Connie Morgan in Alaska Part 8

Satisfying himself that the bridge would bear the weight of the outfit, Waseche Bill untied the rope and headed the dogs across at a run.

The surface of the glacier became rougher as he advanced and Waseche was kept busy at the gee-pole as the dogs threaded their way between ice hummocks and made long detours to avoid cracks and fissures, so that the winter sun was just sinking behind the mountains when the man at last found himself upon the edge of the glacier, at a point some distance above the cave where Connie Morgan had sought shelter from the storm. He looked out over the undulating ridges of snow waste that stretched away toward a nearby spur of the mountains. Intently he scanned each nook and byway of the frozen desert, but not a moving object, not a single black dot that might by any stretch of the imagination be construed as a living thing, rewarded his careful scrutiny. Gradually his eyes focused upon the point where the mountains dipped toward the great ice field.

"Yonde's the mouth of the canyon I headed into befo' the blizza'd. I'd bet a blue one the old dawg's trailed me in." Filling his lungs Waseche sent call after call quavering through the still, keen air, but the only answer was the hollow echoing of his own voice as it died away in the mountains. A mile to the eastward he worked his outfit into the valley, following the devious windings of a half-formed lateral moraine, and headed the dogs for the mouth of the canyon.

He searched in vain for tracks as he entered the narrow pa.s.s. The snow was smooth and untrampled as the driving wind of the blizzard had left it.

"Sho' is queeah," he muttered. "Sweah to goodness, I hea'd that Boris dawg--I'd know that howl if I hea'd it in Kingdom Come--an' I know it _now_! I wondeh," he mused, as the team followed the devious windings of the canyon, "I wondeh if this heah Lillimuit _is_ a kind of spirit land like folks says. Did I really heah the ol' dawg howl, or has the big Nawth got me, too, like it done got Carlson, an' the rest? 'Cause if they was a dawg wheah's his tracks? An' if it was a ghost dawg, how could he howl?" The sled dogs paused, sniffing excitedly at the snow, and Waseche Bill leaped forward. Before the mouth of an ice-cavern were many tracks, and the man stared dumbfounded.

"Fo' the love of Mike!" he cried excitedly. "It's the _kid_!" He dropped to his knees and patted affectionately the impressions of the tiny _mukluks_. "Boy! Boy! Yo' li'l ol' sourdough, yo' li'l pa'dner--How'd yo' get heah? Yo' done come, jes' as Joe 'lowed yo' would--yo' doggone li'l _tillic.u.m_! Come all alone, too! Jes' wait 'til I catch holt of yo'--an' McDougall's dawgs! No one in Alaska could a loaned them _malamutes_ offen Mac, 'cept yo'--theah's ol' Scah Foot, that lost two toes in the wolf-trap!" The man leaped to the sled and cracked his whip.

"Mus.h.!.+ Mus.h.!.+" he cried, and the dogs bounded forward upon the trail of the boy.

Waseche Bill traversed this same canyon on the day before the blizzard.

He, too, had run up against the dead end, and it was while retracing his steps that he had discovered the sheep trail, by means of which he gained the surface of the glacier a mile back from the termination of the gorge. He grinned broadly as his sled shot past the foot of this trail, entirely obliterated, now, by the new-fallen snow.

"I got yo', now, _kid_," he chuckled. "Holed up like a silveh tip 'till the sto'm blowed by, didn't yo', pa'dner? But I got yo' back ag'in, an'

from now on, me an' yo' sticks togetheh. I done the wrong thing--to go'

way--but yo' so plumb li'l, I fo'got yo' was a sho' nuff man."

His soliloquy was cut short by the sudden stopping of the sled as it b.u.mped upon the heels of the "wheel" dogs, and for the next few minutes the man was busy with whip and _mukluks_ straightening out the tangle of fighting animals. Das.h.i.+ng in the darkness between a huge granite block and the wall of the glacier, they had brought up sharply against the new-formed ice barrier that completely blocked the trail.

Slas.h.i.+ng right and left with his heavy whip, and kicking vigorously and impartially, he finally succeeded in subduing the fighting dogs and removing the tangled harness. And then he stared dumbly at the great ma.s.s of broken ice that buried the trail of the boy. In the darkness he could form no conception of the extent of the barrier. Was it a detached fragment? Or had the whole side of the glacier split away and crashed into the canyon? Before his eyes rose the picture of a small body crushed and mangled beneath thousands of tons of ice, and for the first time in his life Waseche Bill gave way to his emotions. Sinking down upon the sled he buried his face in his hands and in the darkness, surrounded by the whimpering dogs, his great shoulders heaved to the violence of his sobs.

The great ma.s.s of ice that split from the glacier's side, while presenting an unscalable face to the imprisoned boy, was by no means so formidable a barrier when approached from the opposite side.

Waseche Bill was not the man to remain long inactive. After a few moments he sprang to his feet and surveyed the huge pile of ice fragments. By the feeble light of the stars he could see that the walls of the canyon towered high above the top of the ma.s.s. Tossing his dogs an armful of frozen fish, he caught up the coil of _bab.i.+.c.he_ rope and stepped to the foot of the obstruction.

"I cain't wait till mawnin'," he muttered, "I got to find out if the kid is safe. Reckon I c'n make it, but I sho' do wish they was mo' light."

It was not a difficult climb for a man used to the snow trails, and a half hour later Waseche Bill stood at the top and, with a long sigh of relief, gazed into the depths beyond the barrier.

