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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11867 ***
+
+The Alaskan
+
+A Novel of the North
+
+By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+With Illustrations by Walt Louderback
+
+
+
+
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska,
+the new empire rising in the North, it is for me
+an honor and a privilege to dedicate this work.
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+_Owosso, Michigan
+August 1, 1923_
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+[Illustration: It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.]
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.
+ The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.
+ The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.
+ Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.
+
+
+
+
+THE ALASKAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not
+lost the spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead
+in him, and the fire which is built up of clean adventure and the
+association of strong men and a mighty country had not died out of his
+veins. He could still see the picturesque, feel the thrill of the
+unusual, and—at times—warm memories crowded upon him so closely that
+yesterday seemed today, and Alaska was young again, thrilling the world
+with her wild call to those who had courage to come and fight for her
+treasures, and live—or die.
+
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and
+the yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan
+mountains, something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+
+“That is Alaska.”
+
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment
+did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the
+almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled
+with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body
+was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the
+cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds lay like
+shimmering draperies.
+
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. “Yes, Alaska,” she said,
+and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor
+in her voice. “Your Alaska, Captain Rifle.”
+
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the
+low moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now
+she asked: “What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon
+like that, and the stars so clear above!”
+
+“It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are
+in the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it
+were day you could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the
+Inside Passage. I have always called it the water-wonderland of the
+world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken—for we are
+almost alone on this side of the ship. Is it not proof? If I were
+right, the men and women in there—dancing, playing cards,
+chattering—would be crowding this rail. Can you imagine humans like
+that? But they can’t see what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who
+remembers things. Ah, do you catch that in the air, Miss Standish—the
+perfume of flowers, of forests, of green things ashore? It is faint,
+but I catch it.”
+
+“And so do I.”
+
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she
+stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy;
+she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the
+rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted
+windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in
+her face which he could not understand.
+
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute—defying the necessity of making reservation where half a
+thousand others had been turned away—and chance had brought her under
+his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered
+a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he
+had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom
+of years. And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant
+poise of her head with which she was regarding the cabin windows now.
+
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives
+in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was
+impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all
+official regulations in coming aboard.
+
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his
+experience, he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew
+that in some way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom
+of three and sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the
+truth.
+
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very
+pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly
+attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted
+clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her
+eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her
+exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of
+beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he
+doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty
+he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused
+speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many
+things which others might not see—and hold his tongue.
+
+“We are not quite alone,” she was saying. “There are others,” and she
+made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
+
+“Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway,” he said. “And the other is Alan
+Holt.”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of
+the moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain’s arm. “Listen,” she
+whispered.
+
+“Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the
+shore, and there are glaciers all the way up.”
+
+“And that other sound, like low wind—on a night so still and calm! What
+is it?”
+
+“You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets
+rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the
+mountains, you hear that song.”
+
+“And this man, Alan Holt,” she reminded him. “He is a part of these
+things?”
+
+“Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in
+Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him—”
+
+“Thirty-eight,” she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+
+Then he chuckled. “You are very good at figures.”
+
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+
+“This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone—like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of
+ghosts as we talked there in the dusk.”
+
+“Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse
+ate up men’s lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish,” said Captain Rifle. “You will meet many like
+him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their faces—always
+the memory of those days that are gone.”
+
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. “And Alan Holt? You
+know him well?”
+
+“Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him.
+All northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond
+the Endicott Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier.”
+
+“He must be very brave.”
+
+“Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish.”
+
+“And honorable men—men you can trust and believe in?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It is odd,” she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a
+bird-note in her throat. “I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a
+long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going
+home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan.”
+
+“And you are—”
+
+“An American,” she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her
+voice. “A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am
+going north—to learn.”
+
+“Only that, Miss Standish?”
+
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer.
+His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was
+filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his
+eyes.
+
+“I must press the question,” he said. “As the captain of this ship, and
+as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me—in confidence, if you will have it so?”
+
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. “There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle.”
+
+“And yet—you came aboard very strangely,” he urged. “You will recall
+that it was most unusual—without reservation, without baggage—”
+
+“You forget the hand-bag,” she reminded him.
+
+“Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish.”
+
+“But I did, Captain Rifle.”
+
+“True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent.”
+
+“I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass.”
+
+“Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship’s regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from
+something!”
+
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+
+“Yes, I was running away—from something.”
+
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed
+the thrill of the fight she was making.
+
+“And you will not tell me why—or from what you were escaping?”
+
+“I can not—tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But—it is
+possible—”
+
+“What?”
+
+“That I shall never reach Nome.”
+
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung
+to him, and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged
+the hand to her breast. “I know just how good you have been to me,” she
+cried. “I should like to tell you why I came aboard—like that. But I
+can not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!” With one free hand
+she pointed.
+
+“Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery
+of centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those
+things, Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or
+feel what you have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know
+it. And after all that, can’t you—won’t you—forget the strange manner
+in which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to
+put out of your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look back—and
+think. Please Captain Rifle—please!”
+
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his
+hand to her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant,
+leaving him speechless, his resolution gone.
+
+“I love you because you have been so good to me,” she whispered, and as
+suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone at
+the rail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid
+light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching
+her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture
+which she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain
+Rifle. To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that
+went to make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first
+ships of the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the
+purser, had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the
+others; that was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had
+been at the same table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both
+breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of
+neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words
+of speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not
+talkative or communicative of his own free will. There was a certain
+cynicism back of his love of silence. He was a good listener and a
+first-rate analyst. Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and
+others, to trim the balance, were burdened with the necessity of
+holding their tongues. For him silence was not a burden.
+
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very
+quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course,
+escape the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long
+lashes that darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill
+him, but merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even
+more than her gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to
+discuss the matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one
+thing, it would have been her hair—not so much the color of it as the
+care she evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He
+noted that it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the
+dinner lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth,
+silky coils in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an
+intense relief after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and
+marcelled, during his six months’ visit in the States. So he liked her,
+generally speaking, because there was not a thing about her that he
+might dislike.
+
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of
+him—with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather
+Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his
+thick, blond hair. His interest had not reached anywhere near that
+point.
+
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have
+interested him, except as the always casual observer of humanity.
+Another and greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he
+first felt the throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship
+_Nome_ under his feet at Seattle. He was going _home_. And home meant
+Alaska. It meant the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable
+spaces into which civilization had not yet come with its clang and
+clamor. It meant friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he
+loved. Such was his reaction after six months of exile, six months of
+loneliness and desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+
+“I’ll not make the trip again—not for a whole winter—unless I’m sent at
+the point of a gun,” he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after Mary
+Standish had left the deck. “An Eskimo winter is long enough, but one
+in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer—for me.”
+
+“I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington.”
+
+“Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He
+has forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they
+had to listen to him. We may get action.”
+
+“May!” Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. “Alaska has been waiting ten
+years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you’ll get anything.
+When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and
+what we need north of Fifty-eight—why, what’s the use? Alaska might as
+well shut up shop!”
+
+“But she isn’t going to do that,” said Alan Holt, his face grimly set
+in the moonlight. “They’ve tried hard to get us, and they’ve made us
+shut up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites
+in the Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven
+out nine thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left
+are hard-boiled. We’re not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are
+Alaskans, and we are not afraid to fight.”
+
+“You mean—”
+
+“That we’ll have a square deal within another five years, or know the
+reason why. And another five years after that, we’ll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within
+twenty years we’ll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef
+barons, eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million
+Americans who are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation
+systems.”
+
+One of Alan Holt’s hands was clenched at the rail. “Until I went down
+this winter, I didn’t realize just how bad it was,” he said, a note
+hard as iron in his voice. “Lomen is a diplomat, but I’m not. I want to
+fight when I see such things—fight with a gun. Because we happened to
+find gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as
+quickly as possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the
+skin will be worthless. That’s modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for
+you!”
+
+“And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?”
+
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned
+and stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with
+the moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+
+“You ask me a question, madam,” said Alan Holt, bowing courteously.
+“No, I am not an American. I am an Alaskan.”
+
+The girl’s lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+“Please pardon me for listening,” she said. “I couldn’t help it. I am
+an American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything else
+in the world—more than my religion, even. _America,_ Mr. Holt. And
+America doesn’t necessarily mean a great many of America’s people. I
+love to think that I first came ashore in the _Mayflower_. That is why
+my name is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska _is_
+America.”
+
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl’s face was no longer placidly
+quiet. Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her
+voice, and he knew that in the light of day he would have seen fire in
+her cheeks. He smiled, and in that smile he could not quite keep back
+the cynicism of his thought.
+
+“And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?”
+
+“Nothing,” she said. “And yet I love it.” She pointed to the mountains.
+“I wish I might have been born among them. You are fortunate. You
+should love America.”
+
+“Alaska, you mean!”
+
+“No, America.” There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was not
+speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+
+The irony on Alan’s lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+“If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came
+over in the _Mayflower_, I stand reproved,” he said. “You should be an
+authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship.”
+
+“You are correct,” she replied with a proud, little tilt of her glossy
+head, “though I think that only lately have I come to an understanding
+of its significance—and its responsibility. I ask your pardon again for
+interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just happened.”
+
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a
+swift smile and passed down the promenade.
+
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of
+life.
+
+“A remarkable young woman,” Alan remarked. “I imagine that the spirit
+of Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost
+suppose he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite
+though rather indirect result.”
+
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation
+of humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one
+could not miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a
+sting which he did not altogether intend.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the
+captain a question which was in his mind.
+
+“The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?”
+
+“Yes—rather,” acknowledged Captain Rifle. “Hereafter she will ply
+directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we’re doing the Inside
+Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven’t seen fit
+to explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have
+something to do with it. We’re landing them at Skagway, where they make
+the Yukon by way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people
+nowadays, Holt. I can remember—”
+
+“So can I,” nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay
+the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. “I
+remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget.”
+
+“Men don’t forget such women as Jane Hope,” said the captain softly.
+
+“You knew her?”
+
+“Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five
+years ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn’t it? And when I look at
+Mary Standish and hear her voice—” He hesitated, as if betraying a
+secret, and then he added: “—I can’t help thinking of the girl Donald
+Hardwick fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It’s too
+bad she had to die.”
+
+“She isn’t dead,” said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. “She
+isn’t dead,” he repeated. “That’s the pity of it. She is as much a
+living thing to him today as she was twenty years ago.”
+
+After a moment the captain said, “She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan.”
+
+“Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?”
+
+“Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you.”
+
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. “Not at all. I think she is a most
+admirable young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I’m going to
+promenade a bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs.”
+
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his
+way, while the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship _Nome_ was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing
+with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was
+a human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded
+passenger list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names
+represented more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of
+the land he loved, its heart’s blood, its very element—“giving in.” He
+knew that with the throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy,
+and hope were on their way north—and with these things also arrogance
+and greed. On board were a hundred conflicting elements—some that had
+fought for Alaska, others that would make her, and others that would
+destroy.
+
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and
+women whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew
+the tourists almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north
+had not yet seized upon them. They were voluble and rather excitedly
+enthusiastic in the face of beauty and awesomeness. The sour-doughs
+were tucked away here and there in shadowy nooks, watching in silence,
+or they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking their cigars or
+pipes, and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these two, the
+newcomers and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for
+Alan, the flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life
+north of Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked
+out those who belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over
+the edge of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he
+recognized them as the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to
+work on the government railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of
+them was talking, filled with the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+
+“I tell you,” he said, “people don’t know what they ought to know about
+Alaska. In school they teach us that it’s an eternal icebox full of
+gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that’s where
+reindeer come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing. Why”—he
+drew in a deep breath—“it’s nine times as large as the state of
+Washington, twelve times as big as the state of New York, and we bought
+it from Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it down on
+the face of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St.
+Augustine, Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That’s how
+big it is, and the geographical center of our country isn’t Omaha or
+Sioux City, but exactly San Francisco, California.”
+
+“Good for you, sonny,” came a quiet voice from beyond the group. “Your
+geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your
+people that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia,
+and wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our
+people to rise against the Washington government. We’ve asked
+Washington for a few guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh
+at us. Do you see a moral?”
+
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He
+caught a glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did
+not know him. And as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the
+moonlight, the same deep, quiet voice came back very clearly:
+
+“And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to
+hang a few such men as John Graham, sonny.”
+
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot.
+Only one man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred,
+and that man was John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the
+identity of the stranger whose words had temporarily stunned the young
+engineers, when he saw a slim figure standing between him and the light
+of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary Standish. He knew by her
+attitude that she had heard the words of the young engineer and the old
+graybeard, but she was looking at _him_. And he could not remember that
+he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman’s face before. It was
+not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from
+thought and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it
+annoyed Alan Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too
+susceptible reaction in matters which did not concern her. So he said,
+speaking to the silent young men a few steps away:
+
+“He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful.”
+
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had
+scarcely gone out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind
+him, and the girl’s hand touched his arm lightly.
+
+“Mr. Holt, please—”
+
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was
+not altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again,
+only her finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so
+that for a moment he could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth
+hair. Then she was meeting his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in
+the gray depths of her own.
+
+“I am alone on the ship,” she said. “I have no friends here. I want to
+see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?”
+
+“You mean ... escort you?”
+
+“Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable.”
+
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him,
+and he wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not
+smile. Her eyes were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same
+time very lovely.
+
+“The way you put it, I don’t see how I can refuse,” he said. “As for
+the questions—probably Captain Rifle can answer them better than I.”
+
+“I don’t like to trouble him,” she replied. “He has much to think
+about. And you are alone.”
+
+“Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about.”
+
+“You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won’t try. But I’m going into a new country, and I have a passionate
+desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get there.
+I want to know about many things. For instance—”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?”
+
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment
+astonished him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her
+slim figure seemed possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she
+waited for an answer. They had turned a little, so that in the light of
+the moon the almost flowerlike whiteness of her face was clear to him.
+With her smooth, shining hair, the pallor of her face under its
+lustrous darkness, and the clearness of her eyes she held Alan
+speechless for a moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon and
+understand the something about her which made him interested in spite
+of himself. Then he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+
+“Did you ever see a dog fight?” he asked.
+
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly.
+“Once.”
+
+“What happened?”
+
+“It was my dog—a little dog. His throat was torn—”
+
+He nodded. “Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He’s the dog—a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth
+from a new land and enslave it to his own desires and political
+ambitions. That is what John Graham is doing from his money-throne down
+there in the States. It’s the financial support he represents, curse
+him! Money—and a man without conscience. A man who would starve
+thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A man who, in every sense of
+the word, is a murderer—”
+
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone
+whiter, and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the
+look in her eyes brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+
+“There, I’ve hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish,” he said,
+bowing a little. “In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I
+suppose I must apologize for swearing and calling another man a
+murderer. Well, I do. And now—if you care to stroll about the ship—”
+
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and
+Mary Standish as they walked forward.
+
+“A corking pretty girl,” said one of them, drawing a deep breath. “I
+never saw such hair and eyes—”
+
+“I’m at the same table with them,” interrupted another. “I’m second on
+her left, and she hasn’t spoken three words to me. And that fellow she
+is with is like an icicle out of Labrador.”
+
+And Mary Standish was saying: “Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those
+young engineers. I wish I were a man.”
+
+“I wish you were,” agreed Alan amiably.
+
+Whereupon Mary Standish’s pretty mouth lost its softness for an
+instant. But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and
+the sweet air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman’s man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or
+die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his
+sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born
+and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with
+the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious
+laps of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him.
+Men of the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But
+only now and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any
+given moment a supreme physical crisis had come, women would have
+turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
+
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
+The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle
+meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he
+could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his
+face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
+There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more
+forcefully than speech.
+
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present
+situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment
+Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the
+intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of
+the young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He
+chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement,
+gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed
+once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As
+if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a
+decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl’s hand did not
+merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was
+necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils
+of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her,
+together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to
+his stoicism.
+
+“It’s not half bad,” he expressed himself frankly. “I really believe I
+am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish.”
+
+“Oh!” He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. “You
+thought—possibly—I might be dangerous?”
+
+“A little. I don’t understand women. Collectively I think they are
+God’s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don’t care much about
+them. But you—”
+
+She nodded approvingly. “That is very nice of you. But you needn’t say
+I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike.”
+
+“Possibly—except in the way they dress their hair.”
+
+“You like mine?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge
+cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard
+the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation
+parlor built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their
+husbands while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+
+“If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let’s go in,” he suggested. “I know; of no better place. Are you afraid
+of smoke?”
+
+“No. If I were a man, I would smoke.”
+
+“Perhaps you do?”
+
+“I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair.”
+
+“Which would be a crime,” he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they
+entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue
+with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as
+many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up
+and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A
+few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed
+Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled
+blankets that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it
+with her toe.
+
+“What do they mean?” she asked.
+
+“We are overloaded,” he explained. “Alaskan steam-ships have no
+steerage passengers as we generally know them. It isn’t poverty that
+rides steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or
+two on the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in
+there will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an
+earl?”
+
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her
+in, and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three
+men were seated at this table.
+
+“The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl—I forget his name,” he said. “He doesn’t look it, but he is a real
+sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
+The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men,
+and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with
+whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of
+George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The
+thud of Carmack’s spade, as it hit first pay, was the ‘sound heard
+round the world,’ Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled
+whiskers was the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and
+Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the
+strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love
+with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came into
+the north.”
+
+“Why was she courageous?”
+
+“Because she came alone into a man’s land, without a soul to fight for
+her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did.
+As long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney.”
+
+“She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt.”
+
+“Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who
+posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. _Finis_,
+I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his
+big whiskers—”
+
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a
+table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except
+his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her
+and was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than
+impudent in its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he
+shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away.
+
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and
+her cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he
+could not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
+
+“If you will pardon me a moment,” he said quietly, “I shall demand an
+explanation.”
+
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+
+“Please don’t,” she entreated. “It is kind of you, and you are just the
+sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would
+be absurd to notice it. Don’t you think so?”
+
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her
+voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went
+from her face, leaving it strangely white.
+
+“I am at your service,” he replied with a rather cold inclination of
+his head. “But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged.”
+
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon
+the deck.
+
+“One of John Graham’s men,” he said. “A fellow named Rossland, going up
+to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They’ll choke
+the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff
+we call money can do, isn’t it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian
+villages starving, and women and little children dying by the score
+because of this John Graham’s money. Over-fishing did it, you
+understand. If you could have seen some of those poor little devils,
+just skin and bones, crying for a rag to eat—”
+
+Her hand clutched at his arm. “How could John Graham—do that?” she
+whispered.
+
+He laughed unpleasantly. “When you have been a year in Alaska you won’t
+ask that question, Miss Standish. _How_? Why, simply by glutting his
+canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the natives
+have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he
+handles represents the fish trust—and many other things. Please don’t
+misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without it
+we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the
+face of the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska
+does today. Ten thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men
+who have money to invest.
+
+“But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a
+despoiler, one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource
+into dollars as fast as he can, even though those operations make both
+land and water barren. You must remember until recently the government
+of Alaska as manipulated by Washington politicians was little better
+than that against which the American colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard
+thing for one to say about the country he loves, isn’t it? And John
+Graham stands for the worst—he and the money which guarantees his
+power.
+
+“As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics,
+that capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be
+interested. Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate
+bureaus at Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is
+it a wonder the patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like
+John Graham, dishonest and corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to
+work in?
+
+“But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska’s interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of
+the Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska
+is a mighty empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go
+ahead in spite of all our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear.
+Some day—”
+
+Suddenly he caught himself. “There—I’m talking politics, and I should
+entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things,” he
+apologized. “Shall we go to the lower decks?”
+
+“Or the open air,” she suggested. “I am afraid this smoke is upsetting
+me.”
+
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to
+the thickness of the air. Rossland’s inexplicable rudeness had
+disturbed her more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+
+“There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?” he
+asked, when they were outside. “The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are—well—unusually good-looking, the Captain says.”
+
+“And he has already made me acquainted with them,” she laughed softly.
+“Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them. I had
+breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake.”
+
+“The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before—”
+
+“You noticed my absence?” she asked demurely.
+
+“It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought,
+I think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if
+you were ill.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it
+would be only charity and good-will to change seats with him.”
+
+“In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer.”
+
+“Probably not.”
+
+“Have they ever suffered?”
+
+“I think not.”
+
+“When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?”
+
+“I haven’t seen them.”
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+
+“Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking
+me to my cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck.”
+
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. “What is your
+room?” she asked.
+
+“Twenty-seven, Miss Standish.”
+
+“This deck?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her
+hand, did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and
+lighted a fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once,
+as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his
+cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These
+were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen
+before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington.
+
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary
+Standish was asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by
+the recurring insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a
+clever girl, he admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and
+she had told him nothing, while he had been quite garrulous. He was a
+little ashamed when he recalled how he had unburdened his mind to a
+girl who could not possibly be interested in the political affairs of
+John Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his fault. She had
+fairly catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under the
+circumstances, he thought.
+
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole.
+Only the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly
+through the last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears.
+The ship, at last, was asleep. The moon was straight overhead, no
+longer silhouetting the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light
+the world was dark. Out of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow,
+Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island. And he
+wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider
+than the length of the ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course
+instead of going around by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land
+was more distant now, but the _Nome_ was still pushing ahead under slow
+bell, and he could smell the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of
+the scent of forests that came from both east and west.
+
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps.
+They seemed to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a
+man’s voice—and in answer to it a woman’s. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of
+voices. In silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him
+in the moonlight. One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was
+Rossland, who had stared at her so boldly in the smoking-room.
+
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary
+Standish or Graham’s agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud
+and humbug, and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew
+more about Rossland than she had allowed him to believe. She had not
+lied to him. She had said nothing at all—except to restrain him from
+demanding an apology. Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but
+beyond that fact her affairs had nothing to do with his own business in
+life. Possibly she and Rossland had quarreled, and now they were making
+up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of him to think over the matter
+at all.
+
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great
+desire to sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with
+the soothing movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical
+thrum of it. And it was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going
+home. How infernally long those seven months had been, down in the
+States! And how he had missed everyone he had ever known—even his
+enemies!
+
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of
+miles away—the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the
+Endicott Mountains, and “Alan’s Range” at the beginning of them. Spring
+was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like
+corn from a hopper.
+
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people—the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as
+he did. He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief
+herdsmen, would care for things as well as himself. But much could
+happen in seven months. Nawadlook, the little beauty of his distant
+kingdom, was not looking well when he left. He was worried about her.
+The pneumonia of the previous winters had left its mark. And Keok, her
+rival in prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how Tautuk’s
+sometimes hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a little
+heart-breaker and had long reveled in Tautuk’s sufferings. An archangel
+of iniquity, Alan thought, as he grinned—but worth any man’s risk of
+life, if he had but a drop of brown blood in him! As for his herds,
+they had undoubtedly fared well. Ten thousand head was something to be
+proud of—
+
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door
+and had paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each
+time they had passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a
+sound under him. He heard movement then, a swift, running movement—and
+he switched on his light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was
+there. The long corridor was empty. And then—a distance away—he heard
+the soft opening and closing of another door.
+
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He
+picked it up and reentered his room. It was a woman’s handkerchief. And
+he had seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that
+evening in the smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should
+now find it at his door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan
+experienced a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment—also a
+certain resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in
+spite of himself was not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a
+certain point, had been fairly entertaining. It was true he might have
+passed a pleasanter hour recalling old times with Stampede Smith, or
+discussing Kadiak bears with the English earl, or striking up an
+acquaintance with the unknown graybeard who had voiced an opinion about
+John Graham. But he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he holding
+Mary Standish accountable for them. It was, last of all, the
+handkerchief that momentarily upset him.
+
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking
+affair, to be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous
+diminutiveness. As the question came to him, he was wondering how even
+as dainty a nose as that possessed by Mary Standish could be much
+comforted by it. But it was pretty. And, like Mary Standish, there was
+something exquisitely quiet and perfect about it, like the simplicity
+of her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It was a thought that
+came to him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying bit of
+fabric on the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the
+dropping of it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At
+least he told himself so. And he also assured himself, with an
+involuntary shrug of his shoulders, that any woman or girl had the
+right to pass his door if she so desired, and that he was an idiot for
+thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan
+was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with
+woman—and such an absurdly inconsequential thing as a handkerchief.
+
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and
+Nawadlook and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given
+the priceless heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real,
+with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook’s big, soft
+eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as
+usual over the heartlessness of Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that
+gave out the peculiar sound of bells, and to this Amuk Toolik was
+dancing the Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in exaggerated
+admiration. Even in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was
+happening, and that out of the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was
+enjoying Tautuk’s jealousy. Tautuk was so stupid he would never
+understand. That was the funny part of it. And he beat his drum
+savagely, scowling so that he almost shut his eyes, while Keok laughed
+outright.
+
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship’s
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his
+watch. Tautuk’s drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it
+was four o’clock in the morning.
+
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a
+chill air which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few
+minutes after awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and
+he got up quietly and dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar
+he had laid aside at midnight. Not until he had finished dressing did
+he notice the handkerchief on the table. If its presence had suggested
+a significance a few hours before, he no longer disturbed himself by
+thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the girl’s part, that was
+all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the crumpled bit of
+cambric in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted.
+Through the ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty
+chairs, and lights burning dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and
+the drifting warmth of the Japan current had brought an early spring to
+the Alexander Archipelago, and May had stolen much of the flowering
+softness of June. But the dawns of these days were chilly and gray.
+Mists and fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke rolled down
+the sides of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the
+inner waters felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery
+of it was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure.
+He could feel the care with which the _Nome_ was picking her way
+northward. Her engines were thrumming softly, and her movement was a
+slow and cautious glide, catlike and slightly trembling, as if every
+pound of steel in her were a living nerve widely alert. He knew Captain
+Rifle would not be asleep and that straining eyes were peering into the
+white gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them, hazardously
+near, must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the still
+more pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that
+deadly finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they
+must creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager
+for his work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except
+that they were Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide
+tundras, and the mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His
+blood sang to the surety of it now, and for that reason he was not
+sorry he had spent seven months of loneliness in the States. He had
+proved with his own eyes that the day was near when Alaska would come
+into her own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its romance, its
+thrill, but what was all the gold the mountains might possess compared
+with this greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the
+people he had met in the south had thought only of gold when they
+learned he was from Alaska. Always gold—that first, and then ice, snow,
+endless nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning
+everlastingly upon a blasted land in which men fought against odds and
+only the fittest survived. It was gold that had been Alaska’s doom.
+When people thought of it, they visioned nothing beyond the old
+stampede days, the Chilkoot, White Horse, Dawson, and Circle City.
+Romance and glamor and the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs.
+But they were beginning to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even
+the Government was waking up, after proving there was something besides
+graft in railroad building north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and
+Congressmen at Washington had listened to him seriously, and especially
+to Carl Lomen. And the beef barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him
+off and had offered a fortune for Lomen’s forty thousand head of
+reindeer in the Seward Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening.
+Absolute proof.
+
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist
+into the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore
+Roosevelt for putting what they called “the conservation shackles” on
+their country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt’s far-sightedness
+had kept the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what
+money-power and greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today,
+but lay ready to serve with all her mighty resources the mother who had
+neglected her for a generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this
+opening up of a great land. It must be done resourcefully and with
+intelligence. Once the bars were down, Roosevelt’s shadow-hand could
+not hold back such desecrating forces as John Graham and the syndicate
+he represented.
+
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in
+the sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed
+plunderers. And it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging
+work of these financial brigands in a dozen states during the past
+winter—states raped of their forests, their lakes and streams robbed
+and polluted, their resources hewn down to naked skeletons. He had been
+horrified and a little frightened when he looked over the desolation of
+Michigan, once the richest timber state in America. What if the
+Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing to happen in
+Alaska? Politics—and money—were already fighting for just that thing.
+
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was _his_
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a
+physical thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if
+it took every year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to
+the world that the millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north
+were not the cast-off ends of the earth. They would populate them, and
+the so-called “barrens” would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of
+reindeer herds as the American plains had never thundered to the beat
+of cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure he would find at the end
+of this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money, simply as money,
+he hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped him; the
+passion to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into
+its own, and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a
+half of that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was
+down.
+
+The tolling of the ship’s bell roused him from the subconscious
+struggle into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he
+had no sympathy with himself when he fell into one of these mental
+spasms, as he called them. Without knowing it, he was a little proud of
+a certain dispassionate tolerance which he possessed—a philosophical
+mastery of his emotions which at times was almost cold-blooded, and
+which made some people think he was a thing of stone instead of flesh
+and blood. His thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly disturbing
+sensation passed through him now, when he found that unconsciously his
+fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his
+pocket. He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it
+overboard. Then, with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing,
+he replaced it in his pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of
+the ship.
+
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have
+been had he possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at
+all, for that matter—even an uncle or two who might have been
+interested in him. He remembered his father vividly, his mother a
+little less so, because his mother had died when he was six and his
+father when he was twenty. It was his father who stood out above
+everything else, like the mountains he loved. The father would remain
+with him always, inspiring him, urging him, encouraging him to live
+like a gentleman, fight like a man, and die at last unafraid. In that
+fashion the older Alan Holt had lived and died. But his mother, her
+face and voice scarcely remembered in the passing of many years, was
+more a hallowed memory to him than a thing of flesh and blood. And
+there had been no sisters or brothers. Often he had regretted this lack
+of brotherhood. But a sister.... He grunted his disapprobation of the
+thought. A sister would have meant enchainment to civilization. Cities,
+probably. Even the States. And slavery to a life he detested. He
+appreciated the immensity of his freedom. A Mary Standish, even though
+she were his sister, would be a catastrophe. He could not conceive of
+her, or any other woman like her, living with Keok and Nawadlook and
+the rest of his people in the heart of the tundras. And the tundras
+would always be his home, because his heart was there.
+
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd
+figure crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light
+that came with the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not
+asleep. He paused, unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself,
+groaned, and stood up. He was a little man, and his fiercely bristling
+red whiskers, wet with dew, were luxuriant enough for a giant. His head
+of tawny hair, bristling like his whiskers, added to the piratical
+effect of him above the neck, but below that part of his anatomy there
+was little to strike fear into the hearts of humanity. Some people
+smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their man, laughed
+outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny on
+Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart
+was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this
+little man who had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan
+history.
