Barney knew he was thinking of the boy, Timmie, and La Vaune"s money he carried into the woods. A square of light, of course, would have been a cabin window.
"Kill your engine if you see a chance to light, and explain later," he shouted back.
But no square of light appeared, and soon the thought of it was driven from their minds, for, of a sudden, the plane shuddered like a man with a chill. It was the second engine. Bruce threw off the power. Then, with a sput-sput-sput, started it again. Once more came the shudder.
Again he tried with no better results. Half its power was gone; something was seriously wrong. He turned to the other engine. It would not start at all. Here was trouble. They were pa.s.sing over ridge after ridge, and all were roughly timbered. Surely, here was no landing-place. And if the second engine stopped altogether,--Bruce"s heart lost a beat at thought of it.
He gave the engine more gas and headed the plane upward. She climbed slowly, sluggishly, like a tired bird, but at length the keener air told him they were a safer distance above the earth.
"Better chance to pick a landing-place from here," thought Barney.
They had scarcely reached this higher level when the engine stopped. No efforts of the pilot availed to start it. His companions silently watched Bruce"s mute struggles. The Major, a perfect sport, sat stoically in his place. Barney, knowing that suggestions were useless, also was silent. So they volplaned slowly downward, every eye strained for a safe landing-place. They knew what a crash would mean at such a place. Loss of life perhaps; a wrecked plane at least, then a struggle through the woods till starvation ended it. They were four hundred miles from the last trace of white man"s habitation.
They had come down to three thousand feet when it became evident that only rough ridges lay beneath them. No landing-place here, certainly.
They could only hang on as long as possible in the hope the ridges would give way to level ground. Bruce thanked their luck for the wide-spreading wings which would impede their fall.
A moment later he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge higher than any they had pa.s.sed over. Here then was the end, he thought.
But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those rocks by a hundred feet and just beyond Bruce gasped and looked again.
"A miracle!" murmured Barney.
"Or a mirage," whispered Bruce.
Before them lay a square of level land, green,--in the moonlight. All about the square the land was black with trees, but there was a landing place. It was as if their trip had been long planned, their coming antic.i.p.ated, and that a level field was cleared for them.
It was only a matter of moments till they were b.u.mping along over the ground. Soon they were standing free from their harnesses and silently shaking hands.
Barney was the first to speak.
"Say, do you know," he said, "we"re in somebody"s wheat-field!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed the Major.
"See for yourself," The boy held before their astonished eyes a handful of almost ripened heads of wheat.
"Then what"s happened?" demanded the Major. "Have you gone due south by west instead of north by west?"
"Unless my compa.s.s lied, and it has never done so before, we have gone north by west since we started, and we are--or ought to be at this moment--four hundred miles from what the white man calls civilization."
"Well," said the Major, "since we are here, wherever that is, I suggest that we unpack our blankets and get out of the man"s wheat-field, whoever he may be. The mystery will keep until morning."
This they proceeded to do.
A clump of stubby, heavy-stemmed spruce trees offered them shelter from the chill night wind, and there, rolled in blankets, they prepared to sleep.
But Bruce could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So he lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This wheat-field now? Had he really been misdirected by the compa.s.s on the plane? To prove that he had not, he drew from his pocket a small compa.s.s, and placing it in a spot of moonlight, took the relative direction of the last ridge over which they had pa.s.sed and the plane in the wheat-field.
He was right; the compa.s.s had been true. They were four hundred miles northwest of the last mile of track laid on the Hudson Bay Railroad, deep in a wilderness, over which they had traveled for hours without sighting a single sign of white man"s habitation. Yet, here they were at the edge of a wheat-field.
What was the answer? Had some Indian tribe taken to farming? With the forests alive with game, the streams with fish, this seemed impossible.
Of a sudden, the boy started. It was, of course--
The sudden snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows.
Wolves, grizzlies, some unknown terror, perhaps?
Then, in another second his eyes bulged. In an open s.p.a.ce, between two spruce trees, where the moon shone brightly, had appeared for a moment a patch of white. Then, amid the crashing of small twigs, the thing was gone. In childhood, Bruce had been told many stories of ghosts and goblins by his Irish nurse. He had never overcome his dread of them. But it was with the utmost difficulty that he suppressed a shout. Then he laughed softly, for the crackling twigs told him he had seen a creature of flesh and blood, no ghost. He chuckled again and far in the dark a hoot-owl seemed to answer him and his company was a source of comfort.
Yet, here was, after all, another problem: What was this white-coated creature? Of all the wild things of the forest, none was white save the Arctic wolf. It was doubtful if he roamed so far south, especially in summer, and besides, this creature was too large and heavy to be a wolf.
Bruce thought of all the animals he knew and gave it up. It might have been a cow. Cows in this wilderness did not seem more improbable than a wheat-field, but the creature had been too light of tread for that.
Could it have been an Indian dressed in white, tanned deerskin? He was inclined to take this for the right solution, and wondered if he should awaken his companions. He could not tell what danger threatened. Finally he decided to let them sleep. He would keep watch. The three of them could do no more.
Once more his mind turned to the problem of the wheat. What was it that he had just concluded? Oh, yes, Timmie! Why might not Timmie have camped here and planted this wheat? But twelve years? How had he lived? Whence had come the seed wheat? There were a hundred questions connected with such a solution. Ah, well, morning would tell. There would be a cabin somewhere on the edge of the field and they would eat. Eat? For the first time Bruce realized that he had not eaten for hours; was very hungry.
Securing some malted-milk tablets, carried for emergency rations, he dissolved them in his mouth. A wonderfully soothing effect they had.
Propping himself against the trees, he closed his eyes for a second, and before he could pry them open again, he, too, was fast asleep.
When he awoke it was broad daylight and his companions were already astir.
"Did you fellows wake up last night?" he asked, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
Barney and the Major shook their heads.
"Then you didn"t see it?"
"See what?"
"The white thing."
Barney stared. The Major"s face was noncommittal.
Bruce told them of his experience.
"He"s been seeing a ghost," declared Barney, with a laugh.
"On the contrary," said the Major slowly, "I think he hasn"t. There are white creatures in the Arctic; just such ones as he has described. I have seen them myself. No, not white bears, either. But I have never seen them this far South. I will not say now what I think Bruce saw but I will say I do not think it was an Indian."
"Look!" exclaimed Barney suddenly in a whisper.
He pointed to a thin column of smoke that was rising over the tree-tops, to the left of the wheat-field.
"Listen!" whispered Bruce. "Somebody"s chopping wood." The freshening wind brought the sound of the axe plainly to their ears. A second later they heard the distant laugh of a child.
"Come on," said the Major, throwing his roll of blankets at the foot of a tree. "Where there"s children there"s no danger. Maybe they"ll have hot-cakes for breakfast!"
A moment later found the three of them stealing silently through the forest.
What they saw as they peered into the clearing brought them up standing.
A man wielded an axe before a cabin. He was tall and strong, smooth-shaven and clean. No Indian, but a white man. His clothing was of white-tanned buckskin. The cabin was of logs, but large, with a comfortable porch and several windows. The panes of the windows seemed near-gla.s.s. It was impossible to tell, from where they stood, whether the two laughing children who played by the door were white or half-breeds.
The appearance at that door of a neatly-dressed Indian woman seemed to settle that question.
The three men had gone half-way across the narrow clearing, before the man, looking up from his work, saw them. Instantly his face blanched.
With a quick step backward, he reached for a rifle that stood by the door. Then the arm fell limp by his side.