hundred bushels!”
Lawrence had exulted. “That will go a long way toward buying a small
tractor. Then just watch our smoke!”

“Oh, no you won’t!” Jack Morgan, an old-time settler in the valley, had
laughed.

“What? Why not?” the boy demanded.

“Who’ll you sell ’em to?” the old-timer asked in a kindly voice.

“Why, we—we’ll ship ’em out.”

“You can’t, son,” Jack’s voice rumbled. “That’s the trouble. At present
there’s no market for farm products here. Never has been. That’ll be
worked out in time, now the government is interested. But just now we
have to eat our own potatoes.”

“But how do you get any money?” Lawrence had demanded.

“Trap foxes, minks, martin. Good money in trappin’,” was the old-timer’s
reply.

Of course, the boys had come rushing home bursting with the news that
they could make money all winter long trapping.

To their surprise they saw Lawrence’s father’s smiling face draw into
sober lines.

“No, boys,” he said quietly. “Not that. Anything but trapping. It’s too
cruel. I’d rather you went out with a gun.”

“But we haven’t a gun,” Lawrence protested.

“That’s right,” the father agreed. “And it’s not to be regretted.

“You see, boys,” his face took on a strange look, “when I was about ten
years old I had a dog I thought the world and all of. He didn’t cost a
lot of money. Never won any prizes at dog shows. But his hair was kinky,
his eyes alive with fun and his bark a joyous sound to hear. No boy ever
had a more faithful friend than good old Bing.

“And then,” his voice grew husky, “well, you see there was a man who
lived all by himself down by the river, Skunk McGee they called him.
Never amounted to much, he didn’t. But he trapped enough skunks and
muskrats to pay for his groceries.

“Our farm was along the river, on both sides. Father told him more than
once not to set his traps on our farm.

“One time in the dead of winter, way down below zero, old Bing didn’t
come home. I was worried but father said, ‘He’s gone to the neighbors and
they took him in on account of its being so cold.’

“But he hadn’t,” Mr. Lawson’s tone changed abruptly. “He was in one of
Skunk McGee’s traps. And when we found him he was dead, frozen hard as a
rock.

“And so you see, boys,” he added quietly, “I’ve always hated traps. I
never see one even now but I seem to see poor old Bing with one foot in
it, whining and shivering out there all alone.”

From that day on the thought of traps was banished from their minds.

But the foxes? Did they vanish? No indeed! The foxes saw to it that they
were not forgotten.

Before the summer was at an end some families, unaccustomed to the
pioneer life, lost courage and decided to return to their original homes.
Among these were two families who had brought with them small flocks of
chickens. By careful planning the Lawsons were able to buy the chickens.
Having built a stout log henhouse and a small wire enclosure for sunny
days, they felt better than ever prepared for the winter.

“Chicken for Thanksgiving and Christmas and eggs all winter long! What
luck!” Lawrence rejoiced.

The chickens, no doubt, were something of a surprise to the foxes. But
had they not always preyed upon ptarmigan? And were not chickens just big
plump ptarmigan? Perhaps this was the way they reasoned. At any rate, one
night Lawrence heard a loud squawking and rushed out just in time to see
a plump white hen vanish into the night. A fox had her by the neck.

“Something must be done about that,” he insisted at once. “If we can’t
trap the foxes, what then?”

“Take them alive,” was his father’s prompt reply.

“Alive! Alive!” both boys cried.

“I can’t see why not,” was Lawrence’s father’s quiet reply. “Of course,
you’ll have to wear tough, moose-hide mittens and keep your noses out of
reach, but—”

“We’ll do it,” Lawrence exclaimed. “But then,” his face sobered, “how’ll
we ever catch up with a fox?”

“When I was a boy,” said his father, “we used to catch muskrats on
skates.”

“Muskrats on skates?” Lawrence laughed.

“We were on the skates,” his father corrected with a smile. “The rats
were on the ice, you see,” he leaned forward. “We worked it this way.
We’d watch until the muskrat came out of his hole to get a drink. He’d go
to an open pool of water at the edge of the ice. We’d wait until he’d
started back across the ice. Then we’d come swooping down on him. He’d
get frightened and sprawl all over the ice—no wild creature can handle
himself well on the ice. So we had him.

“Once,” he chuckled, “Bob Barnett saw something moving on the ice. It was
just getting dark. He thought it was a rat. He come swooping down upon it
and—” he paused to chuckle. “Well, it turned out to be a skunk. The skunk
objected to his intrusion. So Bob went home to bury his clothes—just for
a scent.”

The boys joined in the laugh that followed but they were not slow in
following this suggestion. They found, however, that great skill and
caution were needed in this type of hunting.

They made progress slowly. After catching two muskrats, a snow-shoe
rabbit and two ground-squirrels, they decided to start a small zoo all
their own.

“Who knows?” Lawrence enthused. “We may catch some truly rare creature.
The keepers of zoos are always on the lookout for live specimens. We may
sell enough to get that bright new tractor down at Palmer after all.”

“A tractor!” Johnny doubted. “Oh! No! Surely not that much!”

“And yet,” Lawrence now thought as he stood watching for Johnny’s next
move on the river ice, “there he is creeping up on a silver fox. What is
a real, live silver fox worth?” To this exciting question he could form
no accurate answer. He had a hazy recollection of reading somewhere about
one that was sold for $3000.00.

“No such luck as that,” he whispered.

Just now, however, his attention was directed toward the silver fox that,
still very much at liberty, had taken a good drink from the pool and was
standing, nose in air, apparently looking, listening, smelling. Had he
smelled trouble? Would he drop into the pool to swim across and disappear
on the farther bank, or would he start back across that glistening
stretch of ice? Lawrence felt his heart leap as he saw the fox drop his
head. The big moment was at hand.

“He—he’s going across!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “It means so
much!” His thoughts went into a tailspin. Not only would they possess a
real, live silver fox for which, beyond doubt, some zoo would pay
handsomely, but their flock of chickens would be safe, for they could
tell by the size of the tracks that he was the one that was getting the
chickens. He was a sly one, indeed, this fox. Three times in the last
month, in spite of their every effort to prevent it, he had carried off a
fat old hen.

“He—Johnny’s starting,” Lawrence said, as, gliding silently from cover,
he prepared to follow his cousin on his swift, silent, breathless quest.

It was a truly wonderful sight, those two boys moving as if pushed by an
unseen hand closer, ever closer to the unsuspecting fox.

Moving swiftly, Johnny reached a fallen cottonwood tree. Just then the
fox, pausing in his course, once more sniffed the air. “I might get him
if I rushed him now,” he thought, “and I might miss.” This was true. The
fox was but a third of the way across the ice. He was still too close to
the pool. The plan was to allow him to reach the very center of the
river, then to rush him. Startled, he would start quickly for some shore.
Losing all sense of caution, he would begin to sprawl upon the ice. As
the boy came rushing on with the speed of the wind, he would stoop over,
snatch at the fox and speed on. He must seize the fox just back of his
ears. Could he do it? As he stood there hidden his pulse pounded madly.
He, too, had seen that it was a silver fox.

“He—he’s smelled me!” The boy’s voice rose in a sudden shrill shout.
“Come on, Lawrence! I’m going after him! Bring the bag!”

Gripping a large, moose-hide sack, Lawrence went speeding after him.

As for Johnny, with breath-taking suddenness, he saw the distance between
him and the fox fade. A hundred yards, fifty, twenty, and—“Now!” he
breathed. “Now!”

The fox was not a foot from the edge of the pool when, still speeding
wildly, the boy bent down and made one wild grab.

“Got him!” he shouted exultantly. But wait! Ten seconds more and the
fox’s ivory teeth were flashing in his very face. He seemed to feel them
tearing at his nose. There was nothing to do but drop him. With a
suddenness, startling even to the fox, the boy let go.

Down dropped the fox. On sped the boy. When Lawrence reached the spot the
fox had vanished into a hole and Johnny was skating slowly, mournfully
back.

“Never mind,” Lawrence consoled. “We’ll get him another time.”

“But a silver fox and a beauty!” Johnny exclaimed. “Think of losing him!”

“I have thought.” Lawrence was able to grin in spite of his
disappointment. “It would have meant a lot and now—” he chuckled, “now we
know it’s a real silver fox after our chickens. We’ll have to lock them
in a vault.”

“Not as bad as that,” said Johnny. “But Lawrence,” his voice dropped.
“This must remain a deep secret. Not a word to anyone. If Jim and Jack
Mayhorn knew about this there’d be a trap on every foot of the river.”

“Never a word,” Lawrence agreed.

They were a rather disconsolate pair as they pulled off their skates a
half hour later.

“To think!” Johnny groaned. “I had my hands on five hundred dollars,
perhaps a thousand dollars worth of fox and had to drop it because it was
too hot.”

“The price of a tractor,” Lawrence agreed. “It’s too bad.”

It was too bad indeed. All day, five days in the week, they worked hard
at clearing land. The trees were coming down. After the spring thaw
thousands of stumps must be pulled. A tractor would do that work. After
that it would draw the plows.

“If only I hadn’t lost him!” Johnny groaned.

“Aw! Forget it!” Lawrence exclaimed. “Come on! Let’s go home by the
camp.”

The “camp,” as they had come to call it, was a three-sided shelter built
on a corner of their forty-acre claim. It had been built, and apparently
abandoned, only a few months before their arrival. Such a snug shelter
was it that the boys had often sought its protection from storms. Once,
with a roaring fire before its open side, they had spent a night sleeping
on its bed of evergreen boughs.

The place never lost its fascination. Who had built it? Trader, hunter,
trapper or gold prospector? To this question they could form no answer.
Would he some day return? To this, strangely enough on this very
afternoon they were to discover the answer, at least that which appeared
to be the answer. As they were looking it over for the twentieth time
Lawrence suddenly exclaimed, “Look! Here’s a bit of cloth tacked to this
post. And there’s a note written on it in indelible ink!”

Johnny did look. “Read it!” he exclaimed.

“I will,” Lawrence began to read. “Can’t quite make it out,” he murmured.
“Oh, yes, this is it.

“‘I WILL BE BACK ON JULY 1st. BILL.’”

“So he’s coming back,” Johnny’s tone was strange.

“Coming back,” Lawrence agreed. “All right, Bill, old boy,” he laughed.
“We’ll keep your snug little camp ship-shape till you arrive.”

And for this bit of service, had they but known it, they were to receive
a very unusual reward.




                               CHAPTER II
                            BLACKIE’S STORY


“Tell us how you got that game leg of yours, Blackie,” Joe Lawrence, the
Palmer store-keeper, said to Blackie, as they all sat about the roaring
steel-barrel stove three nights later.

“Oh, that—” Blackie did not reply at once.

Johnny and Lawrence were by the fire. They had walked in from the claim,
a frosty three miles, with the thermometer at twenty-five degrees below.
They were not the sort of boys who loaf about stores and pool halls,
listening to cheap talk. Far from that. They had come to make a purchase
or two and, in an hour, with the steel-blue stars above them would be on
their way home. Just now the fire felt good.

“Sure, tell us,” Johnny encouraged.

“Hello! You here?” Blackie demanded, as if he had not seen them before.
“What’d you come in for on a night like this?”

“Wedges,” said Johnny. “Steel wedges for splitting logs.”

“Wedges.” There came a hoarse laugh from the corner. It was Jack Mayhorn
who spoke. “Who wants wedges in this country? Do like I do. Cut down the
trees that split easy.”

“They’ve all got tough spots,” Johnny replied quietly. “Where the limbs
have been cut off.”

“Oh, the knotty pines!” Jack laughed again. “Roll ’em into the fence row
an’ leave ’em. That’s the way we do.”

“We don’t,” said Lawrence. “We aim to take them as they come, tough or
not tough, they’ve got to bust.”

“Why?” Blackie fixed his piercing black eyes on the boy.

“I—I don’t know why,” was Lawrence’s slow reply. “I can’t explain it
right.” The boy hesitated. “But I—you know—I sort of hate being licked,
even by a tough log. So I—we sort of take ’em as they come.”

“That’s great!” Blackie slapped his knee. “And I suppose you feel the
same way?” he asked of Johnny.

“Sure do,” was Johnny’s prompt reply. “They can’t come too tough for me.”

“Can’t come too tough for little old Johnny.” There was a sneer in Jack
Mayhorn’s voice. “But he’s afraid to set traps or carry a rifle.”

“Not afraid,” Johnny replied quietly. “Just don’t want to.”

“Tell us, Blackie,” Joe, the store-keeper, broke in, sensing a possible
row, “tell us how you got that leg.”

Even then Blackie did not comply at once. Turning to the boys, he said in
a low tone, “You boys are dead right. No use letting a log or anything
else lick you.” Dropping his voice still lower he added, “I might take
you with me next spring on that coast guard boat. I just might, that is,
if you still want to go.”

Then in a changed voice he said, “All right, Joe, I’ll tell you all about
that leg of mine, though I’m not fond of doing it. It always makes me
hopping mad, just thinking about it.

“You see,” he went on at once, “I was up a river in Asia. Doesn’t matter
which river. I was in the navy. Less than six months ago, although it
seems two years. I was on a small U. S. gunboat. What one? That doesn’t
matter, either. She’s at the bottom of the river now.” He paused to stare
at the fire.

“We were laying up the river. There was fighting down below. We’d come
up-river to get out of the way. The fighting was foolish enough, but none
of our business.

“We were there to protect American citizens. There were twenty or more of
them on board, reporters and missionaries and the like.

“I’d just come on duty when a big bombing plane came hovering, like a
vulture, over us. It circled off again. ‘Good riddance,’ I said to my
buddy.

“I hadn’t finished saying it when it came zooming back. This time higher
up and—” Blackie took a long breath. “The bloomin’ infidels! What do you
think? They let go a bomb that missed us by inches.

“You should have seen us scatter,” Blackie laughed in spite of himself.

And then, of a sudden, the lines between his eyes grew deep and long.
“They bombed us. They sank our ship. My buddy was killed. I caught it in
the leg. I got a lifeboat off, doing what I could to save the women.

“Me,” he faltered. “I’m no sort of a story teller. But I hope I’m
something of a fighter. This old leg will be good as new next spring.
And, sure’s I’m living, I’m going hunting little brown men up there in
Bristol Bay. They stole a cool million dollars’ worth of fish last
season. How many’ll they get this year? That depends on the Coast Guard
men and, glory be! I’m one of them. I’m out of the navy, invalided home,
back on the good old job, and there’ll be plenty of things a-popping in
May.

“Er, excuse me, boys,” he apologized. “That sounds an awful lot like
bragging. We didn’t catch the Shadow that passes in the fog last season.
We didn’t do those Orientals much harm, either. Too slick for us, I
guess. But wish me luck next time. The biggest industry in Alaska, the
run of red salmon, depends on us.”

“Here’s luck,” said Johnny, lifting a cup of coffee just poured by Joe’s
motherly wife. “Here’s luck to the service.”

“And may you be my buddy!” Blackie added.

That night Johnny and Lawrence walked home in silence. The great white
world was all about them and the blue-white stars above. Their thoughts
were long, long thoughts.

Arrived at their log cabin home, they dragged out a tattered map of
Alaska to study its shore-line and most of all the shores of Bristol Bay.

“May,” Lawrence said at last. “That’s a long time yet.”

“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “and there’s plenty to get excited about tomorrow.
What do you say we turn in?”




                              CHAPTER III
                            FAT AND FURIOUS


Anyone who had watched the two boys skating slowly up the river next
morning would surely have been puzzled. Before them, now darting up a
steep bank and now scurrying along over the snow, were two brown,
fur-clad creatures. Neither dogs nor cats, they still appeared quite
domestic in their actions. Once when they had gone racing ahead too far
Johnny let out a shrill whistle and they came dashing back to peer up
into his face as if to say, “Did you call me?”

“They’re great!” Lawrence chuckled. “Got a dog beat a mile. They never
bark.”

“And yet they can find where wild creatures live,” Johnny agreed.

Just now, as you no doubt have guessed, the boys were looking for the
spot, under some great rock or at the foot of a tree, which the silver
fox called his home.

“We must find him,” Johnny had exclaimed only an hour before.

“We surely must,” Lawrence had agreed.

And indeed they must, for three principal reasons. Last night the fox
had, by shrewd cunning, managed to pry the chicken coop door open and
made off with a rooster. The fox was worth a lot of money—they were sure
of this—dead or alive. They must get him before someone with a gun or
with traps got sight of him. And they must take him alive, if possible—a
very large contract.

Their desires had been redoubled by something that had happened only the
night before. Mack Gleason, the settler whose claim joined them on the
west, had been in for a friendly chat.

“Got your tractor yet?” he had asked of Mr. Lawson.

“Not yet,” had been the reply.

“Well, you better hurry. They’re going fast. May not be another shipment
until it is too late for spring’s work.”

“No money just now.”

“Money!” Mack exploded. “Who said anything about money? Government gives
’em to you on time.”

“But time has a way of rolling around,” Mr. Lawson had replied quietly.

“Oh, the Government wouldn’t be hard on you,” Mack laughed. “Look at us.
We’ve got a washing machine and a buzz-saw, and a motor to run ’em, a
tractor, plow, harrow, everything, and all on time.”

“Yes, I know,” had come in the same slow, quiet tones. “And I know the
Government won’t be hard on you. Still it will want its money, same as
any loaning agency. It just has to be that way.

“This week,” Mr. Lawson went on after a moment, “I received a letter from
an old friend of mine. Few years back he secured a government loan on his
home. He didn’t keep up the interest and payments. They took it from him.
Now he’s unhappy about it. But people who borrow must pay. That’s why
we’re trying not to borrow.”

“And we won’t, not if we can help it.” Lawrence set his will hard as he
now followed those dark brown creatures over the ice.

“Johnny,” he said suddenly. “Do you think father should let us use
traps?”

“I—I don’t know,” Johnny replied slowly. “But that, for us, is not the
question. Ours is, ‘Have we a right to urge him to let us use them?’

“And the answer is, ‘No,’” he chuckled. “So we’ll have to trust our
little old otters to lead the way. When they find Mr. Silver Fox for us
we’ll have to grab him.”

“If only one of those trapping fellows doesn’t get him first,” Lawrence
said, wrinkling his brow.

Early in the season, as, with dreamy eyes, the boys wandered over the
forty acres of land that was, they hoped, to be their home for years to
come, they had caught the low, whining notes of some small creatures
apparently in distress.

“It comes from under that rock,” Johnny had said.

“No, over here beneath this dead tree trunk,” Lawrence insisted.

He was right. Having torn away the decayed stump, they had found two
round, brown balls of fur. These balls were baby otters. Taking them
home, they had raised them on a bottle. And now, here they were, paying
their debt by scouting about in search of the silver fox.

Pets they were, the grandest in all the world. The happiest moments of
their young lives were these long hikes. Never once did it seem to occur
to them that it might be nice to desert their young masters and answer
the call of the wild.

Now, as the boys followed them, they went gliding here and there peeking
into every crack and crevice of ice or frozen shore. From time to time
they poked their noses into some hole into which strange tracks had
vanished. After a good sniff they put their heads together and uttered
low whining noises. These noises varied with their opinions on the
condition of each particular hole. At times they appeared to shake their
heads and whine, “Too bad. He was here three hours ago. Now he’s gone.”

At other times they put their noses in the air and sang triumphantly,
“He’s there. He’s right in that hole this minute.”

Had the boys been able to train their pets to go in the hole and frighten
out the prey, they might have held a moose-hide sack at the entrance to
each hole and added quite rapidly to their collection of living Arctic
animals. This, however, the otters would not do. They were not looking
for a fight. And indeed, why should they? They did not live upon
squirrels and muskrats, but upon fish. “We’ll find ’em, you catch ’em,”
seemed to be their motto.

For the boys, finding the lair of the silver fox would not insure his
capture. It merely meant that they would know where he lived and would
watch that spot in the hope that he might come out on the ice in search
of food or a drink and that then they might come speeding in to grab him.

“Look!” Lawrence exclaimed suddenly, “there are Old Silver’s tracks!”

“Yes, sir! He just cut in from the hill to the river. He—” Suddenly
Johnny broke off to peer upstream.

“Something moving up there,” he whispered. “Maybe—”

But the otters had smelled the fox tracks and were off on swift tracking
feet. Johnny bent over to examine those tracks.

“It’s the old fellow or his brother,” he murmured. “No other fox around
here has such large feet. Boy! He’s a humdinger!”

Once more his keen eyes swept the upper reaches of the river. “Huh!” he
grunted. “Whatever that was, it’s vanished now.”

“Might as well follow the otters,” Lawrence suggested.

They did follow. Soft-footed in silence they tracked on for a mile. Up
banks and down again, over a ridge, back to the river. “Look at those
feathers!” Lawrence whispered.

“Got a ptarmigan,” said Johnny. “After that he should have made a bee
line for his lair.”

That was just what the fox had done. Straight as an arrow he had returned
to the stream, then he had sped away along its course until he came to a
huge gray rock. There the trail ended. And beneath this rock, according
to the verdict of the two singing otters, he must still lie fast asleep.

“Good old otters!” Lawrence exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

“They’ve found us his hiding place,” Johnny agreed. “And will we watch
it? We—”

Suddenly he broke off short to point excitedly upstream.

“A bear cub!” Lawrence exclaimed low. “He’s going to cross the river.”

“We—we’ll get on our sk-ates,” said Johnny excitedly. “Then let’s take
him.”

“Can we?” Lawrence was doubtful.

“Sure! We’ll lasso him and tie him up. He’ll make a grand addition to our
zoo. Come on!”

Swinging out on the shining ice, skating silently from the hips, the boys
glided like two dark ghosts toward the unsuspecting bear cub who, at that
moment, had started to cross a broad stretch of slippery ice. Sly silence
is, however, a game that two can play at. This the boys were to learn
very soon and to their sorrow.

One day the boys had come, quite unexpectedly, upon a half-grown white
caribou, or perhaps it had been a reindeer, that had wandered down from
some far northern herd. However that might have been, they were filled
with regret at the thought that they were not equipped for capturing it
for their “zoo.” From that time on they had carried lariats and, by way
of some added safety, short, stout spears. They were thus equipped today
as they sped swiftly, silently toward the bear cub.

“I’ll toss the lasso over his head, then you watch the fun,” Johnny
chuckled.

“I’ll watch all right,” Lawrence agreed. And he did.

Slowly, clumsily, the young bear, no larger than a good-sized dog, made
his way across the ice. The wind was away from him. He could not smell
the intruders, nor was he aware of their presence until, with a sudden
rush, Johnny was upon him.

