Show vuU By ARTHUR STRINGER THE STORY SO In order to ATI Norland from bankruptcy Alan Blade agrees to fly a to-called named Frayne and hit to the la search of the trumpeter With the proceeds Blade's has bought a a which Is stolen while Slade is Suspecting that the disappearance of the plane has something to do with Slade re tarns to where he left the only to find him doing nothing bat hunt There Is no trace of the That leaves Slade with only one the or plane which the first heard and which appears to come from Echo On his way back to report to Cruger Slade stops to see his old prospector Zeke and and learns that the gas cache he keeps near their cabin has been Now ho and Cruger are talking and Slade Is outlining his Now with the CHAPTER XI Slade's first impulse was to proclaim that he'd be looking for a ghost Cruger said out of a prolonged Give that country the We're going bust the way things Slade's lips thinned with going to find that he Cruger remained do you he Slade disregarded the note of soon as I have a look around this was his slightly abstracted then a look around find a friend of was Slade's unexpected got hurt in a fight Slim didn't think you played around with camp said your fighting friend got to do with this trip into the don't know was Slade's quiet-voiced it's going to help a little to know just where he's hanging The cabin on the nestling between its shouldering stood a place of peace as the mounted high above the spruce ridges and the spoonbills and fed in the water But that air of peace departed once Zeke Pratt had rolled out of his wall bunk and reached for his scarred old From one of he a lace was most unmistakably He squinted about the floor Then he groped and grunted about under the bunk Then his narrowing gaze centered on his whose smile was bland as he busied himself slicing sowbelly for took my you old was Zeke's Indignant I want with your demanded edging away until he stood at the far side of the wanted it enough to swipe it from this-here charged He dropped down on all fours to inspect his companion's she's wrapped around your scrofulous old piped back that lace or know what I'll I'll call it quits for I don't aim to do work with a human polecat who robs a camp-mate in his I'm sure fed up with to live peaceful under the same roof with a rattlesnake in But by the time they had the hurricane had blown itself They were forlornly dependent on each In their and they knew it I like to see ventured Minty as he hung up the flour sack that served as a toweL you finish up the on that new dike while I go for a day or you scout demanded secretly disturbed by the thought of being a buck out by that old caribou said I'll go after He he a second reason for that excursion out over the northern He had a hankering to nose about a bit and find out what might be bringing an outsider's plane Into that district of was too good a woodsman not to spot his landmarks and blaze an occasional spruce or as he pushed deeper and deeper Into the broken country north of the He went hour after silent encouraged by a showing of deer tracks and But he got no glimpse of his What most occupied his as the sun lowered and weariness overtook was the problem of finding a comfortable place to make And he had the needed wood and he when he came to a loon-haunted lake lightly fringed with He stoically made his cooked his and ate his bannock and washed down with strong lighting his he sat watching the wild fowl on the lake To the silent a moment came a sound that was neither a throb nor a a far-away The hungry look was still in her But the world had come back to sound that grew stronger as he Peering where a belated sun still hung red above the he caught sight of a It was flying growing bigger as he It showed at against the evening light But as it came closer and veered a point or two Into the wind it became a framework of ghostly heeling down In the lake and slowly losing headway on the ruffled blinking at the pallid realized the ship was both bigger than Lindy Slade's Snow-Ball Baby and different in It floated higher on the and gave the impression of being as it drifted slowly in toward the shoreline where the spruce groves met the Then Minty rubbed his eyes and blinked harder than before he quite knew how or the plane had disappeared from sight who didn't believe in decided to look into what had all the aspects of a miraculous He smothered his fire and rolled up his worn old Then he took up his rifle and quietly rounded the southerly arm of the making it a point to keep as well under cover as But no sign of as he stopped from time to stood revealed to He seemed so alone in a world of twilit emptiness that he fell to as he pressed if his old eyes had been playing tricks on Then he stopped arrested by the sound of you have a fire on the other side of the one of these voices had no a more guttural voice I saw it as I came maintained the if you advertise this layout you'll last about as long here as a snowball in had no was the stubbornly repeated protest MInty's first impulse was to creep a little But on second thought he dropped behind the ridge and circled back through the scattered spruce He as he traversed the valley that led to the neighboring how the timber had been cut away to leave a rough trail that led He also as he skirted this second that its black-rocked surface was scored and seamed with shallow as though a prospector had been stripping and searching for color Minty stood thoughtful a moment and then made his way higher up the sloping hogback that terminated in an abrupt cliff end at the water's He crouched low as he for the cover thinned out as he But he could no longer hear That troubled him a little as he moved forward to the crest of the From there he could see how the lake bluff merged into a darker tangle of And that he was a man-made canopy of spruce It was an arbor-cave into which the wings of a plane could slip and lie And under the casually woven cover that arched the narrow harbor between the rock-shoulders be could make out the pallid outlines of his vanished A tingle eddied through him as he discerned a roughly made landing platform close under the plane a landing platform on which he saw a double row of ore They stood there filled and as though waiting for transport Minty's anxiety for a better view of those ore bags prompted him to move to the upper peak of the He hesitated about advancing down the open And as he hesitated a sudden blast of sound broke the He knew it was a even before he felt the force of the bullet The impact of that bullet tearing through the blanket within three Inches of his twisted his startled body halfway around and sent him tumbling along the rock He lost possession of his rifle as he felL He kept on rolling and bounding down the long slope until hJ body collided with the underbrush that fringed the valley From the ridge top he heard a triumphant voice call got But his one at the moment was to put distance between him and that unknown He crawled into the grateful for the thinning light that was paling to He wormed seeking always any deeper cover that He went on until he came to a stony cross gully quartering off to the left Once in this he scrambled to his feet and ran stooping low as he went When he spotted a spruce grove on his right he dove into emerging on a slope of glacial hardheads along which he dodged from shadow to He neither stopped nor rested until he had mounted a second ridge and lost himself in a second scattering of stunted panting and he sank down behind a ridge of But there was still he in that He pushed on through a sludgy bed of crossed another timbered and came to more open There he studied the made sure of his and began fighting his circuitous way back toward the camp on the When tired out he When the sun wakened he ate and went The second night he slept for an hour or and then pushed doggedly The sub-arctic light of morning was returning to the land when Minty reached the he was still asleep in his wall He awakened him with a shout tinged with days peace Is you old There's to be war in these Lynn was restless and For the third time in half an hour she crossed to the door and scanned the pearl misted skyline that stretched away to tho She told herself that she was merely watching for a familiar blue plane with weathered a plane with the Flying Padre at the But her as she did were on another an equally weathered plane known as the Snow-Ball Her week of watching over old had persuaded her that she was not equipped for She turned back to her patient when she saw lift his white-swathed head in an attitude of he A later Lynn herself heard the familiar bee-bum of a distant the she said as she ran to the A moment later she was hurrying down the slope to the waterfront But the long-legged figure that emerged from the cabin was not that of the Flying She brushed back her wind-blown hair to see Alan striding toward He must have caught the surge of Joy that swept up to her for he stopped abruptly and stood studying her upturned He did not But his own eyes darkened as he detected the look of hunger in the questioning hazel eyes resting on his He groped for her with his heart Then he took her in his She roused herself and her quickly breathing body free of the encircling The hungry look was still In her But time and the world had come back to is he conscious of the firmness with which she was holding him away from a patient she reminded pointing to the knoll-top Slade strode after her ai she moved up the He remembered about old is the old what I'm waiting to find Lynn looks all right hut of I can't be any time to take off the he be able to Slade mean hoping helps answered old hunter will be following a dog team again before Slade arrested her la the may be out of a Job earlier than X he BE 1 |