Wings for Nurse Bennett

by Adeline McElfresh

  He shook his head.

  "We're an hour and twenty-five minutes off our course for Tanacross," she said.

  Only an hour and twenty-five minutes? It seemed a hundred years ago since the compartment door had opened behind them—

  "Around two hundred miles. Maybe two-fifty."

  "Counting the circling?"

  Grimly he said, "Without that. I'm guessing, Sarah. I can't even be sure of direction, but I think we're more or less east."

  East. Then they might not be in Alaska, she thought.

  "Paul—"

  "I'm sorry Jenny and I got you into this, Sarah."

  She was glad when John Norstead fell into step with them. "There's a river, Fergis. A couple of us could follow it out. Probably a town not too far."

  Paul's glance went toward the stream and Sarah's, following it, sought the river's passage through the forbidding gray rocks that seemed to block its passage. The wall of rock seemed sheer and unbroken and it must not be.

  Mr. Norstead was right, she told herself. There probably was a town not too far downstream. Rivers were important to towns in Alaska—

  The thought should have reassured her, but it didn't. Towns in Alaska and Yukon had a habit of being awfully far apart on the maps she had seen and if this were some long-abandoned mining camp—

  They were nearing the three or four cabins, all but one of which appeared absolutely dilapidated. One was partially burned, the roof of another looked ready to fall in. Sarah eyed the dirt roof of the cabin that remained reasonably intact with some trepidation. All sorts of things had been growing out of it and now were brown and sodden.

  "Well, it's not the Hilton." George Jefferson tried to be funny.

  Nobody laughed. Nobody spoke, even, and Sarah wondered if they, as she was, were thinking how good this god- and man-forsaken cabin would look to Herman Elder… Her trim navy suit and silver fox cape incongruous in such primitive surroundings, Mrs. Emlyn was the first inside.

  "Well, at least there's a fireplace!" A stubborn cheerfulness was in her voice. "We won't freeze."

  Perhaps they wouldn't, Sarah thought a moment later when she too was inside.

  But the cabin had lost half its chinking, the wind was whistling through and during the storm it had driven rain between the logs until the floor was slick and almost muddy in places. A dirt floor into which, through the years, generations of mice or rats had burrowed.

  Trying not to shudder, she looked around. The single window, small and square, was broken. Jagged pieces of glass clung loosely to the sash; slivers and chunks, along with assorted debris and refuse from the mouse or rat runs, littered the floor. Sarah's heart sank at the sight.

  In this she might—she probably would—have to deliver Mrs. Stevanic's baby. Oh, God—

  "We can chink the cracks, and—" Mrs. Emlyn broke off as George Jefferson dropped his armload of luggage just outside the door. "Mr. Jefferson, you take that ax in the corner and cut us some spruce. We'll get a fire started in a hurry."

  Sarah hadn't even noticed the ax, but it was there. So was a somewhat rusty iron kettle, half hidden in the ashes and charred remains of logs from a long-dead fire. At least she could boil water when Mrs. Stevanic's time came.

  The thought was more cheering than Mrs. Emlyn even. With hot water and the clean towels and linen and the First Aid bag she had brought from the plane, with this place cleaned up and warm— Paul Fergis paused beside her.

  "What about Mrs. Stevanic?" he asked, low-voiced.

  "I'll talk to her." Find out when the baby was supposed to be due, whatever else her doctor had told her— "I don't know, Paul, but with all the excitement—"

  "I know. Thank God you're here, Sarah!"

  She summoned a smile. "You'd still have Mrs. Emlyn."

  Some of the granite-hardness seemed to go from around his mouth. "She's a grand old gal. Panned gold, sang in saloons till she made her stake, then opened the 'Home, Sw—' " He stopped short, began again, "Look, Sarah. About Mrs. Stevanic—"

  "Paul Fergis, you stop worrying!" Mrs. Emlyn emerged from the door of the makeshift lean-to to interrupt him. "Women have had babies in worse places than this!"

  "Of course they have, Paul," Sarah agreed with her, but only aloud. Jan-Doreen Stevanic was young and healthy, but suppose she were narrow?

  Mrs. Emlyn retrieved the half-buried kettle from the fireplace and thrust it at him. "Here. Go wash this out and bring us some water. There's a jar of instant coffee in my Valise, and there're two tin cups and a mug back there." The silver-gray, precisely waved head nodded in the direction of the lean-to.

