Lost in the Air

by Roy J. Snell

CHAPTER II

THE STRANGE LANDING

"I don't like the way the Rolls-Royce is acting," Bruce grumbled through his telephone to Barney, for, though they were not four feet apart, not a word could they hear, so great was the din of their two powerful engines.

"Same here," answered Barney. "Old Major ought to have given us more time to try 'em out. Brand new."

"Barren Lands far away. Forced to land in tree-tops. Good-night!"

After that there came only the monotonous roar of the engines. The Major's orders had been "Due north by west," and now, though they had put fully two hundred miles between themselves and the last sign of civilization, they were still holding to their course. They also had been directed to fly as low as was safe. Three times the Major had barked an order into the receiver; always to circle some spot, while he swept the earth with a binocular as powerful as could be used in an airplane. Three times he had given a second order to resume their course.

"He seems to be looking for something," Barney said to himself, and at once he began wondering what it could be. Mines of fabulous wealth were said to be hidden away in the hills and forests over which they were passing—rich outcroppings of gold, silver and copper. Perhaps the Major was trying to locate them from the air. Here and there they passed over broad stretches of prairie, the grass of which would feed numberless herds of cattle. Perhaps, too, the Major was examining these with an eye to future gain. Then, again Barney thought of the illegal wireless station and he idly speculated on how it could be so important now that the war was over. There was little to do but think as they scudded away, now racing a cloud, then plunging through the masses of vapor, to reappear suddenly in the sunshine beyond. Barney had always keenly enjoyed watching the land slip by beneath him as he flew, but on this journey there was the added joy of sailing over lands unknown. His reflections were suddenly cut short by a strange jarring rattle from the Rolls-Royce. Instantly the thunder was cut in half, as also was their power. Bruce had stopped the big motor. If now something went wrong with the Liberty, they must make a forced landing. This, with the level stretches of prairie giving place to rough, rolling swells covered with scrub timber, was not a pleasant thing to think of and even less pleasant to attempt.

The sun, sending a last yellow glow across the land, sank from sight, and soon the moon, with silvery light and black bands of shadow, was playing strange tricks with the stolid world beneath them.

All day, when duties permitted, Bruce had kept an eye open for a cabin hidden among the pines. Now he shouted through the telephone to Barney;

"What'll I do if I catch a square of light below?"

Barney knew he was thinking of the boy, Timmie, and La Vaune's money he carried into the woods. A square of light, of course, would have been a cabin window.

"Kill your engine if you see a chance to light, and explain later," he shouted back.

But no square of light appeared, and soon the thought of it was driven from their minds, for, of a sudden, the plane shuddered like a man with a chill. It was the second engine. Bruce threw off the power. Then, with a sput-sput-sput, started it again. Once more came the shudder. Again he tried with no better results. Half its power was gone; something was seriously wrong. He turned to the other engine. It would not start at all. Here was trouble. They were passing over ridge after ridge, and all were roughly timbered. Surely, here was no landing-place. And if the second engine stopped altogether,—Bruce's heart lost a beat at thought of it.

He gave the engine more gas and headed the plane upward. She climbed slowly, sluggishly, like a tired bird, but at length the keener air told him they were a safer distance above the earth.

"Better chance to pick a landing-place from here," thought Barney.

They had scarcely reached this higher level when the engine stopped. No efforts of the pilot availed to start it. His companions silently watched Bruce's mute struggles. The Major, a perfect sport, sat stoically in his place. Barney, knowing that suggestions were useless, also was silent. So they volplaned slowly downward, every eye strained for a safe landing-place. They knew what a crash would mean at such a place. Loss of life perhaps; a wrecked plane at least, then a struggle through the woods till starvation ended it. They were four hundred miles from the last trace of white man's habitation.

They had come down to three thousand feet when it became evident that only rough ridges lay beneath them. No landing-place here, certainly. They could only hang on as long as possible in the hope the ridges would give way to level ground. Bruce thanked their luck for the wide-spreading wings which would impede their fall.

A moment later he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge higher than any they had passed over. Here then was the end, he thought. But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those rocks by a hundred feet and just beyond Bruce gasped and looked again.

"A miracle!" murmured Barney.

"Or a mirage," whispered Bruce.

Before them lay a square of level land, green,—in the moonlight. All about the square the land was black with trees, but there was a landing place. It was as if their trip had been long planned, their coming anticipated, and that a level field was cleared for them.

It was only a matter of moments till they were bumping along over the ground. Soon they were standing free from their harnesses and silently shaking hands.

Barney was the first to speak.

"Say, do you know," he said, "we're in somebody's wheat-field!"

"Impossible!" exclaimed the Major.

