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Show W By ARTHUR STRINGER WsL The young Eskimo woman found it hard to explain. "Um a ghost "plTne" ,. io FAR: V" he j Mini op " wmetlllBf' 'Si sit prtner-K,in,en .ver look lor th. 'Tol Uie trumpeter swan, .ttem -ell Ctner. Crujer. to buy a $TelP K"d nt competition ot the Be orrie.vln,. Alan ti. daushter of th. "fly. Caf i- treatment to samed Slim Tumitead ' Tumitead knows about J .bout Frayne's Mpedl-1, Mpedl-1, sight th. ,,J" ,iked man who heads ae " slade' , ,a, and they spend 1 tibia ol his prospector w Minty, where Slade acne. Frayne shows no w (old or pitchblende, the . aueovered source of now-' now-' next mornlns, when , is the air only a short eciae, to land and stay UttluM Instead ol foinf Now, while Alan Is on (nd her lather are Lts on Umanak a blind i hope ol restoring hit IU Just suggested that ,(h Alan and have him pUei they need lor the op- ft)i the story. IAPTER Vin the radio searched the the whereabouts of Alan ,bandoned Iviuk Inlet ad been taken over as :y hospital. It had been d disinfected and fitted emsde operating table ent itand. ii from the sea front ip the slope to its rough-Is. rough-Is. to tell herself that it )t man with the Viking was waiting. jjtubbornly contended, it ilan she was waiting. It se needed supplies he ; in to them. jhts, a moment later, r things. She crossed jfconvinced that she had lint and far-off hum of She scanned the gray- I searched the long line tinted horizon above muskeg fields. But all i was an arrowhead of pinging silently north-till north-till at the door when that Kogaluk was lead-r.ak lead-r.ak through the topek-ti topek-ti her. f um?" Kogaluk surly sur-ly asking. It?" questioned the girl, iarching the horizon, janak who answered, (bird that comes from 1 go nowhere. I hear lo days now." a he mean?" Lynn in-I in-I slant-eyed Kogaluk. hi Eskimo woman lard to explain, vane, a ghost plane," asserted. lather can't see," Lynn j said Umanak. "But ages. "I shouldn't be here. But 1 knew you needed this stuff." The Flying Padre's smile was an understanding one. "Yes, Lynn's waiting for it," he casually observed. He also observed ob-served that a little of the shadow went from the Viking blue eyes. "Then she's here?" he asked. The Padre nodded. "She'll be anchored here for a couple of weeks with an eye case. But she's been worrying about you." , The gaze of the two men locked for a moment. Slade was the first to emerge from that moment ot abstraction. "I caught up this mail for you at Yellowknife," he said as he handed letters and papers to the older man. Slade's eyes rested on that older man, bareheaded and gaunt in the revealing arctic sunlight, as the letters let-ters were examined. Lynn was right; her father was not so young as be had once been. Yet if there was any inner weariness there it was masked by a quick decisiveness decisive-ness of movement that spoke of a mind still active and a will still strong. "These are for Lynn," the Flying Fly-ing Padre was saying as he inspected inspect-ed two bulky envelopes embossed with English stamps. "They've come a long way," observed ob-served Slade. , "Yes, from Barrett He's at Al-dershot Al-dershot now." Slade felt a little of the warmth go out of the sunlight "And these are the drugs and things," he explained as they mounted mount-ed the knoll to the plain-boarded little surgery. Slade pushed through the cluster of natives about the door, disturbed by the quicker pounding of his heart Then he saw Lynn, all in white. She was boiling something in a test tube, over an alcohol lamp. "Here's Alan," announced her father. fa-ther. "He's brought you two letters from Barrett." She took the letters, not unconscious uncon-scious that two pair of questioning eyes were resting on her. But her "But who could have done it?" questioned Lynn. "It's such empty country." "That's what I intend to find out" Slade told her with determination. Lynn stood upright, fixed by the sudden thought of the ghost plane. But before that thought was put into words the Flying Padre appeared ap-peared in his pontifical-looking surgical sur-gical gown. "If you've time to sit In on this," he said with one eye on the flyer and one on his waiting instruments, "you can wash up and help. It's a rather interesting bit of work." "Will the old boy see again?" "That's what we're counting on," said the man of medicine. "But Umanak speaks a little English, remember." re-member." "Me see the devil-bird that go nowhere no-where after you make eyes good," proclaimed the patient. There was sureness in the delicate movements of the doctor's fingers, but Slade couldn't rid his mind of the thought that one small slip might mean disaster. One wrong move could mean blindness for life. He was glad when the bandages were about the swarthy-skinned old face, concealing what had been done to it "Is that all you do?" Slade inquired. in-quired. He tried to make the question ques-tion seem a casual one. But be found himself touched by a new respect re-spect for a calling which he had so recently been tempted to disparage. dis-parage. 