+
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the
+swiftest gunman between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic
+reminder of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy
+Smith and his gang—days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields
+meant a stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the
+same breath with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome
+Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their
+compasses by his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he
+stood in the gray of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew
+that Stampede Smith was broke again.
+
+“Good morning,” he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days.
+“Why so much loneliness, Stampede?”
+
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale’s under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. “I’m thinkin’,” said he, “what a fool thing is money. Good
+mornin’, Alan!”
+
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the
+lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been
+Stampede’s last asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside
+him, so that their shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+
+“Alan,” said Stampede, “it ain’t often I have a big thought, but I’ve
+been having one all night. Ain’t forgot Bonanza, have you?”
+
+Alan shook his head. “As long as there is an Alaska, we won’t forget
+Bonanza, Stampede.”
+
+“I took a million out of it, next to Carmack’s Discovery—an’ went
+busted afterward, didn’t I?”
+
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+
+“But that wasn’t a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the Divide,”
+Stampede continued ruminatively. “Ain’t forgot old Aleck McDonald, the
+Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the ‘wash’ of Ninety-eight we took up
+seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked thirty of doin’
+the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single clean-up, and that
+was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old Aleck went
+busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle. I
+had to grub-stake.”
+
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted
+the first rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them
+and the unseen mountain tops.
+
+“Five times after that I made strikes and went busted,” he said a
+little proudly. “And I’m busted again!”
+
+“I know it,” sympathized Alan.
+
+“They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an’ Frisco,”
+chuckled Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully, “an’ then
+bought me a ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them, don’t you think?
+Couldn’t have been more decent. I knew that fellow Kopf had a heart.
+That’s why I trusted him with my money. It wasn’t his fault he lost
+it.”
+
+“Of course not,” agreed Alan.
+
+“And I’m sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a fact.”
+
+“You killed him?”
+
+“Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran’s place. Mighty sorry. Didn’t think then how decent it was of
+him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the
+moment. He did me a favor in cleanin’ me, Alan. He did, so help me! You
+don’t realize how free an’ easy an’ beautiful everything is until
+you’re busted.”
+
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw
+the grim look in Alan’s eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other’s arm and shook it.
+
+“Alan, I mean it!” he declared. “That’s why I think money is a fool
+thing. It ain’t _spendin’_ money that makes me happy. It’s _findin’_
+it—the gold in the mountains—that makes the blood run fast through my
+gizzard. After I’ve found it, I can’t find any use for it in
+particular. I want to go broke. If I didn’t, I’d get lazy and fat, an’
+some newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I’d die. They’re doing
+a lot of that operatin’ down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and
+they wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen
+to a man when he’s got money!”
+
+“You mean all that, Stampede?”
+
+“On my life, I do. I’m just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that’s going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody’ll grub-stake me in Nome.”
+
+“They won’t,” said Alan suddenly. “Not if I can help it. Stampede, I
+want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains. I’ve got
+ten thousand reindeer up there. It’s No Man’s Land, and we can do as we
+please in it. I’m not after gold. I want another sort of thing. But
+I’ve fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow playmate of
+yours. It’s a new country. You’ve never seen it. God only knows what
+you may find. Will you come?”
+
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede’s eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+
+“Will I _come?_ Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me. Say
+it all over ag’in.”
+
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last
+of the fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges
+rose up against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was
+flashing in rose and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded.
+Speech was unnecessary. They both understood, and the thrill of the
+life they loved passed from one to the other in the grip of their
+hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There
+were only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other
+belonged to Mary Standish. There was something almost aggressively
+suggestive in their simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He
+nodded as he sat down, a flash of amusement in his eyes when he
+observed the look in the young engineer’s face. It was both envious and
+accusing, and yet Alan was sure the young man was unconscious of
+betraying an emotion. The fact lent to the eating of his grapefruit an
+accompaniment of pleasing and amusing thought. He recalled the young
+man’s name. It was Tucker. He was a clean-faced, athletic,
+likable-looking chap. And an idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan
+told himself. The young engineer was more than casually interested in
+Mary Standish; he was in love. It was not a discovery which Alan made.
+It was a decision, and as soon as possible he would remedy the
+unfortunate omission of a general introduction at their table by
+bringing the two together. Such an introduction would undoubtedly
+relieve him of a certain responsibility which had persisted in
+attaching itself to him.
+
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get
+the empty chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be
+obliterated, and when other chairs became vacant as their owners left
+the table, this one straight across from him continued to thrust itself
+upon him. Until this morning it had been like other empty chairs. Now
+it was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he had no desire to be so
+constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve o’clock tryst of Mary
+Standish with Graham’s agent, Rossland.
+
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of
+seeing Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had
+made their exit through the door leading from the dining salon when the
+young engineer paused. Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his
+face. In a moment it was explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed
+Tucker without appearing to notice him, and gave Alan a cool little nod
+as she seated herself at the table. She was very pale. He could see
+nothing of the flush of color that had been in her cheeks last night.
+As she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool of sunlight
+played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her
+eyes. They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without
+embarrassment. Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It
+seemed inconceivable that such eyes could play a part in fraud and
+deception, yet he was in possession of quite conclusive proof of it. If
+they had lowered themselves an instant, if they had in any way betrayed
+a shadow of regret, he would have found an apology. Instead of that,
+his fingers touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+
+“Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?” he asked politely.
+
+“Not at all,” she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. “I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I
+am afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?”
+
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. “This is the first morning
+I have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have
+slept well. Is this yours, Miss Standish?”
+
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his
+fingers. In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was
+the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was
+disappointed not to catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+“It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?”
+
+“In front of my cabin door a little after midnight.”
+
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some
+kind of result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on
+her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the
+clear depths of her eyes. Her level glance was as innocent as a child’s
+and as he looked at her, he thought of a child—a most beautiful
+child—and so utterly did he feel the discomfiture of his mental
+analysis of her that he rose to his feet with a frigid bow.
+
+“I thank you, Mr. Holt,” she said. “You can imagine my sense of
+obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the
+ship with me. And this is my favorite.”
+
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard
+her give the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot,
+but the flush of it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable
+sensation of her eyes following him as he stalked through the door. He
+did not look back. Something was wrong with him, and he knew it. This
+chit of a girl with her smooth hair and clear eyes had thrown a grain
+of dust into the satisfactory mechanism of his normal self, and the
+grind of it was upsetting certain specific formulae which made up his
+life. He was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself names.
+
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning
+match. He looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a
+smile on his lips. In his eyes was a coolly appraising look as he
+nodded.
+
+“Beg pardon.” The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him
+over Rossland’s shoulder. He might as well have said, “I’m sorry, Boy,
+but you must keep out of my way.”
+
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness,
+Keok had told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a
+humor to kill. They were like that now as they flashed their smile at
+Rossland. The sneering twist left Rossland’s lips as he entered the
+dining-room.
+
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham’s
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the
+tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tête-à-tête
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had
+greeted him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the
+table before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he
+understood the situation.
+
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland’s interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was
+successful, and he was about to extinguish the burning end when he
+hesitated and held it until the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish
+was coming through the door. Amazed by the suddenness of her
+appearance, he made no movement except to drop the match. Her eyes were
+flaming, and two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw him and gave
+the slightest inclination to her head as she passed. When she had gone,
+he could not resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland
+was seated in a chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly
+engaged in looking over the breakfast card.
+
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he
+was a little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in
+upon Rossland. At the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing
+reception which Miss Standish had evidently given to the dislikable
+individual who had jostled him in passing.
+
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the
+snowy peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach
+out his arms and touch them. The _Nome_ appeared to be drifting in the
+heart of a paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the
+mainland; so close on the other hand that he could hear the shout of a
+man was Douglas Island, and ahead, reaching out like a silver-blue
+ribbon was Gastineau Channel. The mining towns of Treadwell and Douglas
+were in sight.
+
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+
+“That’s Bill Treadwell’s place,” he said. “Once the richest gold mines
+in Alaska. They’re flooded now. I knew Bill when he was worrying about
+the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand pair an’ patched
+’em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four hundred dollars
+somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named French
+Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An’ there was a time when there were
+nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It’s worth it.”
+
+Somehow Stampede’s voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and
+Alan wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment
+pressing upon him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual
+interest for Mary Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into
+an old acquaintance and permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased
+with the discovery, and yet he was compelled to acknowledge the truth
+of it. The grain of dust had become more than annoying. It did not wear
+away, as he had supposed it would, but was becoming an obsessive factor
+in his thoughts. And the half-desire it built up in him, while
+aggravatingly persistent, was less disturbing than before. The little
+drama in the dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of
+himself. He liked fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in
+her quiet prettiness, had shown her mettle in those few moments when he
+had seen her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland.
+He began to look for Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty,
+literally terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go
+down to the lower deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship
+gathered near the gangway with their luggage. Alan was about to pass
+them when he suddenly stopped. A short distance from him, where he
+could see every person who disembarked, stood Rossland. There was
+something grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled his watch-fob
+and eyed the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an unexpected
+thrill through Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He
+stepped to Rossland’s side and touched his arm.
+
+“Watching for Miss Standish?” he asked.
+
+“I am.” There was no evasion in Rossland’s words. They possessed the
+hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable authority
+behind him.
+
+“And if she goes ashore?”
+
+“I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so—”
+
+“No, Miss Standish hasn’t done that.”
+
+“Then please attend to your own business. If you haven’t enough to take
+up your time, I’ll lend you some books. I have several in my cabin.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not
+follow. There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to
+imprecate but his own folly. Rossland’s words were not an insult. They
+were truth. He had deliberately intruded in an affair which was
+undoubtedly of a highly private nature. Possibly it was a domestic
+tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation swept over him, and he was
+glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He tried to whistle
+as he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he detested
+the man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted
+to be amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it
+was something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found
+old Donald Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the
+_Nome_ had landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way
+out of Gastineau Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the
+smoking-room and remained there until luncheon hour.
+
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with
+her back toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up
+behind her, so near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across
+at her and smiled as he seated himself. She returned the smile, but it
+seemed to him an apologetic little effort. She did not look well, and
+her presence at the table struck him as being a brave front to hide
+something from someone. Casually he looked over his left shoulder.
+Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the room.
+Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes
+shaded her eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her
+hair first. It had a peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been
+observant enough to know that she had rearranged it since breakfast,
+and the smooth coils twisted in mysterious intricacy at the crown of
+her head were like softly glowing velvet. The ridiculous thought came
+to him that he would like to see them tumbling down about her. They
+must be even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light
+fell upon her through the window. But when she looked across at him
+again, he caught for an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He
+began telling her something about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he
+had seen nothing which she might want to conceal. The light in her eyes
+changed, and it was almost a glow of gratitude he caught in them. He
+had broken a tension, relieved her of some unaccountable strain she was
+under. He noticed that her ordering of food was merely a pretense. She
+scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person at the table
+had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about
+her lack of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an angelic
+virtue.
+
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a
+splendid effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the
+breaking-point. When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own
+chair. At the same time he saw Rossland get up and advance rather
+hurriedly from the opposite side of the room. The girl passed through
+the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps behind, and Alan came
+last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was amusing in a way,
+yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim line about
+the corners of his mouth.
+
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining
+salon to the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon
+Rossland. For only an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they
+flashed past him, and with a swift movement she came toward Alan. A
+flush had leaped into her cheeks, but there was no excitement in her
+voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and clearly heard by
+Rossland.
+
+“I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt,” she said. “Will
+you take me on deck, and tell me about it?”
+
+Graham’s agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few
+hours before at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a
+meddler, words refused to form quickly on Alan’s lips. Before he was
+ready with an answer Mary Standish had confidently taken his arm. He
+could see the red flush deepening in her upturned face. She was
+amazingly unexpected, bewilderingly pretty, and as cool as ice except
+for the softly glowing fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland staring with
+his cigarette half poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in the
+face of danger, and he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed
+softly. She gave his arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past
+Rossland, amazed but obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that
+sent a gentle thrill through him.
+
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: “You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt.”
+
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm,
+were like a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer
+see them, unless he had followed. The girl had played her part, and a
+second time he had accepted the role of a slow-witted fool. But the
+thought did not anger him. There was a remarkable element of humor
+about it for him, viewing himself in the matter, and Mary Standish
+heard him chuckling as they came out on deck.
+
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. “It isn’t funny,” she
+reproved. “It is tragic to be bored by a man like that.”
+
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask,
+and he wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her
+know he had seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at
+her, and she met his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him,
+and her eyes, he thought, were the loveliest liars he had ever looked
+into. He felt the stir of an unusual sentiment—a sort of pride in her,
+and he made up his mind to say nothing about Rossland. He was still
+absurdly convinced that he had not the smallest interest in affairs
+which were not entirely his own. Mary Standish evidently believed he
+was blind, and he would make no effort to spoil her illusion. Such a
+course would undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the
+stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the
+ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she
+looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like
+a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway’s door, while on
+both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy
+crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this
+melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship’s
+engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain
+that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of
+water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the
+sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which
+even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the
+mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were
+opening a guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white
+cottages floated into the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance,
+monument to brave men and thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its
+hiding-place. Alan turned to speak, but what he saw in the girl’s face
+held him silent. Her lips were parted, and she was staring as if an
+unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that bewildered
+her and even startled her.
+
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a
+tense whisper: “I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago.
+Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I
+have lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it—”
+
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at
+him, and he was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+
+“I must go ashore here,” she said. “I didn’t know I would find it so
+soon. Please—”
+
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and
+saw the strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her
+glance he saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand
+was resting confidently in the crook of Alan’s arm. “Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?” she asked with an icy little laugh.
+
+“Yes,” he answered rather unexpectedly. “And some day, if the right
+opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man—the man who
+murdered my father.”
+
+She gave a little gasp of horror. “Your father—was—murdered—”
+
+“Indirectly—yes. It wasn’t done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money
+was the weapon. Somebody’s money. And John Graham was the man who
+struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland—”
+
+“_No_.” Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away.
+“I don’t want you to ask an explanation of him,” she said. “If he
+should make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway, Mr. Holt.
+That will be pleasanter.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western
+mountains, and the _Nome_ was churning slowly back through the narrow
+water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that
+afternoon fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered
+himself to an impulse which he could not understand, and which in
+ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish
+ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions
+and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to
+him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured
+the wind-racked cañon where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a
+day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old
+days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and
+his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy’s sunken
+grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about
+_himself_. And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much
+he had confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this
+slim and beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to
+the indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her
+heart beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the
+Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people.
+There, he had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in
+her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on
+until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship’s gangway to see
+when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and
+the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the
+building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few
+years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and
+civilization and the breaking down of nature’s last barriers before
+science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her gray
+eyes.
+
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the _Nome_ looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight,
+doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+
+“I would always love tents and old trails and nature’s barriers. I envy
+Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am
+sorry to see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this
+man—John Graham!”
+
+Her words startled him.
+
+“And I want you to tell me what he is doing—with his money—now.” Her
+voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed, was clenched at the
+edge of the rail.
+
+“He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the
+case well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little
+children by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which
+the natives have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them
+die.”
+
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+
+“And that—is all?”
+
+He laughed grimly. “Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in
+Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was
+a gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men
+like John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and
+graft will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation
+would not be able to replace.”
+
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
+ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
+of evening. “I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney,” she said.
+“I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
+woman like her. She could fight, couldn’t she? She could make a man’s
+fight?”
+
+“Yes, and did make it.”
+
+“And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck.”
+
+“Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger.”
+
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
+which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+
+“Then this, too, for luck—the luck of Mary Standish,” she laughed
+softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
+done. “It isn’t melodrama,” she said. “I mean it. And I believe in it.
+I want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this
+gateway to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest
+forever at the bottom of the Yukon.”
+
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
+moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. “Thank you for the
+wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget
+it. It is dinner time. I must say good night.”
+
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In
+returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was
+irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan’s
+look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan’s
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was
+a growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of
+poise which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be,
+but a cool brain was at work inside his head—a brain not easily
+disturbed by unimportant things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an
+agent of John Graham Alan looked upon him as an enemy, and as an
+acquaintance of Mary Standish he was as much of a mystery as the girl
+herself. And only now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning to sense the
+presence of a real authority behind Rossland’s attitude.
+
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing
+about the relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it
+involved himself, and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to
+please him. He could see no sport in an adventure of the kind it
+suggested, and the possibility that he had been misjudged by both
+Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger into his cheeks. He
+cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to wipe him out
+of existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of
+way. He had made no effort to discover her history. He had not
+questioned her. At no time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon
+her personal affairs, and at no time had she offered information about
+herself, or an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had
+presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how
+dangerously near that hazard he had been—and he admired her for the
+splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the
+possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the
+dining salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any
+increasing intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his
+experience had been, he resented the idea of being commandeered at
+unexpected moments. Had Mary Standish read his thoughts, her bearing
+toward him during the dinner hour could not have been more satisfying.
+There was, in a way, something seductively provocative about it. She
+greeted him with the slightest inclination of her head and a cool
+little smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either from him
+or from his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate
+reserve.
+
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he
+found himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation
+he had set down for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing
+glimpses at her hair when her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed
+it tonight until it was like softest velvet, with rich glints in it,
+and the amazing thought came to him that it would be sweetly pleasant
+to touch with one’s hand. The discovery was almost a shock. Keok and
+Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never thought of it in this
+way. And he had never thought of Keok’s pretty mouth as he was thinking
+of the girl’s opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary
+Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance.
+
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as
+if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He
+tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an
+hour later, feeding a captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he
+thought, that a captive bear should be going north. Stampede explained.
+The animal was a pet and belonged to the Thlinkit Indians. There were
+seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed that the two girls watched
+him closely and whispered together. They were very pretty, with large,
+dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not look at him
+at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned away.
+
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they
+discussed the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan’s
+plans for the future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his
+cabin to get maps and photographs. Stampede’s eyes glistened as his
+mind seized upon the possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast
+land. An unknown country. And Alan was its first pioneer. The old
+thrill ran in Stampede’s blood, and its infectiousness caught Alan, so
+that he forgot Mary Standish, and all else but the miles that lay
+between them and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward Peninsula. It was
+midnight when Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his
+body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in
+through his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last
+found the comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to
+the wild and half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He
+looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled
+with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another
+generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more
+and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and
+invention and what the human race called progress.
+
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in
+that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in
+the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown.
+After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of
+unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth
+would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what
+she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been
+_her_ thought, too—that she would always love tents and old trails and
+nature’s barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and
+automobiles come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had
+guessed what was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.
+
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was
+a quarter after twelve o’clock, an unusual hour for someone to be
+tapping at his door.
+
+It was repeated—a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again,
+quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened the
+door.
+
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And
+then he saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without
+waiting for him to speak or give her permission to enter. And it was
+Mary Standish herself who closed the door, while he stared at her in
+stupid wonderment—and stood there with her back against it, straight
+and slim and deathly pale.
+
+“May I come in?” she asked.
+
+“My God, you’re in!” gasped Alan. “_You’re in_.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to
+his room, entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of
+invitation from him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first
+explosion of astonishment he stood mute, while the girl looked at him
+steadily and her breath came a little quickly. But she was not excited.
+Even in his amazement he could see that. What he had thought was fright
+had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her so white, and never
+had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as while she stood
+there in these astounding moments with her back against the door.
+
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even
+her lips were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear
+and unafraid now, and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness
+of purpose that staggered him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal
+resentment, began to possess him as he waited for her to speak. This,
+at last, was the cost of his courtesies to her, The advantage she was
+taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and his mind flashed to
+the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the door.
+
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but
+her quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her
+lips tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful
+eyes tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or
+bury her face in her hands, but looked at him bravely while the
+tear-drops glistened like diamonds on her cheeks. He felt his heart
+give way. She read his thoughts, had guessed his suspicion, and he was
+wrong.
+
+“You—you will have a seat, Miss Standish?” he asked lamely, inclining
+his head toward the cabin chair.
+
+“No. Please let me stand.” She drew in a deep breath. “It is late, Mr.
+Holt?”
+
+“Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this,” he assured her.
+“Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish.”
+
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb
+in her white throat.
+
+“Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have
+come to your cabin at midnight—even aboard ship? And it is that with
+me—a matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that
+decision. I could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight.”
+
+“And why me?” he asked. “Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some
+other? Is it because—”
+
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes,
+as if for an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but
+it was gone as quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without
+emotion, she answered him.
+
+“I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to
+you as I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances,
+if I were a man. If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind
+about you is taking an advantage—then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But
+I am not sorry. I trust you. I know you will believe me good until I am
+proved bad. I have come to ask you to help me. Would you make it
+possible for another human being to avert a great tragedy if you found
+it in your power to do so?”
+
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing
+such a situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he
+would have called any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door
+and show his visitor out. But such a thought did not occur to him now.
+He was thinking of the handkerchief he had found the preceding
+midnight. Twice she had come to his cabin at a late hour.
+
+“It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible,” he said,
+answering her question. “Tragedy is a nasty thing.”
+
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the
+tilt of her dainty chin a bit higher.
+
+“Of course, I can’t pay you,” she said. “You are the sort of man who
+would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you to do.
+But I must have help. If I don’t have it, and quickly”—she shuddered
+slightly and tried to smile—“something very unpleasant will happen, Mr.
+Holt,” she finished.
+
+“If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle—”
+
+“No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I
+may have your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you,
+whether you help me or not. Will you give me that pledge?”
+
+“Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish.”
+
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not
+see the sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or
+the quicker throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint
+flush was gathering in her cheeks.
+
+“I want to leave the ship,” she said.
+
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+
+“And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night—before we reach
+Cordova.”
+
+“Is that—your problem?” he demanded, astonished.
+
+“No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am
+dead. I can not reach Cordova alive.”
+
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were
+insane. Her quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching
+steadiness. His brain all at once was crowded with questioning, but no
+word of it came to his lips.
+
+“You can help me,” he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm voice,
+softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door. “I
+haven’t a plan. But I know you can arrange one—if you will. It must
+appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard, anything,
+just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can
+not tell you why. I can not. Oh, I _can not_.”
+
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant,
+leaving it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He
+could see courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+
+“I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I
+am mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven’t
+gone to Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only
+answer I can make is that I have come to you because you are the only
+man in the world—in this hour—that I have faith in. Some day you will
+understand, if you help me. If you do not care to help me—”
+
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+
+“Yes, if I don’t? What will happen then?”
+
+“I shall be forced to the inevitable,” she said. “It is rather unusual,
+isn’t it, to be asking for one’s life? But that is what I mean.”
+
+“I’m afraid—I don’t quite understand.”
+
+“Isn’t it clear, Mr. Holt? I don’t like to appear spectacular, and I
+don’t want you to think of me as theatrical—even now. I hate that sort
+of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it is impossible
+for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to disappear, help
+me to live—and at the same time give all others the impression that I
+am dead—then I must do the other thing. I must really die.”
+
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the
+shoulders and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of a
+child.
+
+“You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat
+of suicide?”
+
+“If you want to call it that—yes.”
+
+“And you expect me to believe you?”
+
+“I had hoped you would.”
+
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed
+her and half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the
+smallest effort to work upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved
+utterly. But he was not blind to the fact that she was making a brave
+fight, even though a lie was behind it, and with a consciousness of
+pride that bewildered him.
+
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going
+on within him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She
+had stated the facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her
+long lashes glistened a little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair
+glowed softly, so softly that he would never forget it, as she stood
+there with her back against the door, nor the strange desire that came
+to him—even then—to touch it with his hand.
+
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. “It is
+Rossland,” he said. “You’re afraid of Rossland?”
+
+“In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it
+were not for the other.”
+
+The _other_! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she
+had no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+
+“What other?” he demanded.
+
+“I can not tell you. I don’t want you to hate me. And you would hate me
+if I told you the truth.”
+
+“Then you confess you are lying,” he suggested brutally.
+
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not
+anger her or shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little
+handkerchief to her eyes, and he turned toward the open port, puffing
+at his cigar, knowing she was fighting to keep the tears back. And she
+succeeded.
+
+“No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you
+have given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is
+a kindness which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I
+thought—”
+
+“How could I bring about what you ask?” he interrupted.
+
+“I don’t know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but I
+see now how foolish I have been. It is impossible.” Her hand reached
+slowly for the knob of the door.
+
+“Yes, you are foolish,” he agreed, and his voice was softer. “Don’t let
+such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to your cabin and
+get a night’s sleep. Don’t let Rossland worry you. If you want me to
+settle with that man—”
+
+“Good night, Mr. Holt.”
+
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and
+looked at him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in her
+eyes.
+
+“Good night.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half
+a minute he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at
+ease. Mary Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left
+him like a soldier. But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught
+for an instant something which she had not betrayed in his cabin—a stab
+of what he thought was pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud
+regret, possibly a shadow of humiliation at last—or it may have been a
+pity for him. He was not sure. But it was not despair. Not once had she
+whimpered in look or word, even when the tears were in her eyes, and
+the thought was beginning to impress itself upon him that it was he—and
+not Mary Standish—who had shown a yellow streak this night. A half
+shame fell upon him as he smoked. For it was clear he had not come up
+to her judgment of him, or else he was not so big a fool as she had
+hoped he might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a loss to
+decide.
+
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in
+the analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and
+bred of the open country, it was as natural for him to recognize
+courage as it was for him to breathe. And the girl’s courage was
+unusual, now that he had time to think about it. It was this thought of
+her coolness and her calm refusal to impose her case upon him with
+greater warmth that comforted him after a little. A young and beautiful
+woman who was actually facing death would have urged her necessity with
+more enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated it
+intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the
+moment, to give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea
+of a girl like Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously
+impossible. Her quiet and wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite
+care which she gave to herself emphasized the absurdity of such a
+supposition. She had come to him bravely. There was no doubt of that.
+She had merely exaggerated the importance of her visit.
+
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up
+this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled
+certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under
+sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd
+stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color
+to his visionings he exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled
+pipe, which he filled and lighted. Then he began walking back and forth
+in his cabin, like a big animal in a small cage, until at last he stood
+with his head half out of the open port, looking at the clear stars and
+setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift with the soft sea wind.
+
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him
+again, with sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little
+harsh with Miss Standish tonight, he would make up for it by
+apologizing tomorrow. She would probably have recovered her balance by
+that time, and they would laugh over her excitement and their little
+adventure. That is, he would. “I’m not at all curious in the matter,”
+some persistent voice kept telling him, “and I haven’t any interest in
+knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin.” But he smoked
+viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have
+liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in
+bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish’s words, “If I should make an
+explanation, you would hate me,” or something to that effect. He
+couldn’t remember exactly. And he didn’t want to remember exactly, for
+it was none of his business.
+
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and
+half on the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began
+thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he
+figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of
+the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming.
+Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska.
+They would go on to Nome together. After that he would spend a week or
+so in the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big portage to
+the Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still
+farther—beyond the last trails of civilized men—to his herds and his
+people. And Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of
+homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant
+dreams. But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations
+tonight. Stampede Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his
+place. And Keok, laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing
+deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan thought drowsily—she was always
+tormenting someone.
+
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his
+cabin, when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open
+sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white
+peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the
+sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The _Nome_ was pounding
+ahead at full speed, and Alan’s blood responded suddenly to the
+impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the
+mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant
+miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were
+losing time by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with
+Cordova he thought of Mary Standish.
+
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of
+her. The thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now
+that the time of that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded
+moments of embarrassment even when he was not directly accountable for
+them. But Mary Standish saved him any qualms of conscience which he
+might have had because of his lack of chivalry the preceding night. She
+was at the table. And she was not at all disturbed when he seated
+himself opposite her. There was color in her cheeks, a fragile touch of
+that warm glow in the heart of the wild rose of the tundras. And it
+seemed to him there was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than
+he had ever seen before.
+
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had
+evidently broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was
+the first time Alan had seen her interested in this way. He had no
+intention of listening, but something perverse and compelling overcame
+his will. He discovered the lady was going up to teach in a native
+school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that for many years she had
+taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda Mulrooney. He
+gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss
+Robson, the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she
+possessed of Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an
+address. The girl hesitated, then said she was not certain of her
+destination, but would write Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+
+“You will surely keep your promise?” urged Miss Robson.
+
+“Yes, I will keep my promise.”
+
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that
+he thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few
+hours’ sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her
+mental attitude, and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured
+himself, could possibly see a note of tragedy in her appearance now.
+Nor was she different at luncheon or at dinner. During the day he saw
+nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of the fact that she was
+purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not displease him. It
+allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a normal sort
+of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked his
+black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of
+the ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his
+first meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked
+his two-mile promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a
+peculiar impression of aloneness. Something was missing. He did not
+acknowledge to himself what it was until, as if to convict him, he saw
+Mary Standish come out of the door leading from her cabin passageway,
+and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a moment he hesitated,
+then quietly he came up beside her.
+
+“It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish,” he said, “and Cordova is
+only a few hours ahead of us.”
+
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the
+shrouding darkness of the sea. “Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt,” she
+repeated after him, “and Cordova is only a few hours ahead.” Then, in
+the same soft, unemotional voice, she added: “I want to thank you for
+last night. You brought me to a great decision.”
+
+“I fear I did not help you.”
+
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he
+caught a shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+
+“I thought there were two ways,” she said, “but you made me see there
+was only _one_.” She emphasized that word. It seemed to come with a
+little tremble in her voice. “I was foolish. But please let us forget.
+I want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage.”
+
+“You will win, Miss Standish,” he said in a sure voice. “In whatever
+you undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of
+is the adventure of coming to Alaska—seeking your fortune—finding your
+life here—it will be glorious. I can assure you of that.”
+
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+
+“The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under
+the mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith
+which I have. I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when
+America was very young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must
+have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung
+back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that
+sometime—somewhere—I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had
+strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is
+that faith which gives me courage to go on with my experiment. That—and
+_you_!”
+
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+
+“You—and your suspicions and your brutality,” she went on, her voice
+trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before
+him. “I wasn’t going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me the
+opportunity, and it may do you good—after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like
+your mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as
+clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them
+bad—and I lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when
+I came to your cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+_afraid_—fearful of something happening which you didn’t want to
+happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was
+a liar, and told me so. It wasn’t fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn’t _fair_.
