The minute they let themselves even think about giving up they were finished, he told himself, and Norstead knew it as well as he did. Perhaps even better because he had been in Alaska longer and probably knew better what mountains and snow in October can do to a man…
"I hope Al was able to pick off a few snowshoes with that Magnum," he said, starting on.
A few snowshoes, and six people. Mrs. Stevanic—
Thank God for Sarah, he thought, although after this she probably wouldn't be able to wait for takeoff time back to Dayton. He supposed he couldn't blame her, but a girl like Sarah married to a stuffed-shirt, not too ethical Dr. R. Caldwell Porter— The grin that sprang to his mouth with the thought that he was being prejudiced, and badly, by Jenny—he didn't know Dr. R. Caldwell Porter from the Abominable Snowman—reminded him that he shouldn't. His face felt as if it'd just cracked into a thousand pieces.
They both heard the plane, off to what would be the southwest if his calculations this morning had been correct, at the same time.
"Paul!" Norstead's shout was an elated croak.
Feeling his heart climb step by laborious step into his throat, Paul nodded.
"I hear it, John!"
His own voice was on the edge of panic, he realized. He hadn't panicked with that gun in his neck, nor when those bastards had flown off leaving them stranded, but now, their second chance—whoever had fired that shot—yesterday? he couldn't remember—had been their first one, and there might not be another—
"I— There it is!" as the plane swept from behind a peak to their left. "There it is!"
Fumbling, half-frozen fingers struggled with the zipper but somehow he managed to peel off his coat, to wave it—frantically.
Like a madman, he thought. They both were acting like madmen… desperate men.
Norstead had found strength somewhere and was running around, waving his arms, shouting, which was a damnfool thing to do, Paul thought.
Shouting to men in a plane—
It was no use, anyhow.
They didn't see. They were too far, flying in the wrong direction, into the sun—damned fools, didn't they know you couldn't see anything flying into the sun?
"Let's go."
John Norstead's voice again was as empty as the whole vast silent world about them would be in a few minutes, as soon as the sound of its motors followed the plane from their ken. Shrugging back into his coat, Paul followed his companion.
The river was turning, making another of those serpentine loops that killed a man to follow—and would kill him quicker if he didn't…
Squinting against the brilliance that was sun on snow, Sarah walked slowly across the clearing toward the charred remains of last night's signal fire and the steadily growing pile of wood that would feed tonight's.
She almost could enjoy this, she had found herself thinking more than once during the day. Jan-Doreen and the baby were doing fine—Jan-Doreen had plenty of milk, thank goodness—and they had shelter, plenty of food as long as the mountain sheep lasted… and it was beautiful.
Mrs. Emlyn had looked tolerant when Sarah had said that a while ago and remarked that if she'd seen as much of this North country as she had she'd "think different about it!"
"You're still here," Sarah had reminded her.
"Only because it's part of me and don't you let it get that kind of hold on you, Sarah Bennett!"
Sarah knew her story. It was one of the things with which they had filled the long nights and days, and the storm. Thirteen when her "Papa," as she always called him, brought her to the Yukon from Colorado in 1897 because "Mama was dead and there was no-body else but my aunt who was so taken with getting ready for 'the Second Coming,' as she called it—and always in capital letters, you don't know how Aunt Lu could make capitals in her voice—that she didn't know the meaning of the word 'laughter'." She had panned gold alongside Papa on the small creek near Dawson until one day a year later. She went to their camp—it was still a tent—to start dinner, leaving him to scoop a few more shovelfuls into their new sluice-box before he followed.
When he didn't come she returned to the sluice-box to find him dead, shot in the back. Later, a miner offered to buy the claim, and she accepted his offer.
"I took his money, the little it was, because what else could a fourteen-year-old girl do? I didn't breathe a word about Aunt Lu, I was afraid they might send me back or she might come after me, which would have been worse. She never approved of Papa, even though he was her brother and poor Uncle Jed envied him. In secret, of course." She drew a deep breath. "I was a long time trusting any man again. I always thought that man killed Papa to get his hands on the claim."
