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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1932-02-25, Page 3THE EXETER TIMES-ADVOCATE iU The Silver Hawk” he UP It BY WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY SYNOPSIS James Dorn, aerial map maker, as­ signed to a territory in the north­ ern Canadian Rockies lives alone In his camp on Titan Island, Kansas Eby, his friend, for the past six years was stationed at Eagle east. aright were N©st, two hundred miles Kansas came over one to a dance that the Indians having on the station platform. When the midnight «train pulled in he seen a girl come <out and glance hurriedly around and then disappear into the darkness. Kansas followed hurriedly but failed 'to find any • trace • Dorn Pere rived The girl, Aurore McNain, asks Dorn to go to a lonely lake in search of her father and she wish­ es to accompany him where she remains in hiding and Dorn car­ ries supplies to her by aeroplane. Carter-Snowdon arrives, and with the help of some ’breeds is trying to locate her. Luke, the trusty old Indian, who knows her secret hiding place is captured and Dorn is trying to free him from Carter- Snowdon. Luke is rescued and finds that the lialf-breeds are closing in ' Aurore’s hiding-place. I-Ie told his friendof her. about it and the same night Bergelot, a trusty metis ar- witli the girl. had had felt un- on CHAPTER XXI A Table Set for Two Dorn thought: “Well, if Kansas 3ias been here, I can get that map and letter from Bergelot and destroy them. They’ve served their purpose” Sle knew that if Aurore had asked Kansas to respect her secret, then 3ier secret was entirely safe, , He -was thinking, with bitterness and rebellion, that Kansas, because he ,iiad no groat interest in Aurore, would be seeing her, talking to her, iieing human company to her, while die himself who loved her must not -come again because of that fact. After those days of loneliness this lialf hour with. Aurore seemed no more than a glance and a hand-clasp and coming out of the -night into her cabin, after a dark, long flight, Dorn was nearly maddened by the dight and warmth and flcwer-frag- yance. He wa looking steadily at Aurore and she had turned her glance away, and neither of them APoke till Dorn, rising abruptly said: “I’d got to leave, Aurore.” 'She rose up too, not daring to ask him to stay but objecting, the words forced from her in a cry: “But Jim, jrou’ve been here—only a few min­ utes—after all tlie-se days-----’’ “I can’t stay,” he said doggedly. Then, to gloss over the real reason, -which both of them were- quivering- Jy aware of, he added: “I mustn’t he seen climbing out of this lake, It’s nearly the dawn now.” He saw a sudden, swift tho.ught -flit across AiUoreks-pvdtty face; saw her fighting against her thought, 'then yielding to. it. She looked, away, looked down at a button cn his jacket. “Jim, couldn’t we . . . .if you don’t dare stay here . . you .said you’re' doing cartograpliing work to-day . . . couldn’t I . . . we ctuld come back after dark to­ night ...” And then,she came to the proposal, “Couldn’t I go along with you, Jim?” Dorn caught his breath sharply. He tried to reason: “I mustn’t take her.....She’ll be safer here than in my -plane. And all day . . . with her ...” Auroro came up very near to him; ■liter hand crept up to his shoulder; she was all conscious that the scar­ let orchid cn her breast was crush- ■ed against him. She said: “Jim, please, if I won't be a bother . . , if you don’t think it is too danger­ ous . . . just for today ...” He realized she was telling him that today would bo •gethcr; and it broke •fuse. Dorn bent and ■ed Aurore’s hair, and uously: “Dear, it seems unreal . . a precibus, unexpected gift . . . your mere asking ...” They were running down tho path together, paddling out to the Silver Hawk, laughing as they turned it and clambered in; and while the first rays of pearl-grey were touch­ ing the neighboring pinnacles, they taxied out upon the besom of Aur­ ore’s lake and leaped exultantly to the air. tion had been sudden, unthinking, and so had been his. reaction tp ju He knew he had done wrong, but the right was sometimes an intoler­ able tyrant, and this would be a day to remember all the rest of his life, The keen wind had brought frost roses into Aurore’s cheeks, A wisp of her hair, escaped from her hel­ met, was wavy in the slip-stream of the propeller. For her this flight and this initiation into the wonders of Dorn’s cloud-land