With a grunt he turned to his own team. A second’s hesitation, and he returned to the abandoned sled. Having righted it, he spied something half buried in the snow.
He picked it up. Instantly his eyes lighted with a strange mixture of joy and astonishment as they gazed upon that object. It was a bow, Johnny’s bow. And that bow had been given to Johnny at a spot hundreds of miles away by a hunchback bowman.
This discovery appeared to alter the Indian’s entire course of action. Beginning again, he went over the ground with painstaking care. He searched the cabin, the forest, the ice covered lake. Finally he followed the course taken by the plane as it glided over the ice before its take-off.
When all this had been done, he lifted his face to the sky as if in prayer; then speaking to his dogs, one of the fastest teams known to this white world, he set them upon a course they were to follow not alone until darkness fell but on and on through the night.
Whatever this person’s purpose might be, he could but have appeared as a heroic figure as, steadily following his untiring team, he traced what to all appearance was a blind trail on through the night.
Scarcely less heroic was a lone gray figure, traveling in the opposite direction. With unerring instinct this gray form followed back over the trail Johnny and his team had traveled. This lone gray figure was only that of a dog; but even a dog, with a purpose, may become a hero.
* * * * * * * *
Once more in Johnny Thompson’s mind, as he felt the strange gray plane whose pilot he had not so much as seen go thundering on, many questions whirled round and round. Why, why was he a captive? Why was D’Arcy Arden here? Who were these great, dark, whiskered men who flew an unmarked plane over these northern wastes?
“One would not think it possible for strangers to live so long and travel so far in such a land without supplies of their own,” he told himself. “Yet in no other land could it be done so easily. In summer it is necessary for dwellers in this land to bring in supplies of gasoline and food for winter’s use. These supplies brought in by steamboat are often left in unguarded spots. Up until now, men in this land have been honest. It is the only way man can survive in such an unfriendly land. But now, if this continues, no man will be safe from cold and hunger.”
Having thought this thing through, he renewed his resolve to do all within his power to bring this unbearable situation to an end.