Never will the boy forget the look of surprise that came over the young
bear’s comical face as he stared straight into his eyes. The whole affair
was easy, too easy. He passed so close to the cub that he might have
touched him. He did not. Instead, he dropped his noose over his head,
pulled it tight, then, letting out slack, whirled about to face the cub.
What would the cub do about that? He was to know instantly. Throwing
himself back on his haunches, the cub began backing and pulling like a
balky horse. On his skates, Johnny was no match for him. All he could do
was to come along. To his further annoyance, he found that his lariat had
whirled about his wrist and tied itself into a knot. As long as the cub
kept the line tight he could not untie the knot. He did not quite relish
the idea of dashing up to the cub and saying, “By your leave, I’ll untie
this knot.” So, for the moment, he played into the cub’s hand.

Then the unexpected happened. With a grunt and a snarl of rage, a huge
black bear, the cub’s mother beyond a possible doubt, dashed over a ridge
to come charging straight at Johnny and the cub.

“Hey! Hey! Look out!” Lawrence shouted. “Drop your rope and beat it.”

“I—I can’t,” Johnny cried in sudden consternation. “He—he’s got me tied.”

“Tied!” Lawrence gasped.

“It’s ’round my wrist.” Johnny watched wide-eyed while the huge mother
bear came tobogganing down the high, steep river bank. She hit the ice
like a bobsled and, dropping on hind legs and tail, came sliding straight
on.

Just in time, Johnny came to his senses and began doing a back-stroke.
Only by inches did he miss the husky swing of the angry bear’s paw.

“Cut the rope,” Lawrence shouted.

“Al-all right, I’ll—I’ll cut it.” Johnny dug into a pocket with his free
hand. A pocket knife. It must be opened. With one eye on the cub, who for
the moment sat whining, and the other upon the mother bear, who was
scrambling awkwardly to her feet, he had no eyes left for his knife. Just
as, having gripped the handle with one hand, the blade with the other, he
managed to open the knife, the cub, going into frenzied action, gave him
a sudden jerk that sent the knife spinning far out on the ice.

“It’s gone,” he groaned.

No more time for this. Old mother bear was after him. Fortunately this
old bear was heavy with fat. She had been preparing for a winter’s sleep.
Still she could travel and she was fat and furious. Her skill as a skater
was something to marvel at.

Since he could not escape from the rope, the only thing for Johnny to do
was circle. Circle he did. One time around with the bear at his heels;
two times around he had gained a little; three times around he caught the
gleam of his knife. Could he stoop and pick it up? He bent over, made a
reach for it, struck a crack with his skate and all but fell.

“I—I’ll get it next time,” he breathed.

To his surprise he found that next time the knife was well out of his
reach. Then to his utter horror, he saw that the perverse cub was
standing still, making an animated Maypole out of himself and that it
would be no time at all until the rope would be all wound around him.
They would meet face to face, cub, mother bear and boy. And after that?
He shuddered as he sped along that ever-narrowing circle.

“I’m coming in,” Lawrence shouted.

“No, you—”

Johnny could say no more. Lawrence was already in. Skating straight at
the bear to attract her attention, Lawrence shot past her and slapped her
sharply on the nose.

It was a daring and effective endeavor. Turning with a snarl, completely
abandoning her cub at this fancied insult, the bear went after him with a
rush.

That was all right as far as it went. The skating was good. The bear was
fast, but not fast enough to catch him. There is, however, an end to all
things. There was an end to that stretch of ice. It ended in a series of
rapids that were not frozen over.

Lawrence groaned as he saw open water ahead. To his added terror, he saw
that the river narrowed at that point. That the bear could outrun him on
land he knew all too well.

“Got to be an artful dodger,” he told himself.

At that moment how he rejoiced that he had trained himself as a hockey
skater. Swinging about in a half circle, he sped toward the right-hand
bank. But the bear was there ahead of him.

Just as she reared up for a sledge-hammer blow, the boy whirled squarely
about and shot away to left. Again he was too late for a safe passage,
but not so much too late. He was gaining. Three more times, then with a
joyous intake of breath he shot past the bear and was away.

In the meantime, Johnny, safe for the moment from the mother bear, had
hastily unwound the surprised cub, then had rushed him with such speed
that the rope was off his neck before he could lift a paw. The cub was
free. So was Johnny. And there were no regrets.

“Johnny,” said Lawrence as he joined his companion five minutes later, “I
don’t think we want any bears in our zoo. They’re too playful.” They were
to change their minds about this, but that was to come sometime later.

“That,” said Johnny with a chuckle, “was almost funny.”

“Yes,” Lawrence agreed, “almost.” He did not laugh. “Almost, but not
quite.”

A moment later he exclaimed, “Johnny! Where are the otters? We can’t lose
them.”

“They’ll probably hunt us up. They—” Johnny broke off short. “Look!” he
murmured low. “Look! There’s the silver fox. He’s out of his hole.
He—he’s going to cross the ice.”

Lawrence glanced back to the spot where the bears had been. They had
vanished. “This time,” he whispered, “we’ll get that old silver fox. We
simply must.”




                               CHAPTER IV
                       THE CAPTURE OF OLD SILVER


Johnny felt his pulse quicken as he sped along over the ice. The silver
fox had come out of the hole. There could be no doubt of that. Would he
dodge back in again or would he start across the ice?

“If he starts!” the boy breathed.

He must not be too fast nor too sure. Last time he had muffed a glorious
chance. Slowing up, he slid in behind a clump of elders and came to a
standstill. There, gripping a shrub, he stood trembling like a butterfly
ready for flight.

As for Lawrence, he was coming on more slowly. Naturally more cautious
than his cousin, he had an eye out for trouble. That fat old mother bear
might still be lurking among the ridges. He had not forgotten how she had
come charging down upon them.

“Can’t take unnecessary chances,” he told himself. “Life is wonderful. I
am sure that taking unnecessary chances is wrong. It is making light of
God’s great gift to us—life.”

Ah, yes, it was good to live just now. For the first time in their lives
his little family felt sure of having a home of their own. As he glided
slowly along he thought of the summer’s struggle. At first it had been
damp and bitterly cold. Then the sun had been hot and the mosquitoes had
come in swarms.

Through all this they had labored on; father, mother, and these two stout
boys. It was said that gangs of men would be along to clear patches of
land and build cabins. To this they had not listened. “We came to make
our own way,” they insisted. “We are pioneers. Pioneers must work.”

When garden and potato patches were planted they had started the cabin.
Selecting, from near and far, trees that were dead but not decayed, they
had built a cabin whose walls would not warp and shrink as would those
built of green timber.

Later, in the autumn when sharp winds told of a long winter ahead, they
had cut squares of tough sod and piled them about the cabin until it
seemed a sod house. When the question of a heating stove had arisen, they
had discovered an abandoned gasoline barrel, had cut one hole for a door,
another for the stove-pipe, had done a little drilling and riveting, and
thus had made a stove that, fed on crackling fir logs, laughed at the
Arctic cold.

“Pioneers!” he whispered. “We are pioneers.” How he loved that thought.

Of a sudden his attention was drawn from past to present by Johnny’s
beckoning hand. With a quick twisting glide, he moved silently forward
until he was at his companion’s side.

“Look,” Johnny gripped his arm. “There is the fox. He hasn’t started
across yet and—”

“And there are the otters!” Lawrence broke in with a shrill whisper.

“Yes,” Johnny agreed. “That’s the queer part of it. They came just so
close to the fox, then seemed to shout something at him.”

“Like one boy daring another to come out and fight,” Lawrence laughed
low.

“Yes, or inviting him to a game of tag,” whispered Johnny. “And look!
There he goes! There goes the fox! Good old otters! They are
helping—helping a lot.”

He had spoken the truth, the fox was after one of the otters.

“Little good it will do him,” Lawrence chuckled. “Those otters are more
at home on ice and in water than on land.”

“Listen!” Johnny’s voice was tense now. His figure stiffened. “In a
minute I’m going after him. I’ve got the bag. If I get him I’ll pop him
inside. I won’t miss now. You just follow along slowly. I might need
you.”

“Al-all right,” the younger boy agreed.

There might have been boys who would have said, “This is my turn. You
muffed last time.” Not so Lawrence. All too well he knew the skill and
natural daring of his cousin. And, after all, in their little family the
rule had ever been, “Each for all and all for each.” So he watched his
cousin glide silently out for one more adventure.

Ten seconds later in watching the little drama of wild life being played
there on the ice, he had all but forgotten Johnny. Never before had he
seen the tame otters put on such a clever show. Just as the larger one
had so far escaped the onrush of the fox that he was becoming
discouraged, the small otter, with cunning and extreme daring, slipped up
and all but shouted in the fox’s ear. At once, the now thoroughly angered
fox turned to dash after this second intruder.

No sooner had the first otter been abandoned than he turned about to
begin slipping up on the fox to dare him for one more race.

“For all the world like a game of tag!” Lawrence murmured.

All this was aiding Johnny, though it is to be doubted whether the otters
knew the value of their antics. The fox was being led farther and farther
out on the ice. At the same time his attention was so held by this
strange game that he was almost certain to miss catching sight of the boy
who now glided closer, ever closer to him.

“Good old otters!” Johnny repeated in a whisper as, drawing his
moose-hide mittens tight, he prepared for the final dash.

“He’s going after him,” Lawrence thought as, with a thrill shooting up
his spine, he glided from his sheltered spot, ready, if need be, to come
in on the finish.

With a suddenness that must have been startling to the keenest eyes,
Johnny swept down upon the fox and the otters. Did the otters see him?
Beyond doubt. They saw everything. But the fox? For once he was caught
quite unawares. One startled look, a quick squatting down on the ground,
and Johnny was at his side. Before the fox could relax from this stiff
pose, Johnny’s hands, like a brass collar, were about his neck.

“You got him!” Lawrence shouted, springing into action. “You got him!
Hurray!”

Then a terrible thing happened. Overjoyed at their great good fortune,
Lawrence for the moment lost his bearing. Of a sudden his skate struck
ice that crunched ominously. He tripped to go plunging forward into the
black waters of the racing river. He had fallen into an open pool.

“I’ll drown,” he thought, as, in an involuntary manner, he struck out
with his hands in a swimming motion. All too late he saw ice ahead. Next
instant he was beneath the river’s ice.

Johnny saw all this. With a gasp of terror he all but dropped the fox.
Then, scarcely knowing what he did, he thrust the fox as if he were his
mother’s fur scarf, into the moose-hide bag, drew the strings tight, then
shot away toward the spot from which his cousin had vanished.

As Lawrence shot beneath the ice, life seemed near its end. Yet there had
never been a time when life had seemed so real and so joyous as now. For
a second panic gripped him. Holding his breath, he tried to think.

In an instant his mind was clear. He knew what he should do. There were
two open pools farther on. How far? He did not know exactly. Could he
hold his breath till then? He must hope. And he must try to move over
closer to the shelving bank. If he reached the pool he might then touch
bottom.

Desperately he struggled to draw himself over to the left. His head
hummed. His lungs were bursting, his heart pounding.

“It—it’s the end,” he thought.

And then, up he popped. Just in time, as his feet touched, he gripped the
edge of the ice and held there. Ten agonizing seconds he clung there,
then a voice shouted, “Hold on, I’m coming.”

Ten seconds more and Johnny, who had leaped to the bank and raced along
it, reached out to grip his mackinaw.

“Now!” he shouted. “Out you come.” And out he came.

Weak from excitement and exhaustion, he lay there for a time motionless.

“This won’t do,” Johnny exclaimed at last. “We’ve got to get going.
Here,” he dragged the sodden mackinaw from his cousin’s shoulders, then
put his own sheep-lined coat in its place. After putting his own dry
mittens on Lawrence’s hands, he pulled him to his feet.

“It’s you for skates and the ice, then home as fast as ever you can.” He
pushed him on before him.

As his skates touched the ice Lawrence felt new warm blood racing through
his veins. He was off with the speed of the wind. And after him, with a
moose-hide sack dangling at his side and filled with one very angry
silver fox, came his loyal, anxious yet joyous friend and cousin, Johnny.

The day, for this part of the world, was not extremely cold. Lawrence’s
trousers froze into pipe-like forms, but his sturdy, youthful body
resisted the cold and sent him speeding on his way.

Dropping down on the river bank at last, they dragged off their skates to
take the usual short cut through the timber.

As he passed the carefully built shelter beside that narrow stream,
Johnny recalled the note tacked to a post and wondered afresh whether the
mysterious Bill would arrive, just as the note said he would, on July
1st.

“Who do you suppose he left that note for?” he exclaimed suddenly.

“Haven’t—the—slightest-notion,” Lawrence panted, still racing along.
“One—thing—is—sure. I’m—going—to—be—there—when that day comes.”

“We’ll both be there,” Johnny agreed. Somehow, as he thought of it, in a
strange way it seemed that Bill and the silver fox must in some way be
associated with each other. “Pure moonbeams,” he assured himself, yet the
thought remained in the back of his mind.

There is something in the north that is called “Grapevine telegraph.”
This name is given to the mysterious means by which, in a land devoid of
telephone and telegraph, news travels fast and far. Was it this unreal
telegraph that, six hours later, as Lawrence, none the worse for his
experience, lay before the roaring fire, brought a stranger to their
door? Who can say? Be that as it may, there he was.

“Excuse me for intruding,” said the tall, smiling stranger as he brushed
the snow from his moccasins. “I heard you’d got a silver fox and I just
had to have a look at him. It’s been three years since I saw one. I’m Jim
Clem. Got a claim over on the other side of the settlement.”

“You—you’ve seen silver foxes.” Johnny was on his feet.

“Hundreds of ’em.” The stranger smiled.

“Hun-hundreds,” Johnny stammered. “I thought they were rare.”

“Used to be,” admitted Jim Clem. “Still are, fairly so. Did you get a
good one?”

“Yes, I—well,” Johnny whirled about. “I’ll show you.” Opening the back
door, he dragged in a small wire cage. “We just put him in this for a
little while,” he half apologized.

“Oh! He’s alive. Hurt much?” Jim asked.

“Not hurt at all.”

“Not hurt?” Jim stared. “How’d you catch him?”

“With my hands,” Johnny chuckled. Then, seeing that this would not stand
as a bare statement, he explained briefly their method of capture.

“Say-ee,” Jim exclaimed, dropping into a chair, “you’re regular natives.
And that’s a fine specimen. Time was when you’d get two thousand dollars
for him.”

“Yes, we—”

“But not now,” Jim broke in. “Never again. Know much about foxes?”

“No, we—”

“Then, I’ll tell you.” Jim settled back in his chair. “I worked on a
silver fox farm for three years. ‘Million Dollar Farm,’ they called it.
And that’s what it was. Raised only silver foxes.

“But you don’t get that way all at once,” he laughed. “Not by a great
deal. Take that fellow you got there. Suppose you find him a mate and
decide to start raising silver foxes. Pretty soon you’d have a lovely lot
of cute little fox cubs. But would they be silver foxes? Not one. That’s
almost certain.”

“Not one?” Lawrence sat up.

“That’s it,” Jim agreed. “You’d get two or three little red foxes and,
with great luck, a cross fox, that’s all.”

“You see,” he leaned forward, “a silver fox is a freak, just as a
half-white robin is. If a half-white robin hatches his eggs his young
ones are likely to be jolly little robin redbreasts, nothing more.

“Only by keeping foxes for years and years can you at last hope to raise
pure silver foxes. That takes thousands and thousands of dollars. Four
brothers went in for that in a big way years ago. Last year they sold
13,000 pelts for more than $1,000,000. And that,” he added, “figures up
to something like $77.00 apiece.”

“That’s what our fox is worth,” Lawrence groaned. “And we’d have to kill
him to get that?”

“Oh, sure,” Jim grinned. “But truly,” his face sobered, “that’s the tough
part about fox farming. In the end you’ve got to kill ’em, so some fine
lady can drape their skins about her neck.”

“I’d never sell ours to a fox farm,” Lawrence said with conviction.

“How about selling him alive to some zoo?” Johnny asked hopefully.

“Don’t know very much about that,” Jim replied slowly. “I wouldn’t hope
too much. There are 5,000 fox farms these days. And they raise some
beauties.

“But if you mean to keep this fellow alive,” he added, “you want to get a
wooden barrel and make it into a den for him. Pack it all ’round with
chaff and moss to make it warm. Then build him a wire pen all about it.
He’ll get along fine if you do that.

“I’ll have to trot along.” He rose to go. “Come and see me. I’ll tell you
more about ’em. They’re interesting no end, foxes are.” He bade them
goodnight.

“Well,” Johnny drawled slowly, “Old Silver won’t buy us a tractor, that’s
sure.”

“No,” said Lawrence. “But we can learn a lot about him and we can at
least keep him from eating our chickens. Don’t give up the ship. We’ll
happen onto something yet.”

There are other rewards than money in this life of ours. Remarkable
achievement of any sort usually brings us kind words of deserved praise
from our fellowmen. It was so with Johnny and Lawrence. More than one
settler had suffered from the night raids of Old Silver. Now that he was
in prison his captors were highly praised.

Still the problem remained; should they give up their dream of complete
independence and go in debt for a tractor?

“I think you’d better,” said Johnny. “There are only a few left and they
are going fast.”

“There’ll always be the Titan,” Lawrence laughed.

“Yes, the Titan,” Johnny agreed. “But who could ever pay for that
tractor?”

The Titan was a powerful new type of tractor. Only one had been brought
on and that one was priced at a cool thousand dollars.

“We’ll wait a little longer,” was Mr. Lawson’s decision. “The tide of
fortune may turn our way.”




                               CHAPTER V
                         JOHNNY FIGHTS FOR FUN


News travels fast in the north. When the time came for the boys to make
one more journey to the store at Palmer everyone had heard of their
catch.

“Here they come,” someone shouted as, stamping the snow from their feet,
they entered the smoke-filled room.

“Here they come. They bring ’em back alive!” someone else shouted.

“Well,” Lawrence drawled, “we bring them anyway. Got two minks today.
That’s two more that won’t carry off folks’ chickens.”

“I hear you boys got a silver fox.” There was a suggestion of antagonism
in Jack Mayhorn’s voice as he said this.

“Yes,” Johnny replied. “And we’ve still got him.”

“Do you know, fellows,” Jack gave vent to a chuckle that seemed a little
strained, “back in Michigan, where I lived on the shores of Lake
Superior, there was a feller who used to go lake-trout fishin’. He
trolled with an out-board motor. Always got ’em, too, a whale of a fine
catch.

“But you know,” he edged forward in his chair, “there was net fishermen
there, too. Fished fer a living. And one day when we was lookin’ over
this sportin’ fellow’s catch, the fish he claimed he’d caught trollin’ we
found had net marks on ’em.”

“Net marks?” someone said.

“Sure.” There was a shifty look in Jack’s eyes. “He’d been liftin’ nets
an’ helping himself to the fish that didn’t belong to him. And I was
wonderin’,” he paused, “just wonderin’, Johnny, if that silver fox of
yours mebby had a lame foot or—or somethin’.”

The silence that followed was painful. Johnny made no reply. His fingers
worked along his palm, that was all.

It was Blackie Dawson who spoke at last. “I take it, Jack,” he spoke
slowly, “you are insinuating that these boys took the fox from your trap.
Let me tell you, old man, that sort of thing calls for a fight; in the
north it does.”

Jack made no reply, but Johnny did.

“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking slowly. “It doesn’t mean a fight to me.”

“You won’t fight?” Blackie stared at him.

“Not to settle a personal grudge,” Johnny replied slowly. “If Jack wants
to think we took the fox from his trap, that’s his privilege. If he would
like to examine the fox that’s his privilege also. But I’m not going to
beat him up just to make him take back something he’s said. That might
seem to be a point of honor but we all have our own codes of honor. It
may seem queer but I’d rather take an insult than give someone a
beating.”

“Take a beating you mean,” Jack sneered. He was nearly twice Johnny’s
size.

“Joe,” said Johnny, turning to the store-keeper, “you told me you got two
pairs of boxing gloves through the mail.”

“Sure, Johnny, I did. Here they are.” Reaching behind him the
store-keeper drew out two pairs of gloves.

“Put ’em on, Johnny,” Blackie encouraged.

“Put ’em on! Put ’em on!” came from all over the room. There was a stir
of expectancy in the air.

“Sure, I’ll put them on,” Johnny grinned. “What do you say, Joe? I’ll box
you five rounds. Five friendly bouts for fun, money or marbles.”

The crowd stared, Johnny was talking not to the man who had offered the
insult but to his friend the store-keeper.

For a moment Joe stood staring at him. Then, as the light of a smile
spread over his face, he said, “Sure, Johnny, I’ll box you, not for money
or marbles, but just, you might say, for fun.”

It will be a long time before the settlers of Matanuska Valley will again
witness such a match as followed. Five rounds for fun, between friends?
Yes, perhaps. And yet there were times when even Johnny doubted that.
True, he was not angry for a moment, just in there doing his best. But
Joe? He was wondering about him.

Though he had told no one in the valley about it, Joe had, only the year
before, belonged to the U. S. Marines. The Marines neither give nor ask
quarters. And Joe had been champion of his regiment. As for Johnny, well
you know Johnny. If you don’t, you should have been there that night.

From the start it was leather against leather, a slap for the chin, a
thrust at the heart, a bang on the side of the head, and after that a
clinch.

Seldom had men been more evenly matched. Joe was older, more experienced,
Johnny younger, faster on his feet.

They had not been going a minute when an involuntary ring had formed
about them. In that ring, gaping open-mouthed was Jack Mayhorn.

Twice Johnny was down on a knee. Each time he was up and at it. Once,
backed into a corner, Joe tripped and fell. He, too, was up before the
count of three.

The fifth round was wild. Had there been an announcer, he must surely
have lost his mind calling, “A right to Johnny’s chin, a left to his ear.
The ear is bleeding. Oh—a! A slam on the side of Joe’s head that makes
him slightly groggy. Johnny’s following through. The clinch! The referee
(Blackie) separates them. They are sparring now. Now! Oh, now! Johnny
takes one on the chin. He’s down. One—two—three—He’s up again.” So it
went to the end.

As the cowbell, rung by young Larry Hooker, announced the close of the
round, the crowd went wild with enthusiasm, but Joe, seizing Johnny by
the glove, dragged him into the kitchen at the back of the store.

“Boy, you’re a whiz!” he exclaimed. “There was a time or two when I
thought you had me.” He was mopping Johnny’s face with a wet towel.

“Not a chance,” Johnny laughed. “I didn’t know what I was stepping into
but I did my best.”

