The Radio Boys Rescue the Lost Alaska Expedition Part 25

The ground was bare of verdure, and great rocks of the copper ore were scattered around. On this account their view was restricted, but the sound of the rifle fire grew momentarily louder, apprising them that they were nearing the scene of conflict. Suddenly Bob, who was in the lead, having out-distanced the others several yards, rounded a big rock and found himself on a bank above a narrow strip of beach.

Below lay a number of forms, as of men dead or wounded. Two canoes were drawn up on the beach, and behind one of these, using it as a bulwark, crouched a man, rifle to shoulder. Farther down the beach were three other canoes grounded, and beside them several forms of wounded men, and five or six men, crouching, firing at the lone defender of the attacked position, creeping up on him.

Just as Bob reached the edge of the bank, the attackers mustered up courage for a rush, and with wild shouts swept forward. It looked dark, indeed, for the lone defender of the upturned canoes. Bob looked back to see how close were his companions, but they were not yet in sight. His dash had carried him farther than he had believed to be the case.

It had taken only a glance to show Bob which way the land lay. The lone defender was the survivor of Thorwaldsson's party, if the explorer's party it was, of which Bob had little doubt. He was a white man. The others were half-breeds, and if Bob was not mistaken they were of the same gang which he had encountered before.

It was distinctly up to him to lend a hand. Throwing his rifle to his shoulder, he prepared to open fire on the crushing enemy. But as his finger pressed the trigger, he groaned. The mechanism of the rifle had became jammed in some fashion. Desperately he worked to release the trigger, but to no avail.

Then the light of battle came into big Bob's eyes. The half-breeds were just below him now. Several of their number had fallen in the rush, shot down by the defender of the canoes. Four were left, and they evidently were bent on polishing off their lone opponent. So absorbed were all in their own drama, they had not seen Bob.

Clubbing his rifle, Bob leaped. He came down on the back of one of the attackers, and bore him to the ground. With catlike swiftness, Bob, who himself had fallen on his hands and knees, gathered himself together, regained his feet, and swinging his clubbed rifle, let out a yell fit to "frighten a wolf pack," as Frank later described it.

The stock of the rifle came down with a thud on the shoulders of another of the half-breeds, felling him as if he had been struck by lightning.

So tremendous was the blow, that it tore the rifle from Bob's grasp. But he leaped for another of the enemy, a fellow whose startled face was close to his, seized him about the waist and whirled him aloft to be tossed aside as if he were a sack of meal. The fourth man was dropped by a shot from the defender of the canoe.

"Attaboy, Bob," came Frank's voice, from the bluff above.

One after the other, Bob's friends leaped to the beach.

As Frank and Jack clapped him on the back, and tried to grasp his hand, uttering enthusiastic praise the while, Bob looked around.

"Say, where's that chap? Why, he's fainted."

Freeing himself from his companions' clutches, Bob leaped over the up-ended canoe and bent above the rec.u.mbent body of the doughty defender.

"Why, he's badly wounded," he cried.

Mr. Hampton pushed him aside.

"Here, let me look, Bob," he said. "You fellows help Farnum and Art in looking after the others. The place is a shambles, with wounded men everywhere."

CHAPTER XXII.-OUTWARD BOUND.

It was a week before the wounded could be moved. At close range though the fight had been, none had been killed. When the boys exclaimed in amazement at this, Art shrugged his shoulders.

"More bullets fly in a fight than ever reach their mark," he said. "I've seen men, tough fellows, regular two-gun men, shoot at each other in Alaskan saloons in the old days without anybody being killed. When a man sees red, he don't take no good aim."

The majority of the wounded were not hit in vital spots, but Thorwaldsson had been shot in so many places that his recovery at first was a matter of doubt. It was he who had been the last of his party to keep firing, he whom Bob had rescued in the nick of time.

From Farrell and others of Thorwaldsson's five companions, however, the story of what had occurred had been obtained. They had been on their way down the Coppermine when they, too, had been overtaken in the fog. They had landed in the little beach to wait for the fog to lift. There the half-breeds, survivor's of Lupo's gang, who had been d.o.g.g.i.ng the trail of Mr. Hampton and his party, had come upon them.

