Within another hour, the first storm of the season had turned into a blizzard. With the provisions they had on hand the boys would have made a landing to get what protection they might from the blinding snow and the now-piercing wind had they dared. They had not yet changed the landing wheels of the monoplane for their novel snow runners and they realized that a new start in the rapidly increasing snow was practically hopeless.
Working directly ahead into the gale had so reduced their speed that Norman had adopted a series of long tacks. He did this in spite of the fact that for miles at a time it took him from the river valley, which he was now locating mainly by the wind eddies he had learned to know. There was no use turning on the searchlight, as it merely gave them a little longer view into the deep gray emptiness before them.
Thoroughly appreciating their danger, the boys also recognized that a panic of fear would not help them. If the car should become unmanageable, they would make the best landing they could and, half burying the monoplane in the snow, would await in the protected cockpit the breaking of the blizzard and a new day.
"Anyway," announced Roy at one time, "while I ain't exactly stuck on being here and it ain't as cheerful as I thought it would be, you got to say this, the Gitchie Manitou ain't falling down any."
No attention was given to supper and it did not get so cold but that the heavy clothing and enclosed cockpit—for they had long since been forced to put up all the sections—were ample protection for the young men. Seven o'clock, by which time they had expected to be in camp, came, as did eight and nine. It was now long after dark and, while the storm had abated somewhat, there was still a heavy wind and plenty of snow.
For hours the boys had been simply following the compass. They had not caught the roar of the Grand Rapids and felt themselves practically lost. By their calculation, and allowing for a head wind, they had concluded that they would have covered the three hundred miles by ten o'clock. If at that time they could make out no signal light, they had decided to come down on the upland and go into camp for the night.
Their calculation was purely a guess but it was not a bad one. Some time after half past nine both boys made out in the far eastern sky a soft glow.
"I thought it had to be a clear night for the Aurora Borealis," suggested Roy, conscious that his companion had also seen the same glow. For a time Norman made no response but he headed the machine directly toward the peculiar flare and ceased his tacking.
"That's no Aurora," he said at last. "I think the woods are on fire."
For ten minutes, through the thinning wind-tossed snowflakes, the Gitchie Manitou groaned its way forward.
"I wonder if it ain't a big signal fire for us," suggested Roy at last.
"It's a big blaze of some kind," answered Norman.
Through the obscuring snow, the nervous aviators had located the light many miles in the distance. Now it began to rise up so suddenly before them that they knew it had not been very far away. Yet they could not make up their mind that it was a signal fire. It did not at all resemble a blaze of that kind.
"Well, don't run into it, whatever it is," shouted Roy a few minutes later as a tall spire-like shaft of yellow light seemed almost to block their progress.
But Norman was already banking the machine, and the flying car responded while the wonder-struck boys gazed open-mouthed.
"It's the camp," Norman yelled just then as a little group of shadowy buildings seemed to rise up out of the snow.
"They've struck gas!" blurted Roy, as he sprang to his feet. "The men have struck gas and it's a gusher!"
Even as he yelled these words, the aviators heard a quick fusilade of shots and as the car darted onward were just able to catch sight of shadowy forms running about within the glare of the burning gas well. The sight was enough of a shock to Norman to throw him off his guard and the snow-weighted car careened wildly toward the earth. Roy attempted to spring to his companion's assistance and realized almost too late that this would be fatal. While the perspiration sprang to Roy's chilled face, Norman's presence of mind returned and he threw the car upward and into equilibrium again.
Then, straining every nerve, he made a wide detour but while his brain acted, the muscles of his hands and arms seemed suddenly paralyzed. The car dropped slowly and safely in the midst of the clearing, and when it touched the snow the landing chassis caught and the airship stopped as if in collision with a wall. Both boys lunged forward and when Roy got to his feet he found Norman curled up among the steering apparatus, cold and motionless.
It was a good half hour later when the young aviator had been revived. His first inquiry was about the Gitchie Manitou. When he learned that this was apparently little injured and had already been backed into the aerodrome, he gave more evidence of his all-day's strain by again relapsing into unconsciousness on the cot that had been improvised for him before the fire in the living room.
