Panther Eye Part 4

"No," said Johnny, closing and locking the door.

The man departed with a sour look on his face. He returned within an hour.

With him was a boy. Between them they carried the most perfectly preserved mastodon tusk Johnny had ever seen.

"Flour?" the man said, pointing to the tusk.

Johnny could not resist the temptation to barter for the tusk. He yielded.

The man carried his flour away in triumph.

After that, not a day pa.s.sed but a half score or more of the natives came sneaking about the cabin, the storeroom, and the mine, begging for food.

As the days wore on, as famine came poking his skeleton form into the igloos of the improvident natives, the condition became truly serious.

Johnny dispatched a messenger inland to discover if it would be possible to obtain deer meat from the Reindeer Chukches living there. When he found that a few deer might be obtained, he began trading sparingly with the coast natives. They had little to trade, and the little he could spare would only postpone the disaster that seemed hanging over the camp like a cloud. The natives would not hunt or fish and each day found them growing more insolent and threatening.

This to the eager young miner was a great trial. Mining operations were going on splendidly. Mine No. 2 yielded a richer pay dirt each day.

Indications were that in a very few days they would be mining the mother-lode from that digging and would be storing away pure gold in moose hide sacks, some to be sent to the men whose wealth had made the expedition possible and some to the orphans of Vladivostok.

It was at this time that the native with the dark and frowning visage came with the announcement that he had located some immense tusks of extinct monsters, a short distance inland. He begged Johnny to go with him to look at them and a.s.sured him that if they pleased him, they should be brought to the coast for barter.

"All right, come sun to-morrow, I go," said Johnny.

"I better go along," said Pant, when the native had left.

"Go if you want to," said Johnny.

Next morning, just at dawn, the three men started on their quest for the ancient ivory.

The way led first up the frozen river bed, then over low-lying hills to a stretch of tundra. At the distant border of the tundra towered high cliffs, flanked by snow-blown mountains. Toward these they journeyed, tramping along in silence.

As they neared the cliffs, Johnny fancied that he saw some dark creatures moving among the rocks. The distance was too great for him to know whether they were human beings or animals.

It was with a creeping sense of danger and a feeling of thankfulness for Pant's companionship, that, after arriving at the cliffs, he found himself being led into a dark cave in a hill of limestone rock.

"U bogak ivory" (look, here is ivory). The native whispered the words as if afraid the extinct monsters would waken from the dead and demand their tusks.

He had lighted a single tallow candle which gave forth a sickly, flickering light.

The place seemed fairly spooky. Only the pit-pats of their footsteps wakened dull echoes through the vaulted cavern. Johnny could not help feeling that there were more than three men in this cave. In vain he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the walls to right and left of him.

They had gone perhaps seventy-five paces into the darkness when there came a sudden indistinguishable sound. Johnny thought it like the dropping of a small rock, followed by a half suppressed exclamation. A chill crept up his spine.

They moved on a few paces. Again came a sound. This time it was like two steps taken in the dark. At the same instant, fingers gripped his arm. He sprang into an att.i.tude of defense.

"Stop," came a whisper in his ear. "Place's full of natives." It was Pant.

"When I knock the candle to the floor, you drop flat and crawl for the door."

For a second Johnny stared in the dark at the place where Pant's face should be. He caught again the puzzling gleam of yellow light.

"All right," he breathed.

Ten seconds later, as the candle executed a spiral curve toward the floor and flickered out, Johnny dropped flat and began to crawl.

CHAPTER V

THE BIG CAT

Hardly had Johnny and Pant disappeared over the hill that morning in their quest for the supposed old ivory of rare value, when things began to happen in the neighborhood of the camp. Dave Tower and Jarvis had been detailed to inspect Mine No. 3, with a view to opening it as soon as the mother-lode had been reached in No. 2. Armed with pick and shovel, they had crossed the first low ridge, which made a short cut across the bend of the river, when Jarvis suddenly whispered:

"Hist! Down! The cat!"

Dave dropped to his knees, eyes popping at the sight just before him. Not twenty yards from them was a huge tiger. With head up, tail lashing, he seemed contemplating a leap which might bring him over a third of the distance between them. Two more leaps, and then what? Dave's hair p.r.i.c.kled at the roots; a chill ran down his spine; cold perspiration stood out on his forehead.

"If only we had a gun," he whispered.

"Keep yer eye on 'im," the Englishman whispered. "Don't flinch nor turn a 'air. 'E's a bad un."

For fully three minutes--it seemed hours to Dave--the great cat lay spread flat to the snow. Then a nervous twitch of his paws told that he was disturbed. Dave's hands grasped the pick-handle until it seemed they would crush it to splinters.

But what was this? The creature turned his head and looked to the right.

In another second they saw what the tiger saw. A clumsy, ponderous polar bear, making her way inland to some rocky cavern for a sleep, had blundered upon them.

"Ship ahoy!" breathed Jarvis. "Twelve feet long, if she's an inch, and a bob for a tail at that."

"Look!" whispered Dave. "She has her cub with her."

"And the cat sees 'er. 'Oly mackerel, wot a sc.r.a.p."

When Johnny Thompson dropped on hands and knees in the cavern after the Eskimo's candle had flickered out, he felt his arm seized by the twitching fingers of Pant, and, half by his own effort, half by the insistent drag of his companion, who seemed to be quite at home in this dungeon-like darkness, he made his way rapidly toward the door.

Complete darkness appeared to have demoralized the forces of evil that had been arrayed against them. Soft-padded footsteps could be heard here and there, but these persons seemed to be hurrying like frightened bats to a place of hiding. Twice they were stumbled upon by some one fleeing.

Johnny's mind worked rapidly.

"Pant," he breathed, "if they strike a light and hold it, we're lost!"

"Got your automatic?"

"Sure."

"Take time to get hold of it."