+There were things which I couldn’t explain to you, but I told you
+Rossland knew. I didn’t keep everything back. And I believed you were
+big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my—friendship,
+even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much faith in myself—I
+didn’t think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!”
+
+“Good God!” he cried. “Listen to me—Miss Standish—”
+
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was
+futile, and she passed through the door before he could reach her.
+Again he called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the
+passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the
+darkness, and his face as white as the girl’s had been. Her words had
+held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she
+believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror.
+And she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment
+and common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool—
+
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door.
+When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried
+again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he
+was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door
+did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would
+undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology in
+words.
+
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in
+its disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes,
+her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she
+had faced him remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away
+from the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears
+like diamonds on her cheeks. Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it.
+Something had escaped him which he could not understand. And she was
+holding him accountable.
+
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts
+to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string
+music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the
+dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw
+Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his
+arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay
+unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland’s face rested against
+her fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan
+turned away, an unpleasant thought of Rossland’s association with Mary
+Standish in his mind. He strolled down into the steerage. The Thlinkit
+people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the
+stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him
+after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest
+himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was
+himself. The thrill he had always experienced with this particular
+writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even
+the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for
+a cigar—and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind
+refused to function, and there was no comfort in his cigar.
+
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously
+lied to himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a
+fight between himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his
+door. Mary Standish—the slim beauty of her—her courage—a score of
+things that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on
+his smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions
+that were struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad
+and entirely a fool, he told himself. But the assurance did him no
+good.
+
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made
+another effort to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o’clock
+music and dancing ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that
+he found himself becoming more interested in the first book he had
+started to read. His old satisfaction slowly returned to him. He
+relighted his cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he heard the ship’s
+bells, eleven o’clock, and after that the half-hour and midnight. The
+printed pages were growing dim, and drowsily he marked his book, placed
+it on the table, and yawned. They must be nearing Cordova. He could
+feel the slackened speed of the _Nome_ and the softer throb of her
+engines. Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing
+inshore.
+
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman’s scream. A piercing cry
+of terror, of agony—and of something else that froze the blood in his
+veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time
+ending in a moaning wail and a man’s husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past
+his window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He
+could not distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to
+respond. There came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by
+the pounding shock of reverse and the clanging alarm of a bell calling
+boats’ crews to quarters.
+
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was
+overboard. And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of
+his body, for the pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an
+instant before him, and in her quiet voice she was telling him again
+that _this was the other way._ His face went white as he caught up his
+smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran down the dimly lighted
+corridor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship
+when Alan reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept
+slowly ahead against the force struggling to hold her back. He heard
+running feet, voices, and the rattle of davit blocks, and came up as
+the starboard boat aft began swinging over the smooth sea. Captain
+Rifle was ahead of him, half-dressed, and the second officer was giving
+swift commands. A dozen passengers had come from the smoking-room.
+There was only one woman. She stood a little back, partly supported in
+a man’s arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at the man, and
+he knew from his appearance that she was the woman who had screamed.
+
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of
+oars, but the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to
+him distinctly in the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was
+the terrible sobbing of the woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed
+to sway under his feet. He was conscious of a crowd gathering about the
+empty davits, but he had eyes only for these two.
+
+“Was it a man—or a woman?” he asked.
+
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced
+from his lips. And the other man, with the woman’s head crumpled
+against his shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+
+“A woman,” he replied. “This is my wife. We were sitting here when she
+climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw her
+going.”
+
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her
+eyes, but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband’s arm.
+She struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to
+comfort her. And then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was
+haggard, and a glance told Alan that he knew.
+
+“Who was it?” he demanded.
+
+“This lady thinks it was Miss Standish.”
+
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a
+moment in his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind
+him, and before him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed
+swiftly, with no sign of it in the immobility of his pale face.
+
+“Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then—then—”
+
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a
+choking breath:
+
+“It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering.”
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and
+a strange calmness began to possess him. “You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?” he found himself saying. “Is it possible you might
+be mistaken?”
+
+“No,” said the woman. “She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed
+her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I’m almost sure she smiled
+at me and was going to speak. And then—then—she was gone!”
+
+“I didn’t know until my wife screamed,” added the man. “I was seated
+facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind
+but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly.”
+
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely
+sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had
+left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary
+Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had
+leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened
+it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the
+room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it
+from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman’s scream. Mary
+Standish was gone.
+
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the
+pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and
+twisted. Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table.
+Then he saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he
+picked up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a
+little shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.
+
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned
+slowly to confront Captain Rifle. The little man’s face was like gray
+wax. For a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the
+shoe crumpled in Alan’s hand.
+
+“The boats got away quickly,” he said in a husky voice. “We stopped
+inside the third-mile. If she can swim—there is a chance.”
+
+“She won’t swim,” replied Alan. “She didn’t jump in for that. She is
+gone.”
+
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of
+his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched
+hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy
+of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of
+wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan’s words. It took only a few
+seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going
+into details. The captain’s hand was on Alan’s arm when he finished,
+and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.
+
+“We’ll talk with Rossland after the boats return,” he said.
+
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held
+the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It
+took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain.
+Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a
+second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the
+passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of
+it came to him—failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the
+throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their
+eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And
+as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an
+agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the
+first law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against
+the desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish
+to rise up out of it and forgive him.
+
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask
+through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly
+coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And
+she would have been right. His heart was gone.
+
+Two people were at Rossland’s door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship’s doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+
+“I can’t rouse him,” he said. “And I did not see him among the
+passengers.”
+
+“Nor did I,” said Alan.
+
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+
+“I think the circumstances permit,” he explained. In a moment he looked
+up, puzzled. “The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in the
+lock.”
+
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his
+knuckles were red. There was still no response.
+
+“Odd,” he muttered.
+
+“Very odd,” agreed Alan.
+
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash
+sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp,
+and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly,
+upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no
+movement and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.
+
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain
+Rifle close the door behind them, and from Marston’s lips came a
+startled whisper:
+
+“Good God!”
+
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His
+arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the
+white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the
+edges and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first
+shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in
+that moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle’s eyes met
+Alan’s. The same thought—and in another instant disbelief—flashed from
+one to the other.
+
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. “A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is
+not dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and
+dressing.”
+
+“The door was locked on the inside,” said Alan, as soon as the doctor
+was gone. “And the window is closed. It looks like—suicide. It is
+possible—there was an understanding between them—and Rossland chose
+this way instead of the sea?”
+
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into
+the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. “There is no
+knife,” he said stonily. And in a moment he added: “There are red
+stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was—”
+
+“Murder.”
+
+“Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window.
+Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a
+long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We’ve got to
+believe that. It was a _man_.”
+
+“Of course, a man,” Alan nodded.
+
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle
+made a gesture toward the door. “Better go,” he advised. “This is a
+ship’s matter, and you won’t want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it.
+Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you.”
+
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan
+passed them, and he heard the door of Rossland’s room close behind him.
+The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He
+went to Mary Standish’s cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings
+and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard.
+Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and
+packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and
+explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them
+to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with
+the captain.
+
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He
+nodded toward a chair.
+
+“We’ll reach Cordova inside of an hour,” he said. “Doctor Marston says
+Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the _Nome_ in port
+until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make
+oath to that. Have you anything—in mind?”
+
+“Only one thing,” replied Alan, “a determination to go ashore as soon
+as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it.
+As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he
+lives or dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon
+him. It was merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will
+you tell me our location when she leaped into the sea.”
+
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let
+Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to
+him.
+
+“We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east
+of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a
+chance. And I hope you will find her.”
+
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+“It’s a bad blow for the ship—her first trip,” he said. “But I’m not
+thinking of the _Nome_. I’m thinking of Mary Standish. My God, it is
+terrible! If it had been anyone else—_anyone_—” His words seemed to
+choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. “It is hard
+to believe—almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill
+herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin.”
+
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain
+details of the girl’s visit. But a number of things which she had
+trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon
+Rossland’s influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort,
+and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in his
+eyes.
+
+“You’re not responsible—not so much as you believe,” he said. “Don’t
+take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and
+let me know. You will do that—you will let me know?”
+
+“Yes, I shall let you know.”
+
+“And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his
+assailant is still on board.”
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: “There is
+nothing in Miss Standish’s room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your
+hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into
+the sea—before she went.”
+
+“Such a thought is possible,” agreed Alan evasively.
+
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His
+face looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. “That’s
+all, Alan. God knows I’d give this old life of mine to bring her back
+if I could. To me she was much like—someone—a long time dead. That’s
+why I broke ship’s regulations when she came aboard so strangely at
+Seattle, without reservation. I’m sorry now. I should have sent her
+ashore. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to
+ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if
+you do—”
+
+“I shall send you word.”
+
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle’s fingers still held to Alan’s as
+they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the
+sky. The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the
+darkened sea.
+
+“A thunder-storm,” said the captain.
+
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous
+note in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into
+darkness. And then he said,
+
+“Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives.”
+
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he
+went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the
+whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A
+vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin.
+Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin
+bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in
+Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month
+in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the
+range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government
+railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence
+still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a
+man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain
+written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to
+go ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until
+morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of
+his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for
+physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The
+desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was
+holding back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of
+a pale face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the
+dispassionate calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was
+battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour—since he had heard the
+scream of the woman—he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid
+earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that
+narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And
+not until Alan’s feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a
+great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After
+he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply
+of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than
+darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there
+gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him.
+The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with
+a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near,
+as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the
+earth unaware.
+
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three
+years ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf
+Ericksen, half a mile up the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be
+there, where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn
+to stay until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way
+instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces
+of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the
+mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden
+glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a
+white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea
+he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked
+between two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as
+they advanced to deadly combat.
+
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder
+that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled
+away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of
+signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air
+struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the
+thrill of storm.
+
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and
+the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the
+crash of the elements about his father’s cabin and the roaring voices
+of the ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought
+him into the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul,
+and there were times when he yearned for this “talk of the mountains”
+as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his
+eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always
+burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen’s cabin.
+
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an
+inky wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his
+face, and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of
+silence he could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he
+dropped his bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede.
+Then he flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage
+to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have
+forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he and
+Alan’s father had tramped the mountains together.
+
+[Illustration: The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.]
+
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the
+frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent
+shoulders, his massive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard
+streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung
+off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty
+shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from
+Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+
+The Swede’s voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing
+the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan’s face made him
+pause to hear other words than his own.
+
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea,
+bracing his arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening
+beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that
+drenched him as he stood there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan,
+a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn
+the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out
+to sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its
+downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was
+blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch
+Alan could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber
+slicker, and Olaf’s great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was
+like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable
+gloom he opened speed until the _Norden_ was shooting with the
+swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.
+
+In Olaf’s cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find
+Mary Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of
+battered reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a
+pirate fleet might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his
+experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a
+body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was
+at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in
+Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the
+slim craft leaped through the water.
+
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him
+there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the
+least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept
+telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All
+through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against
+odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction
+he was going to win now—that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in
+the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the
+islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he found
+her—
+
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in
+moments it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting
+to keep out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his
+mental pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind,
+and waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her
+pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over
+the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep
+away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he
+would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the
+breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and
+self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
+
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in
+which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to _him_
+in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the
+_Nome_. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her
+confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when
+he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word,
+proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the
+courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, “You will
+understand—tomorrow.”
+
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn
+lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the
+tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf
+did not press his folly upon him, but kept the _Norden_ pointed
+seaward, adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland
+loomed up in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day
+the rain subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped.
+Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair.
+White mists began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of
+light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The
+sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as
+the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had
+washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the
+sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his
+body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the
+mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living
+things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of
+forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from
+behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly—in a final triumph of the
+sun—the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.
+
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm,
+grinning at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded
+face. But in Alan’s there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of
+day and of sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but
+something was missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was
+dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met
+the other’s smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to
+the truth.
+
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan’s
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay
+naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it
+inspired by the captain of the _Nome_, as Alan had given him reason to
+believe. There was more than grimness in the other’s face, and a
+strange sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed
+the straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly
+undulating surface of the sea.
+
+At last he said, “If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+_out there_,” and he pointed.
+
+Alan stood up.
+
+“But she wouldn’t be there now,” Olaf added.
+
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down—at the bottom. He
+turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the
+mountains was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A
+quarter of an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the
+rocks and timber that came down close to the sea.
+
+“That’s McCormick’s,” he said.
+
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf’s binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman’s cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who
+knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes
+shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who
+came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow
+water.
+
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of
+the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly.
+Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man.
+They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the _Nome_ and
+what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and
+believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in
+his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading
+its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were
+frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of
+pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty
+dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if
+he found the girl’s body.
+
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he
+had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not
+have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in
+the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable
+he would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have
+guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf’s face
+McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan
+Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the
+most precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his
+services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the
+little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.
+
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled
+gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when
+she heard what had happened aboard the _Nome_. Alan left the three
+together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the
+lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed—that this girl
+whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end
+of the world to Alan Holt.
+
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light
+shore-launch. He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence,
+and with Scotch canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen
+cabins he left details of the drowning and offered a reward of five
+hundred dollars for the finding of the body, so that twenty men and
+boys and half as many women were seeking before nightfall.
+
+“And remember,” Sandy told each of them, “the chances are she’ll wash
+ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes
+ashore at all.”
+
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the
+coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite
+direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping
+into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains
+reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a
+great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept
+slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was
+despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of
+an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer
+concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man
+chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening
+twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him
+that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew
+would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the
+night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.
+
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy’s wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had
+softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the
+others had been. He knew. The woman’s eyes told him, the almost
+mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had
+coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave
+a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to
+speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not
+one of them spoke of Mary Standish.
+
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the
+cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to
+Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River,
+and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of
+paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a
+lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about
+children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children—a lot of them.
+Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman’s
+face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something
+wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+
+“We’re building a new cabin,” he said, “and there’s two rooms in it
+specially for kids.”
+
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that
+was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A
+moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something
+which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to
+pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf’s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not
+see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely
+love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt,
+should think of such a matter at all.
+
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of
+certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents
+tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with
+Olaf at the wheel of the _Norden_. It was sunset when they returned,
+and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of
+the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to
+speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the
+Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which
+he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once
+upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to
+Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and
+the treachery of them.
+
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if
+Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days—probably weeks—if
+it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan
+to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea.
+That was what he called it—“a peaceful resting-place”—and in his
+earnestness to soothe another’s grief he blundered still more deeply
+into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and
+bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him
+beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick
+cabin.
+
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual
+was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in
+suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to
+Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He
+went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he
+entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in
+her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her
+cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It
+was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+
+“You—you didn’t find her?” she asked.
+
+“No.” His voice was tired and a little old. “Do you think I shall ever
+find her?”
+
+“Not as you have expected,” she answered quietly. “She will never come
+like that.” She seemed to be making an effort. “You—you would give a
+great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?”
+
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child
+looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips
+and nodded.
+
+“Of course. Everything I possess.”
+
+“You—you—loved her—”
+
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the
+probing did not sting him; it was not a woman’s curiosity that inspired
+them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not
+realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only
+for himself, but for someone else—aloud.
+
+“Yes, I did.”
+
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to
+be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief
+acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick’s face and
+eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which
+had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of
+this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish’s belongings, and gave
+it to Sandy’s wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to
+speak in a businesslike way.
+
+“Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after
+I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you
+don’t find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day.” It seemed
+hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: “I don’t
+think I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at
+Cordova, and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found.
+And if you do find her, you will look after her yourself, won’t you,
+Mrs. McCormick?”
+
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do
+what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little
+thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to
+Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by.
+Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy
+about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down
+to the beach.
+
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of
+stars, when the _Norden’s_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea.
+Alan looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity
+that lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too
+full. But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far
+away, that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to
+look back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom
+that lay beneath the mountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+That night, in Olaf’s cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his
+life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and
+that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what
+happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part
+of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his
+mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions
+and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but
+he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he
+realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote
+a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter—carefully sealed—which was not to be opened unless they found
+Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy’s cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the
+final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for
+Captain Rifle’s ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of
+Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told
+briefly the disappointing details of his search.
+
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely
+forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank,
+Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the
+hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan’s
+intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say
+about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
+now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
+himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
+Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
+businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he
+might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own
+eyes. In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to
+break down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had
+unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry
+the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him,
+uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told
+him.
+
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening
+camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland.
+Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was
+primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of
+their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax,
+and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the
+swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north,
+whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he
+lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its
+hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once
+more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering
+of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about
+him. He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he
+mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father.
+A thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when
+Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the
+next range.
+
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor,
+and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old
+days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always
+the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for
+thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and
+he was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova
+much longer. Siberia was dragging him—that forbidden world of adventure
+and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles
+across the strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he
+forgot Alan’s tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory
+measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever
+been dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed;
+and he was going if he lived another year or two—going to find his
+fortune or his end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi
+tribes. Twice he had tried it since his old comrade had died, and twice
+he had been driven out. The next time he would know how to go about it,
+and he invited Alan to go with him.
+
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night
+ride across the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred
+plains of Tibet. It stirred old desires in Alan’s blood, for he knew
+that of all frontiers the Siberian would be the last and the greatest,
+and that not only men, but nations, would play their part in the
+breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of firelight in Olaf’s eyes.
+
+“And if we don’t go in first from _this side_, Alan, the yellow fellows
+will come out some day from _that,”_ rumbled the old sour-dough,
+striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. “And when they do, they
+won’t come over to us in ones an’ twos an’ threes, but in millions.
+That’s what the yellow fellows will do when they once get started, an’
+it’s up to a few Alaska Jacks an’ Tough-Nut Bills to get their feet
+planted first on the other side. Will you go?”
+
+Alan shook his head. “Some day—but not now.” The old flash was in his
+eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again—the fight to do his
+bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. “But you’re right about the danger,” he said. “It
+won’t come from Japan to California. It will pour like a flood through
+Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn’t the danger of the
+yellow man alone, Olaf. You’ve got to combine that with Bolshevism, the
+menace of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the little
+neck of water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American
+continent to bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a
+century, but it’s coming sure as God makes light—if we let Alaska go
+down and out. And my way of preventing it is different from yours.”
+
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. “I’m not
+proud of the States,” he went on, as if speaking to something which he
+saw in the flames. “I can’t be, after the ruin their unintelligent
+propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But they’re our
+salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have factions in
+Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It’s going to
+be largely a matter of education. We can’t take Alaska down to the
+States—we’ve got to bring them up to us. We must make a large part of a
+hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the
+Gulf of Anadyr. It’s God’s own country we have north of Fifty-eight,
+Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a
+million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in
+Alaska and at Washington won’t let them come. With coal enough under
+our feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States.
+We’ve got billions in copper and oil, but can’t touch them. We should
+have some of the world’s greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not,
+because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn’t
+conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon
+industry—but they didn’t. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of
+the plains.
+
+“The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and
+common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring
+about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will
+take place right here—in Alaska—and not in Siberia. And if we don’t
+win—”
+
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf’s bearded
+face.
+
+“Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr,” he finished. “And if it ever does come, the people of
+the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska
+could have meant to the nation.”
+
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after
+that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the
+fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her
+quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the
+lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as
+she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of
+this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have
+made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It was a thought
+which brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always these
+visions which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had
+faced him in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling,
+and her eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last
+moment of her plea for life.
+
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him
+in his restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was
+looking at the stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the
+grief in his soul they were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle
+force were at work in him subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of
+tragedy. Mary Standish was with him again, between the mountains at
+Skagway; she was at his side in the heart of the tundras, the sun in
+her shining hair and eyes, and all about them the wonder of wild roses
+and purple iris and white seas of sedge-cotton and yellow-eyed daisies,
+and birds singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the birds. And he
+heard the girl’s voice, answering them in her happiness and turning
+that happiness from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke,
+it was with a little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was
+building a fire, and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the
+mountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new
+import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the
+Chugach and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which
+drew Alan out of the pit into which he had fallen. He understood, now,
+how it was that through many long years his father had worshiped the
+memory of a woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago.
+Unnumbered times he had seen the miracle of her presence in his
+father’s eyes, and once, when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled
+valley back in the mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+
+“Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek,
+with the great rock in the sun? We rested there—before you were born!”
+
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan
+recalled the strange happiness in his father’s face as he had looked
+down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that
+began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan’s
+heart. It would never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be
+alone. He knew at last it was an undying part of him, as it had been a
+part of his father, clinging to him in sweet pain, encouraging him,
+pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
+beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
+grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
+about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
+could see farther than others, because he had known Alan’s father as a
+brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt—straight,
+clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
+Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
+awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
+his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
+of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
+Alan’s, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
+together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish,
+just as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt’s name sacred in his own
+heart. Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of
+memories, observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his
+tongue, and he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his
+mind.
+
+He talked of Siberia—always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were
+soft with the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and
+filled with stars. Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty
+castles whose battlements reached up into the cloud-draperies of the
+sky. They kept close to the mainland and among the islands, camping
+early each evening. Birds were coming northward by the thousand, and
+each night Olaf’s camp-fire sent up the delicious aroma of flesh-pots
+and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time came for
+Olaf to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede’s eyes,
+and as a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably
+come when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+_Norden_ until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country.
+And he was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer
+which carried mail and the necessities of life to the string of
+settlements reaching a thousand miles out into the Pacific left
+Resurrection Bay, and he was given passage. Thereafter the countless
+islands of the North Pacific drifted behind, while always northward
+were the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the ramparted
+ranges beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional
+volcanoes, and at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the
+clouds. First touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at
+Uyak and Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island
+of Unga, and thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch
+Harbor and Unalaska. Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was
+berthed on a freighter, and on the twelfth day of June set foot in
+Nome.
+
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its
+peculiar, black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two
+solitary brick chimneys, brought a lump of joy into his throat as he
+watched its growing outlines from the small boat that brought him
+ashore. He could see one of the only two brick chimneys in northern
+Alaska gleaming in the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away, were the
+ragged peaks of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to
+them in half an hour, and over all the world between seemed to hover a
+misty gloom. But it was where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy
+and unforgetable memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its
+frame buildings, its crooked streets, and what to others might have
+been ugliness, was a warm and thrilling thing. For here were his
+_people_. Here were the men and women who were guarding the northern
+door of the world, an epic place, filled with strong hearts, courage,
+and a love of country as inextinguishable as one’s love of life. From
+this drab little place, shut out from all the world for half the year,
+young men and women went down to southern universities, to big cities,
+to the glamor and lure of “outside.” But they always came back. Nome
+called them. Its loneliness in winter. Its gray gloom in springtime.
+Its glory in summer and autumn. It was the breeding-place of a new race
+of men, and they loved it as Alan loved it. To him the black wireless
+tower meant more than the Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten
+church spires more than the architectural colossi of New York and
+Washington. Beside one of the churches he had played as a boy. He had
+seen the steeples painted. He had helped make the crooked streets. And
+his mother had laughed and lived and died here, and his father’s
+footprints had been in the white sands of the beach when tents dotted
+the shore like gulls.
+
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He
+was unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the
+grip which men’s hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs
+down in the States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement.
+Small boys ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
+grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt
+had come back from the States. Before the day was over, it was on its
+way to Shelton and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the
+beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the news of his arrival Alan
+walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke’s restaurant for a cup of
+coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen’s offices in the Tin Bank
+Building.
+
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days
+before, and his brothers were “in” from the big ranges over on the
+Choris Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a
+tremendously successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty
+thousand head, when the final figures were in. A hundred other herds
+were prospering, and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
+with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a million reindeer were on
+the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when
+compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five thousand!
+In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
+the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in
+Nome. After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their
+best men fighting for Alaska’s salvation at Washington, word was
+traveling from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from
+range to range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from
+thousands of miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
+office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
+strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten
+dollars a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty
+dollars; cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars
+a ton, when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given
+letters of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater
+power, and in the turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man
+just outside the reach of all the milk and honey in a wonderful land.
+Pauperizing, degrading, actually killing, the political misrule that
+had already driven 25 per cent of Alaska’s population from their homes
+was to continue indefinitely. A President of the United States had
+promised to visit the mighty land of the north and see with his own
+eyes. But would he come? There had been other promises, many of them,
+and promises had always been futile. But it was a hope that crept
+through Alaska, and upon this hope men whose courage never died began
+to build. Freedom was on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph
+ultimately, as it always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned
+in the locks which had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources
+of their country, and these men were determined to go on building
+against odds that they might be better prepared for that freedom of
+human endeavor when it came.
+
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged,
+and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of
+gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John
+Graham—interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever
+had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the
+ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men
+that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of
+conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread
+the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest
+days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was
+creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska’s serfdom
+was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth,
+for what remained of Alaska’s men after years of hopelessness and
+distress were fighting men. And the women who had remained with them
+were the mothers and wives of a new nation in the making.
+
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have
+given his life if a few million people in the States could have known
+these women. Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of
+half a continent—possessing the power of the ballot—would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of
+existence; Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women
+were of the kind who greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter,
+with something greater than hope in their hearts. They, too, were
+builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and
+side by side with their men-folk they went on in this epic struggle for
+the building of a nation at the top of the world.
+
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape
+his lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part
+of him, and a secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even
+made evasions when questioned about his business and experiences at
+Cordova and up the coast. Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he
+was away from other men and women. He remembered it had been that way
+with his father, who was always happiest when in the deep mountains or
+the unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with an inner gladness when
+his business was finished and the day came for him to leave Nome.
+
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula.
+For one hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge,
+four-foot railway on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan,
+at times, as though Mary Standish were with him, riding in this strange
+way through a great wilderness. He could _see_ her. That was the
+strange thing which began to possess him. There were moments when her
+eyes were shining softly upon him, her lips smiling, her presence so
+real he might have spoken to her if Lomen had not been at his side. He
+did not fight against these visionings. It pleased him to think of her
+going with him into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque
+“pup-mobile,” losing herself in the mountains and in his tundras, with
+all the wonder and glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a
+time, like the unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder
+and glory in these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind,
+and the miracle of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night,
+as Mary Standish had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of
+June there were twenty hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight
+between the hours of eleven and one. Sleep was no longer a matter of
+the rising and setting of the sun, but was regulated by the hands of
+the watch. A world frozen to the core for seven months was bursting
+open like a great flower.
+
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety
+people at Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to
+Keewalik, on Kotzebue Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried
+them to Choris Peninsula, where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and
+his huge herd of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but
+tried to hide his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on
+to greater haste. For the first time in months he heard the crackling
+thunder of reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like a wild call
+from his own herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end
+came and his business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It
+was night, as his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta
+of the Kobuk River with him in a lighterage company’s boat. But there
+was no darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the
+Redstone, two hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river
+winds. They had supper together on the shore. After that Paul
+Davidovich turned back with the slow sweep of the current, waving his
+hand until he was out of sight.
+
+Not until the sound of the Russian’s motor-boat was lost in distance
+did Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him.
+At last, after months that had seemed like so many years, he was
+_alone_. North and eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew
+so well, a hundred and fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost
+unmapped, unpeopled, right up to the doors of his range in the slopes
+of the Endicott Mountains. A little cry from his own lips gave him a
+start. It was as if he had called out aloud to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik,
+and to Keok and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his way home and
+would soon be there. Never had this hidden land which he had found for
+himself seemed so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something
+about it that was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to
+that other thing which had become a part of him now. It was holding out
+its arms to him, understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel
+strongly and swiftly the space between. And he was ready to answer its
+call.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or
+sleep. The musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin
+timber of the river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It
+was the tundra he wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his
+face to the stars. He was eager to get away from timber and to feel the
+immeasurable space of the big country, the open country, about him.
+What fool had given to it the name of _Barren Lands_? What idiots
+people were to lie about it in that way on the maps! He strapped his
+pack over his shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren Lands!
+
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight
+hours of sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their
+glory—the Barren Lands of the map-makers, _his_ paradise. On a knoll he
+stood in the golden sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and
+stood with bared head, a whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary
+Standish could have lived to see _this_! He stretched out his arms, as
+if pointing for her eyes to follow, and her name was in his heart and
+whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable the tundras reached ahead
+of him—rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and golden and a glory of
+flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever known. Under his
+feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple violets,
+their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay
+a white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees
+in between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze,
+was the cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few
+days they would be opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody
+of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly
+aglow in the sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird
+instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and
+months when there was no real night. He picked up his pack and went on.
+From a pool hidden in the lush grasses of a distant hollow came to him
+the twilight honking of nesting geese and the quacking content of wild
+ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes of a lone “organ-duck” and
+the plaintive cries of plover, and farther out, where the shadows
+seemed deepening against the rim of the horizon, rose the harsh,
+rolling notes of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And then,
+from a clump of willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush
+whose throat was tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song
+of a robin. _Night!_ Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in
+his face. _Bedtime!_ He looked at his watch.
+
+It was nine o’clock. Nine o’clock, and the flowers still answering to
+the glow of the sun! And the people down there—in the States—called it
+a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the earth, a place
+of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even
+though men called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and
+knowledge. It was humorous. And it was tragic.
+
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in
+this velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup.
+A little creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass
+and spread out his blankets. A great stillness drew in about him,
+broken only by the old squaws and the loons. At eleven o’clock he could
+still see clearly the sleeping water-fowl on the surface of the pool.
+But the stars were appearing. It grew duskier, and the rose-tint of the
+sun faded into purple gloom as pale night drew near—four hours of rest
+that was neither darkness nor day. With a pillow of sedge and grass
+under his head he slept.
+
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the
+pool, with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among
+the grasses and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that
+he traveled steadily into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and
+almost without rest. It seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that
+country where all the bird-life of the world was born, for wherever
+there was water, in the pools and little streams and the hollows
+between the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was a babel of
+sound. Out of the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the
+irresistible pulse of motherhood filling him with its strength and its
+courage, and whispering to him its everlasting message that because of
+the glory and need and faith of life had God created this land of
+twenty-hour day and four-hour twilight. In it, in these days of summer,
+was no abiding place for gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer
+to his home, was a place of darkness which its light could not quite
+enter.