"See for yourself," The boy held before their astonished eyes a handful of almost ripened heads of wheat.

"Then what's happened?" demanded the Major. "Have you gone due south by west instead of north by west?"

"Unless my compass lied, and it has never done so before, we have gone north by west since we started, and we are—or ought to be at this moment—four hundred miles from what the white man calls civilization."

"Well," said the Major, "since we are here, wherever that is, I suggest that we unpack our blankets and get out of the man's wheat-field, whoever he may be. The mystery will keep until morning."

This they proceeded to do.

A clump of stubby, heavy-stemmed spruce trees offered them shelter from the chill night wind, and there, rolled in blankets, they prepared to sleep.

But Bruce could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So he lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This wheat-field now? Had he really been misdirected by the compass on the plane? To prove that he had not, he drew from his pocket a small compass, and placing it in a spot of moonlight, took the relative direction of the last ridge over which they had passed and the plane in the wheat-field. He was right; the compass had been true. They were four hundred miles northwest of the last mile of track laid on the Hudson Bay Railroad, deep in a wilderness, over which they had traveled for hours without sighting a single sign of white man's habitation. Yet, here they were at the edge of a wheat-field.

What was the answer? Had some Indian tribe taken to farming? With the forests alive with game, the streams with fish, this seemed impossible. Of a sudden, the boy started. It was, of course—

The sudden snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves, grizzlies, some unknown terror, perhaps?

Then, in another second his eyes bulged. In an open space, between two spruce trees, where the moon shone brightly, had appeared for a moment a patch of white. Then, amid the crashing of small twigs, the thing was gone. In childhood, Bruce had been told many stories of ghosts and goblins by his Irish nurse. He had never overcome his dread of them. But it was with the utmost difficulty that he suppressed a shout. Then he laughed softly, for the crackling twigs told him he had seen a creature of flesh and blood, no ghost. He chuckled again and far in the dark a hoot-owl seemed to answer him and his company was a source of comfort.

Yet, here was, after all, another problem: What was this white-coated creature? Of all the wild things of the forest, none was white save the Arctic wolf. It was doubtful if he roamed so far south, especially in summer, and besides, this creature was too large and heavy to be a wolf. Bruce thought of all the animals he knew and gave it up. It might have been a cow. Cows in this wilderness did not seem more improbable than a wheat-field, but the creature had been too light of tread for that. Could it have been an Indian dressed in white, tanned deerskin? He was inclined to take this for the right solution, and wondered if he should awaken his companions. He could not tell what danger threatened. Finally he decided to let them sleep. He would keep watch. The three of them could do no more.

Once more his mind turned to the problem of the wheat. What was it that he had just concluded? Oh, yes, Timmie! Why might not Timmie have camped here and planted this wheat? But twelve years? How had he lived? Whence had come the seed wheat? There were a hundred questions connected with such a solution. Ah, well, morning would tell. There would be a cabin somewhere on the edge of the field and they would eat. Eat? For the first time Bruce realized that he had not eaten for hours; was very hungry. Securing some malted-milk tablets, carried for emergency rations, he dissolved them in his mouth. A wonderfully soothing effect they had. Propping himself against the trees, he closed his eyes for a second, and before he could pry them open again, he, too, was fast asleep.

When he awoke it was broad daylight and his companions were already astir.

"Did you fellows wake up last night?" he asked, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

Barney and the Major shook their heads.

"Then you didn't see it?"

"See what?"

"The white thing."

Barney stared. The Major's face was noncommittal.

Bruce told them of his experience.

"He's been seeing a ghost," declared Barney, with a laugh.

"On the contrary," said the Major slowly, "I think he hasn't. There are white creatures in the Arctic; just such ones as he has described. I have seen them myself. No, not white bears, either. But I have never seen them this far South. I will not say now what I think Bruce saw but I will say I do not think it was an Indian."

"Look!" exclaimed Barney suddenly in a whisper.

He pointed to a thin column of smoke that was rising over the tree-tops, to the left of the wheat-field.

"Listen!" whispered Bruce. "Somebody's chopping wood." The freshening wind brought the sound of the axe plainly to their ears. A second later they heard the distant laugh of a child.

"Come on," said the Major, throwing his roll of blankets at the foot of a tree. "Where there's children there's no danger. Maybe they'll have hot-cakes for breakfast!"

A moment later found the three of them stealing silently through the forest.

What they saw as they peered into the clearing brought them up standing. A man wielded an axe before a cabin. He was tall and strong, smooth-shaven and clean. No Indian, but a white man. His clothing was of white-tanned buckskin. The cabin was of logs, but large, with a comfortable porch and several windows. The panes of the windows seemed near-glass. It was impossible to tell, from where they stood, whether the two laughing children who played by the door were white or half-breeds. The appearance at that door of a neatly-dressed Indian woman seemed to settle that question.

