The boys had debated the question. They were eager to go forward. A whispered message of the night before had led them to believe that their quest was nearing its end; that the man they sought was not far before them on the trail; yet the dogs must be fed.
It had been decided at last that Joe Marion with an all but empty sled should await the supply of meat, while the others pressed on breaking the trail until near nightfall, when they would make camp and await his arrival.
Curlie and Jennings had carried out their part of the program, but when he should have arrived Joe had not appeared, rounding the clump of spruce trees to the south of them.
After an hour of anxious waiting, Jennings, taking his rifle, had gone out to search for him.
“May have lost his way,” he had commented.
Curlie had remained to listen in on his radiophone. Joe carried with him, attached to his sled, a complete sending and receiving set. In time of trouble the first thing he would think of would be getting off a radiophone message to his companions.
“Ought to be getting something,” Curlie mumbled. “I wonder what could have happened? I wonder—”
He paused for reflection. Night by night as he had sat upon his sleeping-bag, listening in, strange messages had come to him from the sky. Now the rude interference of the unknown man who had been tearing up the traffic of the air told Curlie that they were coming closer to one another, and now the whisper of the girl, that ghostlike creature who appeared to haunt the track of the lawbreaker, told Curlie of the day fast approaching when he and the outlaw of the air must meet face to face. At such times he had wondered if he should then meet the girl as well as the man.
On the previous night the whisper had informed him that they were but seventy-five miles apart.
“Coming, coming,” Curlie had whispered to himself.