Even sixty years later, her lips, saying it, had pressed tight, saying she still thought so.
The first ten of those sixty years had been hard, but they had molded a part of Alaska into Cornelia Blair (as she had been then) and all of Cornelia Blair into Alaska.
She'd gone into Dawson, put up her hair, defied doubters to prove that she wasn't the eighteen she claimed and sung in dance halls for the coins and gold dust that miners threw at her feet. "Not the naughty, bawdy songs. I didn't know any of those and besides, Papa would have turned over in his poor grave. I sang 'My Old Kentucky Home,' 'Home, Sweet Home,' 'Darling Nelly Gray,' 'The Shining Shore,' songs like that, and if I do say it myself, I had them crying like babies and not ashamed of it, either!"
Then sprawling, brawling Dawson lost the limelight that was gold, and she followed the miners to Nome and then to Fairbanks, where she opened her own saloon, the "Home, Sweet Home,"
"And married Mr. Emlyn. I think Mr. Emlyn's one reason I like to ride Paul Fergis's airplane."
Her tone had gone fond, instead of just nostalgic. "Paul Fergis is a lot like Mr. Emlyn."
Remembering, Sarah almost wished she hadn't. It was beginning to seem as if Paul had been gone a terribly long time, and when she let herself think about it, it was frightening.
After all, October—
Mac McDavie all but buried the ax in a length of spruce and left it there. Straightening, he grinned.
"You look as if you might make it."
Sarah smiled. "I think I will. Now."
"My hat's off to you, Miss Bennett. Al told us about the baby—about her almost not breathing."
He studied his gloves, the palms of which were beginning to wear through, Sarah noticed. "I—just wanted you to know how I feel."
Sarah said softly, "Thank you." And then, "I don't mind admitting I was plenty scared."
"The way you were sick when you saw that rabbit?"
It was the first time he had reminded her of her squeamishness and now it didn't matter. Mac McDavie had established himself in her eyes, as, apparently she was established in his… She nodded.
"Al's down along the river with that spear. I think he's tired of Old Ram," as they had dubbed the tough mutton.
"It's meat."
"You know what Jefferson says. He couldn't stick a spoon in the broth if he had a spoon."
Sarah laughed. She was feeling decidedly better about George Jefferson. His temperature was down a tenth and even if it still was 100.9, any drop meant a lessening of the inflammation… Thinking about that, she went toward the river, keeping to the semblance of a path that was broken through the snow.
Without laboratory facilities she had only the relief from pain, the easing of the tenderness, and the dropping of temperature to guide her, and she knew what Dr. Cal would say to that! She had heard him say it often enough, frequently addressing a gridiron incision in somebody's abdomen: "Wait till it eases up, and then wait till it doesn't hurt at all—hemostat." And as she passed it, "So here you are, perforated and—look at that, Valden," to his assisting surgeon, "Sarah, spilling all over."
And pus and fecal matter would be spilling into the peritoneum, with peritonitis perhaps already start…
She was glad when Al hailed her.
"Come bring me luck!"
"Need it?" s
he called back.
"You can say that again." And as she approached, "I think I'm too eager."
Smiling, Sarah said, "That's what Mr. McDavie said. Or words to that effect."
Al grinned. His eyes touched her face briefly. "Rested?"
She nodded.
"That was a rough session."
It had been and as soon as she could she had tumbled onto one of the spruce-bough pallets and slept for hours. This was the first time she'd seen Al since their meager breakfast…
Now she said, "Jan-Doreen was wonderful, Al."
"So were you."
His voice was soft.
She looked at him—and then didn't, swiftly. All at once she wanted, more than anything in the world, for Al Malcolm to tell her she was wonderful,—to kiss her—
Chapter 11
The vapor trail was a pencil-thin, white line burrowing through the sky. Pointing as Sarah and Al approached, Mac McDavie said, "That baby's too high to be looking for us."
Al nodded. "Twenty-five thousand, maybe."
