It certainly seemed strange to be sailing away into a totally unknown land, following an airplane that carried a captive, and who could say what other manner of men?
“Are they kidnappers?” he asked himself, “escaped convicts, foreign exiles?” To these questions he could form no answer. One thing he did know; they were robbers. They stole that which in this barren land might mean life or death to many: gasoline.
A thought struck him. Instinctively he slowed his plane a bit. “What if they turn on me?”
What, indeed? They were flying over a barren land. The land beneath them rose in rounded ridges of solid rock. No landing there. Not a chance. True, here and there he made out an oval of dead white which he knew to be the frozen surface of the lake.
“Whose plane is the faster?” This he could not know.
“Keep plenty of distance between,” he told himself. “All I can do is locate their base. After that we can invite the red-coated Mounties to take a hand. They’ll bring the thing to an end quick enough. They say a Mountie always gets his man, and I guess it’s true.”
One fact comforted him. He had, but an hour before, taken on a good supply of gas. Because he was traveling light, he was able to carry it with ease. “They may be as well supplied as we are,” he told himself. “But the odds are against them. If I can force them to land, short of gas, where there is no supply of fuel, they are done. All I have to do is turn back for aid. We’ll mop ’em up. And the mystery will be solved, and this wild land will be free of a great menace.”
He had now thought the thing through—at least as far as his limited knowledge would carry him. The thunder of his motor grew monotonous. His mind turned to other things.
“Pitchblende. Radium!” he said aloud. “What a thing to dream of!” He was thinking of the samples entrusted to his care by Sandy MacDonald, of Johnny’s camp. “They say it gives off heat and light; that if you carry it in a tube in your pocket it will burn you, but not the pocket. How odd! One of nature’s unsolved mysteries,” he repeated. “I wonder why men spend so much time reading of gruesome murder mysteries when nature offers them a thousand unsolved riddles many times more interesting?”
Once more his attention was claimed by the outlaw plane. It had changed its course. Heading straight into the wind, it was sailing north.