Such a speech called for an explanation. It was given over a hot cup of chocolate.
“Oh, yes, there are buffaloes up here,” Jim drawled in the middle of the talk. “Right smart of ’em. Woods-buffaloes, they are. There’s a preserve down south of here. Feller at Fort Chipewyan told me about ’em. He was what they call a buffalo ranger. They’re protected, these buffaloes. You can’t shoot ’em. Probably this one was a cranky old boy who couldn’t stand his relatives.”
“He couldn’t stand me, either,” Joyce laughed. “Here’s hoping I never see him again.”
Vain hope!
“But the man? The rifle?”
“Probably some Indian,” replied her father. “We’ll look into that in the morning.”
They did not. A short, fierce wind-storm that night blotted out all evidence of the girl’s adventure.
CHAPTER VII
THE WINGED MESSENGER
Curlie and Jerry were away with the dawn. As they rose from the glistening white of the landing field to the transparent blue of the sky, Curlie’s heart sang with joy. It was great, this rising aloft to greet the sun. With a safe landing place, the frozen river, ever beneath him, with a dependable mechanic beside him and the long, long lane of air before him, who could ask for more? Once Curlie did wrinkle his brow. He was thinking of the mysterious gray ship he had followed into the storm.
“If that keeps up,” he told himself, “the sky will no more be safe. It will be full of lurking dangers as was the Spanish Main when pirates and buccaneers lurked in every cove.”