A moment later Johnny and his team vanished behind the cliff, leaving a very much puzzled girl alone with her thoughts. And they were long, long thoughts, I assure you.
CHAPTER II
IN SWIFT PURSUIT
When he fell asleep in his airplane, Curlie Carson was many miles from any human habitation, in the heart of a polar wilderness. In that wilderness foxes barked and gaunt wolves howled. An Arctic gale sent snow rattling against his window. And yet he slept like a child in a trundle bed. A few hours of rest, and then he would, granted the storm had ended, greet the dawn high in air.
Mid-afternoon next day found him circling above the shore of Great Slave Lake for a landing.
“Gas cache here,” he told himself. “Just gas up and be away to Fort Resolution. Far as Speed got, I’m sure, with all his flying in the storm. My record’s as good as his. Contract’s safe enough yet.”
Ah yes, the contract. How they all worked for that, the mail contract from Edmonton to the Arctic! A three year contract, it was to be given to the company that made the best flying record this season. At present Curlie’s own company, Midwestern Airways, was a few notches ahead. But one bad break, and the Trans-Canadian, the rival company, would beat them. Only three weeks remained.
“It’s a race, a race for a grand prize,” he told himself. “And we must win!”
Up to this moment the boy had a right to be proud of his own record. The youngest pilot on the route, only a substitute for a disabled pilot of more mature years, he had exceeded them all in miles flown and service rendered in this wild northland. For all this, his thoughts at this moment were humble ones. Full well he knew the treachery of the skies.
His skis bumped. They bumped again three, four times, and his plane went gliding over the snow. With consummate skill he brought the great bird to rest exactly opposite three steel drums resting on a high bank at the lake’s edge.
Many gas caches such as this had been established during the season of open water when river and lake steamers might operate.