The more fortunate Roy was able to relate their adventures and hear the details of the gas gusher's discovery that night. Within the protected clearing, the storm had been more of a heavy downfall of snow and less of a blizzard. Anxious to move the derrick before winter was fully upon them, Colonel Howell and his two men had persisted in working the drill all day. When the gas vein was unexpectedly tapped late in the afternoon, the drill pipes had been blown out and the escaping gas, igniting from the near-by boiler, had consumed the derrick. Fortunately, the tubing and drills had been forced through the derrick and were saved.
The engine house had also caught fire, but this had been pulled down and it was thought that the engine and boiler were undamaged. These details were discussed while Roy ate a late supper and drank with more relish than ever before his tin of black tea. Norman was so improved by morning that he was early astir, eager for a view of the still roaring volume of gas. He found that Colonel Howell had also taken advantage of the first daylight to inventory the possible damage.
While the twisting yellow flame of the uncapped well was less inspiring as day broke, the roar of the escaping flame fascinated the young aviator.
"It's a gusher, and a dandy," explained Colonel Howell as he and Norman stood close by it in the melting snow. "But I think we're prepared for it and we'll try to cap it to-day."
All else, the clearing, the camp structures and the banks of the river, were peaceful and white under the untracked mantle of new-fallen snow. The wind had died out and the gas camp at Fort McMurray stood on the verge of the almost Arctic winter.
The excitement attendant upon the wonderful discovery and the attempt made at once to control the fiery shaft again interfered with Colonel Howell's real plans of active prospecting. For days the experienced oil men made futile efforts to extinguish the gusher and to cap the shaft. When they were of no assistance in this work, Norman and Roy overhauled the airship and substituted the ski-like runners in place of the aluminum-cased rubber-tired landing wheels.
It seemed as if every trader, trapper and prospector within fifty miles visited the camp. A week after the discovery, somewhat to the surprise of all, although apparently not so much to Ewen and Miller, the long missing Chandler appeared at the clearing late one evening. If he had any apology to make to Colonel Howell, the boys did not hear it. But he was sober enough this time and somewhat emaciated. He had come to settle with his old employer and explained his long delay in doing this by saying: "I knew my money was good any time," and that he had been trapping farther down the river.
He lounged about the camp the greater part of the day and even volunteered his services in the still unsuccessful attack of the flaming gas. But Colonel Howell seemed without any interest in his offers. The man was invited, however, to eat in the camp and spend the night there.
When the boys retired, Colonel Howell, the visitor, and Ewen and Miller were still smoking before the big fire. The next morning the boys slept late and when they responded to Philip's persistent call to breakfast, they found that Chandler had eaten and gone. Colonel Howell was awaiting the boys, Ewen and Miller being already at work on the blazing well, and he seemed to have something on his mind.
"Would there be any great danger," he began at once, addressing Norman, "in making a short flight in your airship in weather like this?"
"This isn't bad," volunteered Roy. "It's only a few degrees below zero. There's a good fall of snow for our runners and there hasn't been any wind since the blizzard."
"Well," resumed Colonel Howell, almost meditatively, "it seems a shame for us to be livin' here in what you might call luxury and folks starving all around us. Look at this," he went on, and he led the three boys near one of the windows where a large Department of the Interior map of northern Alberta was tacked to the wall. "Here's Fort McMurray and our camp," he began, pointing to a black spot on the almost uncharted white, where the McMurray River emptied into the Athabasca. Then he ran his finger northward along the wide blue line indicating the tortuous course of the Athabasca past Fort McKay and the Indian settlement described as Pierre au Calumet (marked "abandoned"), past the Muskeg, the Firebag and the Moose Rivers where they found their way into the giant Athabasca between innumerable black spots designated as "tar" islands, and at last stopped suddenly at the words "Pointe aux Tremble."
