CHAPTER IX WHO IS THIS WHISPERER?
"What does it mean?" puzzled Joe, as Curlie reported the Whisperer'smessage. "Did he listen in last night when I was calling for help? Andwas he frightened by that?"
"Might have," said Curlie, "but anyway you couldn't help that. You werein a mess and had to be helped out."
For a moment the two boys were silent. Then Curlie spoke again:
"Might not be that at all. I listened in on a message last night. It wasfrom Munson, the explorer. It was not broken in upon as his others havebeen. There may have been something in that message which caused theoutlaw to turn back."
"Well, anyway," he exclaimed, "whatever the cause is, we'll go out andafter them the first thing after dawn. Is everything all right; sledfixed and dogs doctored up?"
"Everything's fine as silk."
"All right then, let's have some chow. After that we'll turn in. Luckdoesn't go with any one person forever. Why, even to-morrow we mightcatch up with our outlaw friend."
"Hardly that," smiled Joe. "We've got forty or fifty miles of unbrokentrail to make before we really get on the scent at all. By that time,traveling on a hard-packed trail as he is, he'll have a big lead on us.There are probably forks and crosses in the trail a hundred miles or sofarther on, so we've got a real task ahead of us. We'll have to be sly asfoxes to catch him now."
"I suppose that's so," Curlie sighed, "but we'll get him, see if wedon't."
"Say!" exclaimed Joe suddenly, "who is this whispering friend of yoursanyway?"
"Don't know," said Curlie, scratching his head.
"Ever seen her?"
"I don't know."
"How's she come to be traveling with this man anyway?"
"Can't say."
"Mighty queer, I'd say."
"I'd say as much myself. Queer and interesting. I may as well admit thatI am as much interested in coming up with the Whisperer as I am incatching this outlaw."
"Well, we won't do either if we don't eat and turn in," said Joe as hereached for the frying pan.
Joe's prophecy that they would not at once catch up with the man theysought, proved correct. The first two days they struggled forward throughsoft snow, over a trackless wilderness. Then they came upon the campsiteof the outlaw, his last camping place before he turned back.
To Curlie this was a thrilling moment. It was the first earthly sign hehad ever seen of this strange pair, the outlaw and the Whisperer.Heretofore he had followed only the trackless trail of the air. Now hehad footprints of a man and of many dogs to go by. The mark of the camp,though three days old, was as fresh as if it had been abandoned but twohours before. There had been no snowfall. There was never a breath ofwind in that forest.
"As long as his trail is not joined by any other," Jennings told theboys, "we can follow it with our eyes shut. We could do that three monthsfrom now. There might be four feet of snowfall, but on top of it allthere would be the depression made in the first two feet of snow. Thereis never any wind to move the snow about, so there's your trail carved inthe snow, permanent as marble till the spring thaw comes."
"But when he comes to the Yukon River trail?" suggested Curlie.
"Well, that's going to be harder." The miner wrinkled his brow. "Butwe'll find a way to track him--the way he hitches his dogs, track of hissled. There's always something if you are sharp enough to see it."
Curlie examined the marks of the camp very carefully. It was evident thatthe man knew as much about making an Arctic camp as did Jennings. Thesquare made by the tent floor showed that he had spread down a canvasfloor and the heaps of spruce twigs tossed all about told that he hadbedded the place down before he spread out his blankets or sleeping-bags.
"Two teams," was Jennings' comment, "and eight or nine dogs to the team.Fine big fellows too. Shouldn't wonder if they were Siberian wolfhounds."
One thing Curlie made a secret search for: footprints. There were enoughof one sort. The broad marks of a man's foot clad in moccasins or Eskimoskin-boots were everywhere present. What he sought was the mark of asmaller foot, a much smaller foot, the foot of the Whisperer. But thoughhe examined every square yard of trampled ground around the camp, andthough he ran ahead of the dogs for two miles after resuming the trail,he saw no trace of a woman's footprint.
"Looks like he drove one dog team and led the other," he told himself."Looks as if--"
For the first time he began to doubt the existence of the Whisperer.
"Can it be," he asked himself, "that the outlaw and the Whisperer areone? Does he change his voice and pretend to give me tips when he is inreality only leading me on?"
In his mind he went back over the times when the Whisperer had broken inon the silence of the night. There had been those two times when he hadbeen listening in at the Secret Tower Room, back there in the city (toldabout in "Curlie Carson Listens In"). There had been two times when hehad caught her whisper out over the sea.
"That time," he told himself, "she told me he had gone north. Why shouldthis man keep me informed of his own doings? He ought to know that I'dreport it; that someone would follow him if I didn't.
"No," he told himself, "there must be a real Whisperer. The girl mustexist. She's somewhere up there on the trail ahead of us. And yet," hereasoned, "if she is there, where are her tracks?"
Again he began convincing himself that she did not exist, that it was alla hoax invented by the mind of this clever outlaw. The more he thought ofit the more sure he became that this was true. The more sure he became ofit the more his anger grew.
"To be shamed, to be tricked, deceived, buncoed by the man you arepursuing!" he exploded. "That is adding insult to injury!"
With the plain trail stretching straight out before them, they nowtraveled far into the night, traveled until dogs and men were ready todrop. Only then did they turn to the right of the trail and set theirweary muscles to the task of making camp.