+
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless
+spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision,
+she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At
+times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when
+he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was
+he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in
+spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his
+lips. For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would
+have lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the
+ship. She had died, not for him, but _because_ of him—because, in his
+failure to live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had
+broken down what must have been her last hope and her final faith. If
+he had been less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a
+greater wisdom, she would have been walking with him now, laughing in
+the rose-tinted dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under
+the clear stars—happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things.
+At least so he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her
+even had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to
+fight for. He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains
+that might have bound her, or other inclinations that might have led
+her. He claimed her, now that she was dead, and knew that living he
+would have possessed her. Nothing could have kept him from that. But
+she was gone. And for that he was accountable, and the fifth night he
+lay sleepless under the stars, and like a boy he cried for her with his
+face upon his arm, and when morning came, and he went on, never had the
+world seemed so vast and empty.
+
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he
+traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within
+him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra
+call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their
+happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that. Their love had
+been a part of his life, and the knowledge that his response to this
+love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled him with dread. A
+strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his head, so that
+when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had
+come to these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great
+tundras, and he had built himself a little camp among them. He loved
+the place. It had seemed to him that now and then he must visit the
+forlorn trees to give them cheer and comradeship. His father’s name was
+carved in the bole of the greatest of them all, and under it the date
+and day when the elder Holt had discovered them in a land where no man
+had gone before. And under his father’s name was his mother’s, and
+under that, his own. He had made of the place a sort of shrine, a green
+and sweet-flowered tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song and peace
+in summer and the weird aloneness of it in winter had played their
+parts in the making of his soul. Through many months he had anticipated
+this hour of his home-coming, when in the distance he would see the
+beckoning welcome of the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills
+and frosted peaks of the Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was
+looking at the trees and the mountains, and something was lacking in
+the thrill of them. He came up from the west, between two willow ridges
+through which ran the little creek from the warm springs, and he was
+within a quarter of a mile of them when something stopped him in his
+tracks.
+
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment
+he knew it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him.
+This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was
+shooting firecrackers!
+
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok’s mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness
+Nawadlook never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his
+home-coming with a celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably
+imported a supply of “bing-bangs” from Allakakat or Tanana. The
+oppressive weight inside him lifted, and the smile remained on his
+lips. And then as if commanded by a voice, his eyes turned to the dead
+cottonwood stub which had sentineled the little oasis of trees for many
+years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely in the breeze that
+came with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of
+him, who wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old
+happiness, and he drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that
+grew almost up to the cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would
+walk suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of
+thing that would amaze and delight them.
+
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He
+heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one
+of the “giants” that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her
+pretty ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow,
+and then up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He
+could see Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen
+tree, and as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers
+away from her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his
+sight, watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his
+way so that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen,
+within a dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her,
+and Keok was still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something
+about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and
+seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not
+Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The
+slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the
+glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.
+
+“Keok!”
+
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+
+And then:
+
+“Mary!” he called. “_Mary Standish_!”
+
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt’s face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
+had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on
+the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his
+home-coming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+After that one calling of her name Alan’s voice was dead, and he made
+no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
+temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was
+rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of
+wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed
+to pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there,
+_alive!_ He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color
+come into it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log
+and came toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it
+seemed a long time to Alan.
+
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating
+up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
+away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must
+have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and
+made an effort to recover himself.
+
+“You almost frightened me,” she said. “We have been expecting you and
+watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn’t see you.”
+
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same
+voice, unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him
+yesterday and with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again
+today. It was impossible for him to realize in these moments the
+immeasurable distance that lay between their viewpoints. He was simply
+Alan Holt—she was the dead risen to life. Many times in his grief he
+had visualized what he would do if some miracle could bring her back to
+him like this; he had thought of taking her in his arms and never
+letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to pass, and she was
+within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to speak.
+
+“You—Mary Standish!” he said at last. “I thought—”
+
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another
+individual within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack
+of physical expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout
+with joy, yet the directing soul of action in him was stricken. She
+touched his arm hesitatingly.
+
+“I didn’t think you would care,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t
+mind—if I came up here.”
+
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain,
+and the touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard
+himself cry out, a strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his
+breast. He held her close, crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers
+buried in her hair, her slender body almost broken in his arms. She was
+alive—she had come back to him—and he forgot everything in these blind
+moments but that great truth which was sweeping over him in a glorious
+inundation. Then, suddenly, he found that she was fighting him,
+struggling to free herself and putting her hands against his face in
+her efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing but her
+eyes, and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of finding—but
+horror. It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms relaxed.
+She staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her
+breath, her face very white.
+
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at
+him, as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had
+not taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips
+showing the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held
+out his hands mutely.
+
+“You think—I came here for _that?_” she panted.
+
+“No,” he said. “Forgive me. I am sorry.”
+
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling
+of shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at
+him, which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her
+back against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things
+together. Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him
+was centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
+living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
+to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
+weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
+up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
+flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
+face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
+too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
+astonishment growing in her eyes.
+
+“You are alive,” he said, giving voice again to the one thought
+pounding in his brain. “_Alive!_”
+
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
+of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to the
+girl.
+
+“Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?” she asked.
+
+“Your letter? At Nome?” He repeated the words, shaking his head. “No.”
+
+“And all this time—you have been thinking—I was dead?”
+
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form
+of speech.
+
+“I wrote you there,” she said. “I wrote the letter before I jumped into
+the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle’s ship.”
+
+“I didn’t get it.”
+
+“You didn’t get it?” There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he
+had observed it, understanding.
+
+“Then you didn’t mean that just now? You didn’t intend to do it? It was
+because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief
+to find me alive. That was it, wasn’t it?”
+
+Stupidly he nodded again. “Yes, it was a great relief.”
+
+“You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn’t help me,” she went
+on. “So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I
+wrote. To all the world but you I am dead—to Rossland, Captain Rifle,
+everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young
+Thlinkit Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I
+leaped in, and picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me
+ashore while the boats were making their search.”
+
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side
+of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few
+moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had
+done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never
+happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made
+it impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.
+
+“Now I am here,” she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. “I
+didn’t think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind
+afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the _Nome_. And
+so—I am your guest, Mr. Holt.”
+
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she
+smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she
+belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him
+permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pass away from
+him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His
+spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during
+the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of
+things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his
+hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her
+own in them confidently.
+
+“It was like a bolt of lightning,” he said, his voice free at last and
+trembling. “Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of you,
+and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find
+you alive. And _here!_”
+
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But
+reason had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+
+“It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake
+up and find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the other
+things—”
+
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of
+tears at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a
+lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in
+her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+
+“I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step,” he
+said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come. “Then
+I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!”
+
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+
+“And when I found you here, and you didn’t fade away like a ghost, I
+thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been
+wrong, I guess, or I wouldn’t have done _that_. You see, it puzzled me
+that a ghost should be setting off firecrackers—and I suppose that was
+the first impulse I had of making sure you were real.”
+
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a
+clear, wild voice with a sweet trill in it. “_Maa-rie!_” it called.
+“_Maa-rie!_”
+
+“Supper,” nodded the girl. “You are just in time. And then we are going
+home in the twilight.”
+
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his
+place as home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft
+coils of her hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and
+soul filled only with the beauty of her slim figure—a glory of life
+where for a long time he had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came
+into an open, soft with grass and strewn with flowers, and in this open
+a man was kneeling beside a fire no larger than his two hands, and at
+his side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair
+rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who
+it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little
+screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was
+Keok. She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire
+and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild
+creature in the manner of her coming, was only a moment behind. And
+then he was shaking hands with Stampede, and Keok had slipped down
+among the flowers and was crying. That was like Keok. She always cried
+when he went away, and cried when he returned; and then, in another
+moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed she no
+longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in
+doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her
+own.
+
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of
+way. No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and
+nerves were fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming
+back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an
+unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities
+as they assembled themselves. In the edge of the tundra beyond the
+cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes
+which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads. He drew off his pack
+as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks. Nawadlook
+was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began to fill a
+pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today then
+tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had
+experienced shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back
+and dragged the old Alan Holt into existence again. It was like
+bringing an intelligence out of darkness into light.
+
+It was difficult for him—afterward—to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper
+things between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful
+Mary Standish who had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon
+of the _Nome_.
+
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of
+the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the
+tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which
+had been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok’s
+suggestion that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had
+noticed how quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea. She had
+smiled at him as she left, and a little farther out had waved her hand
+at him, as Keok and Nawadlook both had done, but not another word had
+passed between them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of
+sunset Alan stood watching them, and would have stared without speech
+until they were out of sight, if Stampede’s fingers had not gripped his
+arm.
+
+“Now, go to it, Alan,” he said. “I’m ready. Give me hell!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that
+Stampede brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and
+awakening inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man’s
+invitation.
+
+“I’ve been a damn fool,” he confessed. “And I’m waiting.”
+
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things
+began to rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he
+had been one. His mind went back to the _Nome_. It seemed only a few
+hours ago—only yesterday—that the girl had so artfully deceived them
+all, and he had gone through hell because of that deception. The
+trickery had been simple, and exceedingly clever because of its
+simplicity; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage, now that
+he clearly understood that at no time had she wanted to die.
+
+“I wonder,” he said, “why she did a thing like that?”
+
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan’s mind. “I
+couldn’t keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree.” And he added,
+“The little witch even threatened to shoot me!”
+
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. “Begin, Alan. I’m waiting.
+Go the limit.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin’ her in the bush. You can’t take it out of _her_ hide, can
+you?”
+
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent.
+Mary Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a
+quarter of a mile away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They
+trotted up a low ridge and disappeared.
+
+“It’s none of my business,” persisted Stampede, “but you didn’t seem to
+expect her—”
+
+“You’re right,” interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack. “I didn’t
+expect her. I thought she was dead.”
+
+A low whistle escaped Stampede’s lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his
+shoulders. Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the
+girl who had jumped overboard from the _Nome_, and if she had kept her
+secret, it was not his business just now to explain, even though he
+guessed that Stampede’s quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A
+light was beginning to dispel the little man’s bewilderment as they
+started toward the Range. He had seen Mary Standish frequently aboard
+the _Nome_; a number of times he had observed her in Alan’s company,
+and he knew of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore,
+if Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few
+hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into
+the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to
+discover this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+
+“It beats the devil!” he exclaimed suddenly.
+
+“It does,” agreed Alan.
+
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the
+happiness that possessed him, and questions which he had found no
+interest in asking when aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling
+force. Why was it so tragically important to Mary Standish that the
+world should believe her dead? What was it that had driven her to
+appeal to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What was her
+mysterious association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska’s deadliest
+enemy, John Graham—the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance if
+opportunity ever came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with
+its insistence, rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible
+for him to make. Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained
+silent in the lengthening twilight, while Alan’s mind struggled to
+bring coherence and reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt.
+Why had she come to _his_ cabin aboard the _Nome_? Why had she played
+him with such conspicuous intent against Rossland, and why—in the
+end—had she preceded him to his home in the tundras? It was this
+question which persisted, never for an instant swept aside by the
+others. She had not come because of love for him. In a brutal sort of
+way he had proved that, for when he had taken her in his arms, he had
+seen distress and fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and
+more mysterious force had driven her.
+
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon
+him. He was like a man who had found life after a period of something
+that was worse than death, and with his happiness he felt himself
+twisted upon an upheaval of conflicting sensations and half convictions
+out of which, in spite of his effort to hold it back, suspicion began
+to creep like a shadow. But it was not the sort of suspicion to cool
+the thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he was quite ready to
+concede that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her flight from
+Seattle had been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had
+happened aboard ship was further proof, and her presence at his range a
+final one. Forces had driven her which it had been impossible for her
+to combat, and in desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had
+chosen him out of all the world to help her; she believed in him; she
+had faith that with him no harm could come, and his muscles tightened
+with sudden desire to fight for her.
+
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras
+and the soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He
+strained his eyes to catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when
+they came up out of hollows to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of
+evening were drawing closer, and he looked in vain. Bird-song grew
+softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and pools; the fire of the
+sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling of vivid rose
+and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet day,
+and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish.
+What had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with
+the thrilling fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her
+would be explained tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in
+him. Now that she had so utterly placed herself under his protection,
+she would tell him what she had not dared to disclose aboard the
+_Nome_. So he thought only of the silvery distance of twilight that
+separated them, and spoke at last to Stampede.
+
+“I’m rather glad you brought her,” he said.
+
+“I didn’t bring her,” protested Stampede. “She _came_.” He shrugged his
+shoulders with a grunt. “And furthermore I didn’t manage it. She did
+that herself. She didn’t come with me. I came with _her_.”
+
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he
+glared fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed
+him. Alan saw it and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His
+keen vision and sense of humor were returning.
+
+“How did it happen?”
+
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and
+drew in a deep breath.
+
+“First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn’t get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn’t rain. You couldn’t call it
+that, Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three
+other oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming,
+coach floating, driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I
+got in for Chitina. There was one other climbed in after me, and I
+wondered what sort of fool he was. I said something about being starved
+or I’d have hung to the train. The other didn’t answer. Then I began to
+swear. I did, Alan. I cursed terrible. Swore at the Government for
+building such a road, swore at the rain, an’ I swore at myself for not
+bringin’ along grub. I said my belly was as empty as a shot-off
+cartridge, and I said it good an’ loud. I was mad. Then a big flash of
+lightning lit up the coach. Alan, it was _her_ sittin’ there with a box
+in her lap, facing me, drippin’ wet, her eyes shining—and she was
+smiling at me! Yessir, _smiling_.”
+
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+
+Alan stared at him in amazement. “The fourth night—after—” He caught
+himself. “Go on, Stampede!”
+
+“I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin’ to sneak
+out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin’ come again. But it
+caught me. An’ there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her saying
+she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An’ she called me Stampede, like
+she’d known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an’ rocking
+and the thunder an’ lightning an’ rain piling up against each other
+like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me.
+She did that, Alan—_fed_ me. When the lightning fired up, I could see
+her eyes shining and her lips smilin’ as if all that hell about us made
+her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how
+happy she was that I was goin’ her way. _Her_ way, mind you, Alan, not
+_mine._ And that’s just the way she’s kept me goin’ up to the minute
+you hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!”
+
+He lighted his pipe again. “Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?”
+
+“She didn’t,” replied Alan.
+
+“But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the
+happiest moment of her life, because _she_ was on her way up to your
+range, and I’d be such jolly good company for her. ‘Jolly good’—them
+were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew she was coming
+up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand
+surprise. Said it was possible she’d buy your range, and she wanted to
+look it over before you arrived. An’ it seems queer I can’t remember
+anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and
+Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin’ a million
+questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to,
+Alan—but everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and
+Fairbanks, and she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I’d have
+eat soap out of her hand if she’d offered it to me. Then, sort of sly
+and soft-like, she began asking questions about John Graham—and I woke
+up.”
+
+“John Graham!” Alan repeated the name.
+
+“Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin’ aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please—with her hand on my arm—she
+said she wasn’t quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain’t a lie what
+I’m going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a
+wonderful idea she had for surprisin’ _you_. Said she knew you would
+return to the Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some
+fireworks. Said you was such a good American you’d be disappointed if
+you didn’t have ’em. So she took me in a store an’ bought it out. Asked
+the man what he’d take for everything in his joint that had powder in
+it. Five hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk
+something out of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar
+bills in it an inch think. Then she asked _me_ to get them firecrackers
+’n’ wheels ’n’ skyrockets ’n’ balloons ’n’ other stuff down to the
+boat, and she asked me just as if I was a sweet little boy who’d be
+tickled to death to do it!”
+
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne
+in secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his
+words upon his companion. Incredulity shot into Alan’s eyes, and the
+humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that
+Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination. Yet what he had told him
+seemed impossible. Mary Standish had come aboard the _Nome_ a fugitive.
+All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and
+these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea.
+How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at
+Fairbanks as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian
+had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night
+she played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died?
+And was this money—possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle—the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It
+was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was
+cut under his father’s in the old cottonwood tree.
+
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: “You don’t seem
+interested, Alan. But I’m going on, or I’ll bust. I’ve got to tell you
+what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I
+won’t say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!”
+
+“Go on,” urged Alan. “I’m interested.”
+
+“I got ’em on the boat,” continued Stampede viciously. “And she with me
+every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not letting me out
+of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one hole to
+go in an’ come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a little
+shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin’
+something, an’ I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin’ to do with it, she said, ‘Stampede, that’s
+for you,’ an’ when I went to thank her, she said: ‘No, I don’t mean it
+that way. I mean that if you try to run away from me again I’m going to
+fill you full of holes.’ She said that! Threatened me. Then she bought
+me a new outfit from toe to summit—boots, pants, shirt, hat _and_ a
+necktie! And I didn’t say a word, not a word. She just led me in an’
+bought what she wanted and made me put ’em on.”
+
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on
+his pipe. “I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana,” he
+half groaned. “Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote
+the luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. ‘You’re
+goin’ to have a rest, Stampede,’ she says to me, smiling so cool and
+sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. ‘All you’ve got to do is show
+us the way and carry the bums.’ ‘Carry the what?’ I asks. ‘The bums,’
+she says, an’ then she explains that a bum is a thing filled with
+powder which makes a terrible racket when it goes off. So I took the
+bums, and the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and dropped
+out. He had the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we
+whacked up his load among us. I couldn’t stand up straight when we
+camped. We had crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range.
+And _would_ she let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she
+wouldn’t! And all the time while they was puffing an’ panting them
+Indians was worshipin’ her with their eyes. The last day, when we
+camped with the Range almost in sight, she drew ’em all up in a circle
+about her and gave ’em each a handful of money above their pay. ‘That’s
+because I love you,’ she says, and then she begins asking them funny
+questions. Did they have wives and children? Were they ever hungry? Did
+they ever know about any of their people starving to death? And just
+_why_ did they starve? And, Alan, so help me thunder if them Indians
+didn’t talk! Never heard Indians tell so much. And in the end she asked
+them the funniest question of all, asked them if they’d heard of a man
+named John Graham. One of them had, and afterward I saw her talking a
+long time with him alone, and when she come back to me, her eyes were
+sort of burning up, and she didn’t say good night when she went into
+her tent. That’s all, Alan, except—”
+
+“Except what, Stampede?” said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw
+a flash of humor in the little man’s eyes.
+
+“Except that she’s done with everyone on the Range just what she did
+with me between Chitina and here,” he said. “Alan, if she wants to say
+the word, why, _you_ ain’t boss any more, that’s all. She’s been there
+ten days, and you won’t know the place. It’s all done up in flags,
+waiting for you. She an’ Nawadlook and Keok are running everything but
+the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her, and the men—” He
+chuckled again. “Why, the men even go to the Sunday school she’s
+started! I went. Nawadlook sings.”
+
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, “Alan,
+you’ve been a big fool.”
+
+“I know it, Stampede.”
+
+“She’s a—a flower, Alan. She’s worth more than all the gold in the
+world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it’s too late
+now. I’m warnin’ you.”
+
+“I don’t quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?”
+
+“Because she likes me,” declared Stampede a bit fiercely. “I’m after
+her myself, Alan. You can’t butt in now.”
+
+“Great Scott!” gasped Alan. “You mean that Mary Standish—”
+
+“I’m not talking about Mary Standish,” said Stampede. “It’s Nawadlook.
+If it wasn’t for my whiskers—”
+
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale
+gloom ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long
+distance away.
+
+“One of them cussed bums,” he explained. “That’s why they hurried on
+ahead of us, Alan. _She_ says this Fourth of July celebration is going
+to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?”
+
+“I wonder,” said Alan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named
+Ghost Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running
+down from the foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and
+in the depths lay abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn
+smooth by reindeer and caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet
+below the twilight of the plains, Alan dropped on his knees beside a
+little spring that he groped for among the stones, and as he drank he
+could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of water up and down the
+kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls and eternally
+dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede’s face in the glow of
+another match, and the little man’s eyes were staring into the black
+chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+
+“Alan, you’ve been up this gorge?”
+
+“It’s a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill our
+fawns,” replied Alan. “I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is supposed to
+be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will enter
+it. The bones of dead men lie up there.”
+
+“Never prospected it?” persisted Stampede.
+
+“Never.”
+
+Alan heard the other’s grunt of disgust.
+
+“You’re reindeer-crazy,” he grumbled. “There’s gold in this canyon.
+Twice I’ve found it where there were dead men’s bones. They bring me
+good luck.”
+
+“But these were Eskimos. They didn’t come for gold.”
+
+“I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I’m
+telling you there wasn’t any of it left out of her when she was born!”
+He was silent for a moment, and then added: “When we came to that
+dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin’ there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn’t screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until
+it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and
+soppy with the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to
+pieces, and I guess I would if she hadn’t put a hand on my gun. An’
+with a funny little smile she says: ‘Don’t do it, Stampede. It makes me
+think of someone I know—and I wouldn’t want you to shoot him.’ Darned
+funny thing to say, wasn’t it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now,
+who the devil could look like a rotten skull?”
+
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They
+climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the
+tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a
+low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were
+lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge they looked out
+into a vast sweep of tundra which ran in among the out-guarding billows
+and hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form of a wide, semicircular
+bay. Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range, and scarcely
+had they reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its holster.
+Twice he blazed in the air.
+
+“Orders,” he said a little sheepishly. “Orders, Alan!”
+
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from
+beyond the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra.
+It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a
+sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and
+all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it
+very soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under
+their feet.
+
+“Bums!” growled Stampede. “She’s got Chink lanterns hanging up all
+about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found there
+was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!”
+
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until
+it seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then
+burst into innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed
+away with his forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied
+the magazine of his gun, the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning
+the chorus of sound that came from the range. A second rocket answered
+them. Two columns of flame leaped up from the earth as huge fires
+gained headway, and Alan could hear the shrill chorus of children’s
+voices mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All the people of his
+range were there. They had come in from the timber-naked plateaux and
+high ranges where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying shacks
+of the tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration
+of effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it
+all! He knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that
+fact from choking up his heart a little.
+
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying—that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for
+the big fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms
+were booming their hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his
+steps. Over a little knoll, and he was looking at the buildings of the
+range, wildly excited figures running about, women and children
+flinging moss on the fires, the tom-tom beaters squatted in a
+half-circle facing the direction from which he would come, and fifty
+Chinese lanterns swinging in the soft night-breeze.
+
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of
+them. Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children.
+Nawadlook and Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for
+him in any fight or stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede
+his rifle and hastened on, determined to keep his eyes from questing
+for Mary Standish in these first minutes of his return. He sounded the
+tundra call, and men, women, and little children came running to meet
+him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the beaters leaped to
+their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of voice,
+laughter, children’s squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands with
+both his own—hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men’s shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty
+around him counting the children. First, last, and always these were
+_his people_. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power
+and possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great
+family, and he shook hands twice and three times with the same men and
+women, and lifted the same children from the arms of delighted mothers,
+and cried out greetings and familiarities with an abandon which a few
+minutes ago knowledge of Mary Standish’s presence would have tempered.
+Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his
+cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch,
+stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna’s head disappeared, and there
+came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered
+about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their
+semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his
+cabin came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the
+one thing intended for his understanding alone. It was playing “When
+Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
+
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was
+alone. She was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear,
+the quiet pallor of her face, and the strain and repression which had
+seemed to be a part of her were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it
+was not with voice or action that she revealed herself. It was in her
+eyes, the flush of her cheeks and lips, the poise of her slim body as
+she waited for him. A thought flashed upon him that for a space she had
+forgotten herself and the shadow which had driven her to leap into the
+sea.
+
+“It is splendid!” she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. “I didn’t guess how badly they wanted you back. It
+must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that.”
+
+“And I thank you for your part,” he replied. “Stampede has told me. It
+was quite a bit of trouble, wasn’t it, with nothing more than the hope
+of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?” He nodded at the half-dozen
+flags over his cabin. “They’re rather pretty.”
+
+“It was no trouble. And I hope you don’t mind. It has been great fun.”
+
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It
+seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty
+to speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+
+“Yes, I do mind,” he said. “I mind so much that I wouldn’t trade what
+has happened for all the gold in these mountains. I’m sorry because of
+what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn’t trade that,
+either. I’m glad you’re alive. I’m glad you’re here. But something is
+missing. You know what it is. You must tell me about yourself. It is
+the only fair thing for you to do now.”
+
+She touched his arm with her hand. “Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please—let us wait.”
+
+“And then—tomorrow—”
+
+“It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine—just you—and your people—and
+their happiness.” He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned
+by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers. She
+nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin. “I am with Keok and
+Nawadlook. They have given me a home.” And then swiftly she added, “I
+don’t think you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!”
+
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on
+his arm she drew away from him. His face did not show his
+disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him.
+
+“Your people are expecting things of you,” she said. “A little later,
+if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms.”
+
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him
+and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart
+beating faster. She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not
+afraid of tomorrow. Thought of it and the questions he would ask did
+not frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away
+from himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood. It was as if
+something in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had
+dreamed through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and
+that possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a
+little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him. Surely
+he would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to him
+tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and
+he could not let her go away from him again.
+
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to
+discover himself doing things which he had never done before. His
+nature was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or
+less detached. At his people’s dances it was his habit to stand on the
+side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part.
+His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a
+new sense of freedom and a new desire to give physical expression to
+something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was kicking his feet and
+howling with the men, while the women dancers went through the muscular
+movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan. They had
+always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place between
+Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half
+breathless, did he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok
+was frankly amazed. Mary Standish’s eyes were shining, and she clapped
+her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and
+waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the
+balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made
+only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking,
+shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic
+matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never
+had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he
+had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table
+in the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack
+filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor—and
+then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In
+place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new
+covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk
+were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington
+and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against
+the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags.
+They recalled Alan’s mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary
+Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an
+American. Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the
+little flags. There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them
+there. She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them
+waiting the hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana,
+where she had purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He
+went into his bedroom and found new curtains at the window, a new
+coverlet on his bed, and a pair of red morocco slippers that he had
+never seen before. He took them up in his hands and laughed when he saw
+how she had misjudged the size of his feet.
+
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok’s phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was
+gone. Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing
+stillness drew him to the window from which he could see the cabin
+where lived Keok and Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and
+shriveled Sokwenna. It was there Mary Standish had said she was
+staying. For a long time Alan watched it while the final sounds of the
+night drifted away into utter silence.
+
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer
+to his invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly
+his eyes traveled about the room.
+
+“Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you.”
+
+“They seemed to be. I’m happy to be home again.”
+
+“Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room.”
+
+“I guessed as much,” replied Alan. “Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped
+her.”
+
+“Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an’ thoughtful, hasn’t she?”
+
+“And somewhat unusual,” added Alan.
+
+“And she is pretty.”
+
+“Most decidedly so.”
+
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede’s eyes. He twisted nervously in
+his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+
+“What’s on your mind, Stampede?”
+
+“Hell, mostly,” shot back Stampede with sudden desperation. “I’ve come
+loaded down with a dirty job, and I’ve kept it back this long because I
+didn’t want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to
+himself what he knows about a woman, but I’m thinking this is a little
+different. I hate to do it. I’d rather take the chance of a snake-bite.
+But you’d shoot me if you knew I was keeping it to myself.”
+
+“Keeping what to yourself?”
+
+“The truth, Alan. It’s up to me to tell you what I know about this
+young woman who calls herself Mary Standish.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede’s face, and the stolid effort
+he was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put
+into words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion’s
+promised disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of
+anticipation and relief. What he had passed through recently had burned
+out of him a certain demand upon human ethics which had been almost
+callous in its insistence, and while he believed that something very
+real and very stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary Standish
+north, he was now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with
+any force of circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to
+know the truth, yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself
+must tell it to him, and the fact that Stampede had in some way
+discovered this truth, and was about to make disclosure of it, was a
+tremendous lightening of the situation.
+
+“Go on,” he said at last. “What do you know about Mary Standish?”
+
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes. “It’s
+rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way I’m goin’ to
+oughta be shot, and if it was anything else—_anything_—I’d keep it to
+myself. But you’ve got to know. And you can’t understand just how
+rotten it is, either; you haven’t ridden in a coach with her during a
+storm that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an’ you haven’t hit the
+trail with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you’d
+done that, Alan, you’d feel like killing a man who said anything
+against her.”
+
+“I’m not inquiring into your personal affairs,” reminded Alan. “It’s
+your own business.”
+
+“That’s the trouble,” protested Stampede. “It’s not my business. It’s
+yours. If I’d guessed the truth before we hit the Range, everything
+would have been different. I’d have rid myself of her some way. But I
+didn’t find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok’s
+music machine to their cabin. I’ve been trying to make up my mind what
+to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States,
+a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody’s bunco pigeon chased by the
+police—almost anything—we could forgive her. Even if she’d shot up
+somebody—” He made a gesture of despair. “But she didn’t. She’s worse
+than that!”
+
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+
+“She’s one of John Graham’s tools sent up here to sneak and spy on
+you,” he finished desperately. “I’m sorry—but I’ve got the proof.”
+
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm
+opened, and when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them.
+“Found it on the floor when I took the phonograph back,” he explained.
+“It was twisted up hard. Don’t know why I unrolled it. Just chance.”
+
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper,
+watching closely the slight tensing of the other’s face. After a moment
+Alan dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There
+was no longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been
+accepted as a guest. Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the
+sudden and almost imperceptible shrug of Alan’s shoulders.
+
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. “Rather a
+missing link, isn’t it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I’m
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost—you didn’t tell me.”
+
+“Almost,” admitted Stampede.
+
+“And I wouldn’t have blamed you. She’s that kind—the kind that makes
+you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I’m going to believe
+that paper is a lie—until tomorrow. Will you take a message to Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I’m having breakfast at seven. Tell
+them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at eight. Later
+I’m going up into the foothills to look over the herds.”
+
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan’s part, and it was just
+the way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather
+ashamed of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of
+course they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn’t a shooting
+business—yet. But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note
+on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of
+something like that was in Alan’s eyes.
+
+He opened the door. “I’ll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight.
+Good night, Alan!”
+
+“Good night!”
+
+Alan watched Stampede’s figure until it had disappeared before he
+closed the door.
