Chapter 7 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."

With all his thinking he could not solve the mystery of the nameless and numberless plane. Instead, from out the air there leaped a fresh mystery. A simple thing in the beginning it was too-only a bird in flight.

Birds are common enough in the Arctic. Even in mid-winter ravens croak from the tree-tops, pelicans stand upon icy rocks watching for fish and screaming jays cut a path of blue across the wintry sky.

But this bird was neither raven, pelican nor jay. Curlie knew that at a glance. Having long watched the flight of birds, he could distinguish the darting course of one, the soaring flight of another and the steady flap-flap of a third. This bird, he knew at a glance, was a pigeon.

"A pigeon in such a place!" He fairly gasped with astonishment.

Then a thought struck him squarely between the eyes. "It's a carrier-pigeon! Here may be a clue. I'll follow him."

Fortunately the course taken by the bird was almost the same as that he must follow to reach his next stopping place, Fort McMurray, the headquarters of steel. At this place he would unload his cargo of furs and mineral samples entrusted to his care, then wire for further orders.

"Who would turn a pigeon loose in this bleak land?" he asked himself. "Only some one in desperate circumstances or a man without a heart." At once he thought of the mysterious one who piloted the strange gray plane.

"He's heartless enough," he assured himself. "Holding some one, a woman or a boy, captive! He'd do anything. There'll be a message tied to the bird's foot. I'm sure of that. All I have to do is follow him to his destination. Might bump right into the man's confederates. Then the mystery would be solved at once."

But what was the bird's destination? How was Curlie to know that? "It may be Edmonton; probably is," he told himself hopelessly. "I can't follow him there, not just now. Already I am hours behind my schedule. Little more and I'll be joining the ranks of the unemployed."

Even as he said this, as if to make an end to this dilemma, the pigeon wavered in his flight, sank earthward, and began to circle.

"Going to alight," Curlie shouted to Jerry.

"Absolutely."

"I'm going to land with him. There's a cabin down there by the river. Seen it many times. Who lives there?"

"Don't know."

"May be a partner to that man of the 'Gray Streak.'"

"Absolutely."

"We'll see about it."

"Absolutely, son. Absolutely."

Graceful as the bird itself, the plane sank lower and lower, went bump, bump, bump three times, and glided away on an unmarked field of glistening snow.

Ten minutes after this landing they were approaching the cabin. The carrier pigeon was nowhere to be seen.

Had it not been for three dogs skulking at the back of the cabin, and a few fresh moccasin tracks in the snow before the door, the place would have seemed deserted.

"Strange the fellow don't come out to meet us," Curlie grumbled, as no one appeared to greet them.

It was strange. In the North the airplane has come to be what coastwise steamers are to fishing villages along a rockbound coast, or the slow-going local passenger train is to mountain towns. It brings the mail, reports news of the outside world, and delivers such necessities as the land itself does not supply. At the first sound of drumming motors the cabin dwellers flock forth to greet their soaring friend.

Not so, here. The place was as still as it might have been had its last occupant passed away.

Curlie knocked loudly on the door. No response. He knocked again, more loudly.

"Asleep or drunk," he muttered. He gave the door a lusty kick. It flew open. At the same instant a short, scrawny, red-faced man sprang from a bunk in the corner.

"Sorry," apologized Curlie. "A pigeon soared down here. Seen it?"

"And if I have?" The man's tone was defiant.

"We want to see it."

"Your pigeon, I suppose? Flyin' 'ere in this 'ere blasted frozen wilderness." The man took a step backward toward the corner. A heavy rifle rested there.

Jerry might be slow at times. Not always.

"As you are!" he commanded. At the same time his hand dropped to his hip.

A queer, cowed look came over the cabin-dweller's face.

"Oh, all right. 'Ave your own way!" he grumbled. "W'at d' y' want?"

"The pigeon."

The man's face worked strangely. He was like a man about to go into a convulsion. Reading these signs of distress, Curlie spoke more gently.

"We think he carried a message. We-"

"You think!" the little man broke in. "I know. He does! An' 'at message you'll 'ave, an' welcome! But not 'im!"

"All right. The message," agreed Curlie.

The little man disappeared into a narrow room at the back, only to reappear with a small billet enclosed in thin oil-cloth.

"There, y' 'ave it!" He seemed greatly relieved. "There's the message!"

With trembling fingers, Curlie unrolled the bit of cloth. He spread the message on the table and dropped into a chair before it.

For a long time he sat staring at it; yet it would not have required a mind-reader to tell that he made nothing of it. And indeed, how could he? The message, more than a hundred words long, was so written that not one word made any manner of sense with any other that preceded or followed it.

"That," he said to Jerry, "is worse than a cross-word puzzle.

"The worst of it is," he added after a moment's contemplation, "we don't know who sent it, nor whether we have the least right to interfere with it.

"You see," he explained, "there are Government posts right up to the shore of the Arctic. The heads of the posts may be trying pigeons as messengers. Then, too, some lone trapper may have carried that bird a thousand miles into the wilderness with the intention of using him in case of distress. This may be a distress message."

"Written in code?" Jerry lifted his eyebrows.

"Don't seem probable. But the Government message would be in code.

"I think," Curlie added after further thought, "that we'll make a copy of it and send the bird on his way."

"How do you know you will?" The cabin-dweller was again on his feet. There was a dangerous glint in his eye.

Curlie tried in vain to read the meaning in his expression. Was he, after all, a confederate of those outlaws who had taken to riding the sky in a plane fueled at another's expense?

"I believe you are in with them!" he exclaimed angrily.

"What d' y' mean, in with 'em?" the little man demanded hotly.

"The 'Gray Streak,' outlaw of the air."

Instantly the look on the man's face changed. "Before Gawd, I know less 'n you about this 'ere ghost of the air!"

"Then," said Curlie, as his face cleared, "here is the message. It's up to you. The bird came to your cabin, not to ours."

He handed over the carefully wrapped billet, arose and led the way out of the cabin. He then climbed into the plane with Jerry following, turned his motor over, set it throbbing, and flew away.

If Jerry marveled at all this, he ventured not one question.