“They’re after the outlaw! Good old Jennings and Joe! We’ll get him yet. I’ll catch up with them! Hooray!” He threw his hands in the air and gave such a lusty shout that the reindeer came near leaping out of his harness.
He had discovered that while he was being held prisoner by the Indians, Joe and Jennings in their pursuit of the outlaw had passed him.
“All I’ve got to do,” he told himself, “is to speed up this old white ship of the Arctic desert and I’ll be with them in twenty-four hours.”
In this he was mistaken, but since he did not know it he went bumping merrily along over the ridges. Now and then shouting at his reindeer, now and then bursting forth into snatches of boisterous song, he appeared filled with quite as much joy as a boy off for a fishing trip.
So, for hours he traveled, until his reindeer was in need of rest and food, then he turned off into the edge of the scrub-spruce forest. Here, after tethering the deer in an open spot where there was much moss, he built himself a rude shelter of green boughs, kindled a fire, roasted some strips of reindeer meat procured from the Indians, then crept into his sleeping-bag.
Here for a time, through a crack in his green canopy, he watched the big dipper in its wide circle about the north star, which blinked down from nearly straight above him. He at last fell asleep.
In the meantime, in a camp some distance farther down the valley, beneath a cut-bank at the edge of a frozen river, his two companions were receiving a strange and startling message. The message was once more from Munson, the explorer. Again the expedition had met with disaster. Having attempted the flight to shore in their airplanes they had made but half the distance when one of the planes became disabled and landed, to crash into a pile of ice. With the remaining planes much overloaded, they had been obliged to abandon all food. Two hundred miles from shore the gasoline had given out. Making fortunate landings on broad ice-pans, they had at once started on foot for shore. They had been carried to the right by a strong gale and would doubtless reach land some twenty miles west of their food depot on Flaxman Island; that is, they would land there if anywhere. Without food they were well nigh hopeless. Still they had two light rifles and a hundred rounds of ammunition. There were seals in water-holes and polar bears wandering over the floes. There was a chance for life. If anyone listening in on this message were in a position to come out and meet them they might be the instruments in saving lives.
“That means us,” said Joe. “And it means such a struggle as we have never experienced before.”
“Means we leave the trail of the outlaw at once,” said Jennings.
“Why—uh—” Joe stammered.