“Listen,” Joe held up a hand. The tumult in the outer room had died down.
Blackie Dawson was about to make a short speech. “Gentlemen,” he was
saying, “the day after tomorrow at early candle light, there’ll be
another boxing bout in this room. It will be between—” he paused—“between
Jack Mayhorn and—he—he has a choice—Johnny Thompson or Joe Lawrence.”

“No!” a voice fairly roared after the shouts had subsided, “I got a bad
foot. My footwork, it ain’t no good at all.” It was Jack Mayhorn who
spoke.

“So it’s _your_ foot that’s bad and not that silver fox’s foot?” Blackie
bantered.

The crowd let out a roar that could have been heard a mile.

“That’ll about fix Jack Mayhorn,” said Joe. “He’s not likely to bother
you much now.”

An hour later, when the customers had “cleared out and gone home,” Johnny
and Lawrence found themselves in Joe’s kitchen. Blackie and Joe were
there. So was Mrs. Joe. They were all eating huckleberry pie and drinking
hot chocolate.

“Johnny,” said Joe, feeling a plaster on his chin, “why did you do it?”

“Do what?” Johnny stared.

“Pick on me for a fight. I never done you no wrong.”

“That’s why,” was Johnny’s astonishing reply. “It’s an old Eskimo
custom.”

“What is?” They all stared at him.

“According to the Eskimo law,” Johnny went on soberly, “if you are going
to be killed it has to be done by a near relative or very close friend.
So-o—” he added with a spreading grin, “I thought you’d do as well as
anyone. And you did—even better.”

“Anyway,” Blackie supplemented after their laugh was over, “folks in
Matanuska Valley will know who among us can put up a good scrap and that
always helps.”

When one is young he thinks only of the present and the future, never of
the past. As the two boys walked home that night, they thought much of
the future. The bond of friendship between them and Blackie Dawson was
growing stronger every day. When spring came, would they go booming away
with him on a Coast Guard boat in search of adventure in Bristol Bay? Who
could tell?

In the meantime there was work to be done, plenty of it. Some twenty
acres of land was yet to be cleared. In the spring stumps must be pulled.
Without a tractor this would mean back-breaking labor.

“Perhaps we can get more foxes?” Lawrence said, thinking out loud.

“Yes, and other wild creatures,” Johnny added. “That country ‘back of the
beyond’ has never even been explored. There must be wild life back there
that’s never been seen. Peary found white reindeer on one of his
expeditions. Who can tell what we’ll come upon if we keep up our search?”

Who, indeed? The boy had spoken more wisely than he knew.




                               CHAPTER VI
                        SMOKEY JOE’S BLUE BEARS


Johnny awoke with a start. What had wakened him? He could not say for
sure. He had a feeling that it had been a human voice, perhaps a shout.

Propping himself up on one elbow he listened intently. There came no
sound save the long-drawn distant howl of a wolf. “Must have dreamed it,”
he murmured as he drew deep into the caribou-skin bed.

The night was cold, bitter cold. It was dark. Like chilled white
diamonds, stars glistened in the sky. “What a change a few hours can
make,” he thought. They were sleeping in the mysterious Bill’s shelter,
he and Lawrence.

Why were they sleeping in this cheerless shelter? Warm beds awaited them
at home. When one is young he does not need too good an answer for the
thing he does. Both Johnny and Lawrence were born scouts. They loved the
sharp tang of cold on their cheeks, followed by the quick glow of a
campfire. The smell of wood-smoke, deer steak broiled over coals, dreamy
hours just sitting before the fire, not talking, just thinking, all these
were a joy to them. So they liked to get away for a night. Bill’s camp
was a convenient place.

Johnny did not fall asleep at once, instead his mind was crowded with
dreamy thoughts.

Perhaps Bill was a gold prospector. Perhaps he had discovered gold. Then
when he returned to this camp, they might all go tramping away to find
the spot and stake out claims.

“That would ruin the settlement,” he told himself. “People would desert
their dreams of making homes for brighter, more illusive dreams of
wealth. And yet—” What did he wish? He could not tell.

When they had retired for the night the moon had been shining, a bright
fire gleamed before their shelter. Now all was gloomy and cold. Should he
rekindle the fire? “No. Too chilly,” he shuddered. “Wait till morning.”

The days that had gone before had been uneventful ones. More and more he
had come to realize that they must have a tractor. Long hours they had
worked clearing timber. Brush was burned. But wood must be saved for
fires, for buildings and fences. Every day saw larger piles of wood on
the cleared land.

“With a tractor and a stout sled we’d have it hauled home in no time,”
Lawrence had said to his father. “Without it—”

“Wait a little longer,” his father had counseled.

So they were waiting and tonight, sleeping in Bill’s shelter, they were
still waiting.

So Johnny thought and dreamed until at last he fell asleep.

Perhaps he slept an hour, perhaps less or more. Then he awoke with a
suddenness that set his senses reeling.

“Law-Lawrence!” he shouted in wild consternation. “The bear! The bear!”

Something solid and heavy as a bear had landed with all but crushing
weight on his chest. It still rested there but did not move.

“That’s no bear,” said a gruff, good-natured voice. “That’s my pack.
Sorry! Didn’t know you was here.”

“Lawrence!” Johnny exclaimed. “It’s Bill!”

“Not Bill neither,” the stranger disagreed. “They call me Smokey Joe.”

“Smokey Joe!” Johnny peered into the darkness, trying to get a look at
the man’s face. “Smokey Joe. I’ve heard of you.”

And he surely had. Smokey was a well-known character in the valley. The
old-timers told how he came and went. Always in search of gold, he would
disappear for months.

“Then,” one of the motherly women added, “just when we think he’s gone
for good, up he pops again. We feed him up and patch his clothes. Then,
like some boy, he’s off again.

“But he’s no boy,” she added. “He came to Alaska in the gold rush of
’97.”

“Eighteen-ninety-seven!” Johnny had exclaimed. “More than forty years
ago!”

“He never left,” the gray-haired lady had added. “He came from the
Cumberland Mountains somewhere and he still speaks in their queer way.

“They say,” she added with a lowered voice, “that he struck it rich once,
had nearly half a million dollars, and that he’s got some of it hid away
in the hills somewhere. But, then,” she sighed, “you can’t believe
anything you hear and only half you see in Alaska. Alaska is a place of
wild dreams.”

Johnny was recalling all this as he made haste to split dry wood into
fine pieces, whittle some shavings, then light a blaze in their
out-of-doors fireplace.

“It’s about morning,” he said, at last looking into Smokey Joe’s seamed
face. “Did you come far?”

“Been travelin’ mighty nigh all night,” the old man drawled. “Me and my
hounds here.” He nodded at three powerful dogs, already curled up on the
snow for a sleep. “Right smart cold up yonder. Hit’s a sight better here
in the bottoms.”

“We’ll have coffee before you know it,” Johnny said cheerily. “Coffee and
sour-dough flap-jacks.”

“Ah,” the old man sucked in his breath. “Sour dough flap-jacks. They
shore do stick to yer ribs. Reckon Smokey Joe’s the flapjack eatinest
feller you almost ever seed.”

Lawrence grinned. This old man spoke a strange language.

“A bear!” Smokey chuckled. “You all thought I were a bear! That’s right
smart quare.”

“We almost caught a cub,” Johnny explained. “Caught him alive, I mean.”

“Almost.” Lawrence laughed. “But his mother objected.”

“Bears,” said the old man, blinking at the fire. “Back thar in them thar
glaciers thar’s bears you might nigh wouldn’t believe the plain truth
about.”

“Why?” Johnny sat up. “What’s strange about them?”

“Might nigh everythin’s quare, I reckon. Hm,” the old man sniffed the
coffee, “smells powerful good.”

“It’ll be boiled in a minute or two,” said Johnny. “But tell me about
those bears.”

“They’re blue, plumb blue, like a thin sky.” The old man struggled for
words. “They’re right smart woolly like sheep, I reckon. But they ain’t
sheep. God-a-mighty, narry a bit of it. One of them clawed my lead dog
like tarnation. An’ they’re the fish-eatinest critters you most ever
seed.”

“Polar bears?” Johnny suggested.

“Polar bears, big as good-sized hounds!” Smokey sniffed. “Who’s ever
hearn tell of sech polar bears?”

Who indeed? Johnny was growing excited and confused. “Woolly, blue bears
no bigger than dogs,” he was thinking. “What kind of bears could they
be?”

In his confusion he upset the coffeepot and spilled half its contents.
For all this, there was plenty left. Smokey Joe drank it piping hot, ate
in a ravenous manner. Then, springing to his feet and calling to his
dogs, declared he must get down to Palmer for a new pack of grub.

“He’s found a trace of color in some dashing stream that doesn’t freeze,
not even in winter,” was Johnny’s conclusion. “He’s going to hotfoot it
right back and get rich—maybe.”

“But, Johnny,” Lawrence was not smiling, “do you really suppose there are
any such bears as he described?”

“Of course not,” was Johnny’s prompt reply.

“But, Johnny, if there were, if we caught one alive! No bigger than a
dog. We could do it, Johnny. We could buy a tractor.”

“Forget it. It’s all a pipe dream, I tell you.”

But Lawrence did not forget Smokey Joe’s blue bears, nor, in the end, did
Johnny.




                              CHAPTER VII
                            A STRANGE BATTLE


Shortly after noon of that same day a slim, bright-eyed man in a huge
beaver overcoat drove up to the Lawson cabin. Johnny and Lawrence, who
were about to go back to their wood cutting, stared at him.

“Hello, boys,” was his surprising greeting. “I hear you bring ’em back
alive.”

“Why, yes, we—Sometimes we do,” Johnny replied in confusion.

“Blackie Dawson told me about you.”

“Oh, Blackie.” Johnny’s face brightened.

“I am in the animal business,” the man explained, alighting from his
hired sled and allowing Lawrence to lead his horse away. “I thought you
boys might help me a little.”

“Help you? Oh, sure!” Things were looking better and better. “Here’s
where we get a start,” Johnny was thinking.

“What have you?” the man asked.

“Well, er—mister—”

“They call me Professor Ormsby,” said the stranger. “You may call me what
you please.”

“Well, then, Professor,” Johnny went on, “we have a silver fox, a
perfectly keen fox.”

“Caught in a trap, I suppose?”

“No. By hand.”

“By hand!” The Professor stared. “How do you do it?”

Johnny told him in as few words as possible and with no dramatics at all,
just how it was done.

“Oh, I say!” the Professor exclaimed. “That’s great! You took a chance
with that fox. But, let me see—No-o, I can’t use a silver fox. How about
beavers?”

“We haven’t taken any beaver. We—well, we were afraid it might be against
the law even to catch them alive.”

“I have a government permit,” said the Professor. “But if you haven’t any
beaver—”

“Catching beaver would be easy. We have a grand colony not three miles
away,” Lawrence put in. “We might—”

“How about mink?” Johnny asked. “We have some fine ones. Or snow-shoe
rabbits?”

“I suggest that you eat the rabbits,” the Professor laughed. “I’ll have a
look at your mink. But beaver! There’s your main chance. Can’t you get me
some? Big ones, the bigger the better.

“You see,” he smiled, “we think we’re really doing good through this
work. In the big cities, hot in summer and cold in winter and crowded
always, there are hundreds of thousands of children who would never know
what a woodchuck, a monkey, a beaver or a bear looked like if they didn’t
see them in a zoo. Brings real joy to them, I’m sure. Many’s the fellow
who dates his first real interest in the wide out-of-doors to his visit
at the zoo.”

“Yes, I—” Johnny had scarcely heard him. “Could we do it?” he was asking
himself. He was thinking of beaver. “Why not? Thousands and thousands of
city children.” His head was in a whirl.

“I think,” he tried to make his voice seem very cheerful, “I think we can
supply the beaver. Can’t we, Lawrence?”

“What? Yes. Oh, yes,” Lawrence replied.

“One of them must be a big one, a real boss of the village,” warned the
Professor.

“We’ve got him,” Johnny laughed uncertainly. “Napoleon himself.”

“Yes. Oh, yes. We’ve got him, all right,” Lawrence did not laugh.

Strangely enough, as a short time later the boys went away on one more
“Bring ’em back alive hunt” there was no spring in their step. Their
faces were sober. If they succeeded this one more time, the coveted
tractor would be within their grasp, and yet they appeared anything but
happy.

“Might even get the Titan,” Lawrence tried to tell himself. This boy
loved fine machinery and that Titan tractor was a beauty. It had power,
plenty of it. With it they could not only pull stumps and plow fields for
themselves, but do work for other settlers on shares and, in quiet times,
they could work on the road. “Four live beavers,” he thought. “That’s all
it takes.” Yes, that was all it took, and yet—

Up a small stream that flows into the Matanuska River early in the year
the boys had discovered a beaver colony. Many an hour they had spent
watching these busy beavers. Never in all their lives had they seen such
feats of engineering done by creatures of the wild.

There were at least sixty beavers in the group. One big fellow, weighing
sixty pounds or more, was the leader. He was the boss contractor. And
such a boss as he was!

“Napoleon,” they had named him. He stood for hours, as the great little
general is pictured, straight, stiff and soldier-like. To him came the
others. Were there trees to be felled? Two lieutenants came marching
soberly up to him. They talked earnestly, nodding their heads, like real
people, then off they rushed to start a dozen beavers doing the work.

It was so in everything. Most interesting of all had been the building of
the big dam. This work, the boys understood, must be rushed. Winter would
come. Ice would freeze two feet thick. The level of the stream must be
raised to six feet so the beaver tribe could use the water beneath as a
highway all winter long. The water must be dammed up.

This dam building, done under the wise direction of old Napoleon, had
progressed rapidly for a time, then a sudden freshet of water loosened
some of the beams and the whole affair threatened to go down stream.

“What’ll they do now?” Lawrence had asked.

“Wait and see,” was Johnny’s answer.

Old Napoleon sent his men, like sub-engineers, all over the dam, making a
study of conditions. Then, apparently abandoning all this work, he
ordered a new dam built a hundred feet farther down stream.

But did he truly abandon his first work? Not a bit of it. He and his crew
built just enough of a dam below to raise the water and relieve the
pressure from the original dam. Then, with an air of professional pride,
Napoleon returned to his old post and the work was well completed before
frost.

“He,” Johnny thought to himself, “is the friend we mean to capture and
sell into slavery, Old Napoleon.” Little wonder that his heart was heavy.
“Old Napoleon,” he whispered once again.

But what was this? As they neared the beaver colony where they were sure
to find Napoleon out sunning himself, they caught sight of some creature
skulking through the brush.

“It’s a wolf,” Johnny whispered. “Let’s follow him.”

Follow him they did, and to their consternation saw that he was headed
for the beaver colony.

“We’d better frighten him away,” Lawrence whispered. “He’ll drive all the
beavers beneath the ice. Then we won’t be able to lasso a single one.”

This, Johnny knew, was good advice, but for some reason scarcely known to
himself, he said, “Let’s wait.”

When at last they caught sight of the beaver village, they saw old
Napoleon standing stiff and straight as ever in his place. He was having
a sun bath.

After sneaking along through the brush, the wolf made a dash at the
beaver.

“He’ll kill him,” Lawrence whispered.

Did he? Strange to say, as the wolf came near, the beaver did not stir
from his place. This appeared to surprise the wolf, who did not at once
rush in for the kill. Sneaking up close, he made a dash at the beaver,
but stopped just short of his goal. Still the beaver did not move. To the
boys this seemed strange. Their respect for the old fellow grew by leaps
and bounds. He appeared to be saying, “What’s a wolf that one should fear
him?”

“He—he’s great!” Johnny shrilled.

“Magnificent,” Lawrence agreed.

Snarling low, the wolf began dashing and snapping at the beaver. Each
snap made him bolder. Now his ugly jaws were three feet from the
apparently defenseless hero of wild life, who had decided to give his
life for his home and his people. Now he was only two feet away. And now
only a foot.

“We—we’d better step in,” came from Lawrence.

“Wait,” Johnny gripped his arm hard. Perhaps he should stop the wolf, but
he waited, fascinated.

“Now!” Lawrence caught his breath. The end, he was sure, had come.

And then, of a sudden, things did happen, but not in accord with
expectations. Old Napoleon had chisel-shaped teeth that cut wood like a
hatchet. Without a sound, as the wolf, having grown bold, snapped in his
very face, he shot forward to close those murderous teeth over the wolf’s
closed jaws.

“Great Scott!” Johnny muttered.

The struggle that followed was fast and furious. Kicking and scratching,
the wolf rolled over and over, but not once did Napoleon’s locked grip
loosen. It was only when his opponent, completely exhausted and all but
smothered, lay limp at his side, that he at last pried his own jaws apart
to climb awkwardly to his place in the sun. Instantly the wolf dragged
himself to his feet, to go slinking away into the brush.

For one full minute the boys stood there motionless. When Lawrence spoke
his voice was husky. “Johnny, I’ve often suspected old Napoleon of being
a tyrant. He’s lazy, too. I’ve never seen him do a lick of work. But he
is one swell engineer and a grand boss.”

“What’s more, he’s no coward,” Johnny added.

“Johnny, I can’t do it,” Lawrence dangled his lasso.

“Neither can I,” said Johnny. “Let’s go.”

Turning, they made their way in silence down the narrow stream to its
mouth. There they dropped down upon the snow to put on their skates.

“Johnny,” said Lawrence, “we’re a pair of old softies.”

“That’s right,” said Johnny. “But I don’t mind, do you?”

“Not a bit. Let’s go.”


“Get ’em?” the Professor asked as they came stamping into the cabin.

“No—er, well, no we didn’t,” Johnny stammered.

“How come?” the man’s face sobered. “That was your big moment.”

Sensing the tenseness of the situation, Mrs. Lawson said, “The coffee’s
hot. I have some spice cookies, just out of the oven. How would you like
a bite to eat?”

“That—that would be splendid!” said the Professor.

When, over their cups of coffee, the boys had told the whole story, there
was a strange look on the Professor’s face as he said, “Can’t say that I
blame you. Under the circumstances I should have done the same thing. We
shall be obliged to get our beaver some other way. And as for your
tractor—”

“We—we’ll manage,” Lawrence replied slowly. Then, “By the way, Professor.
You must know about bears. Are there any light blue bears?”

“Blue bears? Let me think! Oh, certainly! They belong up this way, too.
Very rare they are, though.”

“Blue bears!” Lawrence became greatly excited. “Small blue bears, no
larger than a good-sized dog, with woolly hair? They—they live on fish?”

“What?” It was the Professor’s turn to become excited. “You haven’t seen
one? You—you couldn’t catch one for me, could you?”

“Sure—sure,” Lawrence stammered. “No, I mean we haven’t. That is, we
could, I—I’m sure we could.”

“If you were to bring me one of those bears alive and in good condition,”
the Professor spoke in a deeply solemn voice, “you might name your own
price. Glacier bears, they are called. There is a stuffed specimen in the
United States National Museum, but not a single living specimen in
captivity anywhere.”

“We—we’ll hunt up Smokey Joe tomorrow,” Johnny said. “He’s seen them. He
can tell us where they are. In fact, he told us all about them, only I
thought it was all hooey.”

“Smokey Joe? Who is that?” the Professor asked.

“An old prospector,” Johnny explained. “He’s been all over this country.”

“In that case,” said the Professor, “much as I should like a glacier
bear, I suggest that you postpone your search until late spring. Those
rare creatures inhabit the wildest sort of country, rocks, cliffs and
glaciers. They are worse than mountain goats. You would almost certainly
perish. And besides, it is fairly certain that they, like most others of
their kind, hibernate. And so—”

“So another bubble bursts,” Johnny groaned.

“Don’t be too pessimistic,” the Professor smiled. “I shall hope to hear
from you sometime in June or early July. A single specimen will do.

“And, by the way,” he added as he rose, “I’ve decided to offer you a
hundred dollars for your silver fox. That may not seem such a good price,
but is really above the market.”

“Sold! Sold!” the boys exclaimed in unison. And so it was that the boys
collected their first real money. They were, however, still a long way
from their goal.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                    THE STORMY PETREL’S FIRST PRIZE


As the winter wore on the cold grew more intense. Ice on the streams was
thick. Wild animals appeared to vanish from the scene. Snow covered much
of the river surfaces. All these things served to make “bringing them
home alive” more difficult.

At last the boys gave up this strange occupation and turned to the task
of clearing the ten-acre tract.

“If we can get that tract cleared we’ll plant it in barley, oats and
peas. When these are ground together they make excellent chicken feed.
We’ll go in for poultry. There’s a steady market for dressed chickens and
eggs at Fairbanks,” said Mr. Lawson.

“Yes, if we get that tract cleared,” Lawrence thought, but did not say.
No further suggestion that they go into debt for a tractor was made by
anyone.

The long Arctic evenings were divided between games and dreaming. The
fame of Johnny’s and Joe’s boxing had traveled far. The recreation room
at Palmer was given over to this excellent sport two nights a week.

A boxing club was formed. Even Jack Mayhorn dropped his feud with Johnny
and joined up. Members of a boxing club at Seward accepted an invitation
for a contest. Johnny and Joe won this by a narrow margin.

On the evenings when business or pleasure did not take them to town
Johnny and Lawrence might often be found dreaming by their own
hearth-fire.

“When the land is cleared and plowed, when the grain is sowed and we’ve
earned a breathing spell,” Lawrence would say, “then we’ll hunt up old
Smokey Joe and go out for one of those glacier bears.”

“If we can find Smokey Joe,” Johnny would smilingly agree. “And if they
don’t need us for service in Bristol Bay.”

“Bristol Bay,” Lawrence would reply doubtfully. “Seems as if I’d rather
catch animals alive than go after those Orientals.”

“We’ll take them alive, too,” Johnny chuckled.

Lawrence was not so sure of this. Hour after hour Blackie Dawson, who had
discarded his crutches, entertained them with stories of his adventures
with the Orientals.

“They want everything for themselves. They spoiled their own fishing by
catching the salmon before they were half grown and canning them right on
the ships. Now they want to come over here and do the same, right up
there in Bristol Bay.

“They catch our fish and can ’em, then they pop into Seattle or San
Francisco and say, ‘See all the fine fish we have canned for you. Come
and buy them.’

“Think we’ll do that?” he would storm. “Not on your life! We’ll get ’em.
You’ll see.

“But the Shadow,” his voice would drop, “that shadow that passes in the
fog. How’s a fellow to catch that? Who can tell? But we’ll get it, too,”
he would add, striking the table a lusty blow.

In March he received his appointment as Commander of the _Stormy Petrel_.