+
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the
+anxiety which the prospector’s unexpected revealment had aroused in
+him. The other’s footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the
+paper in his hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of
+ordinary business size and had been carelessly torn from the larger
+part of the page, so that nothing more than the signature and half a
+dozen lines of writing in a man’s heavy script remained.
+
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have
+possessed, read as follows:
+
+“_—If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing facts
+and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands within
+a year_.”
+
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John
+Graham.
+
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore
+for its maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself
+like a fibrous plant through all his plans for the future, had made of
+it an unforgetable writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand
+words written by his enemy, and the man who had been his father’s
+enemy, all that he had kept away from Stampede’s sharp eyes blazed in a
+sudden fury in his face. He dropped the paper as if it had been a thing
+unclean, and his hands clenched until his knuckles snapped in the
+stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the window through which a
+few moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary Standish’s
+cabin.
+
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made
+in the one hour of his father’s triumph—that hour in which the elder
+Holt might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not
+revolted in the last of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had
+witnessed. And Mary Standish was the instrument he had chosen to work
+his ends!
+
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend
+the absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or
+still the tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense
+to deny the fact that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary
+Standish; inadvertently she had kept it, had finally attempted to
+destroy it, and Stampede, by chance, had discovered a small but
+convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought he pieced together
+things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from the
+beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose,
+her boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor
+to work herself into his confidence—and with John Graham’s signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and
+irrefutable evidence. The “industry” which Graham had referred to could
+mean only his own and Carl Lomen’s, the reindeer industry which they
+had built up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his
+beef-baron friends were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this
+game of destruction clever Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+
+_But why had she leaped into the sea?_
+
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan’s brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against
+his arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad
+convictions that possessed him. If Mary Standish’s mission was to pave
+the way for his ruin, and if she was John Graham’s agent sent for that
+purpose, what reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting
+to give the world the impression that she had ended her life at sea?
+Surely such an act could in no way have been related with any plot
+which she might have had against him! In building up this structure of
+her defense he made no effort to sever her relationship with John
+Graham; that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her actions, and many
+of the things she had said were links inevitably associating her with
+his enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John
+Graham, was working _against_ him? Could some conflict between them
+have been the reason for her flight aboard the _Nome_, and was it
+because she discovered Rossland there—John Graham’s most trusted
+servant—that she formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what
+he knew to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated
+John Graham now, had at one time—and not very long ago—been an
+instrument of his trust; the letter he had written to her was positive
+proof of that. What it was that had caused a possible split between
+them and had inspired her flight from Seattle, and, later, her effort
+to bury a past under the fraud of a make-believe death, he might never
+learn, and just now he had no very great desire to look entirely into
+the whole truth of the matter. It was enough to know that of the past,
+and of the things that happened, she had been afraid, and it was in the
+desperation of this fear, with Graham’s cleverest agent at her heels,
+that she had appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win him to
+her assistance, had taken the matter so dramatically into her own
+hands. And within that same hour a nearly successful attempt had been
+made upon Rossland’s life. Of course the facts had shown that she could
+not have been directly responsible for his injury, but it was a
+haunting thing to remember as happening almost simultaneously with her
+disappearance into the sea.
+
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the
+night. Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper
+lanterns, and he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary
+Standish had placed over his cabin. There was something comforting in
+the sound, a solace to the dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a
+reminder of their day in Skagway when she had walked at his side with
+her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes and face filled with
+the inspiration of the mountains.
+
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously
+admirable about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine
+loveliness. She had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by
+courage—a courage which he would have been compelled to respect even in
+a man like John Graham, and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed
+to him as a virtue to be laid up apart and aside from any of the
+motives which might be directing it. From the beginning it had been a
+bewildering part of her—a clean, swift, unhesitating courage that had
+leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment would have hung
+waveringly; that one courage in all the world—a woman’s courage—which
+finds in the effort of its achievement no obstacle too high and no
+abyss too wide though death waits with outreaching arms on the other
+side. And, surely, where there had been all this, there must also have
+been some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of physical
+gain, or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan’s lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above
+his cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede’s discovery had
+proclaimed her to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of
+reasoning on their part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and
+the injustice of their suspicions. He tried to force the conviction
+upon himself, and reentering the cabin he went to bed, still telling
+himself that a great lie had built itself up out of nothing, and that
+the God of all things was good to him because Mary Standish was alive,
+and not dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the
+preceding day did not make him overreach the time he had set for
+himself, and he was up at six o’clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her
+old habits, and a tub filled with cold water was waiting for him. He
+bathed, shaved himself, put on fresh clothes, and promptly at seven was
+at breakfast. The table at which he ordinarily sat alone was in a
+little room with double windows, through which, as he enjoyed his
+meals, he could see most of the habitations of the range. Unlike the
+average Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber brought
+down from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of
+flowers lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a
+little knoll that looked down into one of the watered hollows of the
+tundra, was Sokwenna’s cabin. Because Sokwenna was the “old man” of the
+community and therefore the wisest—and because with him lived his
+foster-daughters, Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan’s tribal
+colony—Sokwenna’s cabin was next to Alan’s in size. And Alan, looking
+at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than
+half-way between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent
+miracle of rising in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan
+knew the men-folk of the village had departed hours ago for the distant
+herds. Always, when the reindeer drifted into the higher and cooler
+feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was this apparent abandonment,
+and after last night’s celebration the women and children were not yet
+awake to the activities of the long day, where the rising and setting
+of the sun meant so little.
+
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna’s cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the
+sun on the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes,
+he knew it was Mary Standish.
+
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For
+half an hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in
+preparation for the coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they
+arrived, the minute hand of his watch was at the hour of eight.
+
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by
+the smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they
+spread out the papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion,
+set down a record of the winter’s happenings. Tautuk’s voice, slow and
+very deliberate in its unfailing effort to master English without a
+slip, had in it a subdued note of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk
+Toolik, who was quick and staccato in his manner of speech, using
+sentences seldom of greater length than three or four words, and who
+picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with pride as he
+lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound that
+always sent a chill up Alan’s back.
+
+“A ver’ fine and prosper’ year,” said Tautuk in response to Alan’s
+first question as to general conditions. “We bean ver’ fortunate.”
+
+“One hell-good year,” backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a
+gun. “Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year—she peach!”
+
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the
+affairs of the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through
+achievement, and the pioneer’s pride in marking a new frontier with the
+creative forces of success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the
+passing of time. A hundred questions he had to ask, and the tongues of
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded with the things they desired to
+tell him. Their voices filled the room with a paean of triumph. His
+herds had increased by a thousand head during the fawning months of
+April and May, and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild,
+woodland caribou had produced a hundred calves of the super-animal
+whose flesh was bound to fill the markets of the States within a few
+years. Never had the moss been thicker under the winter snow; there had
+been no destructive fires; soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records
+had been beaten, and dairying in the edge of the Arctic was no longer
+an experiment, but an established fact, for Tautuk now had seven deer
+giving a pint and a half of milk each twice a day, nearly as rich as
+the best of cream from cattle, and more than twenty that were
+delivering from a cupful to a pint at a milking. And to this Amuk
+Toolik added the amazing record of their running-deer, Kauk, the
+three-year-old, had drawn a sledge five miles over unbeaten snow in
+thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds; Kauk and Olo, in team, had
+drawn the same sledge ten miles in twenty-six minutes and forty
+seconds, and one day he had driven the two ninety-eight miles in a
+mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka, the first of their
+inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and heavier beasts, he had
+drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three consecutive days at the
+rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks, Tanana, and the ranges of
+the Seward Peninsula agents of the swiftly spreading industry had
+offered as high as a hundred and ten dollars a head for breeding stock
+with the blood of the woodland caribou, and of these native and larger
+caribou of the tundras and forests seven young bulls and nine female
+calves had been captured and added to their own propagative forces.
+
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the
+way of ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the
+vast expanse of unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness
+of a hundred million people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory
+and reward of the conqueror through such achievement as this; a land
+betrayed rising at last out of the slime of political greed and
+ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening, that was destined in
+his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was Alaska rising
+up slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep, mountain-sealed
+forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth coming
+into possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in
+that long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its
+ultimate ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with
+the song of success.
+
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he
+looked at his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished
+with his papers and books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk’s voice
+coming from the dark mouth of the underground icebox dug into the
+frozen subsoil of the tundra, and pausing at the glimmer of his old
+housekeeper’s candle, he turned aside, descended the few steps, and
+entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight feet under the
+surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for some
+hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when
+alone, but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself
+that the tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness
+and luxuriance, never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below
+which point remained the icy cold placed there so long ago that “even
+the spirits did not know.” He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring
+time and faith in terms of “spirits,” which she had never quite given
+up for the missionaries, and was about to make his presence known when
+a voice interrupted him, so close at his side that the speaker,
+concealed in the shadow of the wall, could have reached out a hand and
+touched him.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Holt!”
+
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in
+the gloom.
+
+“Good morning,” he replied. “I was on my way to your place when
+Wegaruk’s voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems like a
+friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak,
+Mammy?” he called.
+
+Wegaruk’s strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the
+light from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell
+clearly upon Mary Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was
+as if a spotlight had been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit
+of darkness, and something about her, which was not her prettiness or
+the beauty that was in her eyes and hair, sent a sudden and
+unaccountable thrill through Alan. It remained with him when they drew
+back out of gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving Wegaruk
+to snuff her tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did
+not leave him when they walked over the tundra together toward
+Sokwenna’s cabin. It was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which
+it was impossible for him to subdue or explain; something which he knew
+he should understand but could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge
+of this mystery was in the girl’s face, glowing in a gentle
+embarrassment, as she told him she had been expecting him, and that
+Keok and Nawadlook had given up the cabin to them, so that he might
+question her uninterrupted. But with this soft flush of her uneasiness,
+revealing itself in her eyes and cheeks, he saw neither fear nor
+hesitation.
+
+In the “big room” of Sokwenna’s cabin, which was patterned after his
+own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him to
+speak.
+
+“You love flowers,” he said lamely. “I want to thank you for the
+flowers you placed in my cabin. And the other things.”
+
+“Flowers are a habit with me,” she replied, “and I have never seen such
+flowers as these. Flowers—and birds. I never dreamed that there were so
+many up here.”
+
+“Nor the world,” he added. “It is ignorant of Alaska.”
+
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something
+about her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely
+thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from
+his eyes. The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew
+a little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there
+was no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no
+sign that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In
+this moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that
+she was like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin,
+and who had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him
+to achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining
+hair, her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its
+little heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now
+lay in the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and
+the pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together
+with an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and
+in sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:
+
+“Mary Standish, in God’s name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
+come up here!”
+
+“I have come,” she said, looking at him steadily, “because I know that
+a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her.”
+
+“But you didn’t know that—not until—the cottonwoods!” he protested.
+
+“Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick’s cabin.”
+
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at
+her like a man who had been struck, while intelligence—a dawning
+reason—an understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning,
+sent the still greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an
+exclamation of amazement.
+
+“You were at Ellen McCormick’s! She gave you—_that!_”
+
+She nodded. “Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don’t
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I
+am going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you
+returned from searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn’t know.
+But _she_ did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a
+woman, would promise not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a
+great deal of my faith, and my courage was about gone, and I was afraid
+of you.”
+
+“Afraid of me?”
+
+“Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick
+when she asked you—that question; and when you answered as you did, I
+was like stone. I was amazed and didn’t believe, for I was certain that
+after what had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a
+peculiar sense of honor were making the search for me. Not until two
+days later, when your letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we read
+them—”
+
+“You opened both?”
+
+“Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found—and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn’t exactly fair, but you
+couldn’t expect two women to resist a temptation like that. And—_I
+wanted to know_.”
+
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the
+confession. Her gaze met Alan’s with beautiful steadiness.
+
+“And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give
+me a fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my
+courage—and in the end you will drive me away—”
+
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering
+eyes, tears which she did not brush away, but through which, in a
+moment, she smiled at him as no woman had ever smiled at him before.
+And with the tears there seemed to possess her a pride which lifted her
+above all confusion, a living spirit of will and courage and womanhood
+that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and fear that had gathered
+in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+
+“You have come—because you know I love you, and you—”
+
+“Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you
+that inspired me, Alan Holt.”
+
+“There must have been more than that,” he persisted. “Some other
+reason.”
+
+“Two,” she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the dissolution
+of tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+
+“And those—”
+
+“One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that.”
+
+“It has to do with John Graham?”
+
+She bowed her head. “Yes, with John Graham.”
+
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment
+it seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the
+import of the thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed
+red instead of paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes
+burned with a lustrous fire.
+
+“John Graham,” she repeated. “The man you hate and want to kill.”
+
+Slowly he turned toward the door. “I am leaving immediately after
+dinner to inspect the herds up in the foothills,” he said. “And
+you—_are welcome here_.”
+
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at
+the door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+
+“Thank you, Alan Holt,” she cried softly, “_Oh, I thank you!_!”
+
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last
+something had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a
+moment they stood in silence.
+
+“I’m sorry—sorry I said to you what I did that night on the _Nome_,”
+she said. “I accused you of brutality, of unfairness, of—of even worse
+than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big and clean and
+splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, _and you say
+I am welcome!_ And I don’t want you to go. You have made me _want_ to
+tell you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will
+think as kindly of me as you can when you have heard.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the
+world. There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came
+like a sob to the girl’s lips as she turned to the window and looked
+out into the blaze of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard
+Tautuk’s voice, calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and
+he heard clearly Keok’s merry laughter as she answered him. A
+gray-cheeked thrush flew up to the roof of Sokwenna’s cabin and began
+to sing. It was as if these things had come as a message to both of
+them, relieving a tension, and significant of the beauty and glory and
+undying hope of life. Mary Standish turned from the window with shining
+eyes.
+
+“Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof,” she said.
+
+“It is—possibly—because you are here,” he replied.
+
+She regarded him seriously. “I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure,
+if I were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me.
+Hopelessness cannot be so deep that bird-song will not reach it.”
+
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She
+closed the door which he had left partly open, and made a little
+gesture for him to resume the chair which he had left a few moments
+before. She seated herself first and smiled at him wistfully, half
+regretfully, as she said:
+
+“I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should
+have told you aboard the _Nome_. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid,
+but ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am
+not sorry it happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up
+here, and all this—your world, your people, and you—have meant a great
+deal to me. You will understand when I have made my confession.”
+
+“No, I don’t want that,” he protested almost roughly. “I don’t want you
+to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you wish to tell me as a
+friend, that’s different. I don’t want a confession, which would imply
+that I have no faith in you.”
+
+“And you have faith in me?”
+
+“Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the
+same if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship.”
+
+“Oh, _you mean that_!”
+
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed
+to see only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of
+the tundra daises behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to
+say tugging at his heart, he wondered why she was so white.
+
+“You mean that,” her lips repeated slowly, “after all that has
+happened—even after—that part of a letter—which Stampede brought to you
+last night—”
+
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret
+between himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she
+saw it written in his face.
+
+“No, it wasn’t Stampede,” she said. “He didn’t tell me. It—just
+happened. And after this letter—you still believe in me?”
+
+“I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am—most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham’s signature was a lie.”
+
+“It wasn’t that—quite. But it didn’t refer to you, or to me. It was
+part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while I was
+on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of
+them as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the
+whole of it. The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper
+which you did not return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the
+conventional thing for a woman to do—to use paper for padding in a
+soft-toed slipper.”
+
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the
+tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer
+happiness. But Mary Standish’s voice, continuing in its quiet and
+matter-of-fact way, held him speechless, though she could not fail to
+see the effect upon him of this simple explanation of the presence of
+Graham’s letter.
+
+“I was in Nawadlook’s room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of paper
+from the floor,” she was saying. “I was looking at the slipper a few
+minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin on
+the ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it,
+and the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and
+went out. I hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the
+few words when I heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had
+laid it, hid myself in Nawadlook’s room, and saw Stampede when he
+carried it to you. I don’t know why I allowed it to be done. I had no
+reason. Maybe it was just—intuition, and maybe it was because—just in
+that hour—I so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and
+I thought that what Stampede had found would make you do it. And I
+deserve it! I deserve nothing better at your hands.”
+
+“But it isn’t true,” he protested. “The letter was to Rossland.”
+
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. “Better that it were
+true, and all that _is_ true were false,” she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. “I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative
+would I accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to
+understand?”
+
+“I am afraid—I can not.” Even as he persisted in denial, the pain which
+had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. “I understand—only—that I am glad you
+are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an hour ago.”
+
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of
+rich color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining
+lashes that lay against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her
+breath, and her hands grew steady in her lap.
+
+“Would you mind—if I asked you first—to tell me _your_ story of John
+Graham?” she spoke softly. “I know it, a little, but I think it would
+make everything easier if I could hear it from you—now.”
+
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light
+playing in her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she
+had not changed her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She
+raised her eyes, and the question her lips had formed was glowing in
+them as clearly as if she had voiced it again in words. A desire rose
+in him to speak to her as he had never spoken to another human being,
+and to reveal for her—and for her alone—the thing that had harbored
+itself in his soul for many years. Looking up at him, waiting, partial
+understanding softening her sweet face, a dusky glow in her eyes, she
+was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then laughed in a strange
+repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward her.
+
+“I think I know how my father must have loved my mother,” he said. “But
+I can’t make you feel it. I can’t hope for that. She died when I was so
+young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me. But for my
+father she _never_ died, and as I grew older she became more and more
+alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if she
+were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned.
+And never could my father remain away from the place where she was
+buried very long at a time. He called it _home_, that little cup at the
+foot of the mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a
+paradise of birds and flowers keeping her company, and all the great,
+wild world she loved about her. There was the cabin, too; the little
+cabin where I was born, with its back to the big mountain, and filled
+with the handiwork of my mother as she had left it when she died. And
+my father too used to laugh and sing there—he had a clear voice that
+would roll half-way up the mountain; and as I grew older the miracle at
+times stirred me with a strange fear, so real to my father did my dead
+mother seem when he was home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish!
+Oh, it may seem weird and ghostly now, but it was _true_—so true that I
+have lain awake nights thinking of it and wishing that it had never
+been so!”
+
+“Then you have wished a great sin,” said the girl in a voice that
+seemed scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. “I hope someone
+will feel toward me—some day—like that.”
+
+“But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about,” he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins.
+“Interests were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were
+reaching out, encroaching steadily a little nearer to our cup at the
+foot of the mountain. But my father did not dream of what might happen.
+It came in the spring of the year he took me on my first trip to the
+States, when I was eighteen. We were gone five months, and they were
+five months of hell for him. Day and night he grieved for my mother and
+the little home under the mountain. And when at last we came back—”
+
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the
+tundra or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+
+“When we came back,” he repeated in a cold, hard voice, “a construction
+camp of a hundred men had invaded my father’s little paradise. The
+cabin was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and this
+channel ran where my mother’s grave had been. They had treated it with
+that same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand
+Indian graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud.
+And from the moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun
+rose in the heavens for him. His heart died, yet he went on living—for
+a time.”
+
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her
+slim shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was
+as if he beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+
+“And the man who committed that crime—was John Graham,” she said, in
+the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer would
+be.
+
+“Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work
+rather than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power;
+they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a
+grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my
+father and I went to see him; yes, _laughed_, in that noiseless, oily,
+inside way of his, as you might think of a snake laughing.
+
+“We found him among the men. My God, you don’t know how I hated
+him!—Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool
+he was to think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I
+wanted to kill him, but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet,
+steady hand, and said: ‘It is my duty, Alan. _My duty_.’
+
+“And then—it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham, but
+God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and
+with his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not
+unlocked them with my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of
+helpless pulp, and from the ground, with the last of the breath that
+was in him, he cursed my father, and he cursed me. He said that all the
+days of his life he would follow us, until we paid a thousand times for
+what we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have
+dragged a rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his
+clothes from him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he
+scourged him with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was
+unconscious and like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we
+went into the mountains.”
+
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him,
+and now her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face
+were aflame, as if she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen
+between them.
+
+“And after that, Alan; after that—”
+
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it,
+scarcely understood.
+
+“John Graham kept his promise,” he answered grimly. “The influence and
+money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was
+interested were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most
+heavily interested was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he
+partly owned in Dawson was bankrupted. One after another things
+happened, and after each happening my father would receive a polite
+note of regret from Graham, written as if the word actually came from a
+friend. But my father cared little for money losses now. His heart was
+drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and the grave
+that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at
+Nome, dead.”
+
+“_Dead_!”
+
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary
+Standish, for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+
+“Yes—murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He didn’t do it
+personally, but it was _his money_ that accomplished the end. Of course
+nothing ever came of it. I won’t tell you how his influence and power
+have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of reindeer I had,
+and how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about me when
+I was down in the States last winter in an effort to make _your_ people
+see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him
+under our mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that
+won’t save him when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I
+loosened my father’s. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and
+his money have become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as
+he destroyed the life of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power
+ends, he will make of this great land nothing more than a shell out of
+which he and his kind have taken all the meat. And the hour of
+deadliest danger is now upon us.”
+
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her
+where she sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it
+frightened him. And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and
+never had he seen such living pools of torture and of horror. He was
+amazed at the quietness of her voice when she began to speak, and
+startled by the almost deadly coldness of it.
+
+“I think you can understand—now—why I leaped into the sea, why I wanted
+the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you the
+truth,” she said. “_I am John Graham’s wife._”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Alan’s first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a mésalliance of the sort Mary
+Standish had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with
+face and eyes that from the beginning had made him feel all that was
+good and sweet in life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John
+Graham, the pitiless iron-man, without conscience and without soul,
+coarsened by power, fiendish in his iniquities, and old enough to be
+her father!
+
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled
+himself together without letting her see the physical part of the
+effort it was taking. And he tried to find something to say that would
+help clear her eyes of the agony that was in them.
+
+“That—is a most unreasonable thing—to be true,” he said.
+
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the
+words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have
+said, or acted, under the circumstances.
+
+She nodded. “It is. But the world doesn’t look at it in that way. Such
+things just happen.”
+
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies
+were heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer
+life in Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical
+worth, dryly but carefully written—and she had been reading it. It
+struck him as a symbol of the fight she was making, of her courage, and
+of her desire to triumph in the face of tremendous odds that must have
+beset her. He still could not associate her completely with John
+Graham. Yet his face was cold and white.
+
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a
+newspaper clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it to
+him.
+
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young and
+beautiful girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the girl’s
+shoulder, was a picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were strangers to
+him. He read their names, and then the headlines. “A
+Hundred-Million-Dollar Love” was the caption, and after the word love
+was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty and the other thing, two great
+fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked at Mary Standish. It was
+impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+
+“I tore that from a paper in Cordova,” she said. “They have nothing to
+do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don’t you see something in her
+eyes? Can’t you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
+things. But it seemed to me—when I saw her face—that in her eyes were
+agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
+hide them from the world. It’s just another proof, one of thousands,
+that such unreasonable things do happen.”
+
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
+which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
+He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
+little hands that lay in Mary Standish’s lap. The warmth had gone out
+of it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it
+between his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing
+nothing in particular. It was only the ticking of Keok’s clock that
+broke the silence for a time. Then he released the hand, and it dropped
+in the girl’s lap again. She had been looking steadily at the streak of
+gray in his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a light which he did
+not see, and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost imperceptible
+inclination of her head toward him.
+
+“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he said. “I realize now how you must have
+felt back there in the cottonwoods.”
+
+“No, you don’t realize—_you don’t!_” she protested.
+
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her
+again. It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as
+if he had unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was
+amazed at the swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+
+“You don’t understand, and I am determined that you _shall_,” she went
+on. “I would die before I let you go away thinking what is now in your
+mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be hated for the truth
+than because of the horrible thing which you must believe if I remain
+silent.” She forced a wan smile to her lips. “You know, Belinda
+Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don’t fit in now, do
+they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when
+Alaska was young—”
+
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+
+“I have committed a great folly,” she said, hesitating an instant in
+his silence. “I see very clearly now the course I should have taken.
+You will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard
+what I am going to say. Your face is like—a rock.”
+
+“It is because your tragedy is mine,” he said.
+
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was
+a vivid, feverish glow. “I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich,”
+she said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. “I don’t
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish
+and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter,
+who was grandfather’s brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle
+Peter. He was a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a
+wheel-chair, and he was nearly seventy-five when he died. As a baby
+that wheel-chair, and my rides in it with him about the great house in
+which we lived, were my delights. He was my father and mother,
+everything that was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as a
+child, that if God was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God.
+It was Uncle Peter who told me, year after year, the old stories and
+legends of the Standishes. And he was always happy—always happy and
+glad and seeing nothing but sunshine though he hadn’t stood on his feet
+for nearly sixty years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen,
+five days before my birthday came. I think he must have been to me what
+your father was to you.”
+
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his
+face now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+
+“I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish,” she went on.
+“He didn’t love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I don’t think I
+loved him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole world must have
+stood in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the world
+_was_ afraid of him—bankers, presidents, even the strongest men in
+great financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the
+Grahams, and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the
+cleverest lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of
+the two families. My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died,
+so it was John Graham who was the actual working force behind the
+combined fortunes of the two families. Sometimes, as I now recall it,
+Uncle Peter was like a little child. I remember how he tried to make me
+understand just how big my grandfather’s interests were by telling me
+that if two dollars were taken from every man, woman, and child in the
+United States, it would just about add up to what he and the Grahams
+possessed, and my Grandfather Standish’s interests were three-quarters
+of the whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my Uncle
+Peter’s face at times when I asked him how all this money was used, and
+where it was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and
+I never understood. I didn’t know _why_ people feared my grandfather
+and John Graham. I didn’t know of the stupendous power my grandfather’s
+money had rolled up for them. I didn’t know”—her voice sank to a
+shuddering whisper—“I didn’t know how they were using it in Alaska, for
+instance. I didn’t know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and
+death. I don’t think even Uncle Peter knew _that_.”
+
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a
+slow fire.
+
+“Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the
+biggest factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to
+suspect that John Graham was _anticipating_ a little girl of thirteen,
+and I didn’t guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so
+grandly white of beard and hair, so like a god of power when he stood
+among men, was even then planning that I should be given to him, so
+that a monumental combination of wealth might increase itself still
+more in that juggernaut of financial achievement for which he lived.
+And to bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not fail, they
+set Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of
+face, and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had
+confidence in him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a
+brain which matched in cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham
+himself. And he did his work well, Alan.”
+
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without
+embarrassment. With her nervous fingers tying and untying the two
+corners of a little handkerchief in her lap, she went on, after a
+moment of silence in which the ticking of Keok’s clock seemed tense and
+loud.
+
+“When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to
+Sharpleigh as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently
+he educated me to the thought that it was right and just, and my
+greatest duty in life, to carry out the stipulation of my grandfather’s
+will and marry John Graham. Otherwise, he told me—if that union was not
+brought about before I was twenty-two—not a dollar of the great fortune
+would go to the house of Standish; and because he was clever enough to
+know that money alone would not urge me, he showed me a letter which he
+said my Uncle Peter had written, and which I was to read on my
+seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter urged me to live
+up to the Standish name and join in that union of the two great
+fortunes which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I didn’t
+dream the letter was a forgery. And in the end they won—and I
+promised.”
+
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her
+fingers. “Do you despise me?” she asked.
+
+“No,” he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. “I love you.”
+
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+
+“I promised,” she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse that
+had made her ask him the question. “But it was to be business, a cold,
+unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him.
+In the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I
+would remain his wife—but never more than that. They agreed, and I in
+my ignorance believed.
+
+“I didn’t see the trap. I didn’t see the wicked triumph in John
+Graham’s heart. No power could have made me believe then that he wanted
+to possess only _me_; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly
+lured into his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since
+Uncle Peter died I had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in
+a make-believe world of my own, and I read, read, read; and the thought
+grew stronger and stronger in me that I had lived another life
+somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years when the world was
+clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein money and
+power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of
+manhood and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these
+things, and yet because others had molded me, and because of my
+misguided Standish sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to
+John Graham.
+
+“In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more
+of the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I
+investigated a little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason
+for it, which has come to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost
+knew, at the last, that he was a monster, but the world had been told I
+was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with his fatherly hypocrisy was behind
+me, and John Graham treated me so courteously and so coolly that I did
+not suspect the terrible things in his heart and mind—and I went on
+with the bargain. _I married him._”
+
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal
+of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless
+expression of Alan’s face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from
+her like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her
+back crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she
+continued, while he stood up and faced her.
+
+“You needn’t go on,” he interrupted in a voice so low and terribly hard
+that she felt the menacing thrill of it. “You needn’t. I will settle
+with John Graham, if God gives me the chance.”
+
+“You would have me stop _now_—before I have told you of the only shred
+of triumph to which I may lay claim!” she protested. “Oh, you may be
+sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of it all, but I
+swear before my God that I didn’t realize it then, until it was too
+late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem—that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a
+deadly hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was
+a duty; that I should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the
+hands of those I trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or
+suspect that I was sacrificing _myself_; at no time, blind though you
+may call me, did I see a hint of that sickening danger into which I was
+voluntarily going. No, not even an hour before the wedding did I
+suspect that, for it had all been so coldly planned, like a great deal
+in finance—so carefully adjudged by us all as a business affair, that I
+felt no fear except that sickness of soul which comes of giving up
+one’s life. And no hint of it came until the last of the few words were
+spoken which made us man and wife, and then I saw in John Graham’s eyes
+something which I had never seen there before. And Sharpleigh—”
+
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+
+“I went to my room. I didn’t lock my door, because never had it been
+necessary to do that. I didn’t cry. No, I didn’t cry. But something
+strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It seemed
+to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I
+saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind
+him, and locked it. My room. He had come into _my room!_ The
+unexpectedness of it—the horror—the insult roused me from my stupor. I
+sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm’s reach of me, a
+look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to
+suspect—or fear. His arms were reaching out—
+
+“‘You are my wife,’ he said.
+
+“Oh, I knew, then. ‘_You are my wife_,’ he repeated. I wanted to
+scream, but I couldn’t; and then—then—his arms reached me; I felt them
+crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the poison of his
+lips was at my face—and I believed that I was lost, and that no power
+could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my room—the man
+who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me voice, who
+put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh—yes, laugh, and
+almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned
+him, and he freed me—while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that
+evening, and that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I
+said these things, smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a
+great, gloating, triumphant beast, believing that the obedience of
+wifehood was about to give him what he had expected to find through
+dishonor—and I was left alone.