  Sarah could have hugged her. It was what they— she, Paul, all of them—needed.

  Busyness, and something hot—and an airplane dipping down over those sharply rising peaks.

  "Al," Paul Fergis said.

  "Coming." The co-pilot left John Norstead and Mac McDavie talking and came to walk silently beside him in the direction of the river.

  It was a swift-flowing, small stream, rough and unhospitable-looking, as mountain streams frequently are. But there had been a boat-landing, of which rotting fragments remained, and a landing meant someone once had considered the river navigable.

  Studying its leaden turbulence now Paul Fergis had his doubts. He wished he had some glimmer of an idea where they were. My God, for all he knew, this might be the Pelly or one of the McQueston tributaries. He didn't think they'd flown that much more north than east—probably not even that much north because he hadn't glimpsed Mayo Road.

  Which didn't mean much, he reminded himself. He might have missed it anyhow, even though they had flown out of the rain that had robbed him of any chance even to glimpse the Alaska Highway or Taylor Highway, which branched off it at Tetlin Junction below Tanacross. And he knew damn well they'd crossed Taylor.

  "What do you make of it, Al?"

  "Mac says he's never seen them around Killmoose before."

  Fergis thought about that while he knelt to dip the iron kettle into the water and then to scour its inside with a handful of rough brown grass. If they hadn't been around Killmoose before, what the hell were they doing there this morning? They must know the country—they knew there was an airstrip there, perhaps even that he made a stop twice a week, and sometimes three times, and that occasionally another plane used the strip.

  But what were they doing in that country along the north fork of Forty-Mile, afoot, this time of year?

  "Jefferson's right, Paul," Al Malcolm said after a time. "Elder must have known them and they couldn't take a chance on him keeping his mouth shut. That means they're in plenty deep."

  Paul Fergis nodded. It was a full minute before he said, "So are we, Al. Even with Sarah on hand Mrs. Stevanic worries me. My God, Al! Suppose something goes wrong?"

  "Mac and I can start downstream. We're bound to come to a trapper's cabin, a village—something."

  "That's what Norstead thinks." Straightening, Fergis inspected the kettle, stooped to dip it brimful. "I'm the one who's going, Al."

  "Don't you think you'd—"

  "APF passengers are my responsibility before they're yours, Al." I'm the one who stood like a stump while they took Elder— His lean jaw knotting at the unspoken words dinning in his ears, Fergis said, "That's an order, Al," before his young co-pilot could voice the argument that was in his face. "I'm leaving you in charge and God knows how you'll manage. Club a snowshoe rabbit, maybe—Cornelia Emlyn's got instant coffee—"

  Suddenly that coffee sounded like nectar.

  A trickle of smoke began rising from the rock and mud chimney by the time they were halfway back to the cabin, and the sound of the ax biting into a spruce trunk rang out loud and clear. Mac McDavie was swinging the ax as if his hands welcomed renewed acquaintance with a hard hickory handle, Paul thought. He probably did. Holing in in that radio shack with Fletch Minsen could get monotonous as all hell, but with an occasional night in Copper Creek Mac didn't seem to mind.

  As they approached, Geo
rge Jefferson straightened from his expensive steerhide bag, open on the ground.

  "Here you are, skipper," he said, holding a .357 Magnum toward Paul by the barrel. He grinned at Al Malcolm. "I guess it's a good thing I wasn't packing Maggie. I might have been tempted to tilt at windmills too."

  "With Maggie," Al said, "you might have pulled it off."

  Jefferson shook his head. "Not a chance. Those boys were primed."

  Paul hefted the gun, drawing a faint reassurance from its grip. His own gun and the flare pistol he always carried were still in the plane's cabin.

  "How many shells have you got?"

  "That's the rub," Jefferson admitted. "Maybe a dozen."

  Nine—eight, leaving himself out—people to feed and "maybe a dozen" shots. Damn, Paul Fergis swore to himself. He called, "Mac! Norstead!"

  They came over.

  "Let's go in to that fire—"

  Within a few minutes the iron kettle was balanced on three rocks over the spruce-wood fire which licked hungrily at the pitted, blackened bottom.

