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Show WBy ARTHUR STRINGER w.JseL.ci t&lfr&ft THE 8TORV SO FAR: In order to ave Norland Airways from bankruptcy bank-ruptcy Alan Slade agreci to fly a so-called so-called icientlst named Frayne and tali assistant, Karnell, to the Anawotto river In search of the trumpeter swan. With the proceeds Slade's partner, Cruger, has bought a plane, a Lockheed, which Is stolen while Slade Is away. Suspecting that the disappearance of the plane has something to do with Frayne, Slade returns re-turns to where he left the swan-hunter, only to find him apparently doing nothing bnt hunt swans. There Is no trace of the plane. That leaves Slade with only one clue, the "devil bird," or "ghost" plane which the esklmo, Umanak, first heard and which appears to come from Echo Harbor. On his way back to report re-port to Cruger Slade stops to see his old prospector friends, Zeke and Mlnty, and learns that the gas cache he keeps near their cabin has been robbed. Now he and Cruger are talking and Slade Is outlining his plans. Now continue with the story. f CHAPTER XI Slade's first Impulse was to proclaim pro-claim that he'd be looking for a ghost plane. The hungry look was still in her eyes. But the world had come back to her. "All right," Cruger said out of a prolonged silence. "You win. Give that Anawotto country the once-over. We're going bust anyway, the way things are." Slade's lips thinned with resolution. resolu-tion. "I'm going to find that Lockheed," he affirmed. Cruger remained unimpressed. "When do you start?" he inquired. Slade disregarded the note of mockery. "As soon as I have a look around this burg," was his slightly abstracted abstract-ed reply. "And then a look around McMurray." "For what?" "To find a friend of mine," was Slade's unexpected reply, "who got hurt in a fight Slim Tumstead." "I didn't think you played around with camp bums," said Cruger. "What's your fighting friend got to do with this trip into the Anawotto?" "I don't know yet," was Slade's 1 quiet-voiced reply. "But it's going to help a little to know just where he's hanging out." The cabin on the Kasakana, nestling nes-tling between its shouldering hills, stood a place of peace as the sun mounted high above the spruce ridges and the spoonbills and wav-eys wav-eys fed in the water shallows. But that air of peace departed once Zeke Pratt had rolled out of his wall bunk and reached for his scarred old larrigans. From one of them, he saw, a lace was most unmistakably missing. He squinted about the floor boards. Then he groped and grunted about under the bunk end. Then his narrowing gaze centered on his camp-mate, whose smile was bland as he busied himself him-self slicing sowbelly for breakfast. "You took my shoelace, you Ju-das-souled old skillet-swabber," was Zeke's indignant accusation. "What'd I want with your shoelace?" shoe-lace?" demanded Mlnty, edging away until he stood at the far side of the cookstove. "You wanted it enough to swipe it from this-here larrigan," charged Zeke. He dropped down on all fours to inspect his companion's shoe-packs. shoe-packs. "And she's there, wrapped around your scrofulous old shin-bone." shin-bone." "She ain't," piped Minty. "You gimme back that lace o' mine, or d'you know what I'll do? I'll call It quits for keeps. I don't aim to do minin' work with a human polecat who robs a camp-mate in his sleep." "And I'm sure fed up with tryin' to live peaceful under the same roof with a rattlesnake in larrigans. '.' But by the time they had eaten, the hurricane had blown itself out. They were forlornly dependent on each other, in their isolation, and they knew it. "Meat's gittn lower'n I like to see it," ventured Minty as he hung up the flour sack that served as a towel. "S'posin' you finish up the strippin' on that new dike while I go scoutin' for a day or two." "What'll you scout for?" demanded demand-ed Zeke, secretly disturbed by the thought of being alone. "Spotted a buck out by that old caribou crossin' yesterday," said Minty. "Reckon I'll go after him." He had, he knew, a second reason for that excursion out over the northern ridges. He had a hankering hanker-ing to nose about a bit and find out what might be bringing an outsider's outsid-er's plane into that district of theirs. Mlnty was too good a woodsman not to spot his landmarks and blaze an occasional spruce or jackpine as he pushed deeper and deeper into the broken country north of the Kasakana. Kas-akana. He went on, hour after silent si-lent hour, encouraged by a showing of deer tracks and spoor. But he got no glimpse of his buck. What most occupied his mind, as the sun lowered and weariness overtook over-took him, was the problem of finding find-ing a comfortable place to make camp. And he had the needed wood and water, he discovered, when he came to a loon-haunted lake tightly fringed with spruce. He stoically made his fire, cooked his supper, and ate his bannock and bacon, washed down with strong tea. Then, lighting his pipe, he sat watching the wild fowl on the lake water. To the silent watcher, a moment later, came a sound that was neither throb nor a drone, a far away sound that grew stronger as he listened. lis-tened. Peering north, where a belated be-lated sun still hung red above the horizon, he caught sight of a plane. It was flying low, growing bigger as he watched. It showed dark, at first, against the evening light But as it came closer and veered a point or two into the wind it became a framework of ghostly white, heeling down in the lake and slowly losing headway on the ruffled water. Minty, blinking at the pallid wings, realized the ship was both bigger than Lindy Slade's Snow-Ball Baby and different in outline. It floated higher on the water, and gave the impression of being bob-tailed, bob-tailed, as it drifted slowly in toward to-ward the shoreline where the spruce groves met the water. Then Minty rubbed his eyes and blinked harder than ever. For, before be-fore he quite knew how or when, the plane had disappeared from sight Minty, who didn't believe in miracles, mira-cles, decided to look into what had all the aspects of a miraculous disappearance. dis-appearance. He smothered his fire and rolled up his worn old four-pointer. four-pointer. Then he took up his rifle and quietly rounded the southerly arm of the lake, making it a point to keep as well under cover as possible. But no sign of