+
+“I thought of only one thing then—escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived
+with Uncle Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never
+been—and it was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I
+wanted never to face it again, never to look into the eyes of those I
+had known. And even as these thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was
+filling a traveling bag in a fever of madness, and Uncle Peter was at
+my side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had no minutes to lose, for
+the man who had left me was clever and might guess the truth that lay
+hid behind my smiles and cajolery.
+
+“I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh’s low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of
+laughter, and with it I heard John Graham’s voice. I was thinking only
+of the sea—to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I
+drew money. I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any
+ship, and it seemed to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came
+to a great ship that was leaving for Alaska—and you know—what happened
+then—Alan Holt.”
+
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was
+there, and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her
+eyes, but a soft glory of pride and exultation.
+
+“I am clean of John Graham,” she cried. “_Clean!_”
+
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort
+of way, and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head
+that the tears might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining
+and clear as stars.
+
+“Do you despise me now?”
+
+“I love you,” he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+
+“I am glad,” she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+
+“And Rossland was on the _Nome_, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham,” he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+
+She nodded. “Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped
+into the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead.”
+
+“And Rossland was hurt.”
+
+“Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends.”
+
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood
+looking toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests
+of the mountains behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood
+beside him.
+
+“I understand,” she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch
+upon his arm. “You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only
+one. That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom
+in the old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I
+must return with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry.
+I dread it. I—would rather die.”
+
+“And I—” he began, then caught himself and pointed to the distant hills
+and mountains. “The herds are there,” he said. “I am going to them. I
+may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to be here when I
+return?”
+
+“Yes, if that is your desire.”
+
+“It is.”
+
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+
+“And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way.”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+“It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that—alone—”
+
+“You won’t be alone,” he said quietly, still looking at the far-away
+hills. “If you go, I am going with you.”
+
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and
+then, with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at
+the half-opened door of Nawadlook’s room, and the glory in her eyes was
+the glory of his dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over
+the tundras in those days of grief and half-madness when he had thought
+she was dead.
+
+“I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick’s cabin the day you came,” she was
+saying. “And I thank God for giving me the madness and courage to come
+to _you_. I am not afraid of anything in the world now—because—_I love
+you, Alan_!”
+
+And as Nawadlook’s door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that
+twisted the world about him until for a little it held neither vision
+nor space nor sound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden
+tundra haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream,
+Alan Holt set off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and
+Keok and Nawadlook at the corral bars, with Stampede little regretting
+that he was left behind to guard the range. For a mighty resolution had
+taken root in the prospector’s heart, and he felt himself thrilled and
+a bit trembling at the nearness of the greatest drama that had ever
+entered his life. Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw
+that Keok and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+
+The ridge beyond the coulée out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna’s cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan
+set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven
+pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force
+which was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but
+almost an inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he
+took, with his head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was
+an effort behind which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will.
+He wanted to go back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the
+weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost
+fallen a victim to his selfishness and passion in the moment when she
+stood at Nawadlook’s door, telling him that she loved him. An iron hand
+had drawn him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand that kept
+his face to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated
+the words that had set his world on fire.
+
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing
+with him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully
+to understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental
+calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so
+unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the
+mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His
+happiness was almost an insanity. The dream wherein he had wandered
+with a spirit of the dead had come true; it was the old idyl in the
+flesh again, his father, his mother—and back in the cabin beyond the
+ridge such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid to return. He
+laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed exultation as
+he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words came
+to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would
+fight for her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and
+he walked so swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind
+with the deer, so that in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay
+between them.
+
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over
+him in its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what
+he had done—justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her
+as Mary Graham. But she was Graham’s wife. And if he had gone to her in
+that moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook’s
+door, if he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid
+the world at his feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham
+himself. Thought of the narrowness of his escape and of the first mad
+desire to call her back from Nawadlook’s room, to hold her in his arms
+again as he had held her in the cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into
+his face. Something greater than his own fighting instinct had turned
+him to the open door of the cabin. It was Mary Standish—her courage,
+the-glory of faith and love shining in her eyes, her measurement of him
+as a man. She had not been afraid to say what was in her heart, because
+she knew what he would do.
+
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge
+of a slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows
+of sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were
+sweating. Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the
+sun had sunk to its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott
+foothills. Here they rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when
+a golden twilight filled the land, and then resumed the journey toward
+the mountains.
+
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the
+herds steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and
+valleys. Here they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in
+slowly moving streams wherever the doors of the hills and mountains
+opened into new grazing fields, until Alan’s ten thousand reindeer were
+in three divisions, two of the greatest traveling westward, and one, of
+a thousand head, working north and east. The first and second days Alan
+remained with the nearest and southward herd. The third day he went on
+with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in the mountains and
+joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of feeding
+animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was
+becoming stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A
+multitude of emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary
+Standish must leave the range when he returned. He had a grim sense of
+honor, and a particularly devout one when it had to do with women, and
+though he conceded nothing of right and justice in the relationship
+which existed between the woman he loved and John Graham, he knew that
+she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible thing for
+her to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the
+States. The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent
+way, and when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his
+will held down, and yet never quite throttled completely—that something
+which urged him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own
+hands what a glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John
+Graham, if it ever came to that, in the madly desirable way he visioned
+for himself in those occasional moments when the fires of temptation
+blazed hottest.
+
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+
+“If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?”
+
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman’s eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his
+stolid mind a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a
+reassuring hand upon his arm.
+
+“I don’t mean she’s going to, Tautuk,” he laughed. “She loves you. I
+know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so hopeless as a
+lover that she is punishing you while she has the right—before she
+marries you. But if she _should_ marry someone else, what would you
+do?”
+
+“My brother?” asked Tautuk.
+
+“No.”
+
+“A relative?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“A friend?”
+
+“No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone
+Keok hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him.”
+
+“I would kill him,” said Tautuk quietly.
+
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should
+Mary Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything
+to escape from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and
+friends. She had scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled
+her life in the hazard, and in the end had come to him! Why should he
+not keep her? John Graham and the world believed she was dead. And he
+was master here. If—some day—Graham should happen to cross his path, he
+would settle the matter in Tautuk’s way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and
+the world lay about him in a soft glow, and the valley below was filled
+with misty billows of twilight out of which came to him faintly the
+curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and the grunting contentment
+of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had known it would come
+in the end.
+
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd,
+and on the sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like
+Sokwenna’s foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of
+white in him, and when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley
+where the deer were grazing, he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee
+Doodle on a mouth-organ. It was Tatpan who told him that an hour or two
+before an exhausted stranger had come into camp, looking for him, and
+that the man was asleep now, apparently more dead than alive, but had
+given instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours, and not a
+minute later. Together they had a look at him.
+
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a
+peculiarly boyish appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife,
+profoundly asleep. Tatpan looked at his big, silver watch and in a low
+voice described how the stranger had stumbled into camp, so tired he
+could scarcely put one foot ahead of the other; and that he had dropped
+down where he now lay when he learned Alan was with one of the other
+herds.
+
+[Illustration: The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.]
+
+“He must have come a long distance,” said Tatpan, “and he has traveled
+fast.”
+
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place
+him. He wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of
+his hand on the grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in
+sleep the mysterious stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about
+his revolver in a way that spoke of caution and experience.
+
+“If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him,” said Alan.
+
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water
+that ran down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing
+the stranger. By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the
+little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared,
+and the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes
+twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave
+his gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan.
+Only one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster
+like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and
+all at once Tatpan’s eyes began to bulge.
+
+“Stampede!” he cried.
+
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+
+“It’s me,” he conceded. “I had to do it. It was give one or t’other
+up—my whiskers _or her_. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an’ the
+whiskers won. I cut cards, an’ the whiskers won. I played Klondike
+ag’in’ ’em, an’ the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an’ shaved
+’em. Do I look so bad, Alan?”
+
+“You look twenty years younger,” declared Alan, stifling his desire to
+laugh when he saw the other’s seriousness.
+
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Then why the devil did
+they laugh!” he demanded. “Mary Standish didn’t laugh. She cried. Just
+stood an’ cried, an’ then sat down an’ cried, she thought I was that
+blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an’ had to go to bed.
+That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says
+it wasn’t because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in
+me was so sudden she couldn’t help it. Nawadlook says I’ve got a
+character-ful chin—”
+
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede’s face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened.
+Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan
+felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held.
+This, at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down
+the old trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose
+fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in
+Alaskan history which would never be forgotten. Where his first impulse
+had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of
+other days, who, when in Stampede’s presence, knew they were in the
+presence of a master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan
+knew why. The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+
+“Some day, if we’re lucky, there always comes a woman to make the world
+worth living in, Stampede,” he said.
+
+“There does,” replied Stampede.
+
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+
+“And I take it you love Mary Standish,” he added, “and that you’d fight
+for her if you had to.”
+
+“I would,” said Alan.
+
+“Then it’s time you were traveling,” advised Stampede significantly.
+“I’ve been twelve hours on the trail without a rest. She told me to
+move fast, and I’ve moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said it was almost
+a matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted to
+stay, but she wouldn’t let me. It’s _you_ she wants. Rossland is at the
+range.”
+
+“_Rossland_!”
+
+“Yes, Rossland. And it’s my guess John Graham isn’t far away. I smell
+happenings, Alan. We’d better hurry.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range,
+but to ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and
+specific direction was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and
+within the first half-dozen miles he had abandoned the adventure to
+continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan had no saddle-deer in his herd,
+and the swiftest messenger would require many hours in which to reach
+Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an hour after his
+arrival at Tatpan’s camp. Stampede, declaring himself a new man after
+his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen to
+Alan’s advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter’s
+eyes as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race
+through the foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the
+grimness that had settled in the face behind him. His own mind was
+undergoing an upheaval of conjecture and wild questioning. That
+Rossland had discovered Mary Standish was not dead was the least
+astonishing factor in the new development. The information might easily
+have reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife Ellen. The
+astonishing thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up the
+trail of her flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more
+amazing fact that he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly
+at his range. His heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be
+directly under Graham’s orders.
+
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to
+reveal all that had happened on the day of his departure for the
+mountains. He proceeded to do this without equivocation or hesitancy,
+for there now pressed upon him a grim anticipation of impending events
+ahead of them.
+
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other’s disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face
+unchanged. Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish’s
+confession of love at Nawadlook’s door did the fighting lines soften
+about his comrade’s eyes and mouth.
+
+Stampede’s lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. “I knew that a
+long time ago,” he said. “I guessed it that first night of storm in the
+coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana. She
+didn’t tell me, but I wasn’t blind. It was the note that puzzled and
+frightened me—the note she stuffed in her slipper. And Rossland told
+me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as he
+intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately.”
+
+“And you left her alone after _that_?”
+
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan’s
+suddenly quickened pace.
+
+“She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides—”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Sokwenna won’t sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he’s
+watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick off a
+duck the other day at two hundred yards.”
+
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could
+not name clutching at his heart, “Why did you say Graham might not be
+far away?”
+
+“In my bones,” replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again. “In my
+bones!”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+“Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes,
+too. Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he
+owns it. I take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something
+big to reckon with. He asked me how many men we had. I told him,
+stretching it a little. He grinned. He couldn’t keep back that grin. It
+was as if a devil in him slipped out from hiding for an instant.”
+
+Suddenly he caught Alan’s arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men
+stared at each other.
+
+“Alan, we’re short-sighted. I’m damned if I don’t think we ought to
+call the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!”
+
+“You think it’s that bad?”
+
+“Might be. If Graham’s behind Rossland and has men with him—”
+
+“We’re two and a half hours from Tatpan,” said Alan, in a cold,
+unemotional voice. “He has only half a dozen men with him, and it will
+take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik. There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two
+with the upper. I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All
+are armed. It may be foolish, but I’m following your hunch.”
+
+They gripped hands.
+
+“It’s more than a hunch, Alan,” breathed Stampede softly. “And for
+God’s sake keep off the music as long as you can!”
+
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run
+toward the foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter
+of an hour they were lost to each other in the undulating distances of
+the tundra.
+
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence
+from the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan’s
+camp had not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of
+the country gave him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he
+could make the distance in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled
+to add a rest of at least three or four hours during the night. It was
+now eight o’clock. By nine or ten the next morning he would be facing
+Rossland, and at about that same hour Tatpan’s swift messengers would
+be closing in about Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. He knew the speed with
+which his herdsmen would sweep out of the mountains and over the
+tundras. Two years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his Eskimo people had
+traveled fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a hundred and
+nineteen miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He
+couldn’t do that. But his people could—and _would_. He could see them
+sweeping in from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word went
+among them; he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then,
+like wolves scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting
+the tundra in their race for home—and war, if it was war that lay ahead
+of them.
+
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out
+of the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of
+pemmican when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coulées when
+he came to them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a
+telltale cramp began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the
+rest which he knew he must take. It was one o’clock. Counting his
+journey to Tatpan’s camp, he had been traveling almost steadily for
+seventeen hours.
+
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where
+a little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize
+how tired he had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all
+he wanted; he dared not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at
+last, and he slept. When he awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting
+him. He sat up with a jerk, then leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch
+told the story. He had slept soundly for six hours, instead of resting
+three or four with his eyes open.
+
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret
+what had happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate
+a breakfast of pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost
+time. The interval between fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he
+almost ran. That quarter of an hour brought him to the crest of the
+ridge from which he could look upon the buildings of the range. Nothing
+had happened that he could see. He gave a great gasp of relief, and in
+his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told him more than
+anything else the tension he had been under.
+
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna’s
+cabin and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock,
+and he called out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he
+stepped in. Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.
+Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them,
+staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish. She came
+forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw
+Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.
+
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the
+tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle
+she was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at
+his coming. It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart,
+even when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it. He held her
+hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them
+widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden
+quick breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the hope that
+had deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not
+excited. He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her
+eyes and knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt
+the force of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at
+her. She gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken
+breath; a little cry that came of wonder—understanding—and unspeakable
+faith in this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of
+the tragedy that had come to destroy her.
+
+“Rossland is in your cabin,” she whispered. “And John Graham is back
+there—somewhere—coming this way. Rossland says that if I don’t go to
+him of my own free will—”
+
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+
+“I understand the rest,” he said. They stood silent for a moment. The
+gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a
+little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that
+he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.
+
+“You didn’t make a mistake the day I went away?” he asked. “You—love
+me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from
+her. Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they
+thought—Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun—for the bird
+was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very
+still.
+
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little
+window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across
+his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and
+something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another
+day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and
+the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the
+heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the farther
+north.
+
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his
+fingers drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His
+eyes fixed themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath
+he mumbled the old chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in
+Sokwenna’s brain, and after that his eyes closed, and again the vision
+grew out of darkness like a picture for him, a vision of twisting
+trails and of fighting men gathering with their faces set for war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+At the desk in Alan’s living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed
+when he saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his
+sleeves rolled up, and it was evident he was making no effort to
+conceal his freedom with Alan’s books and papers.
+
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had
+told Alan to attend to his own business on board the _Nome_. His
+attitude was that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even
+before he spoke. Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind
+that smile he was admiring the man’s nerve. His hand met Rossland’s
+casually, but there was no uncertainty in the warmth of the other’s
+grip.
+
+“How d’ do, Paris, old boy?” he greeted good-humoredly. “Saw you going
+in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I’ve been waiting for you. She’s a
+little frightened. And we can’t blame her. Menelaus is mightily upset.
+But mind me, Holt, I’m not blaming you. I’m too good a sport. Clever, I
+call it—damned clever. She’s enough to turn any man’s head. I only wish
+I were in your boots right now. I’d have turned traitor myself aboard
+the _Nome_ if she had shown an inclination.”
+
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was
+inspiration again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was
+racing. But Rossland saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the
+cool smile on Alan’s lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was
+meeting the situation. It pleased Graham’s agent. He reseated himself
+in the desk-chair and motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+
+“I thought you were badly hurt,” said Alan. “Nasty knife wound you
+got.”
+
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. “There you have it again, Holt—the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit
+girls down in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn’t she?
+Tricked her into my cabin all right, but she wasn’t like some other
+Indian girls I’ve known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or
+whoever it was got me through the open port. It wasn’t bad. I was out
+of the hospital within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I
+wouldn’t have seen Mrs. Graham one morning—through the window. What a
+little our fortunes hang to at times, eh? If it hadn’t been for the
+girl and the knife and the hospital, I wouldn’t be here now, and Graham
+wouldn’t be bleeding his heart out with impatience—and you, Holt,
+wouldn’t be facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into
+your life.”
+
+“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Alan, hiding his face in the
+smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which had
+its effect upon Rossland. “Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?”
+
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland’s eyes, and his voice became
+cool and hard. “Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don’t
+you think so?”
+
+“Decidedly,” said Alan.
+
+“You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham’s wife?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you probably know—now—why she jumped into the sea, and why she ran
+away from Graham.”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don’t know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn’t care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It’s the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the
+day she was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the
+thought of possessing her. You know how he got her to marry him, and
+you know what happened afterward. But it makes no difference to him
+whether she hates him or not. He _wants_ her. And this”—he swept his
+arms out, “is the most beautiful place in the world in which to have
+her returned to him. I’ve been figuring from your books. Your property
+isn’t worth over a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today.
+I’m here to offer you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is
+willing to forfeit all action he might have personally against you for
+stealing his wife, and in place of that will pay you five hundred
+thousand dollars for the privilege of having his honeymoon here, and
+making of this place a country estate where his wife may reside
+indefinitely, subject to her husband’s visits when he is so inclined.
+There will be a stipulation, of course, requiring that the personal
+details of the deal be kept strictly confidential, and that you leave
+the country. Do I make myself clear?”
+
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as
+he watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out
+proposition upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to
+the point without an effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient
+dramatic sense to appreciate what the offer of half a million dollars
+meant to an individual who was struggling for existence at the edge of
+a raw frontier. Alan stood with his back toward him, facing a window.
+His voice was oddly strained when he answered. But that was quite
+natural, too, Rossland thought.
+
+“I am wondering if I understand you,” he said. “Do you mean that if I
+sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?”
+
+“That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has
+his own.”
+
+Alan tried to laugh. “I think I see the point—now. He isn’t paying five
+hundred thousand for Miss Standish—I mean Mrs. Graham. He’s paying it
+for the _isolation_.”
+
+“Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him—to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to _get_
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one
+we’re using now. You hit the word when you said ‘isolation.’ What a
+damn fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of
+it—half a million dollars!”
+
+“It sounds unreal,” mused Alan, keeping his face to the window. “Why
+should he offer so much?”
+
+“You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a
+normal price wouldn’t guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like
+that, you’re a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your
+health depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn’t it?”
+
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep
+smoke in front of his eyes. “Of course, I don’t suppose he’d allow Mrs.
+Graham to escape back to the States—where she might do a little
+upsetting on her own account?”
+
+“He isn’t throwing the money away,” replied Rossland significantly.
+
+“She would remain here indefinitely?”
+
+“Indefinitely.”
+
+“Probably never would return.”
+
+“Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The
+little secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a
+beautiful summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely
+flowers. Birds. And the girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since
+she was fourteen.”
+
+“And who hates him.”
+
+“True.”
+
+“Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife.”
+
+“But it’s up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That’s not our
+business. If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get
+your range back pretty cheap.”
+
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+
+“Here’s partial payment—two hundred and fifty thousand. I have the
+papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give
+possession, I’ll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining
+payment.”
+
+Alan took the check. “I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland.”
+
+“Yes, only a fool.”
+
+“_And I am that fool_.”
+
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his
+words did not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared
+away from before Alan’s face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he
+stepped on it with his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The
+fury he had held back with almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+
+“If I could have Graham where you are now—_in that chair_—I’d give ten
+years of my life, Rossland. I would kill him. And you—_you_—”
+
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance
+of the beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+
+“What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn’t necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish—_not_ Mary
+Graham—is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to _me_. I love her. She is mine—do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn’t buy one hair from
+her head. I’m going to take her back to the States. She is going to get
+a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has
+nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham for
+me.”
+
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+
+“Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!”
+
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland
+sent the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+
+“Go—before I kill you!”
+
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and
+the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten
+power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed
+quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan
+watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied
+by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did
+Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His
+breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did
+not return for his coat and hat.
+
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the
+table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at
+work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he
+hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him.
+He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god
+of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely.
+Graham would now get his message, and there could be no
+misunderstanding of purpose between them.
+
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at
+the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+
+“You sent him away,” she cried softly.
+
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a
+beautiful glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland’s hat and coat
+on a chair, the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his
+flight; and then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw
+broke down the last of that grim resolution which he had measured for
+himself, so that in a moment he was at her side, and had her in his
+arms. She made no effort to free herself as she had done in the
+cottonwoods, but turned her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid her
+face against his shoulder—while he, fighting vainly to find utterance
+for the thousand words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then
+buried his face in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it
+that he loved her, and was going to fight for her, and that no power on
+earth could take her away from him now. And these things he repeated
+until she raised her flushed face from his breast, and let him kiss her
+lips once more, and then freed herself gently from his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish’s face and in Alan’s quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier
+which convention had raised against them, and now they felt the
+inevitable thrill of joy and triumph, and not the humiliating
+embarrassment of dishonor. They made no effort to draw a curtain upon
+their happiness, or to hide the swift heart-beat of it from each other.
+It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they stood apart, and
+something pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little freedom of
+space between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker and
+deeper grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her
+eyes when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she
+gave him her own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile,
+and she bowed her head a little, so that he was looking at her smooth
+hair, soft and sweet where he had caressed it a few moments before.
+
+“I thank God!” he said.
+
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech
+seemed trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking
+God for that moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had
+come to him. This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as
+he had known it, the beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands
+trembled. For something to do he set up the overturned table, and Mary
+Standish watched him with a quiet, satisfied wonder. She loved him, and
+she had come into his arms. She had given him her lips to kiss. And he
+laughed softly as he came to her side again, and looked over the tundra
+where Rossland had gone.
+
+“How long before you can prepare for the journey?” he asked.
+
+“You mean—”
+
+“That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland
+lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail.”
+
+Her hand pressed his arm. “We are going—_back?_ Is that it, Alan?”
+
+“Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?”
+
+“With you there—no.”
+
+“And you will return with me—when it is over?”
+
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek
+touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+
+“Yes, I will come back with you.”
+
+“And you will be ready?”
+
+“I am ready now.”
+
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist
+rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions—the
+breath of life, of warmth, of growing things—all between him and the
+hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without
+another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek
+against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she
+had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had
+ceased to fight—she had given to him the precious right to fight for
+her.
+
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of
+the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the
+grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the
+significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even
+more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of
+hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction
+which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same
+horror—of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her—Rossland had
+divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done
+right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have
+exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham’s
+flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and
+the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him,
+out there in the hollows of the tundra—
+
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had
+seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that
+brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told
+her a great deal. Yet she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what
+had been in his mind.
+
+“I am ready,” she reminded him.
+
+“We must wait for Stampede,” he said, reason returning to him. “He
+should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland
+is off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like
+Stampede between us and—”
+
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to
+her. She stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable
+desire to take her in his arms again.
+
+“He is between here and Tanana,” she said with a little gesture of her
+head.
+
+“Rossland told you that?”
+
+“Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away.”
+
+“Then you were not afraid that I—I might let them have you?”
+
+“I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that
+second letter at Ellen McCormick’s, Alan!”
+
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone
+before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were
+approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still
+grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window
+under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a
+death’s-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of
+the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the
+vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song
+of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note
+in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat
+like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and
+lifeless stare of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out
+of that space which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and
+then entered his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his
+post and came hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a
+baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed
+like little points of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan
+shiver as he watched him through the window.
+
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in
+that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to
+understand—and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries’
+teachings—that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet
+were many, and the blood was near, and that both smell and footfall
+were coming from the old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping
+with the water that had once run red. Alan was one of the few who, by
+reason of much effort, had learned the story of the kloof from old
+Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile
+tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the
+women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled
+south with what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof,
+and there, on a day that was golden and filled with the beauty of
+bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their enemies and killed them to a
+man. All were dead now, all but Sokwenna.
+
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was
+no longer the cheerful and gentle “old man” of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook,
+who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained
+an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood
+before Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in
+his breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his
+thin hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the
+uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to
+an appointed task—the watching of the southward plain from the crest of
+a tall ridge two miles back on the Tanana trail. He was to return when
+the sun reached its horizon.
+
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which
+stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon
+as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once,
+without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced
+himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months,
+possibly a year this time. There was much to do, a mass of detail to
+attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to leave behind him. He
+must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write down certain
+laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation
+progressed, and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he
+fell into a habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and
+the impossibility of danger. He tried to make himself feel
+uncomfortably foolish at the thought of having ordered the herdsmen in.
+In all probability Graham would not appear at all, he told himself, or
+at least not for many days—or weeks; and if he did come, it would be to
+war in a legal way, and not with murder.
+
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the
+afternoon lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly
+to take the trail beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his
+side. Twice he saw her between noon and five o’clock, and by that time
+his writing was done. He looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his
+favorite rifle and automatic were working smoothly, and he called
+himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest with an extravagant
+number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this ammunition and
+two of his extra guns to Sokwenna’s cabin, with the thought that it was
+this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted for defense
+in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it, and
+for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on
+their way to Nome.
+
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of
+the horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food
+which Wegaruk had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of
+the ravine, watching the twilight gathering where the coulée ran
+narrower and deeper between the distant breasts of the tundra.
+
+“I am going to leave you for a little while,” he said. “But Sokwenna
+has returned, and you will not be alone.”
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“As far as the cottonwoods, I think.”
+
+“Then I am going with you.”
+
+“I expect to walk very fast.”
+
+“Not faster than I, Alan.”
+
+“But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances.”
+
+“I will help you.” Her hand crept into his. “I am going with you,
+Alan,” she repeated.
+
+“Yes, I—think you are,” he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his
+head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand
+in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled
+together since the day he had come from Nome.
+
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and
+sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made
+him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and
+Sokwenna’s advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost
+Kloof and the country beyond.
+
+“I have been thinking a great deal today,” she was saying, “because you
+have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of _you_. And—my
+thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.”
+
+“And I have been—in paradise,” he replied.
+
+“You do not think that I am wicked?”
+
+“I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.”
+
+“Nor that I have been unwomanly?”
+
+“You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.”
+
+“Yet I have followed you—have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan.”
+
+“For which I thank God,” He breathed devoutly.
+
+“And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your
+arms, and have kissed me—”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And I am walking now with my hand in yours—”
+
+“And will continue to do so, if I can hold it.”
+
+“And I am another man’s wife,” she shuddered.
+
+“You are mine,” he declared doggedly. “You know it, and the Almighty
+God knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham’s wife.
+You are legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and
+body you are free.”
+
+“No, I am not free.”
+
+“But you are!”
+
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: “Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am
+not. It is because—heart and soul—I belong to you.”
+
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary
+Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and
+repeated softly, “Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!”
+
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still
+hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky,
+and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them,
+while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life.
+One mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were
+looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.
+
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now—the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick—but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall
+of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+
+“It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to _you_” he
+said. “And I think that if you hadn’t come back to me I would have gone
+mad.”
+
+“I have the letter. It is here”—and she placed a hand upon her breast.
+“Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?”
+
+“That you meant more to me than life.”
+
+“And that—particularly—you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a tress of my
+hair for you if they found me.”
+
+He nodded. “When I sat across the table from you aboard the _Nome_, I
+worshiped it and didn’t know it. And since then—since I’ve had you
+here—every time. I’ve looked at you—” He stopped, choking the words
+back in his throat.
+
+“Say it, Alan.”
+
+“I’ve wanted to see it down,” he finished desperately. “Silly notion,
+isn’t it?”
+
+“Why is it?” she asked, her eyes widening a little. “If you love it,
+why is it a silly notion to want to see it down?”
+
+“Why, I though possibly you might think it so,” he added lamely.
+
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned
+suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back,
+and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair
+until its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in
+a silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a
+cry of gladness.
+
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in
+her hair. “Do you think it is nice, Alan?”
+
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed
+them to his lips and face.
+
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It
+was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand
+which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When
+he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the
+deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had
+stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.
+
+“What is it?” he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see
+what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over
+the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night—and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between
+it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach
+of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so
+swift as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion’s
+face now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night,
+its suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought,
+and he laughed softly.
+
+But her hand clutched his arm. “I saw them,” she cried, her voice
+breaking. “I saw them—out there against the sun—before the cloud
+came—and some of them were running, like animals—”
+
+“Shadows!” he exclaimed. “The long shadows of foxes running against the
+sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away—”
+
+“No, no, they were not that,” she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. “They were not shadows. _They were
+men_!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
+have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering
+of the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a
+boot striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made
+that sound; none but Stampede Smith’s or his own.
+
+“Were they many?” he asked.
+
+“I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running—”
+
+“Behind us?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And they saw us?”
+
+“I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk.”
+
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he
+could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his
+automatic holster.
+
+“You think _they have come_?” she whispered, and a cold dread was in
+her voice.
+
+“Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?”
+
+“No, no, I am not afraid.”
+
+“Yet you are trembling.”
+
+“It is this strange gloom, Alan.”
+
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen
+times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where
+thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight
+thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it
+is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It
+seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a
+mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting
+out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It
+was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird
+chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes
+strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.
+
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing
+circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a
+moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion
+had seen. Graham’s men were near, had seen them, and were getting
+between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if
+there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted,
+he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty
+of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the
+range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the
+overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and
+fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little
+short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or
+humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that
+he would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a
+tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain
+extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband
+“rescuing” his wife, while he—Alan Holt—was the woman’s abductor and
+paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight
+ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt
+of what that “rescue” would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and
+deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered
+itself in readiness for whatever might happen.
+
+If Graham’s men had seen them, and were getting between them and
+retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead—and in this direction Alan
+walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He
+could not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were
+twined about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose
+hair. For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow,
+listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and
+held her there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was
+panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her
+parted lips and kissed them.
