On the Yukon Trail / Radio-Phone Boys Series, #2

Curlie Carson sat before an alcohol stove. Above and on all sides of him were the white walls of a tent. The constant bulging and sagging of these walls, the creak and snap of ropes, told that outside a gale was blowing. Beneath Curlie was a roll of deerskin and beneath that was ice; a glacier, the Valdez Glacier. They were a half day's journey from the city of Valdez. Straight up the frowning blue-black wall of ice they had made their way until darkness had closed in upon them and a steep cliff of ice had appeared before them.

In a corner of the tent, sprawled upon a deerskin sleeping-bag, lay Joe Marion, Curlie's pal in other adventures.

"Lucky we've got these sleeping-bags," Joe drawled. "Even then I don't see how a fellow's going to keep warm, sleeping right out here on the ice with the wind singing around under the tent." He shivered as he drew his mackinaw more closely about him.

Curlie said nothing. If you have read the other book telling of Curlie's adventures, "Curlie Carson Listens In," you scarcely need be told that Curlie Carson is a boy employed by the United States Bureau of Secret Service of the Air, a boy who has the most perfect pair of radio ears of any person known to the service.

In that other adventure which had taken him on a wild chase over the ocean in a pleasure yacht, he had had many narrow escapes, but this new bit of service which had been entrusted to him promised to be even more exciting and hazardous.

He had been sent in search of a man who apparently was bent on destroying the usefulness of the radiophone in Alaska; his particular desire seeming to be to imperil the life of Munson, a great Arctic explorer, by interrupting his radiophone messages. This man was known to be possessed of abundant resources, to be powerful and dangerous. He had a perfect knowledge of all matters pertaining to the radiophone and was possessed of a splendidly equipped sending and receiving set. By moving this set about from place to place, he had succeeded in eluding every government operator sent out to silence him. Already he had done incalculable damage by breaking in upon government messages and upon private ones as well.

Just at this moment, Curlie sat cross-legged upon his sleeping-bag. With head and shoulders drooping far forward, as if weighed down by the radiophone receiver which was clamped upon his ears, he appeared half asleep. Yet every now and again his slim, tapered fingers shot out to give the coil aerial which hung suspended from the ridge pole of the tent a slight turn.

"I don't see how we are going to get the rest of the way over this glacier!" grumbled Joe. "That wall looks straight up; slick as glass, too. How y' ever goin' to get three sleds and eight hundred pounds of junk up there? Ought to have taken the lower trail. What if it is three times as far? Good trail anyway."

"Leave that to Jennings," murmured Curlie.

"Oh! Jennings!" exclaimed Joe. "Mebby he doesn't know so much. He's been gone too long already. What's that package he took with him? Gave us the slip already, maybe. Might be just a frame-up to keep us from making good time."

"Jennings looks all right to me," persisted Curlie.

He gave the aerial another turn.

"Well, anyway!"-

"Sh"-Curlie held up a warning finger. His nose was wiggling like a rabbit's when he eats clover. Joe knew what that meant; Curlie was getting something from the air.

Curlie started as the first word came to him-a whisper. He had heard that whisper many times before. For many days it had been silent. Now she was speaking to him again, that mysterious phantom girl of the air.

As he eagerly pressed the receivers to his ears, he caught, faint as if coming from afar, yet very distinctly, the whispered words:

"Hello - Curlie - I - wonder - if - you - are - listening - in - to-night. You - are - on - your - way - north. I - wanted - to - tell - you - the - man - you - are - after - is - on - the - Yukon - Trail - coming - south. He - started - yesterday. You - may - meet - him - Curlie - but - be - careful. It - is - big - Curlie - and - awful - awful - dangerous."

Cold beads of perspiration stood out upon the tip of Curlie's nose as the whisper ceased.

He had measured the distance. The girl was a thousand miles away to the north. So that was it? The man he had been sent to track down by means of the radio-compass was coming south over the trail. They would meet. He wondered how and where. There were wild, desolate stretches of tundra and forest on that trail. Inhabited only by Indians and wolves, these offered fitting background for a tragedy. Whose tragedy would it be?

"We might wait for him," he mused, "but, no, that wouldn't do. He might turn back. Then all that time would be lost. No, we must press on. We must get off this glacier at once."

In spite of his optimism, this glacier bothered him. He had taken this trail at the suggestion of Jennings, a man who had gone over the trail during the gold rush of '98 and who had offered to go with them now without pay. He had, as he expressed it, been called back by the "lure of the North," and must answer the call. Curlie had decided to accept his assistance and advice. Now he wrinkled his brow in thought. Had he made a mistake in the very beginning?

Just then, as if in answer to his question, Jennings, a short, broad-shouldered person with keen, deep-set blue eyes and drooping moustache, parted the tent-flaps and entered.

"What? Not turned in yet?" His eyes showed surprise.

"Had to see that you got back safe," smiled Curlie. He made a mental note of the fact that Jennings had not brought back the package he had carried away. Only a light axe swung at his belt.

"Well, that's kind and thoughtful," said Jennings. "But we'd better get into them sleepin'-bags pronto. Got a good stiff day to-morrow. Make good progress too or I'm no sourdough-musher."

Fifteen minutes later, Curlie having buried himself deep in the hairy depths of his sleeping-bag, had given himself over to a few moments of thought before the drowsy quiet of the tent lulled him to repose.

The sleeping-bags, in spite of Joe's forebodings, proved to be all that one might ask. With nothing but a square of canvas between his sleeping-bag and the ice, and with the temperature at thirty below, clad only in his pajamas Curlie felt quite as comfortable as he might have felt in his own bed back home.

"Wonderful thing, these bags," he thought dreamily. His thought about the future, the day just before him, was not quite so reassuring. They had come to ridges of ice on the surface of the glacier just at nightfall. There were many of these ridges. Dogs without sleds could climb them, but up their slopes they could not pull a pound. A man climbed them with difficulty. His feet slipping at every attempted step, he was constantly in danger of being dashed to the bottom. How were they to pack eight hundred pounds of equipment and supplies over these seemingly unsurmountable barriers?

Yet he dreaded to think of turning back. That meant four days of travel to reach a point which, straight over the glacier, was but twenty miles before them.

"Ho, well," he sighed at last, "let to-morrow take care of itself. Perhaps Jennings really knows a way. He doesn't look like a four-flusher."

With that his mind turned for a moment to the girl, the Whisperer. Though he had never seen her, he had come to think of this Whisperer as a real person. And indeed she must be, for, times without number, in the Secret Tower Room back there in the city, in the wireless room on the yacht, in the tent on the trail, her whisper had come to him. Always it told of the doings of one man, the man he had been sent after. But what sort of person? He had pictured her to himself as a small, dark, vivacious girl with snapping black eyes. Yet that was only a piece of fancy. He knew nothing about her save the fact that she seemed always near the man he now was seeking. He wondered vaguely now whether he would meet her upon this trip. He tried to imagine the cabin, the lonely trail or the deep forest of the north where he might meet her.

"Probably never will," he told himself at last. "Probably will always be just a whisper."

In the midst of his revery he fell asleep.