“A swell boat.” He was proud of her. “Come on down with me and we’ll turn
her motors over once or twice just to get the rust out of ’em.”

Johnny and Lawrence accepted his invitation. They did far more than turn
the motors over. With Lawrence as engineer and Johnny as first mate, they
cruised for three days along the Alaskan shores.

On the third day, “Just to get in practice,” as Blackie put it, they
hailed a suspicious-looking craft carrying no flag. When the skipper
failed to heed Blackie’s command to head around, they sent a ball from
their shiny brass cannon over her bow and she promptly hove to.

She was found to be carrying contraband drugs. “A fair capture in a fair
chase,” as Blackie expressed it. “A regular feather in our cap.”

“Well,” said Johnny, “how did you like it?”

“Those are glorious motors,” Lawrence enthused. “How I’d love to be their
master. But I hope—” he hesitated. “I rather hope we go after the glacier
bears. That’s the surest way to get a tractor. And a tractor’s what we
need most.”

“Time and fate will decide,” Johnny said soberly.

“Time and Blackie,” Lawrence added with a laugh.

“And Smokey Joe,” Johnny amended.




                               CHAPTER IX
                           FATE LENDS A HAND


Strangely enough it was Fate, in the form of an automobile accident in
far away Seattle, that cast the final vote deciding their choice between
the _Stormy Petrel_ in Bristol Bay and a glacier bear hunt with Smokey
Joe.

Spring had come at last. Steadfastly refusing to go in debt, the Dawsons,
with Johnny’s help, were attempting to clear their land without the help
of a tractor.

At first it was fun. With blasting powder and dynamite they blew the
larger stumps into shreds. The boom—boom—boom of blasts might be heard
for miles.

There remained thousands of smaller stumps. To force these from the tough
sod and heavy black soil with pick, shovel and bar, was back-breaking
labor.

“Give me time,” Johnny would groan when morning came. “There’s a place in
my back somewhere that bends. I’ll find it. Just give me time.”

Joke as they might, they could not but feel that progress was woefully
slow and that seed-time would find them all unprepared.

One bright day an automobile came bumping over the uneven road to pause
before their field. Out from it popped an old friend.

“Blackie!” Johnny exclaimed. “I thought you’d be in Bristol Bay by now.”

“I’m on my way,” Blackie puffed. “And so are you.

“Mr. Lawson,” he exclaimed, “I must draft your boys into my service.”

“What about these stumps,” Mr. Lawson straightened his stiff back.

“What’ll it cost to have ’em out with a tractor?” Blackie demanded.

Both Johnny and Lawrence looked at him with gleaming eyes.

“Why do you need my boys?” the man among the stumps demanded.

“Two of the men who were to accompany me have been crippled,” Blackie
explained. “They were in an auto accident in Seattle. I had a wire this
morning. They were so badly hurt they could not let me know sooner. And
tomorrow we were to sail. Already there has been news of trouble in
Bristol Bay.

“I tell you, Mr. Lawson,” Blackie was pleading now. “It’s for Alaska and
her greatest enterprise I ask it. Yes, and for every humble American who
makes a simple meal from a can of salmon. As I see it, it’s your
patriotic duty to let them go.”

Then Blackie did a strange thing for him. He quoted poetry—

  “‘Not once nor twice in our fair Island’s story
  Has the path of duty been the way to glory.’

“Mr. Lawson!” he exploded, “let them go. Here!” he waved a roll of bills.
“I’ll pull your stumps. I’ll plow your land and sow your seed. Let them
go.”

Who could have refused? Surely not a man with Tom Lawson’s patriotic
soul. “Al-all right, boys,” he said huskily. “Go get your clothes.
And—and Blackie, I must trust you to bring them safely home.”

“No need to worry,” Blackie reassured him. “We’ll all be back to shoot
fire-crackers with you on the Fourth of July. And may your fields be
green by then.”

Twenty-four hours later Johnny and Lawrence found themselves standing on
the narrow deck of the _Stormy Petrel_ watching a familiar shore-line
fade from their sight.

To Johnny this seemed just one more journey into the great unknown. To
Lawrence it was something more, his first long trip away from his own
family. Strange emotions stirred within him. Questions he could not
answer crowded through his mind. How long was this journey to last? What
strange, wild adventures would he meet? What would be the outcome? Would
they be of some real service?

Through his thoughts ran Blackie’s two lines of verse,

  “‘Not once nor twice in our fair Island’s story
  Has the path of duty been the way to glory.’”

What did it mean? He had only a vague notion.

“MacGregor,” he said to the gray-haired engineer who thrust his head up
from the engine room, “what do these words mean?” He repeated the lines.

“Well, noo, me lad,” said the friendly old Scotchman, “I’ve never been
too good at poetry. But it seems to me it says if ye think first of yer
country and her needs, ye’ll be likely to get the things you want most
fer yerself; that is, I meant to say, in the end.”

“Thanks.” Once again the boy paced the deck. Was this true? He wanted a
tractor, a humble, earth-digging, sod-plowing, stump-pulling tractor. It
was a strange thing for a boy to want, he knew. Most boys would have
wished for an automobile, but he wanted a tractor. Would he get it?

As they left Seward behind and headed west to follow the Alaskan
Peninsula until they could cross over into Bristol Bay, it seemed to him
that they were heading directly away from his heart’s desire. The pay
they were to receive was small. It would help very little. “And yet,” he
thought with a firm resolve to do his best in his strange new position,
“Sometimes fate does seem to take a hand in making things come out just
right. Here’s hoping.”

The _Stormy Petrel_ was a sturdy boat with powerful motors. She was
small—little larger than a good-sized speed boat. But how she could go!

There was a small after-cabin with six bunks ranged along the sides. Here
George, the colored cook, presided over a small stove producing glorious
things to eat. The coffee was always hot. And indeed it was needed, for,
as a gray fog settled down upon them, the air became bitter cold.

Johnny was to take watch for watch with Blackie as steersman. Lawrence
was to exchange watches with MacGregor and preside over the motors. Had
this been a week’s cruise simply for pleasure, nothing could have been
more delightful. Johnny loved boats. Lawrence listened to the steady roar
of his motors and was joyously happy.

And yet, there hung over them a sense of approaching danger.

“Say-ee!” Johnny exclaimed on the third day, after taking their position
and studying the chart. “We’re closer to Asia than we are to Seattle.”

“Aye, that we are, me lad,” MacGregor agreed.

“Yes, and that’s why it’s so easy for these Orientals to slip over here
and trap our fish,” Blackie exploded.

“And that,” he went on quietly, “is why you settlers in Matanuska Valley
are given so much financial aid. Your old Uncle Sam wants you there. He’s
going to locate more and more people along these Alaskan shores. You
watch and see! Why? To give them homes? Not a bit of it. To have people
here to watch those Orientals, that’s why.”

“Well,” said Johnny with a laugh. “Looks like we’d learn a lot of
geography and current history on this trip.”

“No doubt about that, me lad,” MacGregor agreed.

They had been on the water for five days when, touching Johnny on the
shoulder, Blackie pointed at two spots of white against the sky.

“That’s snow on two mountain peaks,” he explained. “The cannery we’re
heading for is built on the banks of a small river close to these
mountains. We’ll be there before dark. And after that,” he took a deep
breath. “After that our real work begins.”

“A new world,” Johnny murmured dreamily.

“You don’t know half of it,” said Blackie. And Blackie was right.




                               CHAPTER X
                              A NEW WORLD


Next morning Johnny and Blackie Dawson sat on the deck of the _Stormy
Petrel_. A wild nor’wester was whipping up the ocean spray. Even on the
river well back from the narrow bay, little whitecaps came racing in.

“No day for going out!” Blackie grumbled. “Pile up on the rocks, that’s
what we’d do.”

“Yes,” Johnny agreed. Fact is, he at that moment was not thinking of the
sea, but of the quiet Matanuska valley, of the snug home he and his
people had built there. He wondered in a vague sort of way how far this,
his latest venture, would lead him from that home. He was thinking not so
much for himself as for his cousin Lawrence.

Strange as it might seem, the welcome given them by the people of the
cannery had not come up to their expectations. Men had stared at them,
had mumbled something under their breath, then gone about their work.

Work there was to be done, too. There was a pleasant hum of expectancy
about the place. Every motor, machine and conveyor in the place was being
given the once-over. Power-boat motors thundered as they went through
their testing. Johnny felt a desire to become a part of it all. And yet—

“Fool sort of thing this rushing off after adventure,” he told himself.
But, had love of adventure alone brought them this far, hundreds of miles
from his quiet valley? Love of home was one thing, love of one’s country
another. You didn’t—

His thoughts broke off short. There had come the sound of a loud voice.
The _Stormy Petrel_ was anchored on a narrow dock that ran along the side
of a long, low building, the cannery. A window was open. The speaker was
near. Johnny caught every word. As he listened his ears burned. But what
could he do? He was on his own boat. People who do not mean to be heard
too far must speak softly.

Perhaps the man meant to be heard. There was more than a suggestion of
anger and threat in his voice as he said, “Fine fix we’re in! Huh! Here
we are part of the biggest industry in Alaska. Fifteen million dollars a
year. The Orientals start cuttin’ in on us. We call for help, for
protection. And what do we get? A lousy tub no bigger than a gill-net
boat. And how’s she manned, I ask you?”

A second voice rumbled words that could not be understood.

“She’s manned by a crippled young skipper,” the first speaker growled.
“An old Scotch engineer and two kids. Protection! Bah!” There came a
grunt of disgust. “We’ll have to take things into our own hands.”

At that a door slammed and they heard no more.

“Well?” Blackie tried to scare up a grin. It was not a huge success.
“Kids,” he said.

“We’re not quite that,” Johnny said quietly. “We _are_ pinch hitters.”

“Sure you are,” Blackie agreed. “But I wouldn’t trade you for half the
so-called men in the regular service.

“Say, Johnny!” His voice dropped. “Know who that was talking?”

“No-o.”

“It was Red McGee. He is the union agent that looks after the interests
of these men working in the canneries. They say he’s a good man and a
fighter, but narrow. A—a fighter. Hm’m—” Blackie seemed to play with the
words.

“Johnny,” his whisper sounded like an exploding steam valve. “You _like_
to box, don’t you?”

“Nothing I like better,” Johnny grinned. “Started when I was six and
never stopped.”

“Red McGee’s a boxer,” Blackie said. “Off times like this I’m told these
men up here go in for boxing bouts. Nothing savage, you understand, just
a few friendly rounds. And Red’s never been beaten by any of them.”

“And I suppose you expect me to trim him, at least to try it?” Johnny’s
face was a study.

“No-o, not just that, only a few friendly rounds. I’d like you to
represent the _Stormy Petrel_.”

“I think I get you,” Johnny’s lips moved in a quiet smile. “You want this
crowd to know that I’m not a child.”

“Johnny,” Blackie’s tone was almost solemn, “it’s important. Mighty
important! If this fishing mob gets started and if they find a ship out
there in Bristol Bay catching fish contrary to law, there’s going to be
trouble. More trouble than all our diplomats can clear up in a year.

“There’s no getting ’round it, this business has been slighted. But this
much stands out like your nose—we’ve got to do what we can. And we can’t
do much if these Alaskans sneer at us.

“So-o, son,” he drawled, “if they give you a chance tonight you step in.
And if a chance doesn’t open up, I’ll open one.

“Come on,” he sprang to his feet. “It’s time for chow.”

Passionately fond of boxing as Johnny surely was, he found himself
dreading the encounter Blackie had proposed for that night. Why? He could
not have told.

A strange audience awaited him in the long, low-ceilinged room where, on
working days cases of salmon were stored for shipping. Seated on empty
packing boxes, the men formed a hollow circle. This circle was to be the
ring for the evening’s entertainment.

“They’re all here,” Blackie grinned. “A dozen nationalities: Italians,
Finlanders, Swedes, down-east Yankees, an Eskimo or two and what have
you.

“One thing they’ve got in common,” his voice rang true, “they’re all
Alaskans at heart. Hard fighters, straight shooters, they look you square
in the eye and treat you fair. But when anyone tries any dirty,
underhanded work, you’ll see sparks fly.”

“Well,” Johnny smiled. “Whatever else happens, there will be no crooked
work tonight. I don’t fight that way.”

“Don’t I know it?” Blackie agreed.

“Well, now, here we are,” he chuckled a moment later. “Reserved seats.
Box seats, mind you. Who could ask for more?”

As Johnny sat, quite silent in his place, watching one short three-round
match after another being fought in a good-natured rough-and-tumble
fashion between boatmen, cannery workers, carpenters, engineer and
blacksmith, he became more and more conscious of one fact—the crowd was
holding back its enthusiasm.

“It’s like the preliminary bouts in Madison Square Gardens,” he said to
Blackie at last. “They seem to be waiting for the one big fight. What’s
coming?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“No-o, I—”

“It’s you and Red McGee. They’re waiting for that.”

“What?” Johnny half rose to his feet.

“Keep your seat.” Blackie pulled him down. “Ever hear of the grapevine
telegraph?”

“Yes, in—in a sort of way.”

“It’s the mysterious manner in which news travels up here. These fellows
know about you. The minute I gave them your name they busted out, ‘The
kid that packs a wallop?’”

“And you—”

“I said, ‘Sure! None other. But does Red McGee know it?’

“They said, ‘Guess he doesn’t. He’s been in Seattle, just come up.’

“Then I said, ‘Mum’s the word. We’ll just ask him to give Johnny a few
pointers in boxing.’”

“And they agreed?” Johnny seemed ready to bolt from the room.

“Sure. Why not?” Blackie grinned. “It’s the grandest way to get in with
all of ’em. They like a good joke. So does Red McGee.”

“Even if it’s on him?”

“Even if it’s on him. Absolutely.”

“Then he’s a real sport,” Johnny settled back in his place. “It will be a
real joy to box him a few rounds.”

“Okie doke,” Blackie seemed relieved. “But, Johnny,” he added, “pull your
punches. Murder isn’t legal in Alaska, not south of the Arctic Circle.”

“I only hope Red McGee remembers that,” was Johnny’s solemn reply.




                               CHAPTER XI
                       THE FALL OF THE RED McGEE


When by popular request, emphasized by loud shouts, Red McGee was called
upon to put on the gloves, he stepped forward smiling. Johnny slid to the
very edge of his box for a good look. This was the first time he had seen
the man. He was a little startled.

“So that’s what I’m going up against?” he murmured low.

Six feet of man, broad shoulders, a shock of red hair that stood straight
up, a square jaw and glittering eyes, this was Red McGee.

And was he popular? The hoarse shouts of approval that made the rough
rafters ring as he stepped out on the floor left no room for doubt.

Red was to box three rounds with a man named Tomingo, a dark-faced
foreigner who piloted a gill-net boat. Johnny was thankful for this brief
reprieve before he too should step into the ring.

That Red McGee was no mean boxer he learned at once. He had a head on his
shoulders and a remarkable eye.

“He seems to anticipate every move this Tomingo makes,” Johnny groaned in
a whisper.

“They have boxed together before,” was Blackie’s answer. “Perhaps many
times. When you play a game with a man many times, just any game, you
come to know his tricks. But you, Johnny, he doesn’t know you. It’s an
advantage.

“But, Johnny,” he cautioned after a moment’s silence, “don’t let him get
to you. Look at those arms! If he hits you just once, a good square one,
you’re sunk.

“And, boy,” his voice dropped, “this is a big spot. It’s important,
mighty important. These fellows must respect us, have faith in the
_Stormy Petrel_ and her crew. If they don’t, they’ll go storming out
there six hundred strong, looking for trouble. And if they find it! Oh,
man! They might start a war.”

“There!” Johnny breathed. “There’s the bell. That match is over. And Red
McGee is just nicely warmed up.”

The tall, lanky boatman who acted as referee shuffled off the floor.

“Who’s next?” Red McGee invited with a broad smile.

It was evident at once that few of the men cared to take him on. Tomingo
was wearing a flaming patch where Red’s glove had raked his chin.

“Red,” one of his own men volunteered, “there’s one of them kids from the
_Stormy Petrel_ who’d like to learn a little about boxing. Would y’ mind
a teachin’ him?”

“One of those boys?” Red looked squarely at Johnny. Johnny flinched. Did
Red know? “Oh, sure!” Red’s lips spread in a broad smile. “I like boys,
always have. Sure I’ll show him.

“Look, Tom,” he turned to the referee. “Help the boy on with his gloves.
Be sure he gets ’em on the right hands. It’s awkward boxing if you
don’t.” He let out a low chuckle.

Once again Johnny flinched. What did Red know? Probably nothing. This was
just his way of poking fun at the _Stormy Petrel’s_ crew. This made
Johnny a little angry, but not too much.

“Show ’em, Johnny,” Blackie hissed in his ear. Next Johnny found himself
shaking the great paw of Red McGee. And so the fight began.

Nothing had been said about the number of rounds, nor their length.
Johnny was a little taken back when the referee settled himself on a box
in a corner.

“But then,” it came to him with a sudden shock, “I’m supposed to be a
learner. When you’re taking lessons there are no rounds. Well, I’ll be a
learner, for a while.”

He carried out his plan to the letter, almost. After giving him a few
words of instruction, Red invited him to “Sail right in. Hit me if you
can.”

The boy did not exactly “sail in.” Instead, he danced about the big man
in an awkward but tantalizing fashion. There is nothing more irritating
than a fly buzzing around one’s head. Johnny was, for the moment, Red
McGee’s fly. He was here, there and everywhere. At times he appeared to
leave himself wide open to one of Red’s sledge-hammer blows, but none of
these really connected.

All the time Johnny was thinking, “How long will he stand this? How long?
How—”

The answer came sooner than he expected. His arms were all but at his
side, he was looking Red squarely in the eyes when he saw those eyes
change. It was like the change of a traffic light from green to red. Of a
sudden, a huge gloved paw came squarely at the side of his head.

No one will ever know what that blow might have done had it arrived at
its proposed destination. It did not arrive. Johnny’s head was not there.
Instead, it was Red who, to his vast surprise, received the lightest of
taps on the tip of his chin.

The crowd saw and roared. There were men, plenty of them, who knew that,
had Johnny not pulled that punch, Red would have hit the floor.

Did Red know? For the life of him Johnny could not tell. One thing he did
know, this was no longer a boxing lesson, nor was it to be a sparring
match. It was instead to resemble an old-fashioned fight with no gong, no
referee and no time out. Red McGee was aroused. There could be no doubt
about that.

Johnny kept his opponent going about the ring in a whirl. Twice he
stopped and all but fell into Red’s waiting fists. Twice he heard the
whistle of a glove as it brushed his ear.

Once, when he was in Blackie’s corner, he heard a hoarse whisper,
“Steady, there, boy. I can’t afford to lose you.”

Once, in a mad rush, Red McGee tripped, falling to his knees. Backing
away into a corner, Johnny gave him time to regain his feet. Gladly would
the boy have remained in that corner for the count of a hundred. All too
soon he caught Red’s challenge.

“Come out an’ box.”

“Red’s in a tight place,” Blackie said in a low tone to Lawrence. “I’m
almost sorry I got him into it. He’s got a bull by the tail and can’t let
go. If he quits now he’s afraid he’ll lose the respect of his men. If he
goes on, well, anything may happen.”

In the end two things happened. Both were surprises to Johnny.

The older man was tiring. Johnny found that by using a little strategy he
could tap the man’s chin at will. Be it said to his credit, he tapped
that round red chin only twice. There is little to be gained by an
unnecessarily large score.

Those two taps, little heavier than love pats, stirred up something deep
in Red’s nature. His men were looking on a new man. Not that they thought
the less of him for it. Rough and ready men of the northern wilds, they
understood as few ever do.

Then things began to happen fast. Red lunged at Johnny. The boy dodged.
The man came at him again. In one of those seconds when reason goes on a
vacation, Johnny tried one more pulled punch to the chin. He did not pull
it fast enough. Red McGee fell upon that punch as a polar bear falls upon
a spear.

There came a resounding thwack. Then, doubling up like an empty sack, Red
McGee spread himself neatly on the floor. He was out for much more than
the count of ten.

The hush that followed was appalling. But the shout that followed!
Nothing Johnny had ever before heard even remotely resembled it. Perhaps
a gladiator in the Roman Arena, had he returned from the dead, might have
recognized it with joy or fear.

In vain did Johnny try to analyze that sound. Was it a cheer? Or was it a
curse? Should he be carried out like a football hero or crushed by an
infuriated mob?

Strangely enough, as he stood there half paralyzed by the sudden shock of
it all, he was conscious of one voice. Above the shout had risen a
woman’s scream. And he had not known there was a woman in the place. Who
was she? Where had she come from? Why was she here?

“It’s all right, boys,” he heard a big voice boom. “He didn’t aim to do
it. He pulled his punch. Twice he did it. He—”

The speaker broke off short. There was a girl at his side, or perhaps a
young lady. Johnny was not sure. A round, freckled face and angry eyes,
that was all he saw. In another second she would have been at him, tooth
and nail. But the big foreman, who had done the talking, wrapped a long
arm about her waist as he said, “It’s all right, Rusty. Everything is O.
K., child. He didn’t aim to do it. An’ your daddy ain’t hurt none to
speak of. It’s what they call a knockout. He’ll be ’round in a twinkle.”

At that the girl hid her face in the foreman’s jacket to murmur fiercely,
“The brute! The ugly little brute!”

And Johnny knew she meant him. Because she was a girl, because he had
hurt her and he felt miserable, he slipped back into the outer fringe of
the milling throng.




                              CHAPTER XII
                           A PTARMIGAN FEAST


As Red McGee opened his eyes he found the foreman, Dan Weston and his
daughter, Rusty, bending over him.

“Wh-what!” he exclaimed, struggling to a sitting position, “what in the
name of—”

“You fell into a fast one, Red.” The foreman laughed. The crowd joined in
this laugh but not the girl. Sober of face, she stood looking down at her
father.

“Daddy,” she began, “are you—”

“Do you mean to say that kid from the _Stormy Petrel_ put me out?” Red
McGee interrupted.

“Well, you went out,” the foreman drawled. “The boy was the only one near
you so I reckon—”

He was not allowed to finish for at that Red McGee let out a tremendous
roar of laughter.

“Ho! Ho! Ha-ha-ha!” he roared. “That’s one on Red McGee.

“But, boys!” he struggled to his feet. “I want to admit right here. There
might be something to that _Stormy Petrel_ crew after all. Give ’em a
chance, I say.”

“Sure! Sure!” the crowd boomed. “Give ’em a chance.”

“Where’s that young roughneck?” Red demanded, staring about him. “I want
to shake his hand.”