+
+“You are not afraid?” he asked again.
+
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+“No!”
+
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. “Even
+if they saw us, and are Graham’s men, we have given them the slip,” he
+comforted her. “Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am
+sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly.”
+
+“We must travel faster,” she insisted. “I want to run.”
+
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At
+intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and
+listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to
+the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own,
+but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her
+throat for an instant.
+
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath
+of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks,
+and about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth
+rousing to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud
+seemed to be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out
+where its solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the
+girl’s face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra
+were taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan
+recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge
+of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel,
+and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands.
+While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested
+with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running
+between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear,
+which in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained
+his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the
+concealment of the willows.
+
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another
+voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he
+found himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately
+to loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the
+girl struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it
+seemed, his brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to
+reach his gun, and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in
+the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he
+heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he
+was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body
+crumbled, and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last
+strength that was in him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that
+followed, but the fingers loosened at his throat, the face disappeared,
+and the man who was killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two
+Alan did not move as he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then
+he felt for his pistol. The holster was empty.
+
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near
+him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had
+choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was
+up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he
+called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where
+she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her,
+almost in the water of the little spring from which she had been
+drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now;
+he wanted to kill—to destroy what was already under his hands that he
+might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his
+hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force
+of a club the bearded man’s head sagged backward, and Alan’s fingers
+dug into his throat. It was a bull’s neck. He tried to break it. Ten
+seconds—twenty—half a minute at the most—and flesh and bone would have
+given way—but before the bearded man’s gasping cry was gone from his
+lips the second figure leaped upon Alan.
+
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was
+half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out
+and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did
+he realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A
+sickening horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an
+involuntary moan broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out
+his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl.
+She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long
+hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the
+spring, and her hands were groping—groping—until they found what they
+were seeking.
+
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands
+had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself
+to his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised
+herself over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her
+then; he heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away
+from him, limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a
+moment caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at
+his throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows,
+then a heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up.
+By chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He
+clicked the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the
+fight with a gun.
+
+“Come,” he said.
+
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and
+put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud
+from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from
+the pool and the willows.
+
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the
+strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of
+storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered
+from straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his
+own and set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last
+voice had come. He knew what was happening. Graham’s men were cleverer
+than he had supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range,
+and some of them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the
+triumphant shout of the bearded man’s companion had come. They were
+wondering why the call was not repeated, and were hallooing.
+
+Every nerve in Alan’s body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him
+like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows
+they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his
+life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by
+two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust
+and mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and
+civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the
+unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof
+remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century
+ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their
+hands—
+
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from
+his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up
+suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out
+as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an
+arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning
+flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to
+the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A
+moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the
+detonations of Alan’s pistol continued to roll over the tundra.
+
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of
+the stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary
+Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the
+purplish gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely
+white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil,
+and where it clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw
+her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in
+it—to his amazement—was a pistol. He recognized the weapon—one of a
+brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented
+to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation
+swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along
+she had prepared to fight—to fight with _him_ against their enemies! He
+wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her
+how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead,
+and they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier
+between them and the range.
+
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made
+through the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the
+axes and shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a
+moment, knowing that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against
+him, and then was almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two
+hundred yards had taken the strength from her body. Her pale face
+dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and kissed
+her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his
+breast. Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan
+caught her up in his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew
+their pursuers would not immediately find if they could bet beyond
+their vision. He was joyously amazed at her lightness. She was like a
+child in his arms, a glorious little goddess hidden and smothered in
+her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried toward the cabins,
+conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck, feeling
+the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by
+her helplessness.
+
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly
+approaching rain touched his face. He could see farther now—half-way
+back over the narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish
+slipped from his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his
+face. His breath was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly
+they could make out the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them
+were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of
+houses. The silence of the place was death-like.
+
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow
+cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and
+loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He
+talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and
+spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot
+here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly
+uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the
+nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an
+answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.
+
+“What did he say?” asked the girl.
+
+“That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us.”
+
+“And what else?” she persisted.
+
+“Old Sokwenna is superstitious—and nervous. He said some things that
+you wouldn’t understand. You would probably think him mad if he told
+you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were
+here with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway,
+he has been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled
+every woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains.
+Keok and Nawadlook wouldn’t go. I’m glad of that, for if they were
+pursued and overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland—”
+
+“Death would be better,” finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung
+more tightly to his arm.
+
+“Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna’s place until Stampede
+and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won’t dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours
+now; we can shoot, but they won’t risk the use of their rifles.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets—”
+
+They had reached Sokwenna’s door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices
+came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at
+concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly
+and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They
+could hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where
+they were entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying
+foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan’s heart stood still. There
+was something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of
+their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window
+fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna’s rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied
+his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was
+in the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the
+floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him
+what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready
+to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes
+of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining
+cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle
+chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so
+they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face
+and unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at
+Alan.
+
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham’s
+men would fire upon the cabin—when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna’s fusillade, and a
+hail of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their
+way through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single
+movement Alan was at Mary’s side and had crumpled her down on the floor
+beside Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of
+sudden, consuming fire.
+
+“I thought they wouldn’t shoot at women,” he said, and his voice was
+terrifying in its strange hardness. “I was mistaken. And I am
+sure—now—that I understand.”
+
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer
+guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he
+was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both
+he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary
+Standish in Sokwenna’s cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble,
+believing that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he
+fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing
+less than murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and
+plot, was the victim marked for death.
+
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a
+significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which
+to care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of
+Sokwenna’s cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in
+turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the
+ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open
+with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen.
+
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle
+in her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the
+attic, and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for
+him. Alan pointed to the open trap.
+
+“Quick, get into that!” he cried. “It is the only safe place. You can
+load there and hand out the guns.”
+
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was
+clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok
+climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above.
+
+“Go into the cellar!” commanded Alan. “Good God, if you don’t—”
+
+A smile lit up Mary’s face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet
+and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the
+rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from
+his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her
+shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said,
+“I am going to help you fight.”
+
+[Illustration: Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.]
+
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing
+an apron heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window,
+Sokwenna’s ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray
+mist, and his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham
+and his men. What followed struck a smile from Mary’s lips, and a
+moaning sob rose from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise
+up before the open window to face the winged death that was again
+beating a tattoo against the log walls of the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his
+power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and
+that he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and
+death, there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift
+moments following Sokwenna’s rifle-shots from the attic window.
+
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old
+warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan
+thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening
+mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard
+them singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of
+chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log
+walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a
+ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle
+about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was
+riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the
+direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at
+which to shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these
+he fired as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull
+the trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary
+Standish who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was
+waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely,
+never for an instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of
+fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It
+was for _him_. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a
+breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the
+opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing,
+writhing serpent of death that struck something behind them in its
+venomous wrath. With a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+
+“My God, they will kill you if you stand there!” she moaned. “Give me
+up to them, Alan. If you love me—give me up!”
+
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and
+then another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were
+finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs
+of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl’s slim
+body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the
+trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced
+Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun
+and the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
+its command.
+
+“If you don’t stay there, I’ll open the door and go outside to fight!
+Do you understand? _Stay there!_”
+
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
+another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
+following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna’s gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
+hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
+suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly
+and said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with
+the gun which she had loaded for him.
+
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok’s lips when Alan was at the top
+of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
+of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
+seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
+Mary Standish.
+
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
+power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
+light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
+radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
+through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
+rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
+blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
+second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
+They were no longer white men, but savages.
+
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
+watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
+rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was
+sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the
+illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until
+they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the
+bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was
+Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the
+earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two,
+three, four—and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought
+flashed upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for
+him, head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands.
+She was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or
+tears in her eyes.
+
+“Keep down!” he warned. “Keep down below the floor!”
+
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still
+existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now—from the
+shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light
+of his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled
+the night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the
+floor, so that the lower log of the building protected him. No living
+thing could have stood up against what was happening in these moments.
+Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs,
+crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles
+sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary
+Standish coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself
+down quickly, and she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his
+heart froze with horror as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the
+floor as she stood there in that frightful moment, white and glorious
+in the face of the gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was
+at her side, and with her in his arms leaped into the pit.
+
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or
+two life seemed to leave her body.
+
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In
+the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a
+faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his
+arm.
+
+“We can get away—there!” she cried in a low voice. “I have opened the
+little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine.”
+
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not
+dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and
+Nawadlook’s words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle
+fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift
+words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his
+men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a
+considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could
+steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept
+them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails
+into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in
+the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
+Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and
+that Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did
+her lips move in the effort.
+
+“Go—for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine,” he insisted,
+holding her away from him. “Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
+like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no
+hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They
+will be like—like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves—broken—destroyed—”
+
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
+she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+
+“And _you!_” whispered Mary.
+
+“I must remain here. It is the only way.”
+
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
+went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
+She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said
+no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom
+was her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no
+whisper, no farewell caress came with it.
+
+“Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains,” were his last words.
+
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
+them.
+
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
+that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
+way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
+for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His
+cabin was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at
+the windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a
+movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so
+swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became
+sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch
+of fire whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
+sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
+hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it
+stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from
+Sokwenna’s cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and
+watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In
+spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress
+the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical
+resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously
+through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could
+not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That
+he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant
+possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer
+if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a
+righteous end. Only Rossland’s nerve, and what he might have to say,
+held back the vengeance within reach of Alan’s hand.
+
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was
+within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed
+upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no
+other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly
+illumined the windows of Sokwenna’s place. Was it conceivable that
+Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a
+parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He
+shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and
+his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+
+Rossland’s voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+“Alan Holt! Are you there?”
+
+“Yes, I am here,” shouted Alan, “and I have a line on your heart,
+Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?”
+
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing
+had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: “We are giving you a
+last chance, Holt. For God’s sake, don’t be a fool! The offer I made
+you today is still good. If you don’t accept it—the law must take its
+course.”
+
+“_The law!_” Alan’s voice was a savage cry.
+
+“Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with
+felonious intent. But we don’t want to press the law unless we are
+forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men
+and wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive.
+But we are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made
+you today. What do you say?”
+
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous
+assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And
+when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments,
+believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.
+
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to
+old Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was
+creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange
+voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago,
+calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of
+vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of
+women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time
+he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the
+glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind
+him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill
+and with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him
+and the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning
+cabin. And then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger,
+and Sokwenna’s last shot sped on its mission.
+
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment
+Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped,
+and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound,
+and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
+
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from
+life into death shocked every nerve in Alan’s body. Horror for a brief
+space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and
+motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible
+silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry
+broke that silence, though it was made up of many men’s voices. Deadly
+and thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had
+been killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had
+something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no
+mercy—nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands,
+and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in
+another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+
+“Come below!” he commanded. “We must be ready to leave through the
+cellar-pit.”
+
+His hand touched Sokwenna’s face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior’s heart. There was no tremor
+or beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+
+The guns of Graham’s men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets
+tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the
+shelter of the pit.
+
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting
+for him there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+In the astonishment with which Mary’s unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her
+pale face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the
+cabin. That she had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back
+to him, filled him with instant dread, for the precious minutes he had
+fought for were lost, and the priceless time gained during the parley
+with Rossland counted for nothing.
+
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his
+hand and pull him down beside her.
+
+“Of course you didn’t expect me to go,” she said, in a voice that no
+longer trembled or betrayed excitement. “You didn’t want me to be a
+coward. My place is with you.”
+
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him
+as they were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up
+chokingly in his throat.
+
+“Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there—shot under a flag of
+truce,” he said. “We can’t have many minutes left to us.”
+
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the
+cellar-pit opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it—alone—and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side it
+would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+
+“Where are Keok and Nawadlook?” he asked.
+
+“On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your
+plan that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to
+give myself up unless they did as I commanded them. And—Alan—the ravine
+is filled with the rain-mist, and dark—” She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+
+“It is our one chance,” he said.
+
+“And aren’t you glad—a little glad—that I didn’t run away without you?”
+
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they
+smiled at him in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that
+was almost playfully chiding; and the glory of her love as she had
+proved it to him there drew from him what he knew to be the truth.
+
+“Yes—I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour—”
+
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep
+forth into the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the
+wet particles of it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets
+cut like knives over his head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on
+each side of Sokwenna’s place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine,
+and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog
+that hid the coulée.
+
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely.
+This was not what Alan had hoped for. Graham’s men, enraged and made
+desperate by Rossland’s death, would rush the cabin immediately.
+Scarcely had the thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly
+approaching shouts, the trampling of feet, and then the battering of
+some heavy object at the barricaded door of Sokwenna’s cabin. In
+another minute or two their escape would be discovered and a horde of
+men would pour down into the ravine.
+
+Mary tugged at his hand. “Let us hurry,” she pleaded.
+
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with
+her hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine,
+apparently in the face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden
+fear when their course came almost within the circle of light made by
+the burning cabin. Like shadows they sped into the deeper shelter of
+the corral buildings, and not until they paused there did she
+understand the significance of the hazardous chance they had taken.
+Already Graham’s men were pouring into the ravine.
+
+“They won’t suspect we’ve doubled on them until it is too late,” said
+Alan exultantly. “We’ll make for the kloof. Stampede and the herdsmen
+should arrive within a few hours, and when that happens—”
+
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled
+figure lay huddled against one of the corral gates.
+
+“He is hurt,” whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+
+“I hope so,” replied Alan pitilessly. “It will be unfortunate for us if
+he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way.”
+
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing
+point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She
+heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper
+shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she
+noticed that the mist was no longer in her face. The sky was clearing.
+She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail
+over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of
+them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point
+when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second
+and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout.
+There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came
+distinctly to them.
+
+“The wounded man,” said Alan, in a voice of dismay. “He is calling the
+others. I should have killed him!”
+
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All
+her courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and
+quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They
+passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the
+pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen. Trained to
+the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan’s ears caught faint
+sounds which his companion did not hear. The wounded man had succeeded
+in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain
+behind them.
+
+“Can you run a little farther?” he asked.
+
+“Where?”
+
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a
+cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran
+a little behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved
+them this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way
+to clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they
+reached the kloof he would have to fight in the open. With Stampede at
+his side he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles
+with their enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open
+tundra from which they might have defied assault. But the nearness of
+the girl frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He was
+only an incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price
+of death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her
+remained the unspeakable horror of Graham’s lust and passion. But if
+they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the
+cliff, they could laugh at Graham’s pack of beasts while they waited
+for the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the
+hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution
+came faintly rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent
+a golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay
+between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer
+held shadow or illusionment.
+
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with
+surprising speed, heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her
+endurance amazed him. And he knew that without questioning him she had
+guessed the truth of what lay behind them. Then, all at once, she
+stopped, swayed like a reed, and would have fallen if his arms had not
+caught her.
+
+“Splendid!” he cried.
+
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was
+a swiftly beating little dynamo.
+
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a
+mile of the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary’s
+splendid courage had won it for them.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried
+her through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of
+progress, counted now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight
+were flecking the plains. In another quarter of an hour moving objects
+would be distinctly visible a mile away.
+
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could
+feel their breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of
+the incongruity of the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It
+seemed inconceivable that this day, glorious in its freshness, and
+welcomed by the glad voice of all living things, should be a day of
+tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for him. He wanted to shout
+out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it seemed absurd
+that he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient bulk
+of his rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure
+which they bore.
+
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then
+on he climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge
+and scanned the tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he
+concluded their enemies believed they were hidden somewhere on the
+tundra not far from the range-houses.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow
+ravine, and half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof.
+For a space they rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long
+hair and plaited it in two braids. In these moments Alan encouraged
+her, but he did not lie. He told her the half-mile of tundra was their
+greatest hazard, and described the risks they would run. Carefully he
+explained what she was to do under certain circumstances. There was
+scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but they might be so
+far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to the kloof.
+If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be necessary
+to find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from
+behind succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue
+in the direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he
+followed more slowly, holding Graham’s men back with his rifle until
+she reached the edge of the gorge. After that he would come to her as
+swiftly as he could run.
+
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra.
+About them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile
+back toward the range were moving figures; farther west were others,
+and eastward, almost at the edge of the ravine, were two men who would
+have discovered them in another moment if they had not descended into
+the hollow. Alan could see them kneeling to drink at the little coulée
+which ran through it.
+
+“Don’t hurry,” he said, with a sudden swift thought. “Keep parallel
+with me and a distance away. They may not discover you are a woman and
+possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I stop.
+Follow my movements.”
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were
+soiled with muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her
+thus Alan laughed and cried out softly:
+
+“You beautiful little vagabond!”
+
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and
+after that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so
+cleverly that her action was better than his own—and so they had made
+their way over a third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly
+and cried, “Now, _run!_”
+
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the
+ravine and were running toward them.
+
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock
+which he had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+
+Close behind her, he said: “Don’t hesitate a second. Keep on going.
+When they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn’t
+stop.”
+
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them.
+Then he drew close to Mary’s side.
+
+“See that level place ahead? We’ll cross it in another minute or two.
+When they come to it I’m going to stop, and catch them where they can’t
+find shelter. But you must keep on going. I’ll overtake you by the time
+you reach the edge of the kloof.”
+
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level
+space she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready
+to choke her when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their
+enemies. But in her mind burned the low words of his command, his
+warning, and she did not look back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle
+of rock, which was now very near. She had almost reached it when the
+first shot came from behind her.
+
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and
+made pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if
+stunned, and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham’s men
+saw his ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed
+of their pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that
+they might use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they
+brought themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in
+that flash one of the men went down under Alan’s first shot. Before he
+could fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and
+swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary
+stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he
+joined her. A bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He
+did not return the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+
+“He won’t dare to stand up until the others join him,” he encouraged
+her. “We’re beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few
+minutes longer—”
+
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It
+seemed to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock
+between the gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when
+Alan caught her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge
+to a table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he
+dropped down beside her, and held her close as they crept back under
+the shelving face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with
+a yawning chasm at their side. The trail widened as they descended, and
+at the last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter of a
+million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they
+picked their way, while the trickle and drip of water and the
+flesh-like clamminess of the air sent a strange shiver of awe through
+Mary Standish. There was no life here—only an age-old whisper that
+seemed a part of death; and when voices came from above, where Graham’s
+men were gathering, they were ghostly and far away.
+
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked
+their way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages
+between the Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides
+an uncontrollable impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though
+she sensed the protection of their presence. They were like colossi,
+carved by hands long dead, and now guarded by spirits whose voices
+guttered low and secretly in the mysterious drip and trickle of unseen
+water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm death and vengeance
+had glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a rock
+crashed behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a
+cry broke from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never
+known before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from
+which she had escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable,
+for which she would never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan,
+and when at last the narrow fissure widened over their heads, and light
+came down and softened their way, he saw that her face was deathly
+white.
+
+“We are almost there,” he comforted. “And—some day—you will love this
+gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it together all the way
+to the mountains.”
+
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that
+was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this
+climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was
+a great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with
+a floor as level as a table and covered with soft white sand. Mary
+would never forget her first glimpse of this place; it was unreal,
+strange, as if a band of outlaw fairies had brought the white sand for
+a carpet, and had made this their hiding-place, where wind and rain and
+snow could never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to make her
+thought more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only
+fairies’ feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain.
+So they were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight
+through that fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof
+itself that they must have hidden themselves. Something in the humor
+and gentle thought of it all made her smile at Alan. But his face had
+turned suddenly grim, and she looked up the kloof, where they had
+traveled through danger and come to safety. And then she saw that which
+froze all thought of fairies out of her heart.
+
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many
+of them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer
+light, and at their head was a man upon whom Mary’s eyes fixed
+themselves in horror. White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed
+the truth.
+
+“That man in front?” he asked.
+
+She nodded. “Yes.”
+
+“Is John Graham.”
+
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+
+“Yes, John Graham.”
+
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+
+“I think,” he said, “that from here I can easily kill him!”
+
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone
+out of them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a prayer
+to him.
+
+“I am thinking of tomorrow—the next day—the years and years to come,
+_with you_,” she whispered. “Alan, you can’t kill John Graham—not until
+God shows us it is the only thing left for us to do. You can’t—”
+
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl
+of a bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart
+stopped beating, and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body
+as she saw the swift and terrible change in the stricken face of the
+man she loved. He tried to smile at her, even as a red blot came where
+the streak of gray in his hair touched his forehead. And then he
+crumpled down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against the rocks.
+
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill
+her brain with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below
+hesitated and their hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible
+cry of a woman rang between the rock walls of the chasm. And following
+the cry a voice came down to them.
+
+“John Graham, I’m going to kill you—_kill you_—”
+
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task
+of vengeance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her
+soul, and she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed.
+But she did not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham.
+The troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted in gathering
+before her eyes, something she tried to brush away, but which
+obstinately refused to go. She did not know she was sobbing as she
+looked over the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she had
+lost sight of John Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock
+and began climbing it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated
+she stood above the rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked
+alike, jumping and dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came
+nearer, and suddenly it occurred to her that _all_ of them were John
+Grahams, and that she must kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding
+fairies might have guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in
+those moments when she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men
+did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down
+among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she continued to fire
+until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun was empty.
+The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her
+vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so
+near she could see their faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in
+its desire to kill John Graham.
+
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His
+face was hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its
+holster, and sprang back to her rock. There was no time to wait or
+choose now, for his murderers were almost upon her. With all her
+strength she tried to fire accurately, but Alan’s big gun leaped and
+twisted in her hand as she poured its fire wildly down among the rocks
+until it was empty. Her own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in
+the race to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired her last
+shot she waited through another instant of horror, until she was
+striking at faces that came within the reach of her arm. And then, like
+a monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side.
+She had a moment’s vision of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing
+with a passion that was almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon
+her. Then his arms came about her. She could feel herself crushing
+inside them, and fought against their cruel pressure, then broke limply
+and hung a resistless weight against him. She was not unconscious, but
+her strength was gone, and if the arms had closed a little more they
+would have killed her.
+
+And she could hear—clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came from
+up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that the
+strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+
+Graham’s arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies’ hiding-place with
+its white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+
+“Martens, it couldn’t happen in a better place,” he said to a man who
+stood near him. “Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider.
+If you don’t clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this
+ambuscade will do the business in a hurry.”
+
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others
+hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no
+cries, no shouts—nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+
+Graham’s arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged
+inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of
+day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.
+
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its
+first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to
+climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy,
+very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not
+a sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could
+find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.
+
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the
+tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more
+reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was
+the old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had
+thought was long dead—the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the
+eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede
+Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days
+he had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor
+conscience to bar the way, and his dream—a last great fight—was here to
+fill the final unwritten page of a life’s drama that was almost closed.
+And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white sand
+unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides and
+rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a woman—and
+Alan Holt!
+
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men’s faces turned
+that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the
+scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He
+was almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge.
+Two of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling
+interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a woman’s voice filled with
+madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five
+men stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the cries came
+Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her.
+The girl’s hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and
+Graham’s eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her.
+He caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully
+weak hands beat futilely in his face.
+
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof
+before.
+
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet
+of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and
+scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge
+when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of
+the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or
+swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down
+as if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one
+who fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched
+on his face.
+
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl
+crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body,
+her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a
+gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other
+could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation
+gripped Stampede. He saw Graham’s pistol rise slowly and deliberately.
+He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham’s face was the cold
+and unexcited triumph of a devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was
+four inches—perhaps five—away from the girl’s. There was only that—and
+the extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the
+automatic seeking his heart. And then, in that last second, straight
+into the girl’s staring eyes blazed Stampede’s gun, and the four inches
+of leering face behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede,
+and not the girl, who closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and
+saw Mary Standish sobbing over Alan’s body, and Graham lying face down
+in the sand, he reverently raised the gun from which he had fired the
+last shot, and pressed its hot barrel to his thin lips.
+
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her
+face in her hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die,
+for in this hour of triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for
+her. Alan was gone. Only death could have come with that terrible red
+blot on his forehead, just under the gray streak in his hair. And
+without him there was no longer a reason for her to live.
+
+She reached out her arms. “Give him to me,” she whispered. “Give him to
+me.”
+
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede’s face. But she heard his voice.
+
+“It wasn’t a bullet that hit him,” Stampede was saying. “The bullet hit
+a rock, an’ it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between
+the eyes. He isn’t dead, _and he ain’t going to die!_”
+
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies’ hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was
+riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake
+a girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and
+at last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl
+plunged into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and
+he leaped after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds
+like the clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long
+sleep, from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a
+face very near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of
+tears.
+
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, “Alan!”
+
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed
+against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his
+mouth and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew
+the end of the race had come, and he had won.
+
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth
+he sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see
+him, and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his
+old housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away
+from him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the
+strange change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to
+ask the question, for more than any others of his people did he love
+these two missing comrades of the tundras.
+
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened—but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told
+him of that.
+
+“Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away,” he said.
+“We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the
+corrals. Now that Graham is dead, they’re frightened stiff—afraid we’re
+going to hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland to
+fight for them, they know they’re lost.”
+
+“And our men—my people?” asked Alan faintly.
+
+“Fought like devils.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But—”
+
+“They didn’t rest an hour in coming from the mountains.”
+
+“You know what I mean, Stampede.”
+
+“Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna,” and he counted
+over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among
+them.
+
+“And Tautuk?”
+
+“He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone
+else attempts to do anything for him.”
+
+“Then—I am glad Tautuk was hit,” smiled Alan. And he asked, “Where is
+Amuk Toolik?”
+
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+
+“You’ll have to ask _her_, Alan.”
+
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that
+puzzled him.
+
+“You must wait,” she said.
+
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and
+with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until
+she told him the secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and
+she nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was
+content to accept the punishment. So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and
+what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+
+“I don’t need a doctor,” he said, “but it was mighty thoughtful of you
+to send Amuk Toolik for one.” Then he caught himself suddenly. “What a
+senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who need a doctor more
+than I do.”
+
+Mary nodded. “But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now.”
+And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of
+her ear.
+
+“Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel,” he said. “Then
+we will start for the States, as we planned.”
+
+“You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up
+the new house,” she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice
+that he was stunned. “I have already given orders for the cutting of
+timber in the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin
+construction very soon. I am sorry you find your business in the States
+so important, Alan. It will be a little lonesome with you away.”
+
+He gasped. “Mary!”
+
+She did not turn. “_Mary!_”
+
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she
+faced him.
+
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips
+pressed to his.
+
+“It wasn’t a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to
+marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait—”
+
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that
+brought a little sob of joy from her heart.
+
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a
+little reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a
+happiness which he believed had never come to any other man in the
+world. It was not her desire to return to the States at all. She never
+wanted to return. She wanted nothing down there, nothing that the
+Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he could find some way
+of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was afraid it
+might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing
+that would make her happy, and that was _his_ world. She wanted it just
+as it was—the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains—with
+the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She
+now understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not
+an American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska
+she would go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end.
+His heart throbbed until it seemed it would break, and all the time she
+was whispering her hopes and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair,
+until it lay spread over his breast, and against his lips, and for the
+first time in years a hot flood of tears filled his eyes.
+
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised
+Mary’s head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where
+she stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled
+confusion and glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and
+her eyes were shining like stars as she looked at Alan.
+
+“It is Amuk Toolik,” she said. “He has returned.”
+
+“And—is he alone?” Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he
+waited for her answer.
+
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked
+back his hair. “I must go and do up my hair, Alan,” she said then. “It
+would never do for them to find me like this.”
+
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on
+the roof of Sokwenna’s cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was singing
+again.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11867 ***
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+         margin-right: 10%;
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+</head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11867 ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Alaskan</h1>
+
+<h3>A Novel of the North</h3>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD</h2>
+
+<h4>With Illustrations by Walt Louderback</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="letter">
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska,
+the new empire rising in the North, it is for me
+an honor and a privilege to dedicate this work.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>Owosso, Michigan<br />
+August 1, 1923</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="331"></a>
+<img src="images/331.jpg" width="399" height="600" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#331">It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#332">The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#333">The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#334">Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>THE ALASKAN</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not lost the
+spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead in him, and the
+fire which is built up of clean adventure and the association of strong men and
+a mighty country had not died out of his veins. He could still see the
+picturesque, feel the thrill of the unusual, and&mdash;at times&mdash;warm
+memories crowded upon him so closely that yesterday seemed today, and Alaska
+was young again, thrilling the world with her wild call to those who had
+courage to come and fight for her treasures, and live&mdash;or die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and the
+yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan mountains,
+something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is Alaska.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment did she
+answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the almost vivid
+light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled with a dusky fire, and
+her lips were parted a little, and her slim body was tense as she looked at the
+wonder of the moon silhouetting the cragged castles of the peaks, up where the
+soft, gray clouds lay like shimmering draperies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. &ldquo;Yes, Alaska,&rdquo; she
+said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in
+her voice. &ldquo;Your Alaska, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the low
+moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now she asked:
+&ldquo;What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon like that,
+and the stars so clear above!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are in
+the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it were day you
+could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the Inside Passage. I have
+always called it the water-wonderland of the world, and yet, if you will
+observe, I must be mistaken&mdash;for we are almost alone on this side of the
+ship. Is it not proof? If I were right, the men and women in
+there&mdash;dancing, playing cards, chattering&mdash;would be crowding this
+rail. Can you imagine humans like that? But they can&rsquo;t see what I see,
+for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things. Ah, do you catch that in
+the air, Miss Standish&mdash;the perfume of flowers, of forests, of green
+things ashore? It is faint, but I catch it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so do I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she stood
+with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy; she
+could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the rhythmic
+thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted windows, and as the
+old captain looked at her, there was something in her face which he could not
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute&mdash;defying the necessity of making reservation where half a thousand
+others had been turned away&mdash;and chance had brought her under his eyes. In
+desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered a strange terror
+under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he had fathered her with
+his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom of years. And more than once
+he had observed that questing, defiant poise of her head with which she was
+regarding the cabin windows now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives in Nome.