The three men had gone half-way across the narrow clearing, before the man, looking up from his work, saw them. Instantly his face blanched. With a quick step backward, he reached for a rifle that stood by the door. Then the arm fell limp by his side.

"Well, you've come!" he said in a lifeless tone. "I could have killed you, one or two of you, but I won't. I may be a thief, but not a murderer. Besides, there are probably more of you back there in the trees."

"On the contrary," smiled the Major, "we are only three. We are not armed. So you see you might easily kill us all. But why you should want to, and why you expected us, when the last thing we thought to do was to land in your wheat-field last night, is more than I can guess."

"Landed?" The man's face showed his bewilderment.

"I know," exclaimed Bruce impulsively, "I'll explain. You're Timmie—Timmie—" he hesitated. "Well, anyway, that's your first name. I know all about you—"

Again the man's trembling hand half-reached for the rifle.

"Then—then you have—come for me," he choked.

Bruce, realizing his mistake, hastened to correct it.

"You're mistaken," he said quickly. "We haven't come for you in the way you mean. You won't need to go a step with us unless that is your wish. Timmie, we're here to help you; to tell you that you were forgiven long ago."

"Is—is that true?" The man faltered. "The logging company?"

"The partners are dead. Their only heir, La Vaune, forgives you."
"And the Province, the Red Riders?"

"The Province forgot the case years ago."

"Thank—thank God!" The man choked, then turned to hide his face. He faced them again in a moment and spoke steadily. "I've got the money here in the cabin, every cent of it. God knows I didn't mean to do it. But the temptation was too great. And—and once I had done it, I was afraid to go back. I would have died in prison. How did you come? Are you going back? Will you take the money to the little girl, La Vaune?"

"We're going farther," smiled Bruce, happy in the realization of what all this meant to the maid in the camp. "We're going on. We flew here and will fly back—or try to." "And we'll be more than glad to return the money," he wished to add, but remembering that he would not have that to decide, he ended, "La Vaune is no little girl now, but quite a young lady. She needs the money, too. And—and," he laughed sheepishly, "she's rather a good friend of mine."

Timmie drew his hand across his eyes, as if to brush away the vision of long years. Then, with a smile, he said briskly:

"Of course, you'll have breakfast? We're having hot-cakes."

"What did I tell you?" chuckled the Major, slapping Barney on the back.

Eager as the visitors were to hear the strange story of this man of the wilderness, they were willing that breakfast should come first.

As they stepped upon the porch, the keen eye of the Major fell on some white and spotted skins hanging over a beam. A close observer might have noticed a slight nod of his head, as if he said, "I thought so." But the boys were following the scent of browning griddle-cakes and saw neither the skins nor the Major's nod.

But Barney, missing a familiar pungent odor that should go with such a breakfast in a wilderness, hurried back to the plane to return with a coffee pot and a sack of coffee.

Within the cabin they found everything scrupulously clean. Strange cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column of steam toward the rafters.

With memories stirred by draughts of long untasted coffee, it was not difficult for Timmie to tell his Story.

"When I left the settlement," he began, as he turned his mooseskin, hammock-like chair toward the open fireplace, and invited his guests to do likewise, "I struck straight into the wilderness. I had a little food, a small rifle and fishing-tackle. To me a summer in the woods with such equipment was no problem at all. I meant to go northwest for, perhaps, two hundred miles, camp there for the summer, then work my way back by going southwest. I would then be far from my crime and would be safe. That is what I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I began to think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to be back. But it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers, creeping through underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got through the summer, living on fish, game and berries. You see, I had become terribly afraid of the Red Riders—the mounted police. I had heard that sooner or later they always got a man. I was determined they would not get me.

"At last, snow-fall warned me to prepare for winter. I was in this valley that day, and I've been here ever since. If I had ever got any pleasure from that stolen money, which I haven't, I would have paid for that pleasure a hundred times that first winter. Fortune favored me in one thing: the caribou came by in great droves, and, before my ammunition was exhausted, I had secured plenty of meat. But at that, I came near dying before I learned that one who lives upon a strictly meat diet must measure carefully the proportions of lean and fat. Someway, I learned. And somehow, starving, freezing, half-mad of lonesomeness, I got through the winter, but I am glad you did not see me when the first wild geese came north. If ever there was a wild man, dressed in skins and dancing in the sun, it was I."

"But the wheat?" asked Barney. "How did that happen?"

