It was during this return journey that one or two questions that had been puzzling him were, in a way, answered.
At Fort Chipewyan he lay over for a few hours to await the passing of a snowstorm. He did not tarry long enough. The storm was traveling south. It was making but fifty miles an hour. He was doing better than a hundred. He had not been in the air an hour when he realized that he could not reach McMurray without running into that storm.
“That means I can’t see to land,” he grumbled to himself. Jerry was not with him. “Have to sleep on the river.”
Sleeping on the river is not as bad as it sounds. Here and there along the river, trappers’ cabins are to be found. The inhabitants of these cabins are for the most part known to the pilots. And any weary bird-man is sure of a hearty welcome there. The coffee pot is ever on the fire and a pan of beans rich in bacon fat ready for warming. There is an extra bunk in the corner to which the stranger is welcome. But, for the most part, the pilot prefers rolling up in his eight-foot-square eiderdown robe and sleeping on the floor of his cabin. This is what is known as “sleeping on the river.”
It may appear strange that out of the three possible cabins on this section of the river Curlie chose to come to earth before the one occupied by the rough and ready little world war hermit who had in so strange a manner defied him when a pigeon had been tracked to his window.
“Oh, it’s you, me lad!” the scrawny little man exclaimed, as Curlie climbed from the cockpit. “Sure it’s sorry vittals I be ’avin’, but such as they be, y’ are welcome.”
“Ptarmigan!” exclaimed Curlie. “Nothing better than that!” A brace of these birds hung by the cabin door.
“And can y’ eat ’em?”
“Sure. Why not? They’re fine.”
“Every man to ’is taste. Sure I’ve fed ’em to me dorgs until they’ve grown feathers, they ’ave. But it’s the birds ye shall ’ave, roasted with bacon fat fer seasonin’.”