“Here—here he is!” Blackie pushed Johnny forward.

“I—I’m sorry—” Johnny began.

“Young man,” Red McGee broke in, “never apologize. Your enemies don’t
deserve it, and your friends don’t demand it. From now on we’re pals.
Shake on it.” Their hands met in the clasp of a grizzly and a bear cub.

“What’s more,” Red went on, “the treat’s on me. You’re coming up to
dinner with me, all four of you fellows from the _Stormy Petrel_. Ever
eat ptarmigan pot pie?”

“Never have,” said Johnny.

“Well, you’re going to before this day is ...”

                            * * * * * * * *

... look into her eyes, he found himself seeing cold, blue-gray circles
expressing as near as he could tell, undying hate.

“Of course,” he said to Blackie, “you can’t expect a girl to understand
about boxing, with all of its ups and downs. But it does seem she might
give a fellow the benefit of the doubt.”

“She will, son. She will,” Blackie reassured him. “Perhaps sooner than
you think.” Was this prophesy or a guess? Time would tell.

Rusty McGee was the type of girl any real boy might be proud to call a
pal. With an easy smile, a freckled face and a mass of wavy, rust-colored
hair, she caught your interest at a glance. The strong, elastic, healthy
spring of her whole self kept you looking.

More than once during his visit to the McGee summer home, a stout log
cabin nestling among the barren Alaskan hills, Johnny found his eyes
following her movements as she glided from room to room.

“Boy, she can cook!” Blackie exclaimed as he set his teeth into the juicy
breast of “mountain quail,” as ptarmigan are often called. And Johnny did
not disagree.

Since the crew of the _Stormy Petrel_ were her father’s friends, it was
evident that Rusty meant to do her best as a hostess. But to Johnny she
gave never a smile.

“How she must love that old dad of hers!” Blackie whispered once.
Johnny’s only answer was a scowl.

Yes, Johnny was shunned and slighted by this youthful “queen of the
canneries,” as she had once been called, but the _Stormy Petrel’s_
engineer, old Hugh MacGregor, came in for more than his full share of
interest.

Hugh MacGregor was truly old. His thatch of gray told that. With
grandchildren of his own he was just a big-hearted old man. Rusty was not
long in sensing that.

When the dinner, a truly grand feast, was over, the others, Blackie, Red
McGee, Lawrence and Johnny retired to the glassed-in porch where they
might have a look at the barren hills of Alaska and the wide,
foam-flecked sweep of Bristol Bay, and, at the same time, talk of fish,
Oriental raiders and the sea.

MacGregor remained behind to “help with the dishes.”

“Do you like Alaska?” Rusty asked him.

“Oh, sure I do!” was the old man’s quick response. “I spent a winter much
further north than this many years ago. I was quite young then. It was
thrilling, truly it was. Cape Prince of Wales on Bering Straits—” his
voice trailed off dreamily.

“Way up there?” the girl exclaimed. “What were you doing?”

“Herdin’ reindeer and Eskimo,” he laughed. “I crossed the straits in a
skin boat with the Eskimo and lived a while in Russia without a passport.
You do things like that when you are young.

“Ah yes,” he sighed, “youth is impulsive, and often wrong.” He was
thinking of Johnny. He knew how Johnny felt about things. He had become
very fond of the boy.

Did Rusty understand? Who could tell? Burying her hands in foamy suds,
she washed dishes furiously. Nor did she speak again for some time.

Meanwhile, over their pipes, Red McGee and Blackie were discussing the
task that lay before them.

“I suppose you know all about this Oriental fishing business,” Red
suggested.

“I’m not sure that I do know all about it,” was Blackie’s modest reply.
“Suppose you tell me.”

“It’s like this,” Red cleared his throat. “There was a time when we
thought the salmon supply off these shores was inexhaustible. We caught
them in nets and traps just as we pleased.

“Then,” he blew out a cloud of smoke, “there came a time when we woke up
to the fact that the whole run of salmon might vanish. You know what that
would mean?”

“Yes, I know,” Blackie agreed. “The little man in Hoboken, Omaha and
Detroit who hasn’t much pay and has a big family could no longer feed the
children on a fifteen-cent can of salmon.”

“Right,” McGee agreed. “More than that, thousands of fine fellows, just
such men as you saw tonight, fair-minded, honest men that would,” he
paused to chuckle, “that would see one of their best friends knocked cold
by a stranger in a fair sparring match and not want to kill him, men like
that would be out of a job. Their families would go hungry. You know,
about all they understand is salmon catching.”

“And so?” Blackie prompted after a moment’s silence.

“So the government and the canners got together on a conservation
program; so many fish to be caught each year, the same number allowed to
go up stream and spawn.

“The plan was well worked out. We’ve put the salmon industry on a sound
foundation. It will continue so for years unless—”

“These Orientals are allowed to come over here and set three-mile-long
nets across the bay,” suggested Blackie.

“That’s just it!” McGee struck the table a resounding blow. “They’re
taking advantage of a technicality of international law. And unless we
drive them out—”

“Not too loud,” Blackie cautioned. “There goes one of them now.”

“What?” McGee sprang to his feet. A slender, dark-haired person was
passing down the path before the cabin.

“No,” he settled back in his place. “He’s not one of ’em. He’s one of our
Eskimos. We have three of them down here. It’s a little off their regular
beat. But they are keen at locating the runs of salmon. Inherited it from
their fathers, I—

“But say!” his voice rose. “He does look like one of those Orientals.”

“Sure he does,” Blackie agreed.

“We might use him for a sort of spy,” McGee’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“His name’s Kopkina. Used to work in a restaurant. He picked up the
Oriental lingo, at least enough to pass for one of ’em. If some of them
come around here, we’ll have Kopkina mix in with them. He might find
things out, important facts.”

“It’s a good idea,” Blackie agreed.


“Yes,” MacGregor was saying to Rusty, as he told more of his adventures
in the very far north, “it was a bit peculiar goin’ up there like that,
livin’ with the Eskimos. And me still a young fellow like Johnny Thompson
now.” He shot her a look. She smiled at him in a peculiar way, but said
never a word.

“It was the food that was strange,” he went on after a chuckle. “Of
course, you can chew polar bear steak if you’ve got uncommon good teeth.
Seal steak’s not half-bad and reindeer makes a grand Mulligan stew.”

“Yes, I know,” the girl agreed. “We have some reindeer meat sent down
every season. Stay with us and you’ll have a taste of it.”

“We’ll stay, all right,” MacGregor declared. “That’s what we’re here for
to stay, hunting Orientals and shadows—shadows.” He repeated the word
slowly. “Blackie believes in moving shadows in the fog on the sea.”

“Shadows?” the girl stared at him.

“Sure! He says they glide along across the sea with never a sound. Like
some phantom schooner it was,” he said.

“That’s strange.” The girl’s eyes shone. “There was a gill-net fisherman
last season told something just like that. He was an Italian, sort of a
dreamer. We didn’t believe him. But now—what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” MacGregor scratched his gray thatch.

“But, Mr. MacGregor,” the girl said after a moment, “didn’t you have a
thing to eat except Eskimo food?”

“What? Oh, yes, up there, up there when I was a kid same as Johnny,”
MacGregor laughed. “Sure—sure we did. It came on a sailin’ schooner all
in cans.

“We had evaporated potatoes and eggs in cans, butter pickled in cans, hot
dogs in cans, everything. And the Eskimos,” he threw back his head and
laughed. “They’d stand around watchin’ to see what we’d take out of a can
next.

“And then we got a phonograph,” he laughed again.

“A phonograph?” Rusty said.

“Sure. First one those little brown boys ever seen. Had a long tin horn
to it, that phonograph did. The Eskimos looked at it and tapped the tin
horn. They said, ‘_Suna una?_’ (What is it?) We didn’t tell ’em, so they
tapped it some more and said, ‘All same tin can-_emuck_.’

“Bye and bye we cranked it up and started it going. The record was a
white man singin’ ‘Meet me in Saint Louis, Louie. Meet me at the Fair.’

“Well, that was funny!” he chuckled. “The Eskimos just looked and
listened for a long time. Then one of them looked at the others and said,
‘Can you beat that! A white man in that tin can!’”

The merry laugh that rang out from the kitchen was heard by those on the
porch. Johnny heard it with the others and was glad—glad that that fine
girl could laugh even if it wasn’t his joke.

“See that cannery out there?” Red McGee was saying. “Cost a cool million
dollars. Paying interest on the investment, too. Also it’s giving two
thousand people a living. But these Orientals with their floating
canneries—”

“Floating canneries?” Lawrence broke in.

“Sure! That’s what they’ve got. They pick up some big hulk of a ship
cheap, install some canning equipment, load on a drove of cheap coolies
and steam away. Pretty soon they’re over Bristol Bay, just off the shores
of Alaska, but beyond the three-mile limit. Three miles! Bah!” he
exploded.

“I’m in favor of calling every square mile of Bristol Bay American
waters,” Blackie replied.

Red McGee stared at him with sudden approval. “Say!” he roared, “we must
be brothers.”

“We ought to run those Orientals off,” Blackie grinned. “We’re here to
start just that. That boat of ours may not seem so hot, but she’s got
speed and power, three airplane motors in her. Good ones, too. Once we
sight an Oriental fishing boat setting nets too close behind the fog
they’re coming ashore.”

“To do a lot of explaining.”

“Yes, and for quite a long visit.”

“That’s the talk,” Red McGee stood up. “Here’s hoping the wind drops so
you can get there. The fishing hasn’t really started. No foreign boats
have been seen. But they’re there. They made a haul last year. We’re sure
of that. So why shouldn’t they come back?”

“Why not?” Blackie agreed.

In all of this time neither Johnny nor Lawrence said a word. For all
that, they were thinking hard and their young hearts were on fire with a
desire to do their bit for the good old U. S. A. and Alaska, their
present home.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” said MacGregor, as he joined the party on
the porch.

“It will pass,” was Red McGee’s modest reply. “I built it for my wife.
She loved these rugged hills and the smell of the sea. She—” his voice
faltered. He looked away. “She left us a year and a half ago. But Rusty
and I, we—we sort of carry on.

“But if those Orientals—” his voice rose, “Oh! Well, enough of that for
today. It’s good of you fellows to join us in a feast!”

“It’s been swell!” said Blackie.

“Swell! Grand! Mighty keen!” were the impulsive comments of the boys.

“We know each other better,” said Blackie.

“A whole lot better,” Red McGee agreed.

“Goodbye, Rusty,” MacGregor called back through the house.

“Goodbye! Goodbye! Come again soon,” came back in a girlish voice.

“I wonder,” Johnny thought as he took the winding path leading down to
the wharf. “Wonder if we’ll ever get to come back here?”




                              CHAPTER XIII
                               THE SHADOW


“Fog.” There was more than a suggestion of disgust in Johnny’s tone as he
said this word. It was the next morning. After a good night’s sleep
aboard the _Stormy Petrel_ he felt ready for anything. The moment he
awoke he had listened for the pounding surf.

“Gone!” He had leaped from his bunk. “Storm’s over. Now for a good look
at Bristol Bay and perhaps, just perhaps, some of those Orientals.”

“Here’s hoping,” Lawrence agreed.

Yes, the storm was over, but here instead was a damp, chilling blanket of
dull, gray fog.

“Can’t see a hundred feet,” he grumbled.

“You’ll get used to that, son.” It was Red McGee who spoke. He had been
leaning on the rail talking to Blackie. “‘Men and Fog on the Bering Sea.’
That’s the name of a book. And it’s a good name. There are always men and
nearly always there is fog.

“Fish are coming in,” he added as a cheering note. “Two boats are just in
from a try at the gill-nets. They made a fair catch.”

“But this fog,” Johnny insisted, “gives those Orientals a chance to slip
in close, doesn’t it?”

“It does!” Red agreed. “Blast their hides! That floatin’ factory of
theirs comes in close to the three-mile limit. Then their other boats,
small, fast ones, can come over the line and set nets. You couldn’t see
them in the fog. They’d put ’em up early. Three miles of nets.

“Claim they’re catchin’ crabs. Crabs, me eye!” he exploded. “Crab nets
are set on the bottom. Salmon nets are set close to the top. Drift nets
are what they use. We’ve never found one inside the three-mile line, but
we think they’ve been there all the same.

“If you ever do find one,” he turned to Blackie, “take it up and bring it
in. We’ll can their fish an’ boil their nets.

“Shouldn’t be any three-mile line,” he continued. “All our shore water
belongs to us. So do the fish. It’s food, son! Food for the millions. And
these Orientals would have had fish on their own shores if they hadn’t
exterminated them.”

“We’re going out right now,” said Blackie. “Going to have a look for that
shadow that passes in the fog. We’ve got a nice swivel cannon up there
forward. Don’t know whether you can hit a shadow, but it won’t do any
harm to try.”

“All the same, this _is_ a serious situation,” said Blackie as they
headed out into the fog. “These Alaskans are a strange people. They are
like the men of the old west, the west that’s gone forever; fearless men
with hearts of gold, fighting devils when they know they’ve been wronged.
And this Oriental raiding business is an outrage, providing it’s true.”

“But is it true?” Johnny asked.

“That,” said Blackie, “is what we’re going to find out.

“Johnny,” he said after a moment, “go up forward and remove that box. Let
our little brass messenger swing with the boat.”

A moment later, up forward, a small swivel cannon swung from side to
side. As it did so it seemed to point, first right, then left.

“This way or that?” Johnny thought. “I wonder which it will be.”

Hour after hour the fog hung on. Hour after hour Johnny squinted his eyes
for some moving object in that blanket of gray fog. The cold, damp ocean
air chilled him to the bone. Stamping his feet, he held doggedly to his
post. When his watch was over he went below to soak in the heat of the
stove that George, the colored cook, kept roaring hot. He drank two cups
of scalding black coffee, downed a plate of beans and a whole pan of hot
biscuits, then spread himself out on a cushioned seat to close his eyes
and dream.

In those dreams he saw creeping gray shadows, darting fish and a pair of
laughing eyes. The eyes closed. When they opened the face wore a frown.

“Rusty!” he whispered. “Wonder if she’ll ever forgive me?”

All too soon his turn at the watch came. The days were long, twenty hours
from dark to dawn. By nature a hard driver, inspired by his desire to
help the Alaskans, Blackie steered his small craft endlessly through the
gray murk.

Then—of a sudden Johnny rubbed his eyes—stared away to the right—closed
his eyes—snapped them open again to whisper hoarsely,

“Blackie! The shadow passes.”

“The shadow! Where?”

The boy’s hand pointed.

“As I live!” Blackie muttered.

A short, slim line, little darker than the fog, moved slowly across the
spot where sky and sea should meet.

“Ahoy, there!” Blackie roared. “What boat goes there?”

No answer.

“I’ll show them!” Blackie put out a hand. Three powerful motors roared.
The _Stormy Petrel_ lurched forward, all but throwing Johnny into the
sea.

Sudden as the movement was, it proved too slow. Like a true shadow, the
thing vanished into the murk.

“It—it went down,” Johnny stammered. “Must have been a whale.”

“Or a submarine,” Lawrence suggested.

“It did not go down,” said MacGregor. “It slid away into the fog. And it
was not a whale. I’ve seen plenty of whales. They’re never like that.”

“Wait!” Johnny sprang for the cannon. “I’ll give them a shot just to let
them know we’re after them.”

“No! No! Not that!” MacGregor waved him back. “‘Speak softly and carry a
big stick.’ That was Teddy Roosevelt’s motto. The grandest president that
ever lived. There’s time enough to make a noise after we’ve got ’em under
our thumb.”

“I—I’m sorry,” said Johnny.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                           A VOICE IN THE FOG


Forty-eight long hours the _Stormy Petrel_ haunted the gray fog. During
far more than his fair share of that time, eyes blinking but tireless,
Johnny stood on deck studying the small circle of black waters.

Three times his heart leaped as a dark bulk loomed before them. Three
times he heaved a sigh of disappointment.

“Only one of the gill-net boats returning to the cannery,” was the
answer.

“They’re running strong,” was the joyous report of one fisherman. “Full
load first trip. Looks like a grand season.”

“Poor luck,” came from the second. “We tried hard. Got only half a load.
Have to come in anyway. It’s the rule. Fish must always be fresh.”

The third boat had had even worse luck. It was going back all but empty.

“No new calico dress for Nancy this time,” the youthful skipper groaned.

“No gitta da dress,” his Italian companion agreed.

At last, out of gas, with her crew half-blind from watching, the _Stormy
Petrel_ headed for the harbor.

“They’re out there somewhere,” Red McGee insisted, as he met them at the
dock. “Must be anchored up north of here somewhere. It’s the boys who go
up that way who come back half-empty.

“But the wheels are turning,” he added with a touch of pride. “Ever see a
cannery in operation?” he turned to the boys.

“No, never have,” was the quick response.

“Rusty,” said Red, turning to his daughter, “how’d you like to show these
boys through our plant?”

Did Johnny detect a frown on the girl’s face? If so, it was gone like the
shadow of a summer cloud.

“Sure! Come on!” she welcomed. They were away.

Somewhere Johnny had heard that a fish cannery was a place of evil smells
and revolting sights. Dirty coolies gouging into half-rotten fish—that
was his mental picture.

A surprise awaited him. Not a coolie was in sight. The place smelled as
fresh as a May morning. To his ears came the sound of rushing water.

“Where are the coolies?” he asked a man beside a machine.

“This is him,” the man chuckled. “An iron coolie.”

As the two boys watched they saw the machine seize a large salmon, sever
its head and tail, remove the scales and fins, clean it and pass it on in
a split second.

“Jimminy crickets!” Lawrence exploded. “And I used to think I was the
champion fish cleaner!”

Rusty favored him with a gorgeous smile.

When, a little later, Johnny made a try for that same young lady’s smile,
the cloud once again passed over her face, but no smile. He was not,
however, entirely discouraged. It was, he thought, more as if she could
not forgive him than that she did not want to.

“We saw the shadow pass,” Lawrence confided to the girl, as at last they
stood before a canning machine.

“Oh!” the girl breathed. “Did you? And what—”

“It vanished into the fog.”

“I have a small motor-boat,” the girl said, in evident excitement. “It’s
the _Krazy Kat_. I—I’m going out to look for the shadow in the fog.”

“You—you’d better not do that,” Johnny spoke before he thought. “You’d
be—” He did not finish.

“I was practically born and raised here.” She spoke to him, as an
old-time Alaskan might to a newcomer.

Johnny did not resent it. He had spoken out of turn. And yet he was
disturbed. He did not care to think of this fine young creature out there
in the fog alone. Supposing she did find the Orientals setting nets.
Suppose they found her, alone out there in the fog?

“None of my business,” he told himself fiercely. “Just none at all.”

The _Stormy Petrel_ remained an entire day in port. Blackie spent his
time listening to reports from the various fishing grounds. The shores of
Bristol Bay are hundreds of miles long. Next time he went out he wanted
to go to the right spot, if there were such a spot.

Johnny made the acquaintance of Kopkino, the Eskimo. From him he learned
much about salmon, Orientals and the shores of Bristol Bay. And then,
just at midnight, he passed the sturdy little man standing beside a dark
pathway. There were three little men with him and they were all talking.
They were not Eskimos. He was sure of that. But they were Orientals. He
had heard enough of the languages to know.

At once his mind was filled with questions. Was Kopkino betraying his
employer for Oriental gold, or was he acting as a spy for his big white
brother? Who could say?

“He’s an Oriental,” Johnny told himself. “All Eskimos are. But after
all—” He came to no conclusion.

Just before dawn the _Stormy Petrel_ crept out into the fog. She was
bound for an unannounced destination.

“Action,” Johnny said to Lawrence. “This time we are to have action. I
feel it in my bones.”

One thing puzzled Johnny not a little. They were provisioned as if for a
long trip, two weeks or more.

Several hours later the _Stormy Petrel_ was once again circling about in
the fog.

“Seems like it’ll never end, this fog,” MacGregor said to Johnny. They
were on deck working out their watch. “Looks as if nature was on the side
of those Orientals.

“Orientals,” he continued musingly, “I don’t suppose they’re much
different from the rest of us, only just some of them.”

“Just some of them,” Johnny agreed, giving the wheel a turn.

“Come to think of it,” MacGregor went on, “there are a few white men who
are not so honorable.”

“Quite a few,” Johnny agreed.

Truth is, Johnny was dead tired. He wanted nothing quite so much as to
crawl into some warm corner and sleep for hours and hours.

“I don’t hate them all the same,” MacGregor squinted his eyes to look
through the fog. Then he demanded low, “Hear anything, Johnny?”

“Not a thing.”

“Thought I heard a voice coming out of the fog.”

For some time after that neither spoke. They were listening with all
their ears for some sound that might tell them the mysterious moving
shadow was about to pass.

“What is this shadow?” Johnny asked himself. “Submarine, some fast,
silent craft, or a whale?”

He liked the idea of a submarine. The Orientals had them. Why not use
them for laying nets? Easy enough to vanish when danger was near.

“Hate, me lad, is destructive,” the aged man’s voice was solemn as he
took up the thread of conversation he had dropped. “Hate destroys you as
well as the people you hate.”

He broke off short to cup a hand behind his ear.

“There _was_ a voice,” he insisted in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes, I heard it,” Johnny replied, tense with sudden excitement.

Ten minutes had passed. They were beginning to relax when the sound came
again.

“Over to the right,” MacGregor shrilled. “Turn her about quarterin’ them.
Give her top speed.”

“Right.” Johnny twisted the wheel. The motors roared. It was a bold step
that might have led to disaster. Should there be a boat out there setting
nets, and should they crash at that speed, what would it mean? Johnny did
not dare to think.

“There!” MacGregor gripped the boy’s arm.

“Oh—ah!” Johnny groaned. “We missed them.”

It was true. Off to the left, for the space of seconds, they saw an
unmistakable dark, gray bulk. And then it was gone.

“Our own speed defeated us,” declared MacGregor. “Ah, well, better luck
next time.”

“Or worse,” Johnny grumbled.

Had he but known it, it was to be worse, much worse.

“As for me,” MacGregor said a half hour later, resuming his talk, “I
don’t hate anybody. It’s not worth while. Sometimes I hate the things
they do. Mostly, I try to think of good people and the good things they
do.

“And that,” his voice rose, “that’s what I like about this job of ours.
If we can drive these Orientals from our shores we’ll be doing good to
our own people, a whole lot of ’em.

“Know what I see when I’m tired and I close my eyes?” he asked suddenly.

“No. What?” Johnny grinned good-naturedly.