"Thank the Lawd, it's only a slivah!" he exclaimed. "But, at that, it mout of catched him." With a kick he sent a small fragment of ice spinning into the chasm. Almost instantly, the man heard a low growl, and his eye caught the flash of an indistinct grey shape against the snow floor below him. Straight as an arrow the shape shot toward the ice wall, and Waseche Bill heard the scratching of claws upon the flinty surface, and a low, throaty growl as the shape dropped back into the snow. He laughed aloud.

"Oh, yo' Slashah dawg!" he cried happily, as he proceeded to make the end of his long line fast to a projecting pinnacle.

"I'll jes' slip down an' s'prise the kid," he chuckled, "he's prob'ly rolled in by now." Taking a couple of turns about his leg with the rope, he lowered himself over the edge and slid slowly downward. Suddenly, he gripped hard and checked his descent. He was ten feet from the bottom, and something struck the rope just beneath his feet, and as it struck, he heard again the low growl, and the vicious click of fang on polished fang, and the soft thud with which the wolf-dog struck the snow.

"Hey, yo' Slashah!" he called sharply. "Go lay down! It's only me, Slashah--don't yo' know me?" For answer the dog sprang again, and the man hastily drew himself higher--for this time the long white fangs clashed together almost at his feet, and the low growl ended in a snarl as the grey body dropped back upon the snow.

"Doggone yo'! Quit yo' foolin'! Git out!" cried the exasperated man, as he tightened his grip on the swaying line. And then, beneath him, the canyon seemed filled with dogs--gaunt, grey shapes that sprang, and snapped, and growled, and fell back to spring again.

"Now, what d'yo' think of that," muttered the man disgustedly, as he peered downward into green glaring eyes and slavering jaws. "Mac's dawg's, too! I'd sho' hate fo' this heah rope to break! Theh's ol'

Boris!" he exclaimed, as the lead dog appeared at the edge of the snarling pack. "h.e.l.lo, Boris, ol' dawg! Yo' know me--don't yo', Boris?"

With a short, sharp yelp of delight, the dog dashed in and leaped toward his old master, but his activity served only to egg on the others, and they redoubled their efforts to reach the swaying man.

Waseche Bill laughed:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Now, what d'yo' think of that! I'd sho' hate fo' this heah rope to break!"]

"'Taint no use. Reckon I'll have to wake up the kid." And the next moment the walls of the canyon rang with his calls for help.

At the other end of the chasm Connie Morgan stirred uneasily and thrust his head from under the flap of his sleeping bag. He listened drowsily to the pandemonium of growls and yelps and snarls, from the midst of which came indistinctly the sound of a voice. He became suddenly wide-awake and, wriggling from the bag, caught up his dog whip and sped swiftly up the canyon.

It was no easy task for the boy to beat the excited dogs into submission, but at length they slunk away before the stinging sweep of the lash, and Waseche Bill, his hands numb from his long gripping of the rope, slid squarely into the up-reaching arms of his little partner.

"Yo' sho' saved my bacon that time, kid. Why, that theah Slashah dawg--he'd of et me alive, an' the rest w'd done likewise, onct they got sta'ted!" Waseche Bill's tongue rattled off the words with which he sought to disguise the real emotion of his heart at finding the boy he had learned to love, safe and sound in the great white wilderness. But Connie Morgan was not deceived, and he smiled happily into the rough hair of his big partner's _parka_, as the man strained him to him in a bearlike embrace.

That night the two sat long over the camp fire at the foot of the moraine, and the heart of the man swelled with pride as the boy recounted his adventures on the trail.

"And now I've found you," concluded the boy, "I'm going to take you back. Pardners are pardners, you know--and tomorrow we'll hit for Ten Bow."

The man turned his face away and became busily engaged in arranging the robes into a bed close against the boy's sleeping bag.

"We sho' will, kid. Pa'dners _is_ pa'dners, an'--me an' yo'--somehow--I cain't jes' say it--but--anyways--Why! Doggone it! Me an' yo's mo'n jes pa'dners--ain't we, kid?"

Later, as the man burrowed deep into his robes a voice sounded drowsily from the depths of the sleeping bag:

"Waseche!"

"Huh?" questioned the man.

"Black Jack Demaree said to tell you--let's see--what was it he said?

Oh, yes--he said when I found you to tell you that 'you can't tell by the size of a frog how far he can jump.'"

Waseche Bill chuckled happily to himself:

"Yo' sho' cain't," he agreed. "Black Jack's right about that--trouble is, I nevah know'd much about frawgs."

CHAPTER IX

THE WHITE DEATH

It was yet dark when Waseche Bill opened his eyes and blinked sleepily into the small face that smiled down at him in the light of the flickering fire. The rich aroma of boiling coffee and the appetizing odour of bacon roused him to his senses and he grinned happily at the words of the boy:

"Come on, pardner, grub's ready! And you better fly at it, too. 'Cause if I know anything about it, we'll sure know we've done something by the time we get the outfit out of this hole."

Waseche glanced upward where the tiny stars winked coldly between the high walls of the gloomy gorge in which Sam Morgan's boy found himself held prisoner when the huge ma.s.s of ice detached itself from the side of the glacier and crashed into the canyon.

"Yo' sho's on the job, son--seem's if I jest got good an' asleep. What time is it?" he asked, as he crawled from beneath his robes.

"Six o'clock," answered the boy extending a cup of steaming coffee.

"Six o'clock! Sufferin' cats! Three hours till daylight--Ain't yo got no pity on the ol' man?"

"Old man, nothing!" grinned Connie over the rim of his tin cup. "But if you wait for daylight to come down into the bottom of this well, you will be an old man before you get out."