domain were an enchanting adventure, He thought: “That morning when she showed me all around her island—that was Aur­ ore’s inning; to-day is mine!” The grey dawn gradually changed to a roseate glow in the east, Wien the sun inching up over a blue-hazy range, the wild country beneath them stirred and woke to a new­ born day. Looking under keel they- saw the gray smokc*-mist curl up from cold lake-waters, and down the pinnacles, to strike in sudden splen­ dour on some upland flower meadow Dorn could never look down at this virgin wilderness without a feeL ing of shame at the work lie was do­ ing; and since Chrter-Snowdon become his enemy, that feeling grown acute and personal. He that this region, unknown and trodden, was one corner cf the world where a man could still find a re­ treat and peace. But he was betray­ ing it. Where he pioneered in his plane, charting with aerial camera, there the timber outfits and mining companies and railroads tap-spurs would eventually follow, and at no distant day. It was all very well to talk glibly about the “illimitable recources of the north” but down through the Kootenays he had seen how illimitable those resources could become in a few short years, and he knew how long these slow- growing forests of his province would last when steamer lines were carrying them to four timber-hung­ ry continents. Dorn understood the 'forces be­ hind this desolation creeping stead­ ily northward toward the wilderness which had been his homo. * The press of population was not ' the cause of it, for population would have meant homesteads and ranches nestling in the valleys, and perma­ nent towns instead of ghest villages. The cause of it was the greed of a small number of men and Carter Snowdon was one of the chief of them. He had never yet replanted a seedling where he had cut out a giant. For him this virgin wilder­ ness wa something to strip and de­ flower and bend to his own use; and Dorn felt he was playing directly into Carter-Snowden’s 'hand; and his work had become anathema to him. A little after sunrise he reached “block” and began mapping. His that day was to finish off a clus- of thirty-odd peaks. Precipit- along their eastern slopes, they all faced a huge cloud gatherer, and they seemed like an assembly -cf hoary giants at council, with smoke- clouds drifting above tlieir heads, talking to one another in tho rumble of their avalanches. By steeply banking his plane at a low altitude Dorn snapped several “obliques” of rugged mountain scen­ ery which the Bureau wanted for publicity purposes. Then he climb­ ed to fourteen thousand feet to be­ gin his wide-angle vertical He set the intervalometer an exposure every fifty clipped in an orange filter out the aerial haze-; and the magazine, he started liis routine flights back across the “block.” At first tliat morning he was able to keep a lookout on the horizon for those enemy planes; his camera, wonderfully intricate and complete­ ly automaticized left him free to pil­ ot the Silver Hawk and watch ths overlap of his strips. He did not oven have to jot down instruments records, for at every exposure a small auxiliary lens on top the huge camera, took a picture of his instru­ ment board, so that on the main pic­ ture itself appeared a small *oval insert, showing his altitude, speed, direction, and all the data which the Bureau would need in making a perfect mosiac of the region he was charting. He had no reason to expect his enemies; but they knew where he was mapping, and Dorn thought: “Timers going to come after me soino time; that’s what they brought in that fighting plane for—to knock mo out of the air and make sure I won't bother them when they close in on Aurore; and it would be just 1115 ...” and the observ- IlllllUIIUllllllllllllllllllllllllljllllllllliniar drew Dorn’s attention to a glistening monopane swimming them from the east. Dorn snapped off seized liis long-range brought the machine up to him. At a glance he recognized it as the fight­ ing plane, q And then, several miles farther south, into his field of vis­ ion swam a second craft—-the big heavy biplane. With that pursuit, machine roar­ ing down upon him ike a botl of annihilation, Dorn’s first thought was; “Here’s the battle; God—and Aurore’s mixed up in it!”