Riddle of the Storm

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER IV PITCHBLENDE

  The fight waged at Joyce Mills' camp with the gray shadows that weretimber wolves was short and furious. A great gaunt giant of the forest,large as a man and quick as a tiger, who had been ready the instantbefore to engage in an uneven battle with Joyce's dog leader, Dannie, sawJim Baley approaching on the run and turned to leap at him.

  Jim was no child. Born and reared in the rough timber-grown hills ofKentucky, he was as slim and active as a blacksnake. For him an axe wasnot alone an axe. It was a weapon.

  As the gray beast leaped for his throat, he gripped the axe handle, onehand at each end, and swung it high. It caught the wolf squarely underthe chin. That same instant Jim's heavy boot shot forward in a viciouskick.

  With a savage snarl the beast fell groveling in the snow. Before he couldregain his feet he was dealt a blow on the head that left him quite outof the combat.

  Seeing their leader lying motionless before them, the five wolves thatremained turned to go slinking away.

  "Cowards! Cowards!" Jim shouted. "A sorry lot, you are! Wouldn't evenattack a dog unless he's chained. You--"

  He turned to find Joyce at his side. In her hand she still gripped anaxe.

  "So you thought you'd take a hand?" he grinned. "Well, 'tain't necessary.They've left. Right smart glad I am to see your spunk. You'll need it inthis land."

  Bending down, he scooped a handful of snow to rub it across the back ofhis left hand. It came away red.

  "You're hurt!" Joyce's words came quick.

  "Nothing much. Take a heap more'n that to kill a tough timberjack likeme. Scratched me with his claws, the ornery beast!"

  "We'd better tend to it anyway."

  "All right."

  "Bounty on him," Jim added, poking his foot at the dead wolf. "Twentydollars or more. Right enough, too. Destroyer he is. Kills everythingfrom pretty white ptarmigan to the lambs people try to raise furthersouth."

  Back at the cook-shack Joyce bathed his wounded hand, applied iodine,then bound it up. And all the time she was thinking to herself, "It can'tbe Jim. True courage and a feeling for others, even dumb animals, doesnot go with a dishonest heart."

  But if Jim had not stolen the films that had cost so much and might meana fortune to some one, who had? Ah, well, there was time enough to thinkof that. Now she must finish preparing supper. The others would be invery soon.

  * * * * * * * *

  In the meantime there was cause for excitement in Johnny Thompson's camp.Scarcely had Johnny arrived when Sandy MacDonald, a bearded giant of aprospector, came tramping in. Over his back he carried a load that wouldhave broken the back of a slighter man.

  "That," he declared as he dropped the sack with a heavy sigh, "is morepitchblende. It looks better than the last."

  "Tell us more about this pitchblende," Johnny begged.

  "Pitchblende," explained Sandy, as he dropped heavily into a chair, "isthe ore from which we take uranium.

  "And from uranium we get radium."

  Radium--Johnny knew in a general way what radium was. He knew little ofits value.

  "Radium," Sandy reminded Johnny with a benevolent smile, "is at presentworth about a million dollars an ounce."

  "How--how do you get it from that stuff?" Johnny pointed at the bag.

  "It's a slow process," said the aged prospector a trifle wearily. "Youcrush the ore fine, then you leach it in acid. After two or threeleachings you get a fair amount of uranium. Then you separate the radiumfrom other elements. And if you've a ton of ore you'll get, if you'relucky, as much radium as you can tuck under your thumb nail."

  "That is," he went on to explain, "if it's ore as rich as has been foundthus far. Of course mineralogists are always hoping to find richerdeposits. And when some one does make the discovery, even if it's on theNorth Pole, men will go after it. And the man that finds it will be richbeyond his wildest dreams; what's more, he will be classed as one of theworld's greatest benefactors. What better could he ask?"

  "What indeed?" murmured Scott Ramsey, his young partner.

  "This stuff," said Sandy, touching the sack with his moccasined foot,"must go where the other samples have gone, to Edmonton."

  "Be a week before the next mail plane goes south," said Johnny.

  "That just gives us time for a cup of coffee." Sandy smiled a broadsmile. "What do you say we have it now?"

  They were an interesting group. Sandy, cumbersome, hearty, powerful evenin his old age, ever a prospector, never very prosperous, he had wendedhis long way across the world always in a valley of golden dreams. ScottRamsey, blonde-haired and still youthful, with an air of business abouthim, seemed to say with every move: "This is an adventure, but it must bemore. It must be a financial success." And so it must. He had led Sandyto invest his all, a tidy little cabin in Edmonton and a wee bankaccount, in this venture.

  Johnny Thompson had been included in the party because of his familiaritywith the North. He it was who selected and managed dog teams, built campsand purchased supplies. Joe Lee, the silent, soft-footed Chinaman, wasthe cook. Johnny was all else that goes toward making a prospector's campa place that may be called "Home."

