Copyright MCMXXVII
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
Made in the United States of America
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE I [A Creeping Menace] 3 II [Inspector Cameron Takes Charge] 11 III [Smoke!] 17 IV [The Fire Patrol] 28 V [Mackenzie River Post] 38 VI [Ships From the Stars] 49 VII [Returning Memory] 57 VIII [The Toll of the North] 66 IX [Cameron Feels the Strain] 74 X [The Mutineer] 81 XI [Phantoms of the Storm] 92 XII [A Hungry Prowler] 102 XIII [The Lone Cabin] 112 XIV [Outwitted] 122 XV [Bill and Thomas] 135 XVI [An Indian with Boots] 144 XVII [The Pursuit] 154 XVIII [The Return to Camp] 165 XIX [The End of the Journey] 175 XX [The Night Patrol] 184 XXI [Disaster Looms] 194 XXII [When Moments Are Eternity] 205 XXIII [Back at the Mission] 217 XXIV [A Trek Homeward] 223
DICK KENT WITH THE
MALEMUTE MAIL
CHAPTER I
A CREEPING MENACE
A discouraged, dishevelled human figure crossed a narrow woodland to the west of a chain of hills, thence made his way slowly down to a sun-baked valley or depression, many miles in extent. The valley was rough, broken, repellent to the eye. For the most part unverdant, it ran in a northeasterly direction—bleak, uninviting, monotonous—here and there rutted with long gray drifts of silt and sand.
No trail of any sort traversed that sinister, malevolent wild. Except for an occasional poplar or charred, broken stump of spruce or jack-pine, there were few landmarks to relieve the discouraging prospect. However, at one end of the valley, scintillating like a silver coin in the bright rays of the sun, the traveller discerned a small lake, fringed with green.
In the center of the narrow green strip, on one side of the lake, stood the cabin of a prospector. The traveller regarded it impassively for a moment before he went on.
Still hours high, the sun struck its bright rays across the land: a glare of white in the somnolent valley, a sheen of mirrored brilliance where it radiated over the placid, blue waters of the lake. A deep hush had fallen over the earth. Below the wide, azure arch of the sky feathered voyagers of the air coasted silently to unknown haunts, apparently the only living things in the dead gray world around them.
The figure hurried on. The sight of the cabin had acted as a slight spur to his jaded body. He pushed forward steadily until he had made his way over the narrow strip of green and up the path to the house. He knocked listlessly at the door, then stood silently, as might a criminal awaiting the heavy hand of the law.