* He knew they had come for him that day; is was quite a necessary part of their plan—to crash him against some mountain-side so that when the ’breeds located Aurore’s lake he would not come out of the clouds to interpose for her. They had left him unmolested all these days in order to take him utterly unawares when they did strike, and had he been alone that morning, busy with camera and guide lines, without Aurore to warn him, -he would have gone down in flaming wreck. For several tumultuous seconds Dorn studied the monoplane. With a swift glance he had. spotted a moun­ tain lake beneath, and had decided; “I'll set down on it and fight them off with 'the machine gun till dark, and then Aurore and I may be able to get away,” But he recognized the make of that monoplane, lie had flown a dozen like it, and his reas­ surance flooded back as. he studied it. It was a Fokker two-place with Wasp motor. It was swift, all right, but he believed his .Silver Hawk was swifter. He felt that in a chase he could dance away from it; that if need be he could dump part of Ills gas and even throw out the camera, and wash that monoplane out of sight in a two-liundred mile raso. Just as he swung the Silver Hawk north and was ready to line out for the Yukon, the enemy plane check­ ed its headlong rush, swerved sharp­ ly, and began circling. Dorn dropped tho controls and thumbed his glass­ es,' wondering wfiat caused this sua- den manouvre. He observed the enemy gunner training binoculars at him, and then lie understood. “They saw Aurore! It stopped, ilyifiv dead-short when they saw she’s with down upon the camera, glasses, me!” 'Circling like a wary hawk watched. The biplane stood on till it joined its smaller consort; likewise carried two mon—it’s pilot, and Carter-Snowdon in the mechan­ ic’s seat. It had no machine gun; it was not a fighting plane. Dorn thought: “Carter-Snowden hasn’t any stomach for an air battle. He came along to watch while these men did the dangerous work. He wanted particular to see me killed. He turned the glasses back to the Fokker. Over the compartment edge of the observer's seat the heavy barrels of a Vickers twin water-cool­ ed stuck up. That enemy pilot, Dorn noted certainly knew his stick. Though the air over the cluster of peaks was full of holes as a Swiss cheese, he handled his craft like a flying wizard, Aurore touched Dorn on the shoul­ der; turning, he saw how puzzled she was by his strange actions and by these planes coming upon them, Her pretty lips moved and he read the words plane , . . Mr, Eby’s Dorn fairly seized upon her hesi­ tant suggestion. He throttled down for an intsant and geared in tho su­ per-charger to muffle the engine’s roar so that lie could shout to her; “Yes, Kansas’s plane . . . looks different in the air. Other ma­ chine is cartographer’s friends .... don’t mind them seeing you ...” Aurore believed him so that it hurt Dorn; but he volved himself in lies to her from the very beginning and he had to keep on deceiving her.. Her smile ami all inno- the truth, she dipped her in the slip-stream, waving planes. moment Dorn was thunder­ struck by this act. Then he laugh­ ed aloud. That wave of Aurore’s tiny kerchief was a taunt flung into Carter-Snowden’s face—a barb that rankled and enraged. 'To be within a few hundred yards of Aurore after this long hunt for her, to see her there in full sight across that void of air, to see her in Dorn's plane, must have exploded all the festering- jealous fury which had caused him to conie along that morning in hopes of watching Dorn go down to death. He lialf-rose from the seat, drop­ ped glasses, and back for a stunned moment, then gestured a furious or­ der at the pursuit machine. Dorn thought: “I’d better escape -—if I can. Aurore might any minute ask for these glasses. If I refused she’d get suspicious. If I gave them to her,'she’d recognize* Carter-Snow­ don, .and she’d know then I’ve been dying to her all along. If I can wash that plane out of sight, on them: “Jim, that doesn’t look exactly . . on deceiving her., came back again now; cent of kerchief to those 'For a Other too . . . about utterly had ln- •his job ter ous mapping, to make seconds; to screen reloading their last to­ ll is will to rc- his lips touch­ lie said impet- in- chapter xxn The “Silver Hawk” ■plying westward at leisurely speed toward his mapping territory, Dorn kept glancing back at the passenger he carried. It was hard to believe* that Aurore was actually there in his plane; an hour ago he had never re­ motely dreamed of this situation coming to jiass. Aurora’s suggos- AIHuaC) ttLlll lb W.UUIU luck this mornilig when . lie glanced at Aurore in er’s seat. •Then something went the tiny