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.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE CABIN OF THE PARALYZED INDIAN

No sooner had the monoplane begun to disappear over the northern hills
than the impatient Paul demanded the attention of Colonel Howell.

"Colonel," he began, "I'm almost ashamed to even make the suggestion, but
I've been watching the men at work on the gusher. They don't seem able to
get a plug into the pipe or to put a cap on the end of it, even with the
rigging they've managed to set up."

"We seem to be at the end of our string," laughed Colonel Howell. "But
laymen frequently make suggestions that never occur to professionals.
Have you an idea?"

"Not much of a one," answered Paul diffidently, "but I learned one thing
in school--I think it was