They couldn't hear the plane but even the vapor trail was a comfort somehow. Proof that they weren't alone in the world after all. That beyond these snow-draped mountains there were people—men and planes searching for them even if this one wasn't…
Watching the vapor trail, which already was beginning to disperse as high altitude winds assailed it, Sarah said, "I hope it's one of ours."
Al's laugh was at ease. "Don't worry, it is. That's what those DEW stations are up there for."
"They could be sabotaged, couldn't they?"
"Maybe."
Al's eyes were still on that burrowing white line. "But it would take some doing to penetrate the security set-up around those stations. They might be knocked out by bombing, some of them anyhow, but not before they had done their job."
Distant Early Warning. Early warning while enemy planes or missiles still are at a distant point or points, giving us a chance to get planes and missiles off the ground to retaliate… Sarah was thinking that as Al went on, "It's guys like Elder who give me the creeps."
Sarah nodded. Mac McDavie looked at the ax in his hands as if its presence there gave him an idea about "guys like Elder," for which, Sarah thought, she couldn't blame him. Plans for that new missile-launching area, which she hadn't even heard about although all the rest of them knew the vague and transitory rumors that most of Fairbanks had been talking about all summer, in the wrong hands could be disastrous.
"I suppose," Al said after a time, "Alaska is infiltrated plenty. It would be damnably easy. A new state, strategic, big and with people pouring in and no questions asked."
"Yeah," Mac McDavie said. "You take a guy at face value and he turns out to be someone like this Elder. Know what I thought he was?" He didn't wait for a reply. "I had a math prof in college, a fidgety, fuss-budgety old character with pink cheeks and white hair. I guess I pegged Elder the same way." He slammed the ax into a spruce log. "Shows how wrong you can get."
"It's all a part of the plan, I suppose. A—A sort of facade," Sarah said and the two men nodded in agreement.
"The Rands and Smith could have used a facade."
With the words Al gave up searching the segment of sky into which the plane was boring—the west, they knew, now that the sun had given them their bearings.
Mac McDavie retrieved his ax. "You know, I've been thinking about that, Al. I think Jefferson's got something. If Elder hadn't been on the plane, they might have gone on to Juneau. It's easy to pick up a flight to Seattle from there." He thought a minute. "But there was Elder who knew them, one of them anyhow, and they didn't dare risk it."
He looked at Sarah. "Miss Bennett, can you remember whether they had seen Elder before they bought their tickets? What their reaction was? They had to plan that maneuver someplace. It went off too smooth."
The tiny radio shack squatting beside the airstrip at Killmoose sprang into her mind's eye. They had all crowded into it, but first she, Mrs. Emlyn and Jan-Doreen Stevanic had gone to the trading post where there was a tiny, spartanly furnished women's lounge and the Rands and Mr. Smith already had paid for their passage when they returned. Paul had presented them to her, explained to them that Miss Bennett was their stewardess…
"I—don't know," she said slowly, trying to remember. "I don't remember seeing Mr. Elder in the radio room at all. I—got the impression that he had gone in with the other men, but—I'm sorry."
"I saw him." Al repeated what he had said earlier, "I thought he was going to balk, started yelling about the weather, and then he disappeared." He shook his head. "I suppose that should have been the tip-off, right there, but damn it! I thought it actually was the weather, or maybe he was afraid of flying… Give me that ax, Mac."
Sarah picked up one of the fireplace lengths of wood Mac McDavie had chopped, a sizable log that would burn for a long time, she thought comfortedly, and walked slowly toward the cabin.
Although she had been born and raised in Troy, which is a small city, and had gone to Dayton for nurse's training as soon as she graduated from high school, and had lived there since, in a gas-heated, comfortable apartment, she had fallen easily into the habit of carrying wood, packing snow into the ancient iron kettle that was their one utensil, of trekking through the snow to the dilapidated latrine… The smile was plucking at the corners of her mouth as she pushed open the cabin door.
What a far, far cry from Ralph's office.