  "There!" Mrs. Emlyn exclaimed, stepping back from the fireplace. "We'll have coffee in two shakes of a sluice-box!"

  Somehow Paul Fergis felt better. Less trapped. Not quite so weighted down. After all, they were alive, they had a fire, a roof of sorts, a gun—

  Remembering it, he handed it back to Jefferson. "I wish it was a thirty-thirty." He looked around the tight little half circle. "I'm going to try following the river. Al will be in charge. Keep a fire going on the valley floor tonight, it just might be spotted—"

  "Then why not sit it out?" George Jefferson interrupted him to ask. "Till morning, anyhow. Hell, Fergis, it's going to be an early dark, these clouds and all."

  Paul shook his head. "They'll be looking for us along a line from Killmoose to Tanacross, or to the west if they figure we were blown off course. We're easterly, perhaps even in Yukon." That didn't surprise them; somehow he had expected it to. "We might be in luck and be across that mountain from Fort Selkirk or Pelly Crossing."

  He didn't believe it, but it wouldn't hurt for them to. Especially Mrs. Stevanic, he thought.

  "I'll go with you," John Norstead volunteered. "There should be two of us."

  Fergis nodded. "Well—"

  "Paul Fergis, you are not leaving this cabin until you've had a hot drink!" Mrs. Emlyn poked vigorously at the fire with an ancient poker she had found standing in a corner. "Maybe by then you'll get some sense. It's colder and, mind you, there's snow coming."

  She was probably right, Paul thought, but then his eyes touched Mrs. Stevanic's swollen body. God, if that was Jenny—

  "We'll wait for the coffee," he said.

  Chapter 4

  Ward Barthey's voice, dramatic, brocaded with excitement, filled the eight-by-ten radio shack and spilled over into the wind-whipped darkness that in October settled early upon Killmoose:

  " 'Security' has been stamped in bold letters on any information regarding the reported attempt to sabotage one of the United States' Distant Early Warning stations above the Arctic Circle. Official sources refuse to discuss either the reports or the breach of security that leaked word of the sabotage attempt and the subsequent widespread search for the three men believed involved in the attempt."

  "In the meantime, Air Force and private planes this afternoon combed the mountains between Killmoose, some two hundred miles east of Fairbanks, and Tanacross in an effort to locate a missing Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways plane with thirteen persons aboard."

  Thirteen, Fletch Minsen thought. Jeez!

  The announcer's voice raced on: "Four of the passengers boarded the plane, owned and piloted by Paul Fergis of Fairbanks, at the Killmoose airstrip. One of them was MacDonald McDavie, thirty-four, who is one of the two radio operators on duty at Killmoose. The other three men, according to Fletcher Minsen, the other radio man at Killmoose, made their appearance at the airstrip after the APF plane landed. The men were strangers to him, he said, and one of them he described via radio to authorities at Tanacross as, quote, a big man with his right shoulder stiff and carried high, unquote."

  "The description tallies with that of the man who is believed to have stolen a Cessna plane in Barrow last Friday. A light plane that may be the Cessna was located today in the mountains along the Seventy-Mile River, some fifty miles to the north of Killmoose, where it had crashed and partially burned. A plane flew low over the scene this afternoon but no bodies were seen."

  "It is believed that the occupants of the plane were uninjured, or were injured only slightly, and left the scene in an attempt to find their way through the mountains. Searching parties were being organized at Sam Creek, Coal Creek, Flume Creek and Nation, towns nearest the scene of the crash."

  "The trio who boarded the APF plane at Killmoose, Minsen reported by radio to Tanacross, bought passage to Juneau, Minsen says he believes, although the transaction was handled by Fergis. APF flies from Fairbanks to Juneau, with frequent unscheduled stops as passenger or freight needs require."

  "The APF plane vanished in a rainstorm after reporting twenty minutes after taking off at Killmoose that it was flying in rough weather at nine thousand feet. The widespread search was launched when the plane was an hour overdue at Tanacross, where authorities alerted by Minsen and radio operator Lee O'Kinnelley of Tanacross were waiting to question the three men. Unofficial sources say Air Force planes from Eilsen and Ladd Air Force bases at Fairbanks will continue the search through the night in hopes of spotting flares or other signals from the missing plane."

