CHAPTER IX EAGLE EYES
There are some who believe that, should one be so fortunate as to reachEdmonton in Alberta, Canada, he would be at an outpost of civilization.Nothing could be more false. Edmonton is not an outpost. It is a city.
There are those again who believe that all cities are alike. They, too,are mistaken. The city of Edmonton is not like any other city in theworld.
No one knew this better than Curlie Carson. He was not a stranger toother cities. Chicago, New York City he knew. Belize, in BritishHonduras, had seen him on her streets. Paris he loved for her beauty. Yetnone of these thrilled him more than did Edmonton. On his days off,between flights, nothing suited him quite so well as sitting in thenarrow lobby of his own hotel, the old Prince George, listening to thescraps of conversation that drifted unbidden to his ears. For, while notan outpost, Edmonton is the gateway to a thousand outposts. All the vastNorthwest lies beyond it.
And down from this Northwest, even in these conventional days when allmen appear to think alike, talk alike, and dress alike, men still driftinto Edmonton who are unique. They dress in strange ways and speak ofaffairs that are far from the minds of the commonplace men of the street.
They drift into Edmonton, and then an invisible bond draws them one andall to the Prince George. There in the lobby they sit and talk of timberdrives along some unknown river, of mineral in the Rockies, of musk ox,of reindeer on the tundra, of fish in Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,of fur from the far flung barrens, of petroleum and of tar-sands, of goldoutcroppings, and a hundred other curious industries and discoveries.
"The thrill one gets from it!" Curlie said to Jerry that evening, afterthey had followed the carrier pigeon to the lone cabin and had left itthere, to continue their flight to McMurray and then to Edmonton. "Thethrill comes from knowing that every man of them is sure that he is goingto make his fortune at once, or at least after the break-up in thespring."
"That," said Jerry, "is the pioneer spirit. It is not dead. It stilllives here."
"Yes!" exclaimed Curlie. "And I am glad it does! How wonderful it is tolive in a land where men still dream!"
"Ah, yes." Jerry settled back and closed his eyes as if he, too, woulddream.
Curlie was in no mood for dreaming. The incident of the carrier pigeonwas too fresh in his mind for that.
Drawing a slip of paper from his pocket, he began studying it. "I'd givea pretty penny to be able to read it," he grumbled to himself after atime. He was looking at his copy of the code message he had taken fromthe carrier pigeon. So absorbed did he become that he did not notice thata tall, dark-haired man moved across the room to take a chair directlybehind him. The man had small, piercing eyes. He wore no beard, yet thevery blueness of his chin suggested that he might recently have had abeard. His eyes, as they fell upon the paper in Curlie's hand, becamestrangely fixed.
Curlie did not read the message. Indeed, as we have said, since no twowords of it made sense as they stood, how could he? It was one of thosemessages that impart information only after they are rearranged. It ispossible that every fifth word, plucked from the rest and set in order,would make a sentence. Then again, it might be every third or every sixthword. Or perhaps the first and fourth, then the fifth and eighth wordsmight be combined with the ninth and twelfth, and so on. The thing had somany possibilities that Curlie gave it up very soon and, folding thepaper, put it back into his pocket.
Perhaps this was just as well, for the man of the eagle eye, if one wereto judge by the tense look on his face, even from his point ofdisadvantage was making progress at deciphering the message.
"Curlie," said Jerry starting up from his reverie, "why did you allowthat little fellow back in the cabin to keep the carrier pigeon?"
"I--I don't know." Curlie seemed confused.
"What? You do a thing and don't know the reason?"
"Sometimes I do." Curlie spoke slowly. "There are times when I seem to beguided by instinct, or shall we say led by a spirit that is not myself,that is higher and wiser than I. At least," he half apologized, "I liketo think of it that way. Probably it's all wrong.
"But I say, Jerry!" He sat up quickly. The eagle-eyed one startedsuddenly, then rising, glided silently away. "I say, Jerry old boy, thatchap in the cabin was a world war veteran. A real one from Canada, orperhaps Ireland. He's one of those scrawny little fellows so small and soquick that a shell couldn't get them, nor a bullet either. Served throughit all, then came back here to live on the birds and fish he can get witha light rifle and a gill-net. You can't be rough with a chap like that,you really can't."
"No," murmured Jerry. "Not even if he committed murder. But, Curlie, doyou think he's in with the crowd that's flying wild up here and burningup our gas?"
"That," said Curlie, "remains to be found out."
"But, Jerry!" He leaned far forward. "There's something about that littletrapper and the carrier pigeon that we don't know. I'm going to keep aneye on that little fellow and his cabin. There's something worth knowingthere. And in the end I'll know it."