The surprise had been mutual, for the half-breeds had been looking for the Hampton party and not for Thorwaldsson. However, they had attacked, the majority from the canoes, and three who had been scouting along sh.o.r.e, from the land. Surprised thus, Thorwaldsson's party had put up a game fight, but one after the other had been shot down until only the leader was left. He, barricaded behind the canoes, had held off the rest of the attackers until the final rush and Bob's timely arrival.

As the days pa.s.sed by, with the twilight deepening into short nights, Art and Farnum both grew increasingly anxious to be on their way for the outside. They knew their North, and they realized that the time remaining to them before Winter set in was narrowing down to a perilously small edge.

"We'll have a mighty hard job of it, Mr. Hampton," Farnum pleaded. "What with wounded on our hands, and prisoners to guard, it looks almost hopeless as it is for us to get out. But, anyway, we can't afford to waste time. Can't Thorwaldsson be moved? He'll be all right in a canoe."

"As long as the traveling is easy, yes," said Mr. Hampton. "He will be all right. But how about at the portages? He's lost lot of blood already. He can't afford to lose any more. However, I expect that with care we can prevent his wounds from reopening. We'll start tomorrow."

Accordingly, on the day appointed, camp was broken, and the party got under way. Frank's shoulder was healed sufficiently to permit him once more to wield a paddle, although still a trifle stiff, and he took his place in the canoe with Bob and Jack. They had another pa.s.senger this time in Farrell, whose right arm had been broken by a shot in the sanguinary fight on the river beach. Thorwaldsson was taken in the canoe occupied by Mr. Hampton and Farnum, Art going in one of the other craft with members of Thorwaldsson's party. Several of the latter had been creased by rifle bullets and one shot through a leg, but all could wield paddles.

And so the long trip out of the wilderness began, with the half-breeds in three canoes, deprived of arms and closely watched by their captors in the four canoes bringing up the rear. With reasonable care, it was felt, the prisoners could be controlled until they should near civilization. Without weapons they would be in a hopeless plight in the wilderness, unable to defend themselves against wild animals, unable to provide food for themselves. Therefore, no attempt on the part of their captives to escape was looked for by the others, until they should near the outlying settlements of the inhabited country.

"When that time comes," Mr. Hampton had warned the boys, "we must be on the lookout, for the half-breeds, unless closely watched, will try to get back their weapons and make a break for it. And I am determined to take them into civilization as witnesses to prove my statement of the murderous conspiracy against us on the part of an eminent gentleman in faraway New York."

Mr. Hampton spoke bitterly, for from all that had occurred and from the accounts, first of Long Tom and of the dying Lupo, and again of Farrell and the surviving members of Thorwaldsson's party, he had pieced together the story of the conspiracy against them.

To the boys he confided this tale, the main theme of which was that when Farrell had told his story to Mr. Otto Anderson concerning the discovery of the oil-bearing region in the Arctic, Mr. Anderson's confidential secretary had gone to a New York financier and sold him the information.

He had not been able to tell definitely, however, the location of the oil region, for the very good reason, as before related, that Farrell was not certain of it himself, his vicissitudes in getting out of the country having unsettled his mind. Therefore, this financier had sent his agents westward with word that Thorwaldsson be tracked.

"Perhaps this financier, Old Grimm, ordered the mere tracking of Thorwaldsson," said Mr. Hampton. "But I doubt it. The attacks on Thorwaldsson's expedition, the disappearance of his ship and crew, all look like parts of a deep-laid plan to attain Grimm's ends at whatever cost in human life. And, on top of it all, the attack on us by Lupo, who was paid a handsome sum down in Dawson by Anderson's former secretary, acting as agent for Grimm, show the latter aimed to put us all out of the way."

"And all for money," said Jack. "It's hard to believe."

"Ah, you don't know Grimm," said his father. "The man who develops this Arctic oil region may become the richest in the world. Grimm is ambitious for that position. He's got a lot of money so far, in one crooked way or another. But he's not one of the big ones yet, not one of the richest. And he wants to be supreme. Well, he has overreached himself this time, for I've got the evidence, and I'll see that we get more in Dawson and Seattle and New York. Mr. Grimm will no longer have the power or freedom to toy with men's lives when I get through with him."