What a wonderful far cry—
The thought startled her, when it shouldn't have, she realized. She hadn't been happy in the plush surroundings that Ralph had said once when they'd been talking were as much a part of the treatment as his consultations, as the shots and pills he dispensed. "My patients expect expensive furnishings, sweet-heart." And with that suave grin his women patients loved, "Why shouldn't they? They're paying for them…"
The smile crept back inside her, as sick as, in that moment, her heart felt.
Ralph had a facade too, and it wasn't a pretty one.
Not, she told herself, when you looked behind it.
"What at first appeared to be—and still may become —one of the most bizarre chapters in Alaska's colorful history unfolded this afternoon with the discovery in the southern Nisling Mountains of Yukon Province of the wreckage of the Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways plane missing since Tuesday."
Fletch Minsen drew a deep breath and reached for his plug. The Nislings, for Jeez sake! The same shock he had felt when he'd first heard it, from Lee O'Kinnelley, gripped him.
Ward Barthey's voice raced on, spilling excitement over the airwaves and into the tiny radio shack: "The wreckage was sighted earlier this afternoon by the pilot of a plane on a routine flight that had taken it to Aishihik airport, on the northern tip of Aishihik Lake, but was not identified as the APF plane until an hour ago when a ground party from Aishihik reached the scene. Three bodies were found in the wreckage—"
Three? Fletch Minsen stiffened, felt his guts curl up.
"There were no others in the surrounding area, although thirteen persons—ten passengers and a crew of three—were aboard the plane when it took off from Killmoose, an isolated airstrip in the mountains east of Fairbanks. The three were identified by papers on their persons as Howard Rand and John Rand of New York City and Guy Smith, no address."
"According to passenger records in the APF office here in Fairbanks the men were not aboard when the plane left Fairbanks, so it is assumed they are the three mystery men who boarded the plane at Killmoose— the same three men who are believed to have abandoned in the mountains north of Killmoose the light plane stolen last Friday at Barrow after a reported sabotage attempt at a Distant Early Warning station near Barrow. Rumors of the attempt were squelched quickly, and official sources still refuse comment."
"However, it is known that an alert for the men has been broadcast over a wide area covering all of Alaska and northern and western Canada."
"In the meantime, what has happened to th
e other ten persons who were aboard the APF plane when it took off from lonely Killmoose airstrip on the upper stretches of the North Fork of Forty-Mile?"
The newscaster paused for effect and Fletch Minsen felt the cold, sick knot in the pit of his stomach start churning. Jeez! They couldn't've set that plane down very many places in them mountains—
"If the three men whose bodies were found in the wreckage," Barthey went on, "are the trio being sought for the attempted sabotage—and the belief is spreading that they are—were they desperate enough to have resorted to the old pirate prerogative of having their captives walk the plank?"
"Do the Nisling Mountains hide a macabre secret such as Alaska and Yukon Territory did not know even at the height of the gold fever?"
"Only the fact that a part of the luggage that went aboard the plane at Fairbanks is missing says that this may not be so. A member of the APF ground crew who assisted in loading operations before the plane took off from Fairbanks Tuesday morning says that most of the pieces of luggage are missing from the wreckage. However, this is not conclusive. Luggage has been jettisoned before in an effort to gain altitude or to lighten a load in an attempt to stretch the gasoline supply. But—and this is important—freight shipments consigned to Tanacross, Yakutat and Juneau still were aboard when the plane slammed into the side of the peak."
"The plane is believed to have been heading for Aishihik airport, only twenty-some miles to the south. The APF spokesman said he believed the plane might have carried enough fuel to have reached Whitehorse and expressed a belief that the plane may have crashed in the blinding snowstorm that blanketed a wide area of northwestern Canada and Alaska with as much as two feet of snow in some areas. He pointed out that a thick-falling snow can cause a pilot to lose his depth-perception, which, coupled with poor visibility, can create an extremely hazardous circumstance."
"Location of the wreckage so far to the east of the area in which the search centered has shifted operations to a broad expanse of isolated rugged mountain country bounded roughly by Killmoose and Tanacross on the northwest and forming a narrowing triangular corridor that has its apex at the site of the wrecked plane, perhaps twenty-two or -three miles from Aishihik."
Wings for Nurse Bennett Page 10