Alaska, the officials will remove the seals from the barrels. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Sandy mumbled, looking quickly away into the embers. He was stunned. Those automatics weren’t plugged up. He had never heard his father deliberately tell a lie before.

Unaware of the tension that had mushroomed up, MacKensie stretched. “I’d better be getting back to the radio shack and see what’s come in from the weather stations on this storm. If she looks bad, I’ll have to keep a crew on alert. Any time you gentlemen feel like sacking in, go to it. Your cabin should be warm now. It’s small, but cozy. There are six bunk beds, so it won’t be too crowded.”

“Where’s Charley?” Sandy asked, suddenly aware that the Indian was not in the room.

“Right after supper he went outside to get your dogs bedded down,” one of the crewmen told him.

Professor Crowell smiled. “He treats them like children, and they love it. Actually, though, all those huskies need for a bed is a soft snowdrift.”

“They like to sleep in snow?” Jerry asked incredulously. “Don’t they freeze?”

“No, once they tuck in their paws and stick their noses under their tails, they’re ready for anything. Have you noticed their coats? Double thick. Underneath that heavy outside fur there’s a short woolly undercoat. The fact is they’re probably more comfortable sleeping outside than next to a roaring fire.”

Lou Mayer held his hands up to the flames. “We have nothing in common.”

After MacKensie left, the other maintenance men began to drift off to bed. The snow was coming down very hard, and they faced the prospect of a long, hard day battling the drifts.

About nine o’clock, Sandy yawned and stretched. “What do you say we turn in, pal?” he said to Jerry.

“I’m with you,” Jerry replied promptly.

The boys looked inquiringly at the older men. “You two run along,” Dr. Steele told them. “We’ll finish our pipes first.”

Sandy and Jerry dug their mackinaws and mittens out of a heap of clothing on the long table in the vestibule and slipped on their boots.

“It’s only a hundred-yard walk,” Sandy admitted, “but at thirty below zero it’s worth the trouble.”

“Amen,” Jerry agreed, wrapping his wool muffler around his lantern jaw.

The boys stepped out the back door of the big hut and followed the path leading back to the cabins. Ten feet away from the building, the wind-whipped grains of ice and snow closed in on them like a white curtain, blotting out their vision. If it had not been for the clearly defined path, they would have been helpless.

“You could get lost in your own back yard in this stuff,” Jerry gasped. “Yipes!” he shouted as he blundered off the path into a snowdrift. “Where’s the St. Bernards?”

Sandy took his arm and guided him back on the path. Finally, a dark outline with a faint square of light in the center of it loomed up before them.

“Here we are,” Sandy shouted above the wind. “Home at last.”

“If only the boys back at Valley View High could see us now,” Jerry yelled in his ear. “Wouldn’t it be something to drop that Pepper March out here some night? Boy! Or better yet, let’s drop him into a den of those Kodiak bears.”

Sandy laughed. “I don’t know which of the two is more ornery. He might scare them off.”

They reached the cabin door, and Sandy leaned against it and pushed it open. They staggered inside and slammed it shut behind them. The interior of the one-room shack was dark, except for the logs burning low and evenly on the open hearth.

Sandy blinked to accustom his eyes to the dimness. “I could have sworn there was a light in the window as we came along the path.”

“Probably the reflection of the flames on the panes,” Jerry suggested.

“Yeah. Well, let’s light a lamp.” Sandy took several steps toward a table silhouetted against the firelight, then stopped suddenly. “Hey!” he said in a startled voice, nudging an object on the floor with his boot. “What’s this junk spread all over the floor? Looks like somebody was breaking up house. I wonder—” He broke off as a dark shape materialized from the shadows in the far corner of the cabin and seemed to glide toward him. At the same time, he heard Jerry’s excited shout in his ear.

“Sandy! There’s somebody in here. Hey, look out!”

Sandy Steele, without even a consciousness of what he was facing, reacted with his athlete’s instinct and reflexes. Crouching low, he braced himself solidly, and as the figure loomed up before him, he threw a hard body block at the middle of it. His shoulder hit a solid form and he heard a soft grunt of pain and anger. As his arms grappled with the intruder, he realized for the first time that it was a man. His fingers brushed rough wool, and then he felt the steel fingers at his throat.

“Get help, Jerry!” he bellowed, just before the wind was pinched off in his throat. Then he took a hard, numbing blow at the back of his neck and felt himself falling ... falling ... falling ... into blackness.

CHAPTER FOUR
Charley Works Out the Huskies

When Sandy regained consciousness he was lying flat on his back on a cot, surrounded by a ring of anxious faces. He recognized his father, Jerry, Professor Crowell, Lou Mayer, Superintendent MacKensie and several other men from the maintenance gang.

“What—what happened?” Sandy asked weakly.

“It’s all right, Son. You’re fine. Just a nasty bump on the head,” Dr. Steele told him.

“He really clobbered you, Sandy,” Jerry said. “Then he straight-armed me and sent me flying back over a chair. Before I could get up he was gone in the blizzard.”

“There’s no sense trying to follow him in this heavy snow,” MacKensie declared. “His tracks are probably covered already.”

“Did he get away with anything?” Sandy wanted to know.

Dr. Steele and Professor Crowell exchanged significant glances. Then the Canadian geologist said hurriedly, “No, he didn’t steal a thing. Probably some renegade trapper looking for guns and ammunition. They prey on unwary travelers, these chaps. I’ll bet he’s wanted by the Mounties as it is.”

Superintendent MacKensie looked puzzled. “He certainly was a queer one, all right. He really messed things up. But, now, what do you suppose he was after in that stuff?” He pointed to an open valise in the middle of the room.

Sandy propped himself up on one elbow and saw that Professor Crowell’s notebooks and papers were scattered all about the floor.

“He must have thought you had money hidden between the pages,” Lou Mayer said quickly.

Superintendent MacKensie scratched his head. “I dunno. It beats me. We’ve never had anything like this happen before. There have been hijackings on the highway, but no one’s ever had the nerve to break in here.”

“Well, no harm done,” Dr. Steele said. “And Sandy will be as good as new after a night’s sleep. I suggest we clean this mess up and turn in.”

The others agreed, and while Sandy rested on the cot they began to gather up their scattered belongings.

“I wonder if he got at the rest of the stuff we left in the station wagon,” Professor Crowell said.

“I doubt it,” Superintendent MacKensie said. “Your wagon is in the shed with our scout plane and the heavy machinery. We’ve had men working out there all evening.”

After the cabin was in order,