On the Yukon Trail / Radio-Phone Boys Series, #2

The Radio-Phone Boys Stories
By JAMES CRAIG
The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1922 by The Reilly & Lee Co. All Rights Reserved
Curlie Carson sat before an alcohol stove. Above and on all sides of him were the white walls of a tent. The constant bulging and sagging of these walls, the creak and snap of ropes, told that outside a gale was blowing. Beneath Curlie was a roll of deerskin and beneath that was ice; a glacier, the Valdez Glacier. They were a half day’s journey from the city of Valdez. Straight up the frowning blue-black wall of ice they had made their way until darkness had closed in upon them and a steep cliff of ice had appeared before them.
In a corner of the tent, sprawled upon a deerskin sleeping-bag, lay Joe Marion, Curlie’s pal in other adventures.
“Lucky we’ve got these sleeping-bags,” Joe drawled. “Even then I don’t see how a fellow’s going to keep warm, sleeping right out here on the ice with the wind singing around under the tent.” He shivered as he drew his mackinaw more closely about him.
Curlie said nothing. If you have read the other book telling of Curlie’s adventures, “Curlie Carson Listens In,” you scarcely need be told that Curlie Carson is a boy employed by the United States Bureau of Secret Service of the Air, a boy who has the most perfect pair of radio ears of any person known to the service.
In that other adventure which had taken him on a wild chase over the ocean in a pleasure yacht, he had had many narrow escapes, but this new bit of service which had been entrusted to him promised to be even more exciting and hazardous.
He had been sent in search of a man who apparently was bent on destroying the usefulness of the radiophone in Alaska; his particular desire seeming to be to imperil the life of Munson, a great Arctic explorer, by interrupting his radiophone messages. This man was known to be possessed of abundant resources, to be powerful and dangerous. He had a perfect knowledge of all matters pertaining to the radiophone and was possessed of a splendidly equipped sending and receiving set. By moving this set about from place to place, he had succeeded in eluding every government operator sent out to silence him. Already he had done incalculable damage by breaking in upon government messages and upon private ones as well.