"That's an Indian town," went on Colonel Howell, "and it's about as far south as you ever find the Chipewyans. It isn't much over a hundred miles from here and Chandler says there ain't a man left in the village. Pretty soon, he thinks, there'll be no women and children left. Maybe he's making a pretty black picture but he says all the men have gone over toward the lake hunting. They've been gone over two weeks and the camp was starving when they left."
The colonel, with a peculiar look on his face, led the way back to the breakfast table.
"These Indians are nothing to me," he went on at last, "and all Indians are starving pretty much all the time, but they die just the same. But somehow, with plenty of pork and flour here and this great invention here right at hand from which nobody's benefitting, it seems to me we must be pretty hard-hearted to sit in comfort, stuffing ourselves, while little babies are dying for scraps that we're throwing in the river. I—"
"Colonel," exclaimed Roy at once, "you've said enough. Get up what you can spare and we'll have bannocks baking in that settlement before noon."
"I don't want to get you into another blizzard," began the colonel, yet his satisfaction was apparent.
"Don't you worry about that," broke in Norman. "I think we feel a good deal the same way about this. Besides, aren't we working for you?"
"Nothing like that!" expostulated the oil prospector. "This isn't an order."
"I'll help get the stuff ready," began Paul, "for I know that's all I can do. Is this Chandler trapping near there?" he went on, as he gulped down the last of his tea.
"Says he's been helping them," explained Colonel Howell, "but he couldn't have done much, judging by his appearance."
"Is he going back there?" asked Roy curiously.
"He didn't say," answered Colonel Howell slowly. "But he's got his money now and I imagine he won't go much farther than Fort McMurray. I don't care for him and I don't like him around the camp. He's too busy talking when the men ought to be at work."
It was an ideal winter's day, the atmosphere clear and the temperature just below zero. There was no cause for delay and while Norman made a tracing and a scale of the route, Paul and Roy drew the Gitchie Manitou into the open. Colonel Howell and the half-breed cook had been busy in the storehouse, arranging packets of flour and cutting up sides of fat pork. Small packages of tea were also prepared, together with sugar, salt and half a case of evaporated fruit. The only bread on hand was the remainder of Philip's last baking of bannock.
"See how things are," suggested Colonel Howell, when these articles were passed up to Roy, "and if they're as bad as Chandler says, we'll have to send Philip out for a moose. These things'll carry 'em along for a few days at least."
The look on the young Count's face was such that Norman was disturbed.
"Paul, old man," he said, "I know you'd like to go with us and we'd like to have you. But we've got more than the weight of a third man in all this food. I hope you don't feel disappointed."
"Well, I do, in a way," answered Paul, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "but it isn't just from curiosity. I envy you fellows. You're always helping and I never find anything to do."
"You can help me to-day," laughed Colonel Howell. "I'm going to cap that gas well or bust it open in a new place. I'll give you a job that may make both of us sit up and take notice."
"Come on," exclaimed Paul, seeming instantly to forget the mission of the machine. "I've been wanting a finger in that pie from the start."
"Good luck to you," called out Norman, as he sprang aboard the monoplane, and the colonel caught Paul laughingly by the arm and held him while Norman threw the big propeller into sizzling revolution.
The powerful car slid forward for the first time on its wooden snowshoes. As it caught the impulse of the great propeller, it sprang into the air and then dropped to the snow again with the wiggling motion of an inexperienced skater. Then, suddenly responding again to the propeller, it darted diagonally toward a menacing tree stump; but Norman was too quick for it. Before harm could result, the planes lifted and the airship, again in its native element, hurled itself skyward steadily and true.
It was an exhilarating flight. For the first time the boys got a bird's-eye view of Fort McMurray and were surprised to find that the main settlement drifted down to the river in a long-drawn-out group of cabins. Few people were in sight, however, and all the world spread out beneath them as if frozen into silence. The big river continued its course between the same high hills and, as the last cabin disappeared, the boys headed the Gitchie Manitou directly for the top of the hills, where the plains began that led onward and onward until the sparse forests finally disappeared in the broken land of the Barren Grounds. And on these, not much farther to the North, they knew that caribou and moose roamed in herds of thousands, and that the musk ox, the king of the Northland big game, made his Arctic home.