“Children,” MacGregor said in a mellow tone. “Children playing before an
open fire and their mother puttin’ the crust on an apple pie in the
kitchen. And those, Johnny, are the children and wives of men way up here
scoutin’ around in the cold and fog for salmon. We’re servin’ them,
Johnny, or at least we’re trying to.”

Just then Blackie’s head popped up out of the hatch.

“See anything?” he demanded.

“Plenty,” said Johnny.

“Yes, an’ heard ’em,” MacGregor added.

They told Blackie what had happened.

“So you think you heard them?” he asked.

“Think?” MacGregor roared. “We _know_ we heard ’em.”

“Might have been a seal barking to his mate, or mebby a loon. You can’t
be sure. Question is, if they’re here, where’s their nets?” Blackie came
up on deck.

“Turn the boat north by east,” he said to Johnny. “We’re going in for a
rest.”

“Rest? What’s that?” Johnny opened up a grand smile.

“Something we don’t have much of,” said Blackie. “But this fog burns your
eyes. You’re no good when you’ve been out too long.

“There’s a cabin on shore if only we can find it,” he explained. “A
trapper’s place, snug and warm. Red McGee told me about it. Trapper’s
gone south with his furs. We’re to make ourselves at home.”

Make themselves at home they did. After tying the _Stormy Petrel_ up at a
narrow dock they helped George up to the cabin with kettles, pans and
food supplies. Then, while a jolly wood fire roared in the huge stove
made of a steel gasoline barrel, laid on ends, they sprawled out on
rustic chairs to sniff the odor of roasting beef and baking pies and to
dream dreams.

With his eyes closed, MacGregor was seeing “children and their mothers
putting the top crust on apple pies.” In his dream Blackie held a
struggling Oriental by the collar of his coat and the seat of his
trousers. As for Johnny, he was seeing a round, freckled face all rosy
with smiles. Then, to his dismay he was seeing that same face take on a
somber look.

“Rusty,” he thought once again. “Will she ever forgive me?”

The feast George had prepared was one fit for a king or even a big league
baseball player, and the sleep they had in that cabin resting among the
bleak Alaskan hills was the soundest Johnny had known for many a day.
Well it was that this should be, for Fate had much in store for him.




                               CHAPTER XV
                          A ROAR FROM THE DEEP


“It will be an hour or two before I can get out,” Blackie said next
morning, standing up to stretch himself before the fire. “I want to go
over some maps Red McGee gave me. Lawrence can draw up a simple chart
that will keep us going right.

“MacGregor,” he turned to the aged Scotchman. “How would you like to take
Johnny for a circle or two in the fog? You might discover some evidence.
It’s nets we want most. If we can discover some of those nets inside the
three-mile limit it will help a lot.”

“Like nothin’ better,” said MacGregor. “Come on, Johnny, let’s get
goin’.”

MacGregor had spoken for both of them. Johnny was fond of the engineer.
He was old, mellow and kind, was MacGregor. This, he had confided to
Johnny, was to be his last year with the service. Another twelve months
and he would be pensioned. “And, Johnny,” he had added, “I’m as eager as
any boy to have a part in something big before I am compelled to go.”

“I hope you can have,” had been Johnny’s heartfelt wish.

So now, with the sun still low and the fog, it seemed, thicker than ever
before, they slipped out of the snug little natural harbor into the great
unknown that is any sea in time of fog.

Standing at the wheel, Johnny watched the dark circle of water about
them. Ever they moved forward, yet never did this circle grow larger. It
was strange.

There was life at this circle. Now a whole fleet of eider-ducks, resting
on their way north, came drifting into view. With a startled quack-quack
they stirred up a great splatter, then went skimming away.

And now a seal with small round head and whiskers like a cat came to the
surface to stare at them.

“Not worth much, that fellow,” was MacGregor’s comment. “Not much more
hair than a pig.

“But look, Johnny!” his voice rose. “There’s a real fur seal. His hide’s
worth a pretty penny. Wouldn’t have it long either, if those Orientals
sighted him. We used to have a hot time with ’em over the seals. Had to
pay ’em to get ’em to leave the seals alone. That was a shame. Have to do
the same with the salmon, like as not. We—

“Look, Johnny! What’s that?” His voice suddenly dropped to a whisper, as
if he believed the fog had ears. “Right over to the left, Johnny. Ease
’er over that way.”

“Another seal,” said Johnny.

“It’s no seal,” MacGregor whispered. “Johnny!” His whisper rose. “We got
’em. It’s a net marker. Inside the three-mile limit. An’ it’s none of Red
McGee’s net markers either.”

“That—that’s right,” the boy breathed.

“And there’s the floats, Johnny! There they are!”

Sure enough, leading away into the fog was a wavering line of dots.

“We’ll follow it,” was MacGregor’s instant decision. “See how much net
there is, then—”

“I’ll follow it,” Johnny agreed.

“Set the boat to go five miles an hour. I’ll time you.” MacGregor pulled
out his large, old-fashioned watch. “Now we’ll see.”

For a full ten minutes, in silence, the two of them watched the
apparently never-ending line of net floats appear and disappear into the
fog.

“Near two miles of it,” MacGregor growled. “And yet no end. No wonder
some of our fine boys come in with empty boats. These Orientals, they
just find a place outside where the salmon run an’ head ’em off. They—

“Slow up, Johnny!” he warned. “There’s the end. Shut off the motor.”

The motor ceased to purr. Silence hung over the fog. A seal bobbed up his
head, then ducked. A large salmon, caught in the net close to the
surface, set up a feeble splatter.

“Ease about,” said MacGregor. “I’ll pick up that net with this pike pole.

“Now,” he breathed, leaning far out over the rail, “now I got her. Now—”

He had succeeded in getting his hands on the marker when catastrophe came
thundering up at them from the deep. A tremendous explosion sent the
water rocketing toward the sky. The prow of the _Stormy Petrel_ rose
until it seemed she would go completely over.

Frantically Johnny gripped the wheel to save himself from being plunged
into the icy water. But where was MacGregor?

For ten tense seconds the boat stood with prow in air. Then with a slow,
sickening swash, she came down.

“MacGregor!” Johnny cried. “What happened? Where are you?”

“Here—here I am!” MacGregor’s voice rose from the sea.

“Johnny!” his voice was hoarse with emotion. “Shove off that life boat.
Get her off just any way. There’s a terrible hole in the _Stormy’s_ side.
She’ll sink in another minute. For God’s sake, be quick!”

Johnny was quick and strong. If ever his strength stood him in good stead
it was now.

The life boat hung over the afterdeck. The knots of ropes that held it in
place were wet and stiff with fog.

“No time,” he muttered. With his knife he slashed away the ropes. The
boat fell on deck with a thud. It was a heavy steel boat. To his
consternation, he saw that it had fallen squarely between the heavy
rails. The prow must be lifted. Creeping under it, he put all the
strength of his back against it. It rose.

“Now!” he breathed. “Now! And now!”

The boat was on the rail. He could fairly feel the _Stormy’s_ deck
sinking beneath him. She was doomed, there was no doubt of that. Those
heavy motors would take her down fast.

Once again he heaved. The life boat was now a quarter over the rail, now
a third, now half.

Leaping from beneath it, he executed a double movement, a shove and a
leap. He was in the life boat. The life boat plunged, all but sank,
swayed from side to side, then righted herself.

There was a low, sickening rush of water. Johnny looked. The _Stormy_ was
gone. In her place were swirling water and in the swirl an odd collection
of articles; a coat, a cap, a pike pole, and MacGregor’s checkerboard.

“MacGregor!” Johnny called hoarsely. “MacGregor! Where are you?”

“Here! Over here!” was the cheering response. “I had to get away. She
would have sucked me down.”

Seizing an oar, Johnny began sculling the boat. In a moment he was
alongside his companion. A brief struggle and MacGregor, watersoaked and
shivering, tumbled into the boat.

“John—Johnny,” his teeth were chattering. “There—there shou-should be
d-d-dry clothes in the stern.”

Dragging a half barrel from the prow, Johnny pulled out shirts,
underclothing, trousers, socks and shoes.

“Seems you were looking for this,” he chuckled as he watched the plucky
old man disrobe himself.

“Johnny,” said MacGregor. “In the Coast Guard service you are always
looking for it an’ all too often you’re not disappointed.”

When, a few minutes later, after a brisk rub-down, MacGregor had
struggled into dry clothes and had succeeded in lighting his pipe, he
said, “Well, me boy, we thought we had ’em an’ now they’ve got us. We’re
miles from anywhere in a fog. And that’s bad! Mighty bad.”

“Do you suppose Blackie heard it?”

“What? The explosion? ’Tain’t likely. We’re all of four miles from there.
Don’t forget, we followed that net two miles. An’ that explosion was
muffled by the water.

“An’ if he heard,” he added after a brief pause, “what could he do? He’s
four miles away. No compass. An’ no boat except maybe a fishing skiff.
No, Johnny,” his voice sounded out solemn on the silent sea. “For once in
our lives we are strictly on our own, you and me.

“Well, me lad,” he murmured a moment later. “They got us that time.
Attached some sort of bomb to their net, that’s what they did. Safe
enough in a way, too, for how you goin’ to prove it was their net? Yes,
they got us. But you wait, me lad, we’ll be gettin’ them yet.”




                              CHAPTER XVI
                             LOOMING PERIL


Many times in his young life Johnny had been on his own, but never quite
like this.

“Not a bit of good to row,” was MacGregor’s decision. “We’ve not the
least notion which way to go. If there was a breeze we might row by that.
There’s no breeze.”

“No sun, moon or stars, either,” Johnny agreed.

For a full half hour they sat there in silence. Off in the distance a
seal barked. Closer at hand an eider-duck quacked to his mate. A sudden
scream, close at hand, startled them for an instant. It was followed by a
wild laugh. They joined in the merriment. It was only a loon.

There came a wild whir of wings. A flock of wild ducks, flying low and
going like the wind, shot past them.

“That’s north,” Johnny exclaimed. “They’re going due north to their
nesting place. That’s east,” he pointed. “All we have to do is to row
that way. We’ll come to land.”

“If you kept your course, which you couldn’t,” MacGregor chuckled.

“It’s worth trying. Anyway, I’m cold,” Johnny began to row. “There may be
other bird flights to set me right.”

There were not, at least not for fifteen minutes. When at last a pair of
loons with long necks stretched straight before, passed them, to his
disgust, Johnny saw that the boat was headed due north.

“Well,” he sighed, dropping his oars, “At least I—”

“Listen!” MacGregor put up a hand.

Johnny listened. “Say! That’s no seal.”

“Nor a bird either. That’s a human sound.”

“Like someone trying to start a motor.”

“Just that.”

For a time the sound ceased. Then it began again.

“Over to the left.” Once again Johnny took up the oars. This time he
rowed slowly, silently. No telling whose motor had stalled. Fisherman,
trapper, or Oriental? Who could tell?

Four times the sound ceased. Four times Johnny’s oars rested on the
surface of the water.

When, at last, a small, dark spot appeared on the surface of the sea,
Johnny fairly ceased to breathe.

“Heck!” said a voice in that fog.

“Doesn’t sound like an Oriental,” Johnny whispered.

“Fisherman nor trapper either,” replied MacGregor.

Leaning even more gently on his oars, Johnny sent his boat gliding
forward. Then, of a sudden, he dropped his oars to stare.

“It’s that girl, Rusty,” he whispered hoarsely.

“The same,” MacGregor agreed.

There could be no doubt about it. The girl was bending over to give her
flywheel one more turn. Over her boy’s shirt, high boots and knickers she
had drawn a suit of greasy coveralls. On her face, besides a look of grim
determination, there was a long, black smudge.

“Heck!” she exclaimed once more.

“Havin’ motor trouble?” MacGregor spoke aloud.

The girl started so suddenly that she all but lost her balance. Then,
after a brief spell of unbelieving silence, she said, “It’s you, Mr.
MacGregor! How glad I am to see you! I’ve been lost for hours. I—I went
out to hunt the Shadow, that shadow you know. My motor’s stalled. But
now—”

“Now we’re all lost together,” MacGregor chuckled.

To Johnny, the girl gave never a second look.

“Do—do you suppose you could start it?” she said to MacGregor, nodding at
her motor.

“No harm to try. At least we’ll come aboard for a cup o’ tea,” MacGregor
chuckled.

Johnny rowed the lifeboat alongside the girl’s boat, the _Krazy Kat_, and
they climbed aboard.

“She’s not gittin’ gas,” said MacGregor, after he had turned the motor
over twice.

“I know,” the girl’s brow wrinkled.

Without saying a word, Johnny scrambled back to the box covering the gas
tank. After lifting the box off, he struck the tank a sharp rap. The tank
gave off a hollow sound.

“You might try putting some gas in your tank,” he said with a sly grin.

“Oh, but there must be gas!” the girl exclaimed. “There must be.”

“Perhaps,” said Johnny. “But it’s empty. May be a leak.” Drawing a small
flashlight from his pocket, he bent over and examined the offending tank.

“Yep,” he said, “there is a leak, a small hole, but big enough. Your gas
is in the bottom of the boat, along with the bilge water. Any reserve
supply?”

“Not a bit.”

“Well, then, here we are.” Johnny took a seat. “Now we have two boats and
there are three of us. The motor-boat won’t go, but—”

Suddenly he sprang to his feet. “You’d have a compass, wouldn’t you?”

“Ye-es,” the girl replied with evident reluctance, “but it—it’s out of
order. That’s why I got lost.”

“Well, anyway,” Johnny said with forced cheerfulness, “now there are
three of us. Two’s company and three’s a crowd. I always have liked
crowds. Besides,” the corners of his mouth turned up, “you’ve got
something of a cabin.”

“Oh, yes.” The girl seemed, for the moment, to forget that she was
speaking to one who had knocked her beloved daddy out. “Yes, there is a
cabin. There’s a small stove and—and some wood. There’s tea and some
pilot biscuits.”

“A stove, wood, tea and pilot biscuits?” Suddenly MacGregor seized her
and waltzed her about in a narrow circle. “Rusty, me child, you are an
angel.”

A half hour later found them comfortably crowded into Rusty’s small
cabin. They were sipping tea and munching hard round crackers.

“The fog’ll lift after a while,” MacGregor rumbled dreamily. “We lost our
boat. That’s bad. But there’s marine insurance. That’s good. We’ll have
another boat. I wonder,” he paused to meditate, “wonder what Blackie and
the others are thinking by now.”

“And doing,” Johnny suggested uneasily.

“Yes, and doin’,” MacGregor agreed.

A half hour later, growing restless, Johnny crept from his corner, opened
the cabin door and disappeared up the narrow hatch.

Ten seconds later he poked his head into the door to exclaim in a low,
tense voice, “MacGregor, come up here quick.”

MacGregor came. The girl came too. For a full half minute the three of
them stood there speechless. They were looking up and away. Their eyes
were wide and staring.

“MacGregor,” Johnny asked, “what is it?”

“A ship,” MacGregor whispered. “A thunderin’ big ship. She’s not two
hundred leagues away. She’s not movin’, just driftin’. That’s how she
came close to us.”

“Wha-what ship is she?”

“Who knows, son? But I’d lay a bet I could guess the country she came
from.”

“So—so could I.” Johnny’s throat was dry.

“We—we,” Rusty pulled her old sou’wester down hard on her head, “we’d
better get into the life boat and row away. It—it doesn’t matter about
the _Krazy Kat_. It really doesn’t.” She swallowed hard.

“We can try it,” MacGregor agreed. “But I’m afraid it’s too late.

“Well,” he added with a low, rumbling laugh. “We were lookin’ for ’em.
Now we found ’em, we don’t want ’em. Come on, an’ mind you, never a
sound!”




                              CHAPTER XVII
                                TRAPPED


“It’s no use. We’re in for it.” Five minutes later MacGregor dropped his
oars. From some spot close to that dark bulk against the sky had come the
throb of a motor.

“Rusty, me child,” the old man’s voice was very gentle. “Be sure those
golden locks of yours are well tucked in. Whatever you do, don’t remove
that sou’wester. For the present you are a boy. You must not forget.”

“I—I won’t forget.” Rusty’s fingers were busy with her hair.

“I only hope,” the old man added soberly, “that my guess is wrong.”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a smart little motor boat,
bright with red and white paint, hove into view. And on the deck,
scarcely less smart in brass buttons and braid, stood a small man with
slanting eyes.

Those eyes appeared a trifle startled at sight of MacGregor. “A thousand
pardons.” The little man’s voice was smooth as oil. “What is that which
you wish?”

“Only a few gallons of gasoline,” said MacGregor.

The lightning change on the little man’s face was startling. It was as if
a dagger had suddenly flashed from his belt, yet his tone was smooth as
before.

“Ah! You are out of gas? Very unfortunate. Your line, please. We shall
escort you to our ship.”

“But we don’t want to go to your ship,” MacGregor protested. “All we want
is gas.”

“Ah, yes, a thousand apologies. But here there is no gasoline, only at
the ship. Your line, please.”

“Say, you—” Johnny’s angry voice was stopped by a heavy pressure on his
arm.

“Give him our line, son,” said MacGregor.

Grudgingly Johnny obeyed. A moment later, with the two boats in tow, the
bright, little craft went rolling back toward that broad, black bulk.

“It’s no use to quarrel with ’em,” MacGregor said in a sober whisper.
“We’ve fallen into their hands. I think that chap recognized me. I’ve
been along the Pacific waterfronts for many years. So have these
Orientals.”

“But—but what will happen?” Rusty asked.

“Who knows?” was MacGregor’s sober reply. “Let us hope for the best.
They’ll not let us go now. When they’re well beyond the three-mile limit
they may give us gas and let us go.

“In the meantime, Rusty,” he warned, “don’t forget you’re a boy. It’s a
good thing you’ve got on knickers instead of a dress.”

They were brought alongside. A ladder was let down. They climbed aboard.
There they were ushered before one more small man who wore even more
brass and braid. Johnny thought with a touch of humor that he would make
a very fine monkey if only he had a cap, a tin cup and a string.

When MacGregor requested that they be given gasoline and allowed to
leave, there were excuses, very profuse and polite, but quite formal.
There were reasons, very unfortunate reasons; too much fog, a storm
coming up, too few men to spare even one or two, to find the way alone
quite impossible. Oh, quite!

The man, who beyond doubt was the captain, talked on and on.

It all ended by the _Krazy Kat’s_ being hoisted on board, by the little
party drinking very black and very hot tea with the much adorned captain,
and at last by their being escorted, for all the world as if they were
embarking on a long voyage, to a pair of staterooms on the second deck.

For a time after the stateroom doors had been closed the surprised trio
stood staring first at one another and then at their surroundings.

The two staterooms were joined by a door. There were two berths in each
stateroom. There were round portholes, no other windows.

“That will be your stateroom, Rusty,” MacGregor opened the door to the
one beyond. “Keep your outside door locked.

“One thing more,” hesitatingly he produced a pair of scissors, “I always
carry them,” he explained. “A man doesn’t live everywhere as I have done,
not in Alaska, without learning to cut hair. I’m a fair hand at it.
Rusty, me child, those rusty red locks of yours have got to come off.”

Without a word the girl dropped to a stool beside the berth.

“Johnny,” said MacGregor, “I suggest that you step outside and stand
guard. Don’t leave the door, not more than three steps. If anyone comes
near, make some noise on the door.”

“Right,” said Johnny.

“Rusty,” said MacGregor, “do you ever box?”

“Oh yes, often.” The girl’s face flushed. “Often. Daddy and I box by the
hour.” She gave Johnny a strange, fleeting look.

“Good!” MacGregor exclaimed low. “Tonight we’ll have an exhibition match,
just you and Johnny. Two boys showing these Orientals how to play.

“And now,” he nodded his head toward the door.

Johnny opened it ever so softly, peered through the crack, and was gone.

At the same moment the old man lifted the shabby sou’wester from the mass
of lovely hair, blew on his scissors, heaved a heavy sigh, then slashed
with apparent ruthlessness at a great handful of perfectly natural,
copper-colored curls.

A half hour later the door opened a crack.

Taking the cue, Johnny stepped inside. He stopped short when he looked at
Rusty.

It was with the greatest difficulty that he suppressed a smile at what he
saw. The sou’wester was no longer needed. Good old MacGregor had done his
work well. Rusty’s hair looked like a real boy’s.

“What a grand boy!” Johnny thought. And after that, “What a perfect brick
of a girl she is!”

“Mac,” he said a moment later, “there are twenty thousand fine big red
salmon up forward. I stepped around a hatchway far enough to see.”

“Twenty thousand,” the old man murmured. “Our boys get fourteen cents
apiece just for catchin’ ’em. Twenty-eight hundred dollars. A grand
livin’ for two happy families. And that’s the first haul. There’ll be
many another unless someone stops ’em.

“And we won’t stop ’em,” he added with a touch of sadness. “Not just yet.
But you wait!” he sprang to his feet. “We’ll get a break yet.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                        FIVE ROUNDS AND A FRIEND


It may seem a little strange that MacGregor and his young companions
accepted the whole situation so calmly. Yet the old man had lived long
and in many places. He was wise in the ways of the world. He realized
that they had already seen too much to be released at once. How long
would they be detained? To this question he could form no answer. Perhaps
until the end of the legal fishing season, twenty or more days away.
Perhaps longer. They might even be taken to the Orient. After that some
fantastic story might be told of their being picked up adrift on the high
seas.

Johnny was thinking along these same lines. But he, unlike MacGregor, was
already laying plans for escape. For the present, however, he was willing
to bide his time.

Dinner was brought to them by a smiling little brown man. It was not a
bad meal, as meals go on the sea—boiled rice, baked salmon and tea.

When it was over, MacGregor slipped out into the gathering night. While
he was gone not a word was spoken. Johnny was busy with his own thoughts.
So, he supposed, was the girl who now looked so very much like a boy.

He was thinking, “I wonder if there were shadows passing us in the fog.
Or did we imagine them?” Certainly he had seen nothing resembling a
shadow here. And this girl. Would she forgive him? Well enough he knew
that in trying times such as these people were either drawn closer
together or driven farther apart. He could only wait and see.

“There’s hope in the airplane that young Dan MacMillan is bringing up,”
he thought with fresh courage. “If only he’d arrive and fly over this
ship we’d manage somehow to signal him and then the whole navy would be
on this old freighter’s heels.”

He was thinking now of something told to him in secret by Red McGee. He
had been speaking of the cannery. It had been built by old Chad
MacMillan. A crusty, honest, fair-dealing man, he had managed it for many
years.