'That's all we can do," said the Flying Padre, "for the present But Lynn is going to stay on and look after Umanak. I've a couple of meningitis men-ingitis cases at Cape Morrow that mustn't be neglected." "And he'll be able to see again?" persisted the skeptic-minded layman. lay-man. "Of course he'll see again," was Lynn's low-noted reply as she tucked a warmed four-pointer about her patient. pa-tient. "Me see devil-bird that go nowhere," no-where," murmured Umanak. Slade stood suddenly arrested by those murmured words. He knew well enough what a devil-bird was to gaze remained abstracted as she glanced at the bulky envelopes and placed them on the window sill. "They'll have to wait," she said. Then her face lost its abstraction as she smiled up at Slade. "And you've got our supplies," she cried with a note of relief that brought no particular par-ticular Joy to the bush pilot bearing bear-ing them. "That means we can get busy," the Flying Padre proclaimed. Slade's frown deepened as he stood watching the nondescript line of Innuits that formed outside the door of their improvised surgery. "When is this bread line of the Igloos over?" he asked. "Why?" asked the busy nurse. ' "Because I rather wanted to talk to you," asserted the flyer, touched with a feeling of jealousy at the renewed re-newed discovery of how this white-clad white-clad reliever of pain could remain so immersed in her work. Then, for a moment, she emerged from the shell. He saw, or thought he saw. a fleeting look of hunger in her eyes. But that look vanished as the Flying Padre called out: "Is Umanak ready?" "Not yet," she answered. "Don't you think it's rather worth while?" Lynn questioned. "I suppose so, trouble-shooter, he responded lightly. It was worth something to be there at her side. "Then you can help me scrub up old Umanak," Lynn said with a smile. "Dad's going to do that cat-aractemy cat-aractemy on him this morning And something tells me it's the first hot-water hot-water bath he ever had. "We'll probably have to hold him down," said Slade. But Umanak. to their surprise, was not averse to his bath. "Um good." he murmured. "What kept you late?" Lynn asked as she toweled her pater dry and preceded to robe him in flannelette pajamas that were much too long for him. "Then you were waiting for me? he challenged. There was a tinge of hope in his voice. -For our supplies." was her re- SP"ISbad to swing back to Jackpine Point to refuel." Slade n to , slightly hardened voice. eas thief loose somewhere in this dis-Sct dis-Sct My cache at Wolf Lake was cleaned out" ar um two, three days f dn't just melt away," a "It must have gone i braided head nodded fssent h Echo Harbor," she TUt harbor on sea, full Echo Harbor taboo ) could it do there?" I'nak who answered, i have good eyes him afraid devil voices." s sturdy old shoulders. 1 tte last time you ) heard this ghost i the young white J were, she knew, s 'way from any pos-s. pos-s. m today," said Uma- wid it with convic- some thuught to this. Wing to persuade her-twedulous her-twedulous and child- were merely fabri-J3 fabri-J3 out of something I oull be quickly re-pmmonplace. re-pmmonplace. she stood there she lmanak stiffen in his fn now," was his 1 triumph. apparently, was if othei-s For when forward, with strain-lC?.Uld strain-lC?.Uld he nothing. f1' repented the old regarded his cry. For w wandered back Jie southern skyline tori." ,SmaU 8peck i J. as she watched. ! ghost Piane Uma. 'Thafs Alan Slade fBaU Baby and the pDee waiting for." ' s i Waitin8 at the ?ade came ashore. ise of strain nj?" Promptly ques- said Slade. Lockheed." . ffkeame grim. l'veto find out" I 011 armful of pack- a native. "What does he mean by that?" "He keeps saying he can hear a ghost plane, a devil-bird that comes and goes along the coast-line," Lynn explained. "And his daughter Kogaluk Kog-aluk claims she's seen it flying low between here and Echo Harbor." It was Dr. Morlock who spoke next "I suppose," he said as he checked over instruments and bottles bot-tles and stowed them' away in his abraded bag. "you'll be heading south tomorrow?" Slade crossed to the window and looked out along the empty and interminable in-terminable skyline. "No," he said, "I'm not going south tomorrow." "What are you going to do? asked Lynn, startled by the grim-ness grim-ness of his face. "I think I'll look into this devil-bird devil-bird business," he said as his narrowed nar-rowed gaze rested on the horizon. For just above that horizon he caught sight of a small and ghost-Uke ghost-Uke gnat of silver winging its resolute reso-lute way southward above the dark Une of the muskeg country. It looked as insubstantial as a soap bubble. But Slade, as the silver fleck Anally vanished, told himself that he knew a plane when he saw one. "Where'U that take you?" the Flying Fly-ing Padre was asking. "I don't know yet," said Slade. "But I've an idea it'll end up somewhere some-where along the Anawotto " "I'll go down to the plane with you," she said as she joined Slade in the doorway. When she returned to the knoll-tno knoll-tno surgery, a few minutes later, S watog father detected both . new light in ber eyes and a deeper line of thought between her hrows She had the look of a woman wom-an who had been kissed and, hav-"g hav-"g been kissed, found the world a different shape. The Padre's own face took on a deeper line of thought "How about Alan? instead of answering.' Lynn ,rossed to the window. There, aft-!iance aft-!iance out over the empty rock ridge's! ! she Z up the two letter, frltSHSlt Barrett has to say;' she observed with a forced casualness. (TO BE COSTIMED) |