He returned to sit down on the sled and scratch his head.
“Traveling light, they are. I’d never catch them now.”
Again he was silent for some time.
“Wish they’d left me a rifle. I’d go after the outlaw single-handed. But of course they wouldn’t. Don’t even know I’m alive, let alone on their trail with a reindeer. Nothing more improbable than that. Wish I’d risked a call to them. Didn’t dare, though. Outlaw’d know we were after him if he listened in. Now what’s to be done? Have to see how much radiophone stuff they left behind.”
For some time he busied himself sorting out the parts of the heavier radiophone set and connecting them up.
“All here,” he breathed at last, “even my little outfit for making mince pie of a fellow’s speech then piecing it together again. Joe took all the smaller set, though. That’s good. Best thing I can do is to camp right here and wait until I’m sure they must be camped for the night. Then I’ll send out a signal and see if I can get them. I can talk mince meat fashion so the outlaw won’t know what it’s about, anyway. Got to get in touch with them some way or another.”
Realizing that after hearing from them he might want to travel at night to make up for lost time, after tethering out his reindeer he crept into his sleeping-bag and, in a moment, fell into a sound sleep.
When he awoke it was quite dark. Getting busy at once with his radiophone, he sent a signal quivering through the air.
He received no response.
A half hour later he sent out a second. Still no answer.