eletric heater tlio films in the camera at proper temperature; and busy with adjust­ ing it, Dorn could not watch the sky for a .wing enemy. It was Aaron* who saw “the Hun in the sun,” and| wrong with which kept ... J” ......... it dwindled to a pinpoint, and tw- ally vanished altogether, and ■ tW Silvey Hawk triumphanty flew alon© -—-a .shining speck in the blue-vault* ed immensity. TMIW< WUW » just tell her, when we’re safe some* where, that I turned my eatrograph- ing work over to these “friends” of mine.” But he did not nt once make his break to escape, in the biplane Car­ ter-Snowdon was shouting orders lu-: to the piolt’s ear and the pilot, let­ ting the plane fly itself, was sema­ phoring them to the machine gun­ ner in the Fokker. Dorn wanted to find out what was passing between- the two enemy craft. Carter-Snowden first ordered the Fokker to roar down upon the Sil­ ver Hawk and at machine-gun point force it to a landing. The Fokker sent back a curt “No,” It surprised Dorn—(that flat re­ fusal; he could not understand It, and watching closely he saw that Carter-Snowdon was surprised, too. After a few moments Carter-Snow­ don ordered the Fokker to cripple the Silver Hawk and compel its oc­ cupants to take to their pack-shutes. The terse “Girl in that Then Dorn ker pilot and no scruples against knocking a man out of the air, but they balked flat- footed at attacking a iilane which carried a girl passenger, He did not catch Carter-Snowdon’s next communication, but he- guessed it was some offer of money, for the Fokker came back with a hot ans­ wer; “Money hell! We won’t do it.” Then the Fokker gunner had a conference; and the gunner sema> phored:* “We’re going to dog him till he runs out of gas and has to set down somewhere.” When he saw that signal, Dorn waited no longer. Wheeling into the northeast, he pushed the throttle wide-open and lined away for the Yukon, with the Fokker on iliis tail. Within twenty miles the heavy bi­ plane dwindled, vanished astern. An­ xiously Dorn kept glancing back at the pursuit machine; and his heart leaped when he saw that it too could not match the speed of his Silver Hawk. F°r seventy miles it hung on doggedly, but it was hopele-sSly outclassed by Dorn’s powerful plane; answer came back: plane.” understood; the Fok- gunner evidently had Dr. Wood’s CHAPTER XXIII Thirty Pieces of Sil'm' but Quickly he realksed it meant for a plane to go up a wilderness Jake before good The girl was living there at lake! The cartographer, Horn, Baek at the Lake of the Dawn up daybreak that morning^ JRm Yore- slaf, from his camp In a canyon val­ ley south, of the mesa, had heard the Silver Hawk climb into the sky. Ho had not known lie was so near his goal; what from day. that had visited her* there by night when his coming and going could not be seen’ Yoroslaf flung off his blankets and, sat up hastily, listening to tnc? thrumming, diminishing motor-song and a smile overspread his swart- and hairy face, Now with success in his hands, he grinned to think of Charlo and Nar­ cisse laboriously following'the trail south, where he had shunted themr and of liow neatly and completely nt? had double-crossed them and euch­ red them out ward. He wolfed bannock and started climbin; horn pasture, meaning to wait there till one of Carter-Snowdon’s planes came near enough to der-flash signals. Of would be in no hurry signals, but would go lake and paddle a log island where this white alone. . . . Perhaps if he himself up in a pool and put on that bright-coloured ceinture fleche from his pack and made himself unwith- standably yes, of any share in the re- a breakfast of greasy half-raw trout, and .g up toward the big-a- see his pow- perhaps he about those down to the across to the girl was slicked agreeable , . : Probabiy, certainement, a girl that way, either front fear or shame, would afterwards, tosay that man nothing at all, big, white-skinned and paunchy with the reward money . . . (Continued next week,) Ilelllil c>> evro let drivers soon NEW CHEVROLET SIX with Silent Second Syncro-Mesh and Simplified Free Wheeling * Listen to General Motors* broadcast s of all Moplc Leaf flOclcey Team’s liomo games from CFRB, CF(M or O D U C E C A N A D Acceleration! When the light flashes green step on the gas—-then glide swiftly ahead of the traffic! The new Chevrolet gives you C. FRITZ & SON, ZURICH, ONT. Ask about the GM AC, General Motors’ own de­ ferred payment plan. 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