  "Aboard the plane in addition to McDavie and the three unidentified men are pilot Paul Fergis; co-pilot Alistair Malcolm, also of Fairbanks; stewardess Sarah Bennett of Troy, Ohio, who was flying her first run as an APF stewardess; Mrs. Cornelia Emlyn of Fairbanks; Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Stevanic of Fairbanks; George Jefferson of Fairbanks and Seattle, Washington; John Norstead of Tanacross; and Herman T. Elder of Juneau. Elder, whose home formerly was in New York City, came to Juneau a year ago after a sensational appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D. C, and since that time has lived in seclusion."

  "More news and a weather warning in a moment, but first a word—"

  Elder. Fletch Minsen massaged the two-day stubble on his chin with his knuckles.

  Now which one was he? Not the kid. Barthey had said Mr. and Mrs. Something Stevanic, so Stevanic would be the dark-haired boy whose wife looked as if she should've stayed home. And he knew Jefferson by sight, so that left the big Swede-looking guy who must be Norstead and the little old geezer—

  Jeez, Minsen thought. Him up before them guys in Washington?

  And turning up on Paul Fergis's plane at the same time them three come out of nowhere?

  He didn't believe it. He didn't believe that business about that Cessna crashing and burning, either, Fletch Minsen told himself.

  If it had, them three wouldn't all've walked away from it. Not in good enough shape to walk fifty-some-odd miles across them mountains, and what if they had bought passage to Juneau? Paul Fergis knew them mountains between Killmoose and Tanacross like he knew the hairs on the backs of his hands.

  The snow that had started falling just after dark was still coming, but not gently, as it had begun. An hour ago the wind had pounced, the first force of it shaking the small cabin, and, ever since, frigid, probing fingers had poked and pried at the mixture of river mud and dead grass and leaves with which Andrew Stevanic and George Jefferson had hurriedly filled cracks between the logs. And sometimes found entry. Sarah shivered when a small draft explored the back of her neck, somehow reminding her of Rand's gun nuzzling Paul's atlas vertebra. The shudder crept along her spine again. A bullet there, or even a blow, and vertebra and spinal cord would have been severed or crushed and not even Rand's flying skill could have saved them in that moment, with Paul still at the controls.

  Rand was a flyer, all right—Al's admiration provided the italics, and even Paul, before he and John Norste
ad had left the cabin, had agreed with him. He had to be, to have charted a course to this valley, to set the plane down among rocks and hummocks and fallen trees and then take off without incident. He knew the country too, they had decided. Probably was an old bush pilot who had flown hunters, uranium prospectors, supplies and equipment to remote nooks and crannies all over Alaska and the Northwest Territories. George Jefferson had ventured that, adding, "A thing wrong with that is, most of those boys fly light planes. Single-engine jobs. What about that, Fergis? Wouldn't there be a difference?"

  "Maybe he was in the Air Force. World War II. His age would be about right."

  Remembering the conversation, Sarah hugged herself in the mist-gray wool suit and crimson sweater that was her Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways uniform until the regular uniforms Paul had ordered for her came. She was cold not a dozen feet from the fire, and Paul and John Norstead—

  As if reading her thought Al Malcolm said, "I hope Paul and Norstead found some good rock to hole up behind."

  The silence, broken only by the yowl of the blizzard and the fire crackling about the spruce log Mac McDavie had just thrown on, lingered. Sarah knew what they were thinking. Even with "some good rock to hole up behind," a man's chances for survival in this were not good. It wasn't just the wind and the snow; it was colder too and keeping a fire going outside was next to impossible. In the clearing in front of the cabin it was impossible. Half an hour ago Andrew Stevanic and Mac McDavie had given up and come in, half frozen.

  On the "chaise longue" that George Jefferson had improvised from a door he had taken from one of the other cabins and "overstuffed" with spruce boughs, Jan-Doreen Stevanic stirred. Uneasily, Sarah thought and felt a stab of alarm. The girl's baby was not due for another two weeks, but—

  "He went because of me." Mrs. Stevanic's voice was deckle-edged with unease too.

  "Paul Fergis is a fool," Cornelia Emlyn snapped, "and that John Norstead is no better!"

  "Oh, come now, Mrs. Emlyn," George Jefferson chided her. "They're doing what they felt they had to do. 'A chaque saint sa chandelle,' you know."