Although Thorwaldsson lay as in a stupor and could not be questioned, the full account of what had befallen his expedition since it set out from Seattle was learned from the others. First of all, they had succeeded in retracing Farrell's earlier footsteps, and had found the oil region and the river running through it. A thorough survey of the country had been made, with maps showing the outlet by water to the Arctic Ocean.

In fact, the party had made its way out the river into the Arctic Ocean and around the coast into the Coppermine. There they had encountered and made friends with a tribe of Eskimo. They had started down the Coppermine, or rather up, as it flows north into the Arctic, but had been attacked, losing half the members of their party and a large part of their equipment, including the radio. It was after this that the aviator of the expedition had attempted to fly to the outside with news of Thorwaldsson's plight, the latter meanwhile being cared for through the following Winter by the friendly Eskimo at the mouth of the Coppermine, to which they had put back. The death of the aviator, near the MacKenzie, of course, was not known to the Thorwaldsson party until the news was imparted by the boys.

The course followed as they struck southward was not that pursued by Farrell when he had made his way back to civilization. On that occasion he had frequently been light-headed, and it was felt it would be unwise to trust now to his guidance. Instead, Mr. Hampton and Farnum decided to retrace their own trail back to the island in the lake where MacDonald had been encountered, and thence follow his course to the Fort of the Northwest Mounted Police.

Day after day they pushed ahead, the nights ever growing longer and colder, with frost on the ground in the mornings. The honking of the wild geese overhead, as they made their way south, also was a warning that the mantle of Winter soon would settle down.

"You see," Art said to the boys one day, "Winter in this country not only means dreadful cold for which we ain't prepared in the matter of clothing or snowshoes or nothing, but also it means there ain't no food to be had. Yes, there's plenty of game now, geese and duck everywhere along the streams, caribou plentiful. But you notice they're all going south. When Winter strikes, there'll be nothing in this wilderness but rabbit and beaver. Beaver's all right-if you can dig 'em out o' their huts. But rabbit-huh! Well, you can starve fine on rabbit."

CHAPTER XXIII.-LONG JIM APPEARS.

Winter, after all, caught them in its icy grip far north of where they had planned to be when the cold should really set in. This was due to a variety of circ.u.mstances. The slowness of Thorwaldsson's recovery was one of the r.e.t.a.r.ding influences, which prevented them making the desired speed. After weeks of travel he was still in a comatose condition, and Mr. Hampton feared his brain had been affected by a bullet that ploughed along the left side of his head. The other wounded, although quick to recover, also acted as a hindrance, especially at the first.

Then, too, the season was unusual. Winter arrived weeks ahead of the expected time. And daily, as the ice on stream and river thickened, it became increasingly hard to break a way. Yet the canoes could not be abandoned, for, once snow began to fly, the travelers would have been helpless on land, without sleds or snowshoes. Sleds of a sort could be constructed, of course, and makeshift snowshoes made, too, but neither would be worth much, and the manufacture of them would take a good deal of time.

Two sentries were always posted at night now; one by a fire around which slumbered the prisoners, the other by a fire in the midst of a circle composed of the Hampton and Thorwaldsson parties combined. It was Jack's turn to keep guard one cold but clear night, after a heavy snowfall, which had caused a great deal of suffering to all, and had brought them, indeed, to the verge of despair. For they were insufficiently clad, even though the skins of many animals slain for food in the past weeks had been saved and roughly cured for wraps; and, in addition, with the closing-in of Winter game had become so scarce that the camp was virtually on the verge of starvation.

Jack was mounting guard by the fire around which lay his friends. One of the Thorwaldsson party, Swenson, did sentry duty by the other fire.

Looking across the little s.p.a.ce which separated the two parties, Jack could see the huddled figures of the half-breeds lying so close to the fire, which Swenson fed constantly with fuel, that they seemed almost to be in it. Around him the members of his own party were similarly disposed.

With a sigh, Jack arose, caught up an armful of wood and tossed it into the fire. The flames at once shot high and, as if that were a signal, out of the darkness beyond came a robust hail.