life, as he stopped from time to time, stood revealed to him. He seemed so alone in a world of twilit emptiness that he fell to wondering, as he pressed on, if his old eyes had been playing tricks on him. Then he stopped short, arrested, by the sound of voices. "Why'd you have a fire on the other oth-er side of the lake?" one of these voices inquired. "I had no fire," a more guttural voice responded. "But I saw it as I came down," maintained the other. "And if you advertise this layout you'll last about as long here as a snowball in hell." "I had no fire," was the stubbornly stubborn-ly repeated protest. Minty's first impulse was to creep a little closer. But on second thought he dropped behind the ridge and circled back through the scattered scat-tered spruce boles. He noticed, as he traversed the valley that led to the neighboring ridge, how the timber tim-ber had been cut away to leave a rough trail that led lakeward. He also noticed, as he skirted this second sec-ond ridge, that its black-rocked surface sur-face was scored and seamed with shallow trenches, as though a prospector pros-pector had been stripping and searching for color there. 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 edge. He crouched low as he went, for the cover thinned out as he ascended. as-cended. But he could no longer hear voices. That troubled him a little as he moved forward to the crest of the divide. From there he could see how the lake bluff merged into a darker tangle of timber. And that timber, he saw, was a man-made man-made canopy of spruce boles. It was an arbor-cave into which the wings of a plane could slip and lie concealed. And under the casually woven cover that arched the narrow nar-row harbor between the rock-shoulders he could make out the pallid outlines of his vanished airplane. A tingle eddied through him as he discerned a roughly made landing platform close under the plane wings, a landing platform on which he saw a double row of ore bags. They stood there filled and tied, 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 ridge. He hesitated about advancing down the open slope. And as he hesitated a sudden blast of sound broke the quietness. He knew it was a gunshot, even before he felt the force of the bullet. bul-let. The impact of that bullet, tearing tear-ing through the blanket folds within three inches of his ear. twisted his startled body halfway around and sent him tumbling along the rock slope. He lost possession of his rifle as he fell. He kept on rolling and bounding down the long slope until hi body collided with the un-derbrmii un-derbrmii that rringed the vaUey bottom, bot-tom, t rom the ridge top he heard a triumphant voice call out: "I got him!" But his one impulse, at the moment was to put distance between be-tween him and that unknown sniper. He crawled into the underbrush, grateful for the thinning light that was paling to semi-darkness. He wormed forward, seeking always any deeper cover that offered. 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 forward, stooping low as he went When he spotted a spruce grove on his right he dove into it, emerging on a slope of glacial hardheads along which he dodged from shadow to shadow. He neither stopped nor rested until un-til he had mounted a second ridge and lost himself in a second scattering scat-tering of stunted timber. There, panting and wheezing, he sank down behind a ridge of granite. But there was still peril he felt, in that neighborhood. He pushed on through a sludgy bed of tules, crossed another timbered ridge, and came to more open country. There he studied the stars, made sure of his course, and began fighting his circuitous way back toward the camp on the Kasakana. When tired out he slept. When the sun wakened him, he ate and went on. The second sec-ond night he slept for an hour or two, and then pushed doggedly on. The sub-arctic light of morning was returning to theland when Minty Min-ty reached the shack. Zeke, he found, was still asleep in his wall bunk. He awakened him with a shout tinged with bitterness. "Your days o' peace is over, you pillow-lovin' old profligate. There's goin' to be war in these regions." Lynn was restless and worried. For the third time in half an hour she crossed to the door and scanned the pearl - misted skyline that stretched away to the south. She told herself that she was merely watching for a familiar blue plane with weathered wings, a plane with the Flying Padre at the controls. But her thoughts, as she did so, were on another plane, an equally weathered plane known as the Snow-Ball Baby. Her week of watching over old Umanak had persuaded her that she was not equipped for solitude. She turned back to her patient when she saw Umanak lift his white-swathed white-swathed head in an attitude of listening. "Devil-bird come," he muttered. A moment later Lynn herself heard the familiar bee-hum of a distant motor. "That's the Padre," she said as she ran to the door. A moment later lat-er 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 Padre. She brushed back her wind-blown hair to see Alan striding toward her. He must have caught the surge of joy that swept up to her eyes, for he stopped abruptly and stood studying her upturned face. He did not speak. But his own eyes darkened dark-ened as he detected the look of hunger hun-ger in the questioning hazel eyes resting on his face. He groped for her hand, with his heart pounding. Then he took her in his arms. She roused herself and forced her quickly breathing body free of the encircling arms. The hungry look was still In her eyes. But time and the world had come back to her. "What is it?" he asked, conscious of the firmness with which she was holding him away from her. "I've a patient there," she reminded re-minded him, pointing to the knoll-top knoll-top surgery. Slade strode after her as she moved up the slope. He remembered remem-bered about old Umanak. "How is the old boy?" "That's what I'm waiting to find out." Lynn explained. "Everything looks all right but of course, 1 can't tell. Father'U be here, any time now, to take off the bandages." "Will be be able to see?" Slade asked. "I mean Umanak." "If hoping helps any," answered Lynn, "that old hunter will be following fol-lowing a dog team again before long." Slade arrested her in the doorway. door-way. "I may be out of a joo earlier than I expected," he said. (TO BE C.I)T1M EDI |