<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>On the <br/>Yukon Trail</h1>
<p class="center"><i>By</i>
<br/>JAMES CRAIG</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</div>
<h1 title="">On the Yukon Trail</h1>
<h2 id="c1"><span class="small">CHAPTER I</span> <br/>THE WHISPER FROM AFAR</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In a corner of the tent, sprawled upon a deerskin
sleeping-bag, lay Joe Marion, Curlie’s pal
in other adventures.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</div>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</div>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Leave that to Jennings,” murmured Curlie.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Jennings looks all right to me,” persisted
Curlie.</p>
<p>He gave the aerial another turn.</p>
<p>“Well, anyway!”—</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As he eagerly pressed the receivers to his
ears, he caught, faint as if coming from afar,
yet very distinctly, the whispered words:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Cold beads of perspiration stood out upon the
tip of Curlie’s nose as the whisper ceased.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</div>
<p>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?</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</div>
<p>“What? Not turned in yet?” His eyes
showed surprise.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</div>
<p>“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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Probably never will,” he told himself at
last. “Probably will always be just a whisper.”</p>
<p>In the midst of his revery he fell asleep.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />