Panther Eye Part 7

Johnny leaped forward. A burly fellow seized his arms. Using an old college trick, Johnny fell backward, taking the man with him. Then, with his foot on the other's stomach, he sent him whirling into two other men, and, before they could recover from their astonishment, Johnny went sprinting down the side of the long row of willows, which had proved his downfall two days before.

He was headed for home. No Russian, nor Russian dog-team, could catch him.

But he was clad only in a towel, and there were many miles of snow between him and his friends.

Suddenly, from the rear, there came the ki-yi of dogs.

"Hounds!" he murmured in despair. "Unhitched from the sled. They'll catch me. I can't escape them." He stared wildly to right and left as he ran, but saw no way of escape.

After Johnny Thompson had left camp in search of the Bolshevik band that eventful morning, he was no more than out of sight when a slight figure crept from a snow-buried pup tent to the right of the cabin and went gliding away up the hill in the moonlight. It was Pant. Rapidly he scaled the snow-packed hillside. Arriving at last at the foot of the rocky cliff, he began a minute examination of those cliffs. Once he climbed to a dizzy height by clinging to the crags. It was a cat-like feat which very few persons could perform, but he did it with consummate ease. At another time he dropped flat on his stomach and crept into a broad crevice between the rocks. He was gone for a long time, but finally appeared grimy with dirt and empty-handed.

"'Money in the rock,'" he murmured. "'Money in the rock for you.'"

Then, as if discouraged with his quest, he turned and started down the hill.

He had covered half the distance when something caught his eye. A black spot, the size of a baseball, had bounced mysteriously past him.

In a twinkling, he was away in mad pursuit. Slipping, sliding, bounding over the glistening surface, turning a somersault to land on his feet and race ahead, he very soon came up with the thing where it had lodged against a protruding flat rock.

His fingers grasped it eagerly. Here was a third message from the unknown one. Perhaps this would explain all.

CHAPTER VII

THE MYSTERY OF MINE No. 1

When Johnny Thompson saw that the wolf-hounds were on his trail, though he was without weapons of any kind and practically dest.i.tute of clothing, he decided to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the Russians, then to turn upon the pack and sell his life dearly, if indeed it must be sold to a murderous pack of half wolves.

As he sped forward, through his mind there ran all manner of stories told round northern camp fires. The stories had to do with these same Russian wolf-hounds. A man had once picketed his dogs near him in a blizzard and, creeping into his sleeping bag, had slept so soundly throughout the night that he did not realize the drifting snow was burying him. He had awakened to struggle against the weight of snow but could not free himself. Months later, when the spring thaw had come, his bones had been found picked clean by his wolf-hounds. A child at Nome, Alaska, playing with his father's team, was scratched by one of them. The smell of blood had set them wild. They had attacked him, and before help could arrive had torn him in pieces. These stories flooding his memory lent added speed to his stalwart limbs.

He ran three miles, four, five miles. But at each added mile, the yelp of the hounds came more distinctly to him. Now he could hear the loud flap as they sucked in their lolling tongues.

He was becoming fatigued. Soon he must turn and stand at bay. He looked to the right and left of him. A cutbank presented a steep perpendicular surface against which he might take his stand with the knowledge that they could not attack him from the rear.

"But shucks!" he half sobbed. "What's the use? I'll be frozen stiff before they get courage to attack me."

To the cutbank he ran, then, turning, waited.

With rolling tongues, the dogs came hurrying up to form themselves into a circle, seven gaunt, gray wolf-hounds grinning at one naked boy.

Then Johnny, catching the humor of the situation, not only grinned back, but laughed outright, laughed long and loud. What he said when he had finished was:

"Bowsie, you old rascal, why didn't you tell me it was you?"

It was his own team. Having been unhitched at the time, they had recognized the stride of their master and had deserted with him. It was indeed a joyous meeting.

There was, however, no time to be wasted. The bitter cold air made Johnny's skin crinkle like parchment. His feet, in contact with the stinging snow, were freezing.

