Triple Spies | Page 6

from the yards. Was that enough? Would any sum be enough? Johnny shivered a little. The man was an old regular, a veteran of many battles not given in histories. Was he one of those who took this motto: "Anything's all right that you can get away with?" Johnny wondered. It might be, just might be, that Johnny would go back on this same train to Vladivostok; and that, Johnny had no desire to do.
The sergeant's eyes closed for a wink of sleep. Johnny looked furtively about the car. The three other occupants were asleep. He drew a fat roll of American bills from his pocket. From the very center he extracted a well worn one dollar bill. Having replaced the roll, he smoothed out the "one spot" and examined it closely. Across the face of it was a purple stamp. In the circle of this stamp were the words, "Wales, Alaska." A smile spread over Johnny's shrewd, young face.
"Yes sir, there you are, li'l ol' one-case note," he whispered. "You come all the way from God's country, from Alaska to Vladivostok, all by yourself. I don't know how many times you changed hands before you got here, but here you are, and it took you only four months to come. Stay with me, little old bit of Uncle Sam's treasure, and I'll take you home; straight back to God's country."
He folded the bill carefully and stowed it in an inner pocket, next to his heart.
If the missionary postmistress at Cape Prince of Wales, on Behring Strait, had realized what homesick feelings she was going to stir up in Johnny's heart by impressing her post office stamp on that bill before she paid it to some Eskimo, perhaps she would not have stamped it, and then again, perhaps she would.
A sudden jolt as they rumbled on to a sidetrack awoke the sergeant, who seemed disposed to resume the conversation where he had left off.
"S'pose it's mighty dangerous tradin' on this side?"
"Uh-huh," Johnny grunted.
"S'pose it's a long way back to God's country this way?"
"Uh-huh."
"Lot of the boys mighty sick of soldiering over here. Lot of 'em 'ud try it back to God's country 'f 'twasn't so far."
"Would, huh?" Johnny yawned.
"Ye-ah, and then the officers are mighty hard on the ones they ketch--ketch desertin', I mean--officers are; when they ketch 'em, an' they mostly do."
"Do what?" Johnny tried to yawn again.
"Ketch 'em! They're fierce at that."
There was a knowing grin on the sergeant's face, but no wink followed. Johnny waited anxiously for the wink.
"But it's tough, now ain't it?" observed the sergeant. "We can't go home and can't fight. What we here for, anyway?"
"Ye-ah," Johnny smiled hopefully.
"Expected to go home long ago, but no transportation, not before spring; not even for them that's got discharges and papers to go home. It's tough! You'd think a lot of 'em 'ud try goin' north to Alaska, wouldn't you? Three days in God's country's worth three years in Leavenworth; you'd think they'd try it. And they would, if 't'wasn't so far. Gad! Three thousand miles! I'd admire the pluck of the fellow that dared."
This time the wink which Johnny had been so anxiously awaiting came; a full, free and frank wink it was. He winked back, then settled down in his corner to sleep.
A train rattled by. The "Reindeer Special" bumped back on the main track and went crashing on its way. It screeched through little villages, half buried in snow. It glided along between plains of whiteness. It rattled between narrow hills, but Johnny was unconscious of it all. He was fast asleep, storing up strength for the morrow, and the many wild to-morrows which were to follow.
CHAPTER III
TREACHERY OUT OF THE NIGHT
Johnny moved restlessly beneath his furs. He had been dreaming, and in his dream he had traveled far over scorching deserts, his steed a camel, his companions Arabs. In his dream he slept by night on the burning sand, with only a silken canopy above him. In his dream he had awakened with a sense of impending danger. A prowling tiger had wandered over the desert, an Arab had proved treacherous--who knows what? The feeling, after all, had been only of a vague dread.
The dream had wakened him, and now he lay staring into utter darkness and marveling that the dream was so much like the reality. He was traveling over barren wastes with a caravan; had been for three days. But the waste they crossed was a waste of snow. His companions were natives--who like the Arabs, lived a nomadic life. Their steeds the swift footed reindeer, their tents the igloos of walrus and reindeer skins, they roamed over a territory hundreds of miles in extent. To one of these "fleets of the frozen desert," Johnny had attached himself after leaving