“Then he died,” Red had gone on, “and young Dan MacMillan, just out of
university and full of big ideas, inherited it. This winter I suggested
that he hire a seaplane to go out scouting for these Oriental robbers.

“‘It’s a fine idea,’ he said to me. ‘A grand idea. I’ll buy a seaplane
and learn to pilot it. You’ll be seeing me up there scouting around as
soon as the salmon season opens.’

“That’s what he said to me,” Red McGee had drawn in a deep breath. “These
wild young millionaires! What can you expect? He’s not here now and like
as not won’t show up at all.”

“What can you expect?” Johnny was thinking over his words now. “If only
Dan MacMillan showed up over this old craft all these little brown men
would be scared out of their skins.”

But would he come? He dared not so much as hope.

He wondered about Lawrence and Blackie. He suffered a pang because of
Lawrence. What a shame that he had dragged the boy up here! He would be
far better off in Matanuska valley planting turnips and potatoes, hunting
wild geese, and, perhaps, catching a glacier bear way back in the
mountains.

But here was MacGregor. And he carried in his hands, of all things, two
pairs of boxing gloves. Johnny had wondered where they were to come from,
but now here they were.

“These little brown boys go in strong for boxing,” the old man explained.

“I told them,” continued MacGregor, “that you were one of America’s most
promising young boxers, but a little out of training.”

“Quite a little,” Johnny agreed.

“I said you and your boy pal would put on an exhibition match on deck
tonight.”

Rusty shot him a look, but said never a word.

“I hope you understand,” the old man said soberly, “that I am asking you
to do this for your own good.” He was talking to Rusty.

She bowed gravely. Then, of a sudden, her face brightened. “I hope they
take us lightly,” she said. “That may give us a chance to escape.”

“That’s what it will,” MacGregor agreed. “And this boxin’ stunt is just
the thing to put them off their guard.”

A half hour later, beneath a brilliant electric light, with a circle of
dark faces about them, Johnny and Rusty shook hands for the first time in
their lives, then drew on the gloves.

Johnny had boxed strange people in many an out-of-the-way place. Never
before had he boxed with a girl. He was not sure he was going to like it
now. But with MacGregor as manager of the strange affair, there was no
turning back.

It _was_ strange, there was no getting around that. A swaying light, a
host of sober, brown faces, the gray fog hanging over all, made it seem
fantastic indeed.

There were to be five short rounds with MacGregor keeping time.

At the very beginning, Johnny discovered that his opponent was fast and
skillful. Having no sons, Red McGee had taken it upon himself to train
his daughter in the manly art of boxing. Life on the bleak Alaskan shore
was often dull. The girl had welcomed each new lesson. And now Johnny was
discovering that her punches that from time to time reached his cheek or
chin, were far from love pats. They really stung, nor, try as he would,
could he entirely escape them.

“She’s taking it out on me because of her father,” he thought grimly.
“Well, I can take it.”

What did the audience think of this affair? Who could tell? They watched
in silence. Once when Rusty was tossed into their midst they helped her
to her feet and pushed her into place. Their movements were so gentle,
the flitting smiles about their lips so friendly, that, for the moment,
the girl forgot her role and said, “Thank you.”

The rounds passed speedily. When the fourth and last was up, Johnny said
in a whisper, “Come on, Rusty, let’s make this one snappy. Give them a
real show.”

Snappy it was. From the moment MacGregor gave them the signal they
whipped into it with a wild swinging of gloves. Rusty’s footwork was
perfect. Johnny found himself admiring the manner in which, hornet-like,
she leaped at him for a sharp, stinging blow, then faded away.

Perhaps he was admiring her too much. However that might be, in the last
thirty seconds of the bout he stepped into something. Trying for a bit of
reprisal in the way of a tap on her chin, he left an opening far too
wide. Rusty’s eyes opened wide, her stout right arm shot out and up. It
took Johnny squarely under the chin and, “believe it or not,” he went
down and out like a match.

He was not out long, perhaps eight seconds. When at last his stubborn
eyelids opened he found himself looking at a circle of grinning brown men
and at Rusty who stood staring at him, but not smiling at all.

“Well,” he laughed, “that must square the McGee’s with Johnny Thompson.”

“John—Johnny, please!” she cried. “I didn’t mean to. I truly didn’t.”

“All right.” Johnny sprang to his feet. “Shake on it. Let’s always be
friends.”

The girl made no response. There was no need. She did clasp his hand in a
grip that was friendly and strong.

A half hour later they were having one more cup of tea in their
staterooms and Johnny was thinking, “Life surely is strange. I wonder how
this affair will end.”

Before he fell asleep he went over it all again. Blackie and Lawrence,
the silent, moving shadow, the hard-working men on shore, the airplane
that might come. When he was too far gone in sleep to think clearly he
fancied that he felt the ship’s propeller vibrating, that the ship was on
the move. He was not sure. After all, what did it matter? There was
nothing he could do about it. And so, he fell fast asleep.




                              CHAPTER XIX
                             ORDERED BELOW


Back in the trapper’s cabin Blackie was in a rage. He stormed at the
Orientals, at MacGregor, then at himself. From time to time he rushed out
on the small dock in a vain attempt to pierce the thick fog and to listen
with all his ears.

“The robbers have got them,” he muttered. “I should have known. That
shadow! It’s done for them and for the _Stormy Petrel_.”

As night came on he settled down to sober thinking. “There’s a fishing
skiff out there by the dock,” he said to Lawrence. “We’ll have to put it
in the water and make a try for the mainland. This cabin is on an island.
Mainland must be thirty miles away. We’ll make it. We’ll find some sort
of power boat. And then, by thunder! Things will get to popping!”

Lawrence, too, was disturbed in his own quiet way. He knew a great deal
about Johnny. Many a time Johnny had been in a tight spot. Always,
somehow, he had come out safely. MacGregor was old and wise. And, after
all, this was not a time of war. Why need one worry too much?

There were a number of tattered books on the shelf in the corner.
Evidently this trapper was something of a naturalist, for five of these
were about animals and birds. In browsing through these, the boy made a
real find, a picture of a glacier bear, a brief description, and the
history of the animal as far as known.

It was with the feelings of a real discoverer that he read those words
over and over. When he had finished he said to himself, “If ever I see
one of those bears I’ll know him.”

But would he? At the present moment those bears seemed as far away as the
moon. And yet, who could tell?

At dawn next morning the three of them, George, the cook, Blackie and
Lawrence, carried their few supplies down to the dock, tacked a note on
the door, climbed into the broad, clumsy skiff and rowed into the fog.

“We’ll follow the shore as far as we can,” said Blackie. “We’ll have to
cross a broad stretch of open water, but I think I can manage that with
my pocket compass.”

When at last Lawrence saw even the small island disappear from sight, he
regretted the circumstances that appeared to make it necessary to leave
that comfortable retreat.


When Johnny and his friends came on board that same morning, they found
the fog still with them, but it was thinner. There was a suggestion of a
breeze in the air.

“Going to clear,” was MacGregor’s prophecy. This, they were soon to
discover, did not concern them too much, at least not in the immediate
future.

When they had eaten a strange mixture of rice and meat and had gulped
down some very bitter coffee, a little man with neither gold nor braid on
his uniform came up to them, saluted in a careless manner and said
simply, “Come.”

They followed him from one deck to another until they found themselves in
a vast place of steam and evil smells.

When their eyes had become accustomed to the light and steam, they saw
long rows of men toiling and sweating over apparently endless tables.
Before the tables, on a conveyor, thousands of large salmon moved slowly
forward.

“No iron coolie here,” Johnny chuckled. “Everything is done by hand.
Heads off, tails, fins, all with big knives.”

“Please,” said the little man. He was holding out a long, thin, oilskin
coat. Understanding his wish, Johnny put it on. Still wondering, he
watched MacGregor and the girl follow his example.

“Please,” said the little man again. “A thousand apologies.” He was
holding out three long, sharp knives, at the same time pointing with his
other hand at a break in the solid line of salmon workers.

“Why, the dirty little shrimp!” Johnny exploded. “He wants us to go to
work.”

“Steady, son,” MacGregor warned. “They understand English. I fancy there
are worse places than this on the ship. We have no choice but to obey.”

Johnny muttered, but dropped into place to slash off a large salmon’s
head.

He had worked in a rebellious humor for a quarter of an hour when, on
looking up, he discovered that Rusty was performing the most disagreeable
task in the salmon line. She was cleaning the fish. Shoving past
MacGregor, he turned her half about as he muttered low, “You take my
place.”

To his great astonishment, he felt the girl whirl back to her place, give
him a hard push, then saw her resume her work.

For a space of seconds he stood there stunned. Then he laughed low. The
girl was wise, much wiser than he had known. She was supposed to be a
boy. Boys were not gallant to one another. She would play the part to the
bitter end. Johnny returned to his task.

“Mac,” he was able to whisper at last, “why would they do this to us?”

“You answer,” was the old man’s reply. “Sh-sh—” he warned. “Here comes a
big shot, one of the monkeys with gold buttons.”

As he passed the “big shot” smiled suavely at them, but said never a
word.




                               CHAPTER XX
                          A BATTLE IN THE DARK


Even at lunch time the toiling trio, Rusty, Johnny and MacGregor, were
not invited to have their lunch on deck. Instead, they were served, like
the coolie with whom they toiled, with great bowls of some mixture that
looked like soup.

“Hm,” MacGregor sighed, “fish chowder. And not bad.”

Rusty’s eyes shone. “What a lark!” She laughed outright. “I only wish we
had a camera. My crowd down in Seattle won’t believe me.”

Johnny looked at her in surprise and admiration. “Here’s one girl with a
spirit that can’t be broken,” he thought.

“Reminds me of a time I was on the Big Diomede Island on Bering Straits,”
said MacGregor with a rumble of merriment. “We were cutting up a big
walrus. I saw an old woman working over the stomach of that walrus. Know
what the walrus lives on?” he demanded.

“Clams,” said Johnny.

“Right. Bright boy,” said MacGregor. “The thing that had happened was
this. The walrus had been down to the bottom. He’d ripped up the sand at
the bottom of the sea. He’d cracked a lot of clams and had swallowed ’em.
He hadn’t digested ’em yet when we shot ’im. Know what that Eskimo woman
was doing?”

“Can’t guess.”

“She had a white pan and was savin’ the clams from the walrus’ stomach.
And that night,” there came a low rumble from deep down in MacGregor’s
throat, “that night we had seal steak and clam chowder for supper. An’ I
took seal steak.”

“O-oh,” Johnny breathed.

“Mr. MacGregor,” Rusty said with a gurgle, “you wouldn’t spoil anyone’s
dinner, would you?”

“Not for the world,” was the old man’s solemn avowal.

“Listen,” MacGregor held up a hand. “I hear an electric generator going.
It’s on this deck. I wonder why? I’m going for a little walk.”

“They’ll chase you back.”

“That’s all they can do.” He was away.

“The ship’s beginning to sway a little,” Johnny said. “Shouldn’t wonder
if we’d get a storm.” The girl could not suppress an involuntary shudder.

“Johnny,” she leaned close to speak almost in a whisper. “When we used
coolie labor I learned to talk with them a little. I’ve been talking to
the coolie who cuts off fish’s heads next to me. He says they expect to
have a boatload of fish in a week or ten days. Then they’ll go back to
the Orient.”

“And if we go with them?” Johnny breathed.

“I’ve seen pictures of the Orient.” The girl’s eyes were closed. “It’s
gorgeous. It truly must be.”

“Do you think we’d get to see anything?”

“Why not?” the girl laughed low. “It’s all there to see. At least they
can’t keep us from dreaming.”

“No, they surely cannot.” At that Johnny did some very choice dreaming,
all his own.

He was wakened from these dreams by the return of MacGregor. “It’s the
strangest thing!” he exclaimed. “I got a look into that place. There’s a
huge generator an’ it’s chargin’ batteries.”

“Batteries!” Johnny exclaimed in surprise.

“Sure! Banks and banks of large batteries.”

“When submarines go under water,” Johnny spoke slowly, “they use
batteries for power. What do you think?”

“I don’t think,” said MacGregor. “Anyway, here’s our little boss. He
wants us to resume our duties as first-class cleaners of sock-eyed
salmon.”

As the day wore on Johnny watched Rusty ever more closely. The heavy,
unpleasant work, together with the ever-increasing roll of the ship, was
telling. He was not surprised that, after the day was over and they were
allowed to go to the upper deck, she took his arm to lean on it heavily.

“Johnny, I won’t give up. Please help me not to give up.”

Johnny looked down at her with a reassuring smile.

As they stepped on deck they found themselves looking at a new world.
Gone was the fog. In its place was racing blue waters, flecked with foam.

“A storm!” the girl shuddered.

“Just too dark to see land,” Johnny groaned. “If it wasn’t, we might get
our location and then—”

“Then what?” she whispered.

“I have some plans. We—”

“Sh—an officer!” she warned.

At the evening meal Rusty ate hard, dry crackers and drank scalding tea.
She was still putting up a brave struggle against being sea-sick.

When darkness came they went below. Rusty retired at once. Johnny threw
himself, all dressed, upon his berth, but did not sleep.

An hour later a shadowy figure passed him. It was Rusty. She was carrying
blankets. Without a sound, he followed her. Arrived on deck, he saw her
at the rail. Understanding, he dropped down upon a wooden bench.

After what seemed a long time, she turned and saw him. Swaying as she
walked, she came toward him to drop down at his side. She did not say, “I
am so sick!” She was too game for that and there was no need. He wrapped
her in the blankets. Then they sat there in silence.

The wind was rising steadily. It went whistling through the rigging.
Ropes banged and yard-arms swayed. A shadow shot past them, a watch on
duty. Lights shone on the blue-black sea. It was a truly wild night.

Of a sudden a form stood before them. Clutching a steel cable, it clung
there.

“Thousand pardons,” it hissed. “Cannot stay here. It is forbidden.”

“My friend is sick. We stay.” Johnny felt his anger rising.

“Thousand pardons,” came once more. “Cannot stay.”

“Million pardons,” Johnny half rose. “We stay.”

A hand reached out. It touched Rusty’s shoulder. That was enough. Johnny
leaped at the man. They went down in a heap. A second more and Johnny
felt a steel clamp about his neck, or so it seemed.

“Jujitsu,” he thought in sudden consternation. Throwing all his strength
into an effort to break the man’s grip, he failed. Coughing, trying to
breathe, failing, strangling, he felt his strength going when, of a
sudden, he caught the sound of a blow, then felt the hated arm relax. Ten
seconds more and he was free.

“You—you hit him,” he managed to breathe. “Is he dead?”

“No—no. Watch out!” the girl warned.

Just in time Johnny caught the man. This time, gripping him by collar and
trousers, he dragged him from the floor. And then, screaming like some
wild thing, the brown man found himself hanging out over an angry sea.

“Johnny, don’t!” The girl’s hand was on his arm.

“Oh, all—all right.”

Swinging the brown man in, he dropped him on the deck. Like a scared
rabbit, the intruder went racing off on all fours.

“Now I’ve done it,” Johnny groaned as he dropped back in his place.

“Perhaps,” said Rusty. “Still, you can’t tell.”




                              CHAPTER XXI
                             WALL OF GLASS


Rusty was not the only one disturbed by this storm. At the very moment
when Johnny was at grips with the Oriental on the ship’s deck, Lawrence,
Blackie and George were battling for their very lives.

What had happened? The distance from the trapper’s cabin to shore was,
they had discovered, far greater than they had supposed. When at last the
fog cleared they found themselves far from any shore on a black and
threatening sea.

“Might as well keep headed for the mainland,” was Blackie’s decision.

Head for the mainland they did. After that, for hours, with the storm
ever increasing in intensity, they rowed as never before.

The clumsy oars were rough and hard to manage. Lawrence’s hands were soon
blistered. Tearing strips from his shirt, he bound them up and rowed on.

Fortune favored them in one thing. They were going with the wind. Had
they been forced to face into the storm, their boat would have been
swamped at once. As it was, just as darkness began to fall the skiff
began to fill.

“Lawrence, you start bailing,” Blackie commanded. “George and I will
row.”

“Ya-as, sir, we’ll row. Don’t nebber doubt dat,” George agreed. Then he
began to sing,

  “Roll, Jordan, roll.
  Oh! Oh! Oh! I want to go dere
  To hear old Jordan roll.”

Lawrence thought with a shudder that he might be there to hear Jordan
roll before day dawned.

By constant bailing he was able to keep the skiff from swamping. So,
chilled to the bone, hoping against hope, he labored on.

When at last they found themselves near to some shore, his heart failed
him.

“Towering rocks,” he groaned.

“There’s a break in those rocks,” said Blackie. “I saw it before dark.
We’ll follow along and here’s hoping.” Once more he put his stout
shoulders to the oars.

A half hour passed, an hour, two hours. Numb with cold and ready to drop
from exhaustion, Lawrence wondered if Blackie could have been wrong. Was
there a break in that wall? And then—he saw it.

“There!” he exclaimed. “There it is. Straight ahead!”

He dared not add that it seemed a strange break. Not very deep, it
appeared to give off an odd sort of glimmer at its back.

Just as they were ready to enter the gap, a great cloud went over the
moon and all was black.

Steering more from instinct than sight, they rowed on. To Lawrence, at
that moment, the suspense was all but overpowering. Where were they
going? Could they find a landing? What was the end to be?

One thing was encouraging, the waves in this place were not so wild. They
no longer dashed into the boat. So with darkness hanging over them they
rowed, for what seemed an endless time, but could have been only a few
moments, straight on into the unknown.

And then. “Man! Oh, man! What was that?” The boat had crashed into an
invisible wall.

Lawrence put out a hand. “Glass!” he exclaimed. “A wall of glass.”

“Not glass, son,” Blackie’s voice was low. “A wall of ice. The end of a
glacier. This is a spot where icebergs break off. If one of them had been
jarred loose by the bang of our boat—and if they had been sent tumbling
by the sound of a voice—man! Oh, man! We would be lost for good and all.”

“Blackie, look!” Lawrence spoke in a hoarse whisper. “A light.”

“It’s a star,” said Blackie.

“A light,” Lawrence insisted.

“Yas, man! A light,” George agreed.

Just then the moon came out, revealing a sloping mountain side. And,
close to a shelving beach was a cabin. The light shone from that cabin.

“Oh! Oh! Lord be praised!” George whispered fervently.

Ten minutes later, as they drew their boat up on the beach, the cabin
door was thrown open and a man, holding a candle close to his face,
peered into the darkness to call, “You all come right on up, whoever you
all are.”

“That,” said Lawrence in a surprised whisper, “is Smokey Joe.”

“Smokey Joe, you old bear-cat!” Blackie shouted.

The grizzled prospector let out a dry cackle. “Come on up an’ rest
yerself,” he welcomed. “I got a Mulligan on a-cookin’.”

At first Lawrence found it hard to believe that this was really Smokey
Joe. “How,” he asked himself, “could he come all this way?” As he studied
a faded map on the deserted cabin’s wall, however, he realized that the
distance overland was short compared to the way they had traveled by
water.

Joe’s Mulligan stew proved a rich repast. He had killed a young caribou
two days before. There had been bacon and hardtack in his kit. Besides
these, he had found dried beans and seasoning in the cabin.

“Yep,” he agreed, as Blackie complimented him after the meal was over,
“hit’s plum grand livin’ when you sort of git the breaks.

“An’ listen,” his voice dropped. “Hit’s plumb quare how things git to a
comin’ yer way. Yesterday I found gold. Struck hit rich, you might say.”
From a moose-hide sack he tumbled a handful of nuggets.

“Gold!” Blackie exclaimed.

“Yup. Hit’s might nigh pure gold,” the old man agreed. “Nuther thing
that’s plumb quare. Hit’s nigh onto that little blue bear’s den.”

“What?” Lawrence started up. “A blue bear! A—a glacier bear?”

“Reckon you might call ’em that,” the old man agreed.

“He’s been a-stayin’ in a sort of cave up thar fer a right smart spell.”

“How—how far is it?” Lawrence asked almost in a whisper.

“Hit—I reckon hit’s—” the old man studied for a moment. “Why, hit’s right
about three peaks, a look an’ a right smart.”

“What does that mean?” Blackie asked in a surprised tone.

“Wall, you jest climb one of them thar least mounting peaks,” the old man
explained. “Then another, an’ another.”

“Three peaks,” said Blackie.

“Fer startin’,” said Smokey Joe. “Arter that you take a look an’ hit’s a
right smart furder than you can see.”

“Perhaps about ten miles,” suggested Blackie after they had had a good
laugh, which Smokey Joe took good-naturedly.

“Near on to that,” the old man agreed.

Long after the old man had rolled himself in his blankets and fallen
asleep Lawrence and Blackie sat beside the cracked stove talking.

“Blackie,” Lawrence said in a husky voice, “that little blue bear is
worth a lot of money. The Professor told us he’d trade us a tractor for
one. They’re rare, about the rarest animals on earth. There’s not one in
captivity anywhere.”

“That won’t help much,” Blackie grumbled. “If this wind goes down, we’ve
got to get out of here at dawn. Something’s happened to Johnny and
MacGregor. We’ve got to look for them.”

“Yes,” Lawrence agreed. “But if the wind doesn’t go down?”

“We’ll have to stay here,” said Blackie. “And,” with a low chuckle, “we
might go ‘three peaks, a look and a right smart’ looking for your
blue-eyed bear.”




                              CHAPTER XXII
                                 DREAMS


“Johnny,” Rusty’s voice was low, husky with strangely mingled emotions,
“when we are back at the cottage, I’ll make a big pan of ice-box cookies.
We’ll take them with a big bottle of hot cocoa. We’ll go out on a sunny
rock and have a feast.” They were still on the deck of the rolling ship
and it was still night.

Rusty’s voice rose. “And such sunshine! Nowhere in the world is it so
glorious.”

“All right,” Johnny agreed. “Ice-box cookies, hot chocolate and sunshine.
That will be keen.”

“Dreams,” he was thinking. “How often when things are hard, very hard, we
dream.” As he closed his eyes now he could see dead salmon in endless
rows. He could hear the monotonous drone of brown men and the endless
wash-wash of the sea. “How grand at times to dream of other things far
away!” he said. “And what a joy to know of other places where we have
been gloriously happy.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “that is wonderful. And Johnny,” she went on, “we have
a home in Seattle, father and I. It is small, but, oh, so beautiful!
Climbing roses and pine trees. There’s a lake before it. There is a
dancing pavilion not far away where the boys and girls I know best come.
There they swing and sway to bewitching waltz time. _Over the Waves_,
_Blue Danube_ and all the rest. Johnny, will you come sometime and join
us there?” Her voice seemed dreamy and far away.