Two of the dogs still wore their seal-skin harnesses. These Johnny tore off of them and having broken the bindings, wound them in narrow strips about his feet, tying them firmly around his ankles.

So, with his feet protected from the cold, he took up the fifteen miles of homeward race, the seven dogs ki-yi-ing at his heels.

Five miles farther on, he came upon a cache built by some Reindeer Chukche. In this he found a suit of deer skin. It was old, dirty and too small, but he crowded into it gratefully. Then with knees exposed and arms swinging bare to the elbows he prepared for a more leisurely ten miles home. He was quite confident that the lazy and stolid Russians were not following.

Johnny was well within sight of the friendly hill that sheltered his cabin from the north wind, when, with a sudden gasp, he stopped and stared.

Coming apparently out of the very heart of the hill, an immense brown object extended itself along the horizon and at last floated free in air.

To understand this strange phenomenon, we must know what had been happening at camp, and what Pant had been doing since finding the mysterious black bill.

The ball was covered with black paper. This much, Pant discovered at once.

The rest he left to the seclusion of his pup tent and the light of a candle.

When at last he unwrapped the paper, he found nothing more than a film, a small, moving-picture film. This had been developed, dried, then rewound on a spool. The remainder of the inner contents of the ball was nothing but blank paper with never a scratch of writing upon it. When Pant had examined each sc.r.a.p carefully, he held the film to the light. There were pictures on it. As his keen eyes studied them, his expression changed from that of puzzled interest to intense surprise, almost of horror.

For a full half hour he sat there holding them close to the light, then far away; tipping them to one angle then another, mirroring them on the retina of his eye until nothing could efface them. Then, having rerolled and rewrapped them, he hid them away among his deer skins and turning over, fell asleep.

He was awake again by sunrise, and without pausing for breakfast went directly to the entrance of Mine No. 1. Having entered without a light, he made his way to the back of the cavity. There he paused to listen. The earth shudder seemed to fairly shake the rocks loose about him. One pebble did rattle to the floor. The next instant there came the clang of rocks on metal. A light flashed. It was in Pant's hand. In the gleaming circle of light from his electric torch, a brightly polished disk of metal appeared.

It was eating its way through the frozen wall of sand and rock. One second the light flashed, the next second Pant was hurrying from the mine as if his life depended upon it.

Das.h.i.+ng down the hill, he broke into the mess-room where the men were a.s.sembled for hot-cakes and coffee.

"Arms! arms!" he panted. "Rifles, automatics, anything. A pick, two picks.

C'mon."

The men, believing that he had gone mad, stood staring in speechless astonishment.

"C'mon, can't you?" he pleaded. "It's the yellow men, the dirty little yellow men. They've got an infernal machine for cutting out the pay dirt in blocks. They've looted Mine No. 1 while we slept. That was the earth-tremble. C'mon, can't you? Bring rifles! Anything. We'll get them yet!"

Catching a glimmer of his meaning, the men dashed to the bunkroom and clubroom, to appear a moment later armed with such weapons as they could find.

Arriving at the entrance of Mine No. 1, Pant held up a finger for silence.

"Arms ready," he whispered, "your left hand on the shoulder of the man ahead of you. I'll lead."

Without a light, he entered the mine and beckoned the men to come on. With soft and shuffling tread they followed, like a chain gang entering a dungeon. They took fifty paces, then they halted. A light flashed.

Instantly every man gripped his weapon.

It was only Pant. What they saw before them caused involuntary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. A hole some eighteen inches square had been cut in the frozen wall.

For a second they listened. The silence was so complete that the ticking of a watch sounded like the beat of an alarm clock.

"They've gone," whispered Pant. "C'mon."

His light blinked out. There followed the sound of garments rubbing against the walls. The man behind Pant felt him one instant, the next he was gone. He had crawled through the hole. There was nothing to do but follow. One by one, thrusting their rifles before them, they crawled through this narrow door from the mine. To what? They could not even guess.