"I am coming to that," smiled his host. "Early that spring," he continued, passing his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away the memory of that terrible winter, "the Indians came. They came from the Dismal Lake region. Driven south by forest fires, they were starving. I had a little caribou meat and shared it with them; that made them my everlasting friends."

"And you got the wheat from them?" interposed Barney.

"Hardly. I doubt if they had ever seen a grain of wheat.

"Well, we lived together that summer. But I am getting ahead of my story. Shortly before they arrived, I noticed some strange-looking caribou in the clearing. I had no ammunition, so could not shoot them. Anyway, they were skin-poor and would be of little use to me. But they seemed strangely tame, coming close to my cabin at night. They were company, and I was careful not to frighten them away. One night, in the moonlight, I caught a glistening flash from the ear of the oldest doe. Then, too, I noticed that one of them had unnaturally short antlers. A closer look told me that these antlers had been cut off.

"Then came the wonderful discovery: these were not caribou, but reindeer escaped from some herd in Alaska.

"Right then I decided to capture and use them. I would put them in pound until their rightful owners came for them, which would be never." He smiled.

"Well, I tried making a lasso of caribou skin. For a long time I could not come near enough to reach them with the lasso. But one night, while they rested, I crept up to them and my lasso caught one by the antlers. Then there was a battle, and all the while I was thinking that now I should have milk, butter and cheese, meat and clothing. And then there was a snap; the skin-rope broke and away went the reindeer—and my hopes.

"I then hit on the plan of building a corral and driving them into it. This was a pretty big job for one man, but with trees lining both sides of a narrow run, where the deer went to drink, I managed to weave willow branches into the spruce trees and make a stout barrier. Well—one morning, I found myself with six reindeer in pound—a bull, three does, a yearling and an old sled-deer. Not long after, the herd was increased by four fawns.

"By good luck, just at this time, the Indians came. They were all for killing the reindeer, but I stopped that. We fed, as I said before, on my caribou meat, and then came the wild-fowl and the streams opened up for fishing.

"It was fortunate that the Indians came. They helped me to build corrals, big enough to give the reindeer plenty of pasturage and pretty soon they were fat and sleek."

"Pardon me," interrupted the Major, "but were some of the reindeer white?"

"Two of them were milk-white. And now I have many of them running free in the forest."

Barney grinned, and Bruce poked him in the ribs. "My ghost," he whispered.

"The wheat," said the host, "was no great mystery, after all. The bank cashier had put into the money-sack two samples of wheat and one of beans which he wanted to have tried in this north country. I have tried them; with what luck, you can see. I don't need to fence my reindeer now, for in winter when the moss is buried deep under the snow I turn them in on stacks of wheat hay. Finally when the Indians went back North the following winter they left me a wife, as you see." He smiled toward his dusky mate, who was industriously scouring a copper griddle.

There was silence for some time. Then the Major spoke:

"The thing that interests me is how you manage to keep up your standards of neatness and cleanliness."

"It is not so hard," said Timmie. "I came of a good old Scotch family. When I was a boy my mother taught me that 'cleanliness is next to godliness,' and I made up my mind that—well, that I would at least be clean. That was all there was left for me to be, you know."

"I think you may call yourself both," said the Major stoutly. "You have paid well for your mistake by twelve years of exile, and as for the money, we'll take that back with us."

Timmie smiled. "I'll be happy for the first time in twelve years when it's gone," he said.

"I say, Major," exclaimed Bruce, "I've been thinking of those white reindeer. Don't you suppose that solves the problem of Peary's white reindeer?"

There was a peculiar twinkle in the Major's eye, as he asked: "How do you make that out?"

"Well, there had been reindeer in Alaska for twenty-five years when Peary discovered his on the eastern coast of our continent. There are many white ones among the domestic herds, and they are constantly wandering away, or being driven away, by packs of wolves. If they wandered this far, might they not easily have gone on to the other side of the continent?"

"Possibly. Possibly," The twinkle in the Major's eye grew brighter, but he said no more. Presently he rose and stepped outside.

"Say!" exclaimed Barney, "I feel like turning right around and going back."

Bruce knew that he was thinking of La Vaune's money. "But we can't," he sighed. "It's not our plane nor our expedition. We're bound by agreement to go on. Besides, there's no real need of going back. La Vaune's all right for the winter. I arranged for her at my old college at Brandon; she will attend the academy and help in the dining-room."

"Well, then," said Barney, "I guess it's us for union-alls and at those engines."

They were soon at their task. But, as Bruce worked that day, he thought often of the mysterious twinkle he had seen in the Major's gray eyes, as he spoke of the white reindeer. Who was this Major, anyway? And where were they going? The Major alone could tell, and apparently he had no intention of doing so.