The Daily Alaska empire., 1934-01-19
44 ,.FORBIDDEN VALLEY I=Aas sssA- S4 WilG@m 3 4aon foueu4

feet the whole mass was wrapped in fierce flames.
 But Paul and Sonya scarcely saw it. Their mortified eyes were on Curtis broken plane as it twirled downward at a ter inc speed, it's propeller gone, its engine roar changed to high-pitched scream.
 At two thousand feet a small manikin object detached itself from the falling wreckage. For five or six seconds it came down and down, turning slowly. head over feet, till the demolished plane vas a hundred yards below it and well to one side.
 Against the blue of the sky tiny bit of white flashed. A moment later a long streamer of white shot out. While the two wrecked craft were plummeting on down. to hit the lake with tremendous splash and sink out of sight, the streamer caught the air, fared out and burst into a white sky-fower.
 "Oh-ool" broke from both of them "a cry of unavoidable thankfulness, releasing all their spellbound fears of those last terrible minutes. Even then they could not fully realize that Curl had saved himself. It came home to them only by degrees. as they watched the packchute stop swinging and drift il their direction.
 It was Sonya who first saw Curt tugging at the guide lines and under stood the danger he was fighting against.
 Paul! Get a cancel He'll come down in the lake! We've got to get out to him!"
 Paul sprang back the path to a canoe near the cabin. By the time he got it to water. he saw that the craft would not be needed; the wind was carrying the chute south against the mountain slope. Four hundred feet high it passed over their heads, and Curt looked down and waved assurance to them. Fall ing slowly. he brushed low over a clump of spruces and lodged in a tall pine just above tn, little knoll.
 Paul hurried up to help his part ner. but Sonya coule not move. When she saw that Curt had landed and was safe. she sank down on the canoe, faint and trembling. A wing of Karakhan's plane was bobbing in toward shore, but the ship itself had disappeared. and Karakhan with it down in the icy depths of the lake.
 As her eyes followed that piece of bobbing wreckage. she strove to realize that he wa5 dead. dead-the man who had cruell..- sent her father and Carl to their innocent deaths. Her long hunt was ended.
 T RUSSIAN LAKE old John came walking into the fireglow of Curtis camp. where Curt sat talk ing with Superintendent Marlin who had flown up from Vancouver that afternoon.
 I'm havin' leetle git-together over at my tent dreckly. like we had that time afore, Curt; an fingered you men 'ud like to j'in us. Paul an Tenn-Og an some more air there already, an the others all said they're comin'."
 Thanks, John. we'll be over," Curt accepted. "Our trip really started there at your fire, and it ought to end there."
 When old Paxton had gone, Mar lin handed Curt another newspaper. Here's the Times-Tribune. Read this"
 The streaming headline: KARAKHAN TAKEN BY FORMER
 MOUNTY
 brought Curt glow of hard learned pride; but he was more gratified by the subhead, with its emphasis on Karakhan's money:
 EmbeZzler of Huge Sums
 Killed in Resisting
 Arrest
 The Karakhan hunt had cost him a heavy price personally = his maimed hand, his brushes with death. the suffering it had dragged him through, and the destruction of the plane he had bought with the savings of several long years. As pay for all that he was to receive less than two hundred dollars.
 But the hunt had gained him cer- tain priceless things, not to be meas ured in money. He and AK were back on the old oting again; he had found himself after a year of groping around, and he had found Sonya.
 He laid the paper and stack of others inside the tent. q suppose we'd better start over to old Johns 'sociable,' AK. You'll be the guest of honor there tonight, and they're probably waiting"
 Marlin did not get up. In moody silence he looked out upon the twilit lake, drumming absently on the chopping beck.
 (CopUright. WiHiam B. Mowery)
 Tomorrow, Curt meets sonya on