Lost In The Air | Page 9

temptation was too great. And--and once I had done it, I was afraid
to go back. I would have died in prison. How did you come? Are you
going back? Will you take the money to the little girl, La Vaune?"
"We're going farther," smiled Bruce, happy in the realization of what
all this meant to the maid in the camp. "We're going on. We flew here
and will fly back--or try to." "And we'll be more than glad to return the
money," he wished to add, but remembering that he would not have

that to decide, he ended, "La Vaune is no little girl now, but quite a
young lady. She needs the money, too. And--and," he laughed
sheepishly, "she's rather a good friend of mine."
Timmie drew his hand across his eyes, as if to brush away the vision of
long years. Then, with a smile, he said briskly:
"Of course, you'll have breakfast? We're having hot-cakes."
"What did I tell you?" chuckled the Major, slapping Barney on the
back.
Eager as the visitors were to hear the strange story of this man of the
wilderness, they were willing that breakfast should come first.
As they stepped upon the porch, the keen eye of the Major fell on some
white and spotted skins hanging over a beam. A close observer might
have noticed a slight nod of his head, as if he said, "I thought so." But
the boys were following the scent of browning griddle-cakes and saw
neither the skins nor the Major's nod.
But Barney, missing a familiar pungent odor that should go with such a
breakfast in a wilderness, hurried back to the plane to return with a
coffee pot and a sack of coffee.
Within the cabin they found everything scrupulously clean. Strange
cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the
translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten
when they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a
towering stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a
column of steam toward the rafters.
With memories stirred by draughts of long untasted coffee, it was not
difficult for Timmie to tell his Story.
"When I left the settlement," he began, as he turned his mooseskin,
hammock-like chair toward the open fireplace, and invited his guests to
do likewise, "I struck straight into the wilderness. I had a little food, a

small rifle and fishing-tackle. To me a summer in the woods with such
equipment was no problem at all. I meant to go northwest for, perhaps,
two hundred miles, camp there for the summer, then work my way
back by going southwest. I would then be far from my crime and would
be safe. That is what I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I
began to think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to
be back. But it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers,
creeping through underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy
beaver-meadows, fighting the awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got
through the summer, living on fish, game and berries. You see, I had
become terribly afraid of the Red Riders--the mounted police. I had
heard that sooner or later they always got a man. I was determined they
would not get me.
"At last, snow-fall warned me to prepare for winter. I was in this valley
that day, and I've been here ever since. If I had ever got any pleasure
from that stolen money, which I haven't, I would have paid for that
pleasure a hundred times that first winter. Fortune favored me in one
thing: the caribou came by in great droves, and, before my ammunition
was exhausted, I had secured plenty of meat. But at that, I came near
dying before I learned that one who lives upon a strictly meat diet must
measure carefully the proportions of lean and fat. Someway, I learned.
And somehow, starving, freezing, half-mad of lonesomeness, I got
through the winter, but I am glad you did not see me when the first wild
geese came north. If ever there was a wild man, dressed in skins and
dancing in the sun, it was I."
"But the wheat?" asked Barney. "How did that happen?"
"I am coming to that," smiled his host. "Early that spring," he continued,
passing his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away the memory of
that terrible winter, "the Indians came. They came from the Dismal
Lake region. Driven south by forest fires, they were starving. I had a
little caribou meat and shared it with them; that made them my
everlasting friends."
"And you got the wheat from them?" interposed Barney.

"Hardly. I doubt if they had