  So, satisfied with their lot, glorying in the abundant health God hadgiven them, dreaming golden dreams of the morrow, they sat down to theirmeal of pilot biscuits, caribou steak, potatoes, pie and coffee with thefeeling that the world was theirs for the asking.

  One question troubled Johnny a little: the affair of the afternoon, histalk with Joyce Mills. Should he tell his companions of it?

  After due consideration, he decided to keep silent. "Who knows but we mayhave made our great strike?" he reasoned to himself. "Pitchblende,radium. Who knows? If we win, if they lose, nothing will come of it."

  Then a thought struck him. This was to be a race for treasure. Who wouldwin that race? Sandy and his group, or the others? Only time would tell.

  "We must do our best." He spoke aloud without really meaning to.

  "Yes indeed!" agreed Sandy heartily. "So we must, son. And so we will!"

  * * * * * * * *

  Strange to say, at this very moment Joyce Mills sat in the small cabinallotted to her father, dreaming dreams and thinking of the revelationthat had come to her from Johnny's lips on that very afternoon.

  "One of them is a thief," she repeated to herself. "It does not seempossible!" And indeed it did not. Never in all her life had she come uponyoung men so frank, so kind and so generous, so whole-heartedly seriousabout their work, and yet so joyous, as the three who at that moment weresending out from the other cabin, to the accompaniment of Jim's banjo,the hilarious notes of an old backwoods song.

  "It can't be, yet it must be," she told herself.

  Then her brow clouded. If they should find gold; if those others came tofile claims, as they undoubtedly would do, there would be trouble.

  "A fight. A terrible fight," she said aloud.

  And yet, how were those others to know when a strike was made? Ifnecessity required, would she tell them? To this question she could formno answer.

  "Moccasin Telegraph," she murmured. "Those were the very words Johnnyused. I wonder what he meant?"

  Having thought this thing through as far as her mind would carry her, sheallowed mental pictures of her father's three young partners to driftbefore her mind's eye. Jim, tall and slim, with a Kentucky mountaineer'sdrooping shoulders and drawling voice; Clyde, big and strong, a littleloud, full of fun and ready for the best or the worst of any adventure;and Lloyd, a Canadian, quiet, soft-spoken, apparently very well educated.These were the three.

  "And one is--

  "No, I won't say it!" she told herself stoutly. "It may not be true. Andif it's not, I must prove it."

  Having put this subject to rest, she allowed her mind to drift back overthe days that had just passed.

  She had come all the way from Edmonton, eight hundred miles, in anairp
lane, her first journey through the air. What a thrilling experiencethat had been!

  As she sat there listening to the roar of the fire, its roar became thethunder of their motor as they went racing across the landing field atEdmonton.

  The snow had been soft and sticky that day. It clung to the airplane'seight-foot skis. Three times they crossed that broad expanse ofwhiteness. Then came a redoubled roar from the motor, and some one said:

  "Up!"

  To her surprise, she found that passing through the air was not differentfrom skiing across the snow. Seated beside her father, with his threeyoung partners reposing on a pile of canvas bags before them, she hadwatched through the narrow window while the houses grew small and thenbegan to pass from sight.

  They appeared to be moving very slowly, yet reason told her they weredoing better than a hundred miles an hour. The city vanished, and broadstretches of farm land lay beneath them.

  "It's not exciting at all!" she shouted in her father's ear. "Just likeriding in a bobsled."

  Yet this was not entirely true. She did experience a thrill as theypassed from the land of broad farms to the world of great silent forestswhere a lonely river wound its white and silent way.

  "We are pioneers!" she whispered to herself. "Adventurers entering anunknown land!" And so they were. When at last they landed on the whitesurface of Great Slave Lake, they found themselves a full hundred milesfrom the nearest settlement. And beyond them, hundreds of miles to thenorth, the east, the south, was a great, white, empty wilderness. Herethere was no one.

  "What a store of wealth must be hidden yonder!" her father had exclaimed."There are lakes no eyes have seen. Magnificent waterfalls tumble overrocks that may be loaded with silver, copper and platinum. Those watersmay fall on sands of yellow gold. Yet no one has heard the rush of thatwater. No eyes have been gladdened by the gleam of the rainbow in itsspray."

  He had been jubilant, happy as a boy. And Joyce had been happy with him.

  Yet, even now as she thought of it, her brow wrinkled. All this was verywell. They were comfortably housed and well fed in a land of realenchantment. Yet all this must have an end. The three young men werefinancing it. There was a limit to their resources. Her father, theexpert mineralogist of the group, was to receive his pay from the profitsof the enterprise. When the strike was made they were to share alike, aneven quarter to each man. "But if there is no strike!" She shuddered. "Wemust win!" she told herself, rising and walking the floor. "We must!"

  Strangely enough, at that moment in his far off camp Johnny Thompson, hertrusted pal of other days, was declaring stoutly:

  "We will win!"

  Would they? And if not both, which party would win?