“Yes,” said Johnny. “Some day I’ll come.”

“But first,” he thought savagely, “I’ll see this infernal boat at the
bottom of the sea.”

For a time after that they were silent. Once again they heard the beating
of ropes against spars, the wail of the wind and the dash of spray on the
deck. How was all this to end?

“Rusty,” Johnny said, “I would like to leave you for a while.”

“Why?”

“There’s something I want to do. You know,” he leaned close, speaking in
a hoarse whisper, “there’s a hole in the gas tank of your boat.”

“Yes, but—”

“We may get a break. Your boat was put on deck after two others. That
means they’ll have to put her in the water before taking the others off.
If there was gas in her tank we might slip down to her and get away.”

“But the gas, Johnny?”

“There are two large cans in another boat. I saw them. I—I’m going to
plug up that hole in your tank, then try to fill it from the cans.”

“They—they may catch you.” Her voice trembled.

“I’ll take a chance.” He rose without a sound. “I’m off. If I don’t come
back, tell good old MacGregor.”

“I—I’ll tell him.” Her whisper was lost in the wind. He was gone.

Creeping along the swaying deck, dodging behind a lifeboat when the watch
appeared, scooting forward, then pausing to listen, he at last reached
the side of the _Krazy Kat_.

After securing the cans of gasoline, he lifted them to the deck of
Rusty’s small boat. Then, with a deft swing, he threw himself after the
cans. The deck was wet with fog. Slipping, he went down in a heap, but
made no sound.

Feeling about in the dark, he found the tank and the leak. A sharpened
splinter of wood stopped the hole.

“Now the gas,” he whispered. This he knew would be most dangerous of all.
Cans have a way of gurgling and popping in an alarming manner. The
gurgle, he concluded, would not matter. It would not be heard above the
roar of the wind and the wash of the sea. But the tinny bangs? Ah, well,
he’d have to risk it.

When one can was emptied into the _Krazy Kat’s_ tank, he heaved a sigh of
relief. The second was half-emptied when he caught the sound of
footsteps.

“The watch!” Consternation seized him. Flattening himself on the deck, he
clung to the still gurgling can.

The sound of footsteps ceased. His heart pounded. Was he caught? Seconds
seemed minutes. If the can popped he was lost. Ten seconds, twenty,
thirty—again the footsteps. Then they grew indistinct in the distance.

“Ah,” the boy breathed.

Just then the all but empty can gave forth a loud bang!

Johnny jumped, then lay flat, listening with all his ears. For at least
two full minutes he remained there motionless. The watch did not return.

With great care he lifted the empty cans from the deck of the _Krazy Kat_
to toss them into the foaming sea. Then, stealthily as before, he made
his way back to Rusty’s side.

“I—I did it,” he shrilled. “Now for a good break and we’re away.”

“Here—here’s hoping.” She drew her hand from beneath the blankets to grip
his own.

“MacGregor, what do you think they’ll do to me?” Johnny asked an hour
later. The storm had partially subsided. Rusty was feeling better. They
were back in their staterooms. Johnny had told the old man of the night’s
adventure.

“It’s my opinion,” said MacGregor, “that you’ll be shot at sunrise.”

“That won’t be so bad,” said Johnny, joining in the joke.

“Not half-bad,” MacGregor agreed. “I mind an Eskimo we shot up there in
the far north. He’d killed a white man. The revenue cutter came along an’
the judge tried him.

“When the judge’s decision had been arrived at, they told this Eskimo to
stand up.

“Well, sir, he stood there stiff an’ straight as any soldier. He was sure
he had been condemned to die and that he was to be shot. They’re a sturdy
lot, those Eskimos.

“Well,” MacGregor paused to laugh. “They set a thing up an’ aimed it at
the Eskimo. Something clicked. The Eskimo blinked. But nothin’ else
happened.

“The white men folded things up and left. But the Eskimo still stood
there, not knowin’, I suppose, whether he was dead or alive.

“Know what happened?” he concluded. “He’d been found innocent and they
had taken his picture.

“For all I know,” he added, “he’s livin’ still an’ so’ll you be, me boy,
forty years from today.

“What can they do?” he demanded. “They don’t dare harm us.”

“I wouldn’t trust them too far,” said Johnny.

“Nor I,” Rusty agreed.




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                        IN THE BLUE BEAR’S CAVE


It was with a feeling of great uneasiness that Johnny came on deck next
morning. What was to happen? Had that little brown man told the story of
their struggle in the night? And if he had? He shuddered.

Yet, strange to say, the day wore on in perfect peace. They were not even
asked to go below and clean fish. The reason for this was apparent, the
fish on deck had been taken care of. Since the storm was still roaring
across the sea, no others could be brought in. During the forenoon two
small, motor-driven crafts came close to stand by.

“They belong to this outfit,” MacGregor declared. “They may have salmon
below-deck. They’re afraid of the storm. That’s why they don’t come in.

“Ah, well,” he sighed. “We’re here for the day at least. Even if your
_Krazy Kat_ was in the water, Rusty, we couldn’t risk her in a storm like
this.”

“These Orientals are a queer lot,” Johnny mused.

“Queer’s no name for it, me boy,” said MacGregor. “As for me, I don’t
trust ’em. They’re like children, just when they’re makin’ the least
noise is when you’re sure they’re up to some mischief.”

Was this true? Johnny shuddered anew, but said never a word.

They discovered during their lunch in their stateroom at noon that there
was something vaguely familiar about the brown boy who brought the lunch.
Johnny stared at him. But Rusty exclaimed in a whisper, “Kopkina! You
here?”

The boy made a motion for silence. “I am spy,” he whispered. “Red McGee
good man. Me, I, Red McGee man.

“You listen,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I tell ’em, that one
captain this ship, tell ’em you Red McGee boy.” He nodded to Rusty. “Tell
’em Red McGee mebby plenty mad. Plenty ’fraid Red McGee. They not punish
you for fight on deck last night. Must go now.” He disappeared through
the door.

“Boy!” Johnny breathed. “I’m feeling better already.”

Two hours later they had added cause for feeling better. Just when the
sea was beginning to calm a little they caught the drum of a motor. As
Johnny heard it his heart stood still, then leaped.

“A motor,” he breathed. “That’s a powerful motor. If only it’s Dan
MacMillan and his seaplane.”

“It is! It is!” Rusty’s voice rose to a high pitch. “There! There it is.
See!”

Johnny did see. He pointed it out to MacGregor. They all leaned on the
rail watching the seaplane approach.

“If it’s only Dan,” MacGregor breathed.

There came the sound of rushing feet. Apparently every little brown man
on the boat had heard those motors. They came swarming onto the deck.

“If it’s Dan MacMillan,” said MacGregor, “there’s sure to be someone with
him.”

“They’ll be looking for us,” said Rusty.

“Yes, and we’ll have to find a way to let them know we’re here,” Johnny
added.

“That,” said MacGregor, “is going to be hard, with all these.” His glance
swept the brown throng.

“Tell you what!” Johnny exclaimed. “Rusty and I might do a little boxing
bout. There’s sure to be someone on the plane who knows us.”

“And they’ll recognize you by your actions,” MacGregor agreed. “It’s a
capital idea. I’ll go for the gloves.”

And so it happened that, as the seaplane flew over the ship, circled,
then dipping low, passed within a hundred feet, those in it witnessed a
strange sight—two white youngsters staging a boxing match for the benefit
of a host of little brown men, who, truth to tell, gave them scant
attention.

“I only hope they recognized us,” said Johnny, throwing his gloves on the
deck.

“You and me too,” said Rusty. “Anyway,” she laughed, “that’s one time I
didn’t knock you out.”

Whatever impression this little drama may have made upon the occupants of
the seaplane, the effect of the appearance of the seaplane on the little
brown men was apparent at once. On every face as the seaplane went
winging away MacGregor read consternation.

“They’re afraid,” he grumbled low to his young companions. “Down deep in
their hearts they are afraid.”

“What will they do now?” Rusty asked anxiously.

“They’re already doin’ it,” said MacGregor, calling attention to the rush
and bustle on board. “Puttin’ the ship in shape. It wouldn’t surprise me
if they weighed anchor within the hour. And if they do, me lassie,” he
added, “you may be lookin’ on them Oriental cities within a week, for
they’ll be headin’ straight for home.”

“Oh-o,” Rusty breathed. But she said never a word.


On that same morning in Smokey Joe’s cabin Lawrence was up before the wee
small hours had passed. After one good look at the sea, which was still
rolling high, he dashed back into the cabin to find Blackie staring at
him wide awake.

“Black-Blackie,” he stammered. “I—I hate to disturb you. But—but that
blue bear—”

“I know.” Blackie sat up. “Three peaks, a look and a right smart ho,
hum.”

“Blackie! It’s terribly important. Just think! A little blue bear. The
only one in captivity, if we get him.”

“I know.” Blackie slid out of his bunk. “Get the fire going. Put the
coffee pot on. We’ll be off in a half hour.”

“Oh, think—”

“Put the coffee on!” Blackie roared.

After tacking an old shirt to a pole as a signal of distress to any boat
that might pass and instructing Smokey Joe to be on the lookout, Blackie
drew a rough map, showing where, according to Smokey’s direction, the
bear’s cave might be found. After that he led the way over the first
“peak.”

These peaks were, they discovered, mere ridges. The distance was, in
reality, much shorter than they had thought.

“This is the place,” Lawrence said, an hour and a half later. “It must
be.”

“It is,” Blackie agreed. “There are the two scrub spruce trees with
Smokey’s blaze on them.”

“And there’s the cave!” Lawrence was greatly excited.

“Not much of a cave,” said Blackie. “Might be quite some bear at that.
Wait.”

With a small hatchet he hacked away at a dry spruce knot until he had a
pitch-filled torch. This, with the aid of some dry shavings, he lighted.

“Now,” he breathed. “Give me one of the ropes. We’ll have to manage to
tangle him up somehow. I’ll lead the way.”

“Al-all right,” Lawrence’s tongue was dry.

The floor of the dark grotto was strewn with pebbles. To walk without
making a noise was impossible.

“Wait! Listen!” Lawrence whispered when they had covered some twenty
paces.

As they paused, they caught a low hissing sound.

“Snakes,” the boy suggested.

“Not here. Too cold. It’s the bear. Get your rope ready.”

Slowly, cautiously they moved forward.

“There! There are his eyes.” Two balls of fire appeared directly before
them.

And then things began to happen. A low snarl was followed by the sound of
scattered pebbles. Blackie was hit by the rushing bear and bowled over
like a ten pin. But Lawrence, quick as a cat, saw a hairy head, aimed a
short swing and let go his rope.

Next instant he was shouting: “Blackie! Quick! Help! I got him! I got
him!”

The husky little blue bear dragged them both to the very entrance of the
cave. There, panting and tearing at the rope, he paused to glare at them.
The rope was drawn tight about his shoulders with one foreleg through the
loop.

Blackie, who was both fast and strong, made quick work of what remained
to be done. Fifteen minutes later, carrying the live bear slung between
them on a pole, they headed for the cabin.

To their great joy, as they neared the cabin, they saw one of Red McGee’s
gill-net boats awaiting them in the little bay. Smokey Joe had flagged it
down.

After a hasty, “Thank you and goodbye” to Smokey, they tossed their
priceless captive into the after cabin of the stout, little motor-boat to
head straight away over a rolling sea toward still more adventure, of
quite a different nature.




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                          OVERTAKING A SHADOW


Once again it was night. The wind had gone down with the sun. The sea was
calm. On board the Oriental ship there was a strained air of tense
expectancy.

“I can’t understand what’s keepin’ ’em here,” MacGregor said in a low
tone to his young companions. “It’s plain that they’re scared stiff of
that seaplane. Looks like they’d heave anchor and be away any minute. And
if they do—” There was no need to finish. Both Johnny and Rusty knew that
this would mean a trip to the Orient under circumstances stranger than
any fiction.

“They seem to be waiting for something,” said Johnny.

This was true. All the little brown men not stationed at posts of duty
were standing along the rail looking away toward the distant shores that
were lost in the night.

“They’ll be back,” MacGregor said, thinking of the men on the seaplane.
“Looks like it’s a race against time. But what are they waiting for?”

It was not long until they should know. As they stood there, nerves
a-tingle, listening, a distant confusion of noises came to them.

“If there were a war,” said MacGregor, “I’d say it was rifle and
machine-gun fire.”

This notion was too fantastic to be seriously considered. But what was
it?

Second by second the sound increased in volume. “Can this be what they’re
looking for?” Johnny asked.

If so, these little men welcomed it in a strange manner. Short, sharp
commands were given. Scores of men went into frenzied action.

“Look!” Rusty gripped Johnny’s arm. “They’re lowering my boat into the
water.”

“And it’s got gas in the tank. All ready to turn over and start. If
only—”

“That’s motors we’re hearin’,” MacGregor broke in. “A thunderin’ lot of
’em! I shouldn’t wonder—”

“MacGregor,” Rusty seized his arm, “our boat is in the water. They are
all crowding the rail again. This may be our chance.”

“So it may,” the old man agreed. “Follow me. Not a sound!”

“I’ll get Kopkina,” offered Johnny. “I just saw him on deck.”

Dodging behind a life-raft Rusty and MacGregor went scurrying along in
the dark and Johnny and Kopkina soon joined them.

“It—it’s just here,” Rusty whispered.

“We—we need a rope ladder,” Johnny exclaimed low.

“Here’s one,” came in MacGregor’s cheering voice. “Let her over easy
now.”

“Now,” he breathed. “Over you go.”

The speed with which they went down that ladder, all but treading on one
another’s fingers, would have done credit to the U. S. Navy.

“Now I’ll cut her loose,” said MacGregor. “All right, Rusty, turn her
over.”

The fly-wheel whirled. The splendid motor began a low put-put-put. They
were away into the dark.

“They’d have trouble findin’ us,” MacGregor murmured.

“But listen!” Johnny exclaimed.

The sound of many motors had doubled and redoubled. Just as they were
about to swing around the prow of the ship, something long, dark and
silent shot past them.

“The Shadow!” Johnny exclaimed.

It was true, this was the Shadow. But at last the Shadow was not going to
escape. After it thundered a powerful speedboat and as she shot past them
the excited trio saw a burst of flames and caught the rat-tat-tat of a
machine gun.

This was followed instantly by a wild scream from the Shadow which
sounded very much like a sign of surrender. At the same time the sea
seemed fairly ablaze with lights from many boats.

Johnny’s head was in a whirl. What was happening? Without knowing why she
did it, Rusty seized him by the arm and held him tight while she
screamed, “Johnny! It’s wonderful! Wonderful!”

What had happened may be quickly told. When Blackie and his crew failed
to return, and Rusty as well, there had been consternation about the
cannery. There was little use searching Bristol Bay in a fog. When,
however, Dan MacMillan appeared in his seaplane, they went into action.
Red McGee climbed into the cockpit and they were away. They had circled
for an hour when they sighted the Oriental ship.

As they flew over it Red McGee experienced no difficulty in getting the
unusual signals Johnny and Rusty had set up for him. He recognized the
boxing forms of both Rusty and Johnny.

Realizing that his daughter would be on board that ship only against her
will, he went into a wild rage. He demanded that the seaplane be landed
close to the ship and that he be allowed to “tackle the whole lot of ’em
single-handed.”

To this young MacMillan, would not consent; for, in the first place, the
sea was too rough for a landing and in the second, he was not willing as
he later expressed it, “To see a good man commit suicide by tackling a
hundred Orientals single-handed.”

He had flown back to their base. By the time they reached the cannery,
Red had cooled off.

“I want every last boat gassed up for an emergency run,” he commanded.
“Any of you men that have guns, get ’em loaded and ready. There’s a
couple o’ whale-guns up at my cabin. You, Pete and Dan, get ’em an’ see
that they’re loaded. We’ll show ’em.”

They were about ready for a start when Blackie and his men arrived on the
scene.

“Blackie,” Red exploded, “they’ve got Rusty and your boy, Johnny. They’re
holdin’ ’em captive. Come on! We’ll start a war!”

For once, Blackie did not say, “No.” After they had turned the small,
blue bear loose in a sheet-metal tool-shed he climbed into Dan
MacMillan’s speed boat, dragging Red and Lawrence with him, and they were
away.

It was this speedboat that had spied the Shadow. They had given it chase
and had, as you have seen, at last, after sending a volley of machine-gun
bullets across its bow, overhauled it.

The Shadow was the very craft that had been awaited by the Oriental ship.
Had it put in an appearance two hours sooner, the ship must surely have
weighed anchor and our story might have been much longer. As it was, the
Orientals were destined to wait a long, long time before lifting the
Shadow on deck, if at all.

While Johnny and Rusty looked and listened, the whole cannery fleet,
every small deck bristling with guns, surrounded the ship.

Having overhauled the Shadow, Blackie placed it in charge of another
craft, then came gliding in alongside the _Krazy Kat_.

“MacGregor,” he said in a husky voice, “tell me what happened.” MacGregor
told him. Hardly had he finished when a small motor launch carrying three
little brown officers arrived. The officers were fairly aglow with gold
and braid.

“A thousand pardons,” their leader began. He was allowed to go no
farther.

“Listen!” Blackie stood up. He was dressed in corduroy trousers and a
leather jacket. His face was working strangely.

“Listen,” he repeated. “No apologies, not a thousand, nor even one. I’ll
do the talking.” His voice was low. “I know why you’re here. To catch our
fish. You sank our boat. You have an hour to get your ship headed out of
Bristol Bay. We’ll take that Shadow of yours with us. We caught her
lifting nets inside the three-mile limit. That makes her a fair prize.

“As to the sinking of the _Stormy Petrel_, I shall make a complete
report. The matter shall be taken up by our diplomats.

“I might add, for your further information, that a law is now before our
Congress making Bristol Bay United States waters, open to our fishermen
alone. It will pass. If you care to come back next year we will meet you
with three destroyers.

“And now, gentlemen,” he doffed a ragged cap, “I bid you good-night.”

Clicking their heels, without a single apology, the officers saluted,
then the power boat lost itself in the shadows.




                              CHAPTER XXV
                             “BILL” RETURNS


“Rusty, my child,” said Red McGee, springing aboard the _Krazy Kat_ as
soon as the Orientals were gone, “are you all right?”

“Never better,” Rusty laughed. “And never half so excited. I—I’m all
right,” she added, “except that I’ll have to grow a new crop of curls.”

“Curls,” Red chuckled. “They’re not very necessary. Not even for a girl.

“Going back with us in the speed boat?” he asked.

“No-o, if you don’t mind,” she hesitated. “We’ve been together so long,
the three of us, MacGregor, Johnny, and I, that I—I think we’d like to
follow you back in the _Krazy Kat_.”

“O.K.,” Red agreed. “Kopkina, suppose you come with me. I want to thank
you for what you’ve done for us. Now let’s get going.”

Already the Oriental ship that had never been welcome was slipping out
into the night.

On the way back Johnny and Rusty spent most of their time studying the
stars and the moon. Just what they read there only they will ever know.

The secret of the Shadow was found to be quite simple, as most secrets
are. It was a long, low craft without deck, cabins, rails or riggings.
Powered by large storage batteries, it was able to slip in close to
shore, set a three-mile-long net at night and lift it in the morning. The
fish were rushed to other motor-boats outside the three-mile zone and
were then carried to the floating cannery.

After installing a gasoline motor, Blackie used the Shadow for sea
patrol. No demand for the return of the craft was made. Needless to say,
the duties of Blackie, MacGregor, Johnny and Lawrence were exceedingly
light for the remainder of the season.

The small blue bear throve on fish-cleanings and other scraps. He was fat
and friendly when at last the boys headed for Seward and Matanuska
Valley. At Seward they left him in the care of a friend until they could
come in a small truck and cart him home.

At the cabin in the valley Johnny and Lawrence were given an uproarious
welcome.

One thing surprised them—the Professor was back. “I am waiting for Bill,”
he explained.

“Bill! Who’s he?” Lawrence asked. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “He’s the man who
built the shelter and left a note saying he was coming back. Let me see—”

“Today,” said the Professor. “And here he is now.” A smiling young giant
with a full red beard came tramping down the road.

“Bill, did you get one?” the Professor demanded.

“No,” Bill’s smile faded. “I did my best. I got the head and hide of one,
that’s all. Had to kill him, or lose him. I—I’m sorry.”

“A whole year,” the Professor groaned. “And never a bear.”

“A bear!” Johnny exclaimed. “Surely there are bears a-plenty.”

“Not that kind,” the Professor corrected. “I want the kind we talked
about once, a glacier bear. Nothing else counts.”

“Oh, a glacier bear!” Lawrence laughed happily. “Is that all you want? I
have one coming up on a truck from Seward. It should be here any time.”

“Just like that!” Bill dropped weakly down upon a stump. “A whole year.
Ice, snow, blizzards, glaciers, hunger, a whole year. Never a bear. And
now this boy calmly says, ‘I’ve got one coming up.’”

“Such,” said the professor, “is the luck of the chase.”

There was time for Bill to satisfy his craving for a “real feed.” Then
the truck arrived.

The Professor and Bill gave one look at the little blue glacier bear.
Then, for sheer joy, they fell into each other’s arms.

“What do you want for him?” the Professor demanded at last.

“A tractor,” said Lawrence.

“The best in the settlement!”

“The Titan.”

“Agreed and for good measure, a gang plow, a harrow, two drums of gas and
three log chains.”

Lawrence could not say a word. He could only stand and stare. All his
dreams had come true in a moment.

“I only wish we might do better,” the Professor half apologized. “But
we’ve spent a great deal of money in the search. So-o, I—”

“I think,” said Lawrence, “that you’re a very good sport. And—and we
thank you.”

Three days later Johnny and Lawrence were in Seward for a day with
Blackie when a trim power boat glided up to the dock.

“Hello, Johnny!” came in a girl’s voice. It was Rusty.

“Come on down to Seattle with us,” Red McGee boomed.

“We’ll show you a roarin’ good time, just to celebrate the finest salmon
season ever known.”

“What do you say?” Johnny turned to Lawrence.

“You go,” said Lawrence. “I’m a farmer now. I’ve got to stay with my
crops, and I’m anxious to get started with the new tractor.”

Johnny went. If there were further adventures awaiting him at the end of
that short journey you may find them recorded in a book called, _Sign of
the Green Arrow_.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
  is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
  dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML
  version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)

--Marked with ellipses the end of page 129, where the printed edition
  apparently dropped a page or two from the manuscript.