+She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was impossible not to
+believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in
+coming aboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience, he
+gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some way she
+was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and sixty years, he
+did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very pretty in a
+quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly attractive about her,
+appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was
+girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray
+in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and
+luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At
+times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty
+he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in
+him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others might
+not see&mdash;and hold his tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are not quite alone,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;There are
+others,&rdquo; and she made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the
+rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And the other is
+Alan Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the moon.
+Gently her hand touched the old captain&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she
+whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the shore,
+and there are glaciers all the way up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that other sound, like low wind&mdash;on a night so still and calm!
+What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets rushing
+down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the mountains, you hear that
+song.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this man, Alan Holt,&rdquo; she reminded him. &ldquo;He is a part of
+these things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in Eighty-four,
+I think. Let me see, that would make him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thirty-eight,&rdquo; she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he chuckled. &ldquo;You are very good at figures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone&mdash;like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of ghosts
+as we talked there in the dusk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse ate
+up men&rsquo;s lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish,&rdquo; said Captain Rifle. &ldquo;You will meet many
+like him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their
+faces&mdash;always the memory of those days that are gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. &ldquo;And Alan Holt? You know
+him well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All
+northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the Endicott
+Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must be very brave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And honorable men&mdash;men you can trust and believe in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is odd,&rdquo; she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like
+a bird-note in her throat. &ldquo;I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a long
+time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going home. Alan
+Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you are&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An American,&rdquo; she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her
+voice. &ldquo;A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going
+north&mdash;to learn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only that, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer. His
+kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was filled with
+honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must press the question,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As the captain of this
+ship, and as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me&mdash;in confidence, if you will have it so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. &ldquo;There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet&mdash;you came aboard very strangely,&rdquo; he urged.
+&ldquo;You will recall that it was most unusual&mdash;without reservation,
+without baggage&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You forget the hand-bag,&rdquo; she reminded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I did, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship&rsquo;s regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from something!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I was running away&mdash;from something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed the
+thrill of the fight she was making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will not tell me why&mdash;or from what you were
+escaping?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can not&mdash;tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But&mdash;it
+is possible&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I shall never reach Nome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung to him,
+and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged the hand to her
+breast. &ldquo;I know just how good you have been to me,&rdquo; she cried.
+&ldquo;I should like to tell you why I came aboard&mdash;like that. But I can
+not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!&rdquo; With one free hand she
+pointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery of
+centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those things,
+Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or feel what you
+have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know it. And after all
+that, can&rsquo;t you&mdash;won&rsquo;t you&mdash;forget the strange manner in
+which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to put out of
+your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look back&mdash;and think.
+Please Captain Rifle&mdash;please!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his hand to
+her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant, leaving him
+speechless, his resolution gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love you because you have been so good to me,&rdquo; she whispered,
+and as suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone at
+the rail.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid light
+of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching her, nor did
+he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which she made as she
+paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle. To him she was only
+one of the five hundred human atoms that went to make up the tremendously
+interesting life of one of the first ships of the season going north. Fate,
+through the suave agency of the purser, had brought him into a bit closer
+proximity to her than the others; that was all. For two days her seat in the
+dining-salon had been at the same table, not quite opposite him. As she had
+missed both breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements
+of neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of
+speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or
+communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of his
+love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst. Some people,
+he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the balance, were burdened with
+the necessity of holding their tongues. For him silence was not a burden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very quiet, and he
+liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape the beauty of her
+eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that darkened them. But these
+were details which did not thrill him, but merely pleased him. And her hair
+pleased him possibly even more than her gray eyes, though he was not
+sufficiently concerned to discuss the matter with himself. But if he had
+pointed out any one thing, it would have been her hair&mdash;not so much the
+color of it as the care she evidently gave it, and the manner in which she
+dressed it. He noted that it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it
+under the dinner lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth,
+silky coils in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense
+relief after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his
+six months&rsquo; visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking,
+because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of him&mdash;with
+his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather Indian-like litheness,
+and the single patch of gray that streaked his thick, blond hair. His interest
+had not reached anywhere near that point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested him,
+except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and greater thing
+gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the throbbing pulse of the
+engines of the new steamship <i>Nome</i> under his feet at Seattle. He was
+going <i>home</i>. And home meant Alaska. It meant the mountains, the vast
+tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which civilization had not yet come with
+its clang and clamor. It meant friends, the stars he knew, his herds,
+everything he loved. Such was his reaction after six months of exile, six
+months of loneliness and desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll not make the trip again&mdash;not for a whole
+winter&mdash;unless I&rsquo;m sent at the point of a gun,&rdquo; he said to
+Captain Rifle, a few moments after Mary Standish had left the deck. &ldquo;An
+Eskimo winter is long enough, but one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New
+York is longer&mdash;for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has
+forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to listen
+to him. We may get action.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May!&rdquo; Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. &ldquo;Alaska has been
+waiting ten years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you&rsquo;ll get
+anything. When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have
+and what we need north of Fifty-eight&mdash;why, what&rsquo;s the use? Alaska
+might as well shut up shop!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she isn&rsquo;t going to do that,&rdquo; said Alan Holt, his face
+grimly set in the moonlight. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve tried hard to get us, and
+they&rsquo;ve made us shut up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six
+thousand whites in the Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have
+driven out nine thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left
+are hard-boiled. We&rsquo;re not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are
+Alaskans, and we are not afraid to fight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That we&rsquo;ll have a square deal within another five years, or know
+the reason why. And another five years after that, we&rsquo;ll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty years
+we&rsquo;ll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons, eh? But
+rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who are turning
+their grazing lands into farms and irrigation systems.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of Alan Holt&rsquo;s hands was clenched at the rail. &ldquo;Until I went
+down this winter, I didn&rsquo;t realize just how bad it was,&rdquo; he said, a
+note hard as iron in his voice. &ldquo;Lomen is a diplomat, but I&rsquo;m not.
+I want to fight when I see such things&mdash;fight with a gun. Because we
+happened to find gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as
+quickly as possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the skin will
+be worthless. That&rsquo;s modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned and
+stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with the
+moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ask me a question, madam,&rdquo; said Alan Holt, bowing courteously.
+&ldquo;No, I am not an American. I am an Alaskan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl&rsquo;s lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+&ldquo;Please pardon me for listening,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t
+help it. I am an American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything
+else in the world&mdash;more than my religion, even. <i>America,</i> Mr. Holt.
+And America doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mean a great many of America&rsquo;s
+people. I love to think that I first came ashore in the <i>Mayflower</i>. That
+is why my name is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska
+<i>is</i> America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl&rsquo;s face was no longer placidly quiet.
+Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her voice, and he knew
+that in the light of day he would have seen fire in her cheeks. He smiled, and
+in that smile he could not quite keep back the cynicism of his thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And yet I love it.&rdquo; She pointed
+to the mountains. &ldquo;I wish I might have been born among them. You are
+fortunate. You should love America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alaska, you mean!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, America.&rdquo; There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was
+not speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The irony on Alan&rsquo;s lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+&ldquo;If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came over
+in the <i>Mayflower</i>, I stand reproved,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You should be
+an authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are correct,&rdquo; she replied with a proud, little tilt of her
+glossy head, &ldquo;though I think that only lately have I come to an
+understanding of its significance&mdash;and its responsibility. I ask your
+pardon again for interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just
+happened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a swift smile
+and passed down the promenade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A remarkable young woman,&rdquo; Alan remarked. &ldquo;I imagine that
+the spirit of Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost suppose
+he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite though rather
+indirect result.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation of
+humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one could not
+miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a sting which he did not
+altogether intend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the captain a
+question which was in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;rather,&rdquo; acknowledged Captain Rifle. &ldquo;Hereafter
+she will ply directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we&rsquo;re doing
+the Inside Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven&rsquo;t seen fit to
+explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to do
+with it. We&rsquo;re landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by way
+of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays, Holt. I can
+remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So can I,&rdquo; nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which
+lay the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before.
+&ldquo;I remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men don&rsquo;t forget such women as Jane Hope,&rdquo; said the captain
+softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You knew her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years
+ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn&rsquo;t it? And when I look at Mary
+Standish and hear her voice&mdash;&rdquo; He hesitated, as if betraying a
+secret, and then he added: &ldquo;&mdash;I can&rsquo;t help thinking of the
+girl Donald Hardwick fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse.
+It&rsquo;s too bad she had to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t dead,&rdquo; said Alan. The hardness was gone from his
+voice. &ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t dead,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the
+pity of it. She is as much a living thing to him today as she was twenty years
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment the captain said, &ldquo;She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Not at all. I think she is a most admirable
+young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I&rsquo;m going to promenade a
+bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his way, while
+the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship <i>Nome</i> was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing with the
+very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a human
+intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger list held a
+significance that was almost epic, and its names represented more than mere men
+and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he loved, its heart&rsquo;s
+blood, its very element&mdash;&ldquo;giving in.&rdquo; He knew that with the
+throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy, and hope were on their way
+north&mdash;and with these things also arrogance and greed. On board were a
+hundred conflicting elements&mdash;some that had fought for Alaska, others that
+would make her, and others that would destroy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and women
+whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew the tourists
+almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north had not yet seized upon
+them. They were voluble and rather excitedly enthusiastic in the face of beauty
+and awesomeness. The sour-doughs were tucked away here and there in shadowy
+nooks, watching in silence, or they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking
+their cigars or pipes, and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these
+two, the newcomers and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for
+Alan, the flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life north
+of Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked out those who
+belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over the edge
+of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he recognized them as
+the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to work on the government
+railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of them was talking, filled with
+the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t know what they
+ought to know about Alaska. In school they teach us that it&rsquo;s an eternal
+icebox full of gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that&rsquo;s
+where reindeer come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing.
+Why&rdquo;&mdash;he drew in a deep breath&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s nine times as
+large as the state of Washington, twelve times as big as the state of New York,
+and we bought it from Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it
+down on the face of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St.
+Augustine, Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That&rsquo;s how big
+it is, and the geographical center of our country isn&rsquo;t Omaha or Sioux
+City, but exactly San Francisco, California.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good for you, sonny,&rdquo; came a quiet voice from beyond the group.
+&ldquo;Your geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your
+people that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia, and
+wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our people to
+rise against the Washington government. We&rsquo;ve asked Washington for a few
+guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh at us. Do you see a
+moral?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He caught a
+glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did not know him. And
+as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the moonlight, the same deep, quiet
+voice came back very clearly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to hang
+a few such men as John Graham, sonny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot. Only one
+man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred, and that man was
+John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the identity of the stranger whose
+words had temporarily stunned the young engineers, when he saw a slim figure
+standing between him and the light of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary
+Standish. He knew by her attitude that she had heard the words of the young
+engineer and the old graybeard, but she was looking at <i>him</i>. And he could
+not remember that he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman&rsquo;s face
+before. It was not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from
+thought and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it annoyed
+Alan Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too susceptible reaction
+in matters which did not concern her. So he said, speaking to the silent young
+men a few steps away:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had scarcely gone
+out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind him, and the
+girl&rsquo;s hand touched his arm lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Holt, please&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was not
+altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again, only her
+finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so that for a moment he
+could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth hair. Then she was meeting
+his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in the gray depths of her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am alone on the ship,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have no friends here.
+I want to see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean ... escort you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him, and he
+wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not smile. Her eyes
+were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same time very lovely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The way you put it, I don&rsquo;t see how I can refuse,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;As for the questions&mdash;probably Captain Rifle can answer them better
+than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to trouble him,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;He has
+much to think about. And you are alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won&rsquo;t try. But I&rsquo;m going into a new country, and I have a
+passionate desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get
+there. I want to know about many things. For instance&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment astonished
+him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her slim figure seemed
+possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she waited for an answer. They had
+turned a little, so that in the light of the moon the almost flowerlike
+whiteness of her face was clear to him. With her smooth, shining hair, the
+pallor of her face under its lustrous darkness, and the clearness of her eyes
+she held Alan speechless for a moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon
+and understand the something about her which made him interested in spite of
+himself. Then he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you ever see a dog fight?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly.
+&ldquo;Once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was my dog&mdash;a little dog. His throat was torn&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. &ldquo;Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He&rsquo;s the dog&mdash;a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth from a new
+land and enslave it to his own desires and political ambitions. That is what
+John Graham is doing from his money-throne down there in the States. It&rsquo;s
+the financial support he represents, curse him! Money&mdash;and a man without
+conscience. A man who would starve thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A
+man who, in every sense of the word, is a murderer&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone whiter,
+and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the look in her eyes
+brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, I&rsquo;ve hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he
+said, bowing a little. &ldquo;In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I
+suppose I must apologize for swearing and calling another man a murderer. Well,
+I do. And now&mdash;if you care to stroll about the ship&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and Mary
+Standish as they walked forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A corking pretty girl,&rdquo; said one of them, drawing a deep breath.
+&ldquo;I never saw such hair and eyes&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m at the same table with them,&rdquo; interrupted another.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m second on her left, and she hasn&rsquo;t spoken three words to
+me. And that fellow she is with is like an icicle out of Labrador.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mary Standish was saying: &ldquo;Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those young
+engineers. I wish I were a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you were,&rdquo; agreed Alan amiably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon Mary Standish&rsquo;s pretty mouth lost its softness for an instant.
+But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and the sweet air.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman&rsquo;s man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or die for
+them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his sentiment was
+entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born and bred of the
+mountains and the open and had nothing in common with the insincere brand which
+develops in the softer and more luxurious laps of civilization. Years of
+aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of the north, reading the lines,
+understood what they meant. But only now and then could a woman possibly
+understand. Yet if in any given moment a supreme physical crisis had come,
+women would have turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as
+Alan Holt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover. The
+mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle meant as much
+as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he could enjoy greatly
+without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his face. And not always was his
+smile a reflection of humorous thought. There were times when it betrayed
+another kind of thought more forcefully than speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present situation
+amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment Miss Standish had
+made in selecting him, when compared with the intoxicating thrill she could
+easily have aroused by choosing one of the young engineers as a companion in
+her evening adventure. He chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered
+note of amusement, gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he
+had observed once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said
+nothing. As if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a decidedly
+pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl&rsquo;s hand did not merely touch
+his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was necessarily so close to
+him that when he looked down, the glossy coils of her hair were within a few
+inches of his face. His nearness to her, together with the soft pressure of her
+hand on his arm, was a jolt to his stoicism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not half bad,&rdquo; he expressed himself frankly. &ldquo;I
+really believe I am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss
+Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant.
+&ldquo;You thought&mdash;possibly&mdash;I might be dangerous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little. I don&rsquo;t understand women. Collectively I think they are
+God&rsquo;s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don&rsquo;t care much
+about them. But you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded approvingly. &ldquo;That is very nice of you. But you needn&rsquo;t
+say I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly&mdash;except in the way they dress their hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You like mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge cloud of
+smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard the
+<i>Nome</i>. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor built
+at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands while they
+smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let&rsquo;s go in,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;I know; of no better place. Are
+you afraid of smoke?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. If I were a man, I would smoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which would be a crime,&rdquo; he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they entered.
+The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue with smoke. A
+score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as many were gathered in
+groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up and down the carpeted floor.
+Here and there were men who sat alone. A few were asleep, which made Alan look
+at his watch. Then he observed Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles
+of neatly rolled blankets that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She
+touched it with her toe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do they mean?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are overloaded,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Alaskan steam-ships have
+no steerage passengers as we generally know them. It isn&rsquo;t poverty that
+rides steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on
+the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there will
+unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in, and
+directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men were seated
+at this table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl&mdash;I forget his name,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t look it,
+but he is a real sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the
+floor. The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men, and
+that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with whiskers
+nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of George Carmack,
+who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The thud of Carmack&rsquo;s
+spade, as it hit first pay, was the &lsquo;sound heard round the world,&rsquo;
+Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was the second-best man
+at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who
+were with Carmack when the strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic,
+he was in love with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came
+into the north.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why was she courageous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because she came alone into a man&rsquo;s land, without a soul to fight
+for her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did. As
+long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who posed as
+a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. <i>Finis</i>, I think.
+Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big
+whiskers&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a table
+and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except his boldness
+as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and was deliberately
+insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in its directness. Then a
+sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her cheeks
+were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could not but
+observe how beautiful anger made her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will pardon me a moment,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;I shall
+demand an explanation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she entreated. &ldquo;It is kind of you, and
+you are just the sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But
+it would be absurd to notice it. Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her voice, and
+Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went from her face,
+leaving it strangely white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am at your service,&rdquo; he replied with a rather cold inclination
+of his head. &ldquo;But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of John Graham&rsquo;s men,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A fellow named
+Rossland, going up to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand.
+They&rsquo;ll choke the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this
+filthy stuff we call money can do, isn&rsquo;t it? Two winters ago I saw whole
+Indian villages starving, and women and little children dying by the score
+because of this John Graham&rsquo;s money. Over-fishing did it, you understand.
+If you could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones,
+crying for a rag to eat&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand clutched at his arm. &ldquo;How could John Graham&mdash;do
+that?&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed unpleasantly. &ldquo;When you have been a year in Alaska you
+won&rsquo;t ask that question, Miss Standish. <i>How</i>? Why, simply by
+glutting his canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the
+natives have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he
+handles represents the fish trust&mdash;and many other things. Please
+don&rsquo;t misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without
+it we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the face of
+the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska does today. Ten
+thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men who have money to invest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a despoiler,
+one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource into dollars as
+fast as he can, even though those operations make both land and water barren.
+You must remember until recently the government of Alaska as manipulated by
+Washington politicians was little better than that against which the American
+colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard thing for one to say about the country he
+loves, isn&rsquo;t it? And John Graham stands for the worst&mdash;he and the
+money which guarantees his power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics, that
+capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be interested.
+Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate bureaus at
+Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is it a wonder the
+patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like John Graham, dishonest and
+corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to work in?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska&rsquo;s interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of the
+Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska is a mighty
+empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go ahead in spite of all
+our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear. Some day&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he caught himself. &ldquo;There&mdash;I&rsquo;m talking politics, and
+I should entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things,&rdquo; he
+apologized. &ldquo;Shall we go to the lower decks?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or the open air,&rdquo; she suggested. &ldquo;I am afraid this smoke is
+upsetting me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to the
+thickness of the air. Rossland&rsquo;s inexplicable rudeness had disturbed her
+more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?&rdquo; he
+asked, when they were outside. &ldquo;The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are&mdash;well&mdash;unusually good-looking, the Captain says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he has already made me acquainted with them,&rdquo; she laughed
+softly. &ldquo;Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them.
+I had breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You noticed my absence?&rdquo; she asked demurely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought, I
+think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if you were
+ill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it would be
+only charity and good-will to change seats with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Probably not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have they ever suffered?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking me to my
+cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. &ldquo;What is your
+room?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-seven, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This deck?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her hand,
+did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and lighted a
+fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once, as he slowly made
+a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his cabin and looked over
+papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These were memoranda giving an
+account of his appearance with Carl Lomen before the Ways and Means Committee
+at Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary Standish was
+asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by the recurring
+insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a clever girl, he
+admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and she had told him nothing,
+while he had been quite garrulous. He was a little ashamed when he recalled how
+he had unburdened his mind to a girl who could not possibly be interested in
+the political affairs of John Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his
+fault. She had fairly catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under
+the circumstances, he thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole. Only the
+soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the last of the
+Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears. The ship, at last, was asleep.
+The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting the mountains, and
+beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark. Out of this darkness, rising
+like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof
+Island. And he wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely
+wider than the length of the ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course
+instead of going around by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land was more
+distant now, but the <i>Nome</i> was still pushing ahead under slow bell, and
+he could smell the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of the scent of
+forests that came from both east and west.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps. They seemed
+to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a man&rsquo;s
+voice&mdash;and in answer to it a woman&rsquo;s. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of voices. In
+silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him in the moonlight.
+One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was Rossland, who had stared at her
+so boldly in the smoking-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary Standish or
+Graham&rsquo;s agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud and humbug,
+and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew more about Rossland
+than she had allowed him to believe. She had not lied to him. She had said
+nothing at all&mdash;except to restrain him from demanding an apology.
+Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but beyond that fact her affairs had
+nothing to do with his own business in life. Possibly she and Rossland had
+quarreled, and now they were making up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of
+him to think over the matter at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great desire to
+sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with the soothing
+movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical thrum of it. And it
+was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going home. How infernally long
+those seven months had been, down in the States! And how he had missed everyone
+he had ever known&mdash;even his enemies!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of miles
+away&mdash;the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the Endicott
+Mountains, and &ldquo;Alan&rsquo;s Range&rdquo; at the beginning of them.
+Spring was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like corn
+from a hopper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people&mdash;the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as he did.
+He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief herdsmen, would care for
+things as well as himself. But much could happen in seven months. Nawadlook,
+the little beauty of his distant kingdom, was not looking well when he left. He
+was worried about her. The pneumonia of the previous winters had left its mark.
+And Keok, her rival in prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how
+Tautuk&rsquo;s sometimes hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a
+little heart-breaker and had long reveled in Tautuk&rsquo;s sufferings. An
+archangel of iniquity, Alan thought, as he grinned&mdash;but worth any
+man&rsquo;s risk of life, if he had but a drop of brown blood in him! As for
+his herds, they had undoubtedly fared well. Ten thousand head was something to
+be proud of&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door and had
+paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each time they had
+passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a sound under him. He
+heard movement then, a swift, running movement&mdash;and he switched on his
+light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was there. The long corridor
+was empty. And then&mdash;a distance away&mdash;he heard the soft opening and
+closing of another door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He picked
+it up and reentered his room. It was a woman&rsquo;s handkerchief. And he had
+seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that evening in the
+smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should now find it at his
+door.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan experienced
+a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment&mdash;also a certain
+resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in spite of himself was
+not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a certain point, had been fairly
+entertaining. It was true he might have passed a pleasanter hour recalling old
+times with Stampede Smith, or discussing Kadiak bears with the English earl, or
+striking up an acquaintance with the unknown graybeard who had voiced an
+opinion about John Graham. But he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he
+holding Mary Standish accountable for them. It was, last of all, the
+handkerchief that momentarily upset him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking affair, to
+be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous diminutiveness. As the
+question came to him, he was wondering how even as dainty a nose as that
+possessed by Mary Standish could be much comforted by it. But it was pretty.
+And, like Mary Standish, there was something exquisitely quiet and perfect
+about it, like the simplicity of her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It
+was a thought that came to him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying
+bit of fabric on the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the
+dropping of it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At least he
+told himself so. And he also assured himself, with an involuntary shrug of his
+shoulders, that any woman or girl had the right to pass his door if she so
+desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only
+slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when
+they had to do with woman&mdash;and such an absurdly inconsequential thing as a
+handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and Nawadlook
+and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given the priceless
+heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real, with her swift smile
+and mischievous face, and Nawadlook&rsquo;s big, soft eyes were brighter than
+when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as usual over the heartlessness of
+Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that gave out the peculiar sound of bells, and
+to this Amuk Toolik was dancing the Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in
+exaggerated admiration. Even in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was
+happening, and that out of the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was enjoying
+Tautuk&rsquo;s jealousy. Tautuk was so stupid he would never understand. That
+was the funny part of it. And he beat his drum savagely, scowling so that he
+almost shut his eyes, while Keok laughed outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship&rsquo;s
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his watch.
+Tautuk&rsquo;s drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it was four
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a chill air
+which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few minutes after
+awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and he got up quietly and
+dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar he had laid aside at midnight.
+Not until he had finished dressing did he notice the handkerchief on the table.
+If its presence had suggested a significance a few hours before, he no longer
+disturbed himself by thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the
+girl&rsquo;s part, that was all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the
+crumpled bit of cambric in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted. Through the
+ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty chairs, and lights burning
+dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and the drifting warmth of the Japan
+current had brought an early spring to the Alexander Archipelago, and May had
+stolen much of the flowering softness of June. But the dawns of these days were
+chilly and gray. Mists and fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke
+rolled down the sides of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the
+inner waters felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery of it
+was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure. He could feel
+the care with which the <i>Nome</i> was picking her way northward. Her engines
+were thrumming softly, and her movement was a slow and cautious glide, catlike
+and slightly trembling, as if every pound of steel in her were a living nerve
+widely alert. He knew Captain Rifle would not be asleep and that straining eyes
+were peering into the white gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them,
+hazardously near, must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the
+still more pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that
+deadly finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they must
+creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager for his
+work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except that they were
+Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide tundras, and the
+mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His blood sang to the surety of
+it now, and for that reason he was not sorry he had spent seven months of
+loneliness in the States. He had proved with his own eyes that the day was near
+when Alaska would come into her own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its
+romance, its thrill, but what was all the gold the mountains might possess
+compared with this greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the
+people he had met in the south had thought only of gold when they learned he
+was from Alaska. Always gold&mdash;that first, and then ice, snow, endless
+nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning everlastingly upon a
+blasted land in which men fought against odds and only the fittest survived. It
+was gold that had been Alaska&rsquo;s doom. When people thought of it, they
+visioned nothing beyond the old stampede days, the Chilkoot, White Horse,
+Dawson, and Circle City. Romance and glamor and the tragedies of dead men clung
+to their ribs. But they were beginning to believe now. Their eyes were opening.
+Even the Government was waking up, after proving there was something besides
+graft in railroad building north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen
+at Washington had listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen. And
+the beef barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him off and had offered a
+fortune for Lomen&rsquo;s forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward
+Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening. Absolute proof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist into
+the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore Roosevelt for
+putting what they called &ldquo;the conservation shackles&rdquo; on their
+country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt&rsquo;s far-sightedness had kept
+the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what money-power and
+greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today, but lay ready to serve
+with all her mighty resources the mother who had neglected her for a
+generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this opening up of a great land.
+It must be done resourcefully and with intelligence. Once the bars were down,
+Roosevelt&rsquo;s shadow-hand could not hold back such desecrating forces as
+John Graham and the syndicate he represented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in the
+sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed plunderers. And
+it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging work of these financial
+brigands in a dozen states during the past winter&mdash;states raped of their
+forests, their lakes and streams robbed and polluted, their resources hewn down
+to naked skeletons. He had been horrified and a little frightened when he
+looked over the desolation of Michigan, once the richest timber state in
+America. What if the Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing
+to happen in Alaska? Politics&mdash;and money&mdash;were already fighting for
+just that thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was <i>his</i>
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a physical
+thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if it took every
+year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to the world that the
+millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north were not the cast-off ends
+of the earth. They would populate them, and the so-called &ldquo;barrens&rdquo;
+would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of reindeer herds as the American plains
+had never thundered to the beat of cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure
+he would find at the end of this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money,
+simply as money, he hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped
+him; the passion to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into
+its own, and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a half of
+that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tolling of the ship&rsquo;s bell roused him from the subconscious struggle
+into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he had no sympathy
+with himself when he fell into one of these mental spasms, as he called them.
+Without knowing it, he was a little proud of a certain dispassionate tolerance
+which he possessed&mdash;a philosophical mastery of his emotions which at times
+was almost cold-blooded, and which made some people think he was a thing of
+stone instead of flesh and blood. His thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly
+disturbing sensation passed through him now, when he found that unconsciously
+his fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket.
+He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then,
+with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his
+pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have been had he
+possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at all, for that
+matter&mdash;even an uncle or two who might have been interested in him. He
+remembered his father vividly, his mother a little less so, because his mother
+had died when he was six and his father when he was twenty. It was his father
+who stood out above everything else, like the mountains he loved. The father
+would remain with him always, inspiring him, urging him, encouraging him to
+live like a gentleman, fight like a man, and die at last unafraid. In that
+fashion the older Alan Holt had lived and died. But his mother, her face and
+voice scarcely remembered in the passing of many years, was more a hallowed
+memory to him than a thing of flesh and blood. And there had been no sisters or
+brothers. Often he had regretted this lack of brotherhood. But a sister.... He
+grunted his disapprobation of the thought. A sister would have meant
+enchainment to civilization. Cities, probably. Even the States. And slavery to
+a life he detested. He appreciated the immensity of his freedom. A Mary
+Standish, even though she were his sister, would be a catastrophe. He could not
+conceive of her, or any other woman like her, living with Keok and Nawadlook
+and the rest of his people in the heart of the tundras. And the tundras would
+always be his home, because his heart was there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd figure
+crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light that came with
+the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not asleep. He paused,
+unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself, groaned, and stood up. He was
+a little man, and his fiercely bristling red whiskers, wet with dew, were
+luxuriant enough for a giant. His head of tawny hair, bristling like his
+whiskers, added to the piratical effect of him above the neck, but below that
+part of his anatomy there was little to strike fear into the hearts of
+humanity. Some people smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their
+man, laughed outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny
+on Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart was
+something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this little man who
+had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest gunman
+between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic reminder of the old days
+when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his gang&mdash;days when
+the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a stampede behind him, and when
+his name was mentioned in the same breath with those of George Carmack, and
+Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe
+Barret set their compasses by his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness
+as he stood in the gray of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew
+that Stampede Smith was broke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days. &ldquo;Why
+so much loneliness, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale&rsquo;s under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what a fool
+thing is money. Good mornin&rsquo;, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the lifting
+fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede&rsquo;s last
+asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside him, so that their
+shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan,&rdquo; said Stampede, &ldquo;it ain&rsquo;t often I have a big
+thought, but I&rsquo;ve been having one all night. Ain&rsquo;t forgot Bonanza,
+have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shook his head. &ldquo;As long as there is an Alaska, we won&rsquo;t
+forget Bonanza, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took a million out of it, next to Carmack&rsquo;s
+Discovery&mdash;an&rsquo; went busted afterward, didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that wasn&rsquo;t a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the
+Divide,&rdquo; Stampede continued ruminatively. &ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t forgot old
+Aleck McDonald, the Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the &lsquo;wash&rsquo; of
+Ninety-eight we took up seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked
+thirty of doin&rsquo; the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single
+clean-up, and that was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old
+Aleck went busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle.
+I had to grub-stake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted the first
+rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them and the unseen
+mountain tops.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five times after that I made strikes and went busted,&rdquo; he said a
+little proudly. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m busted again!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; sympathized Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an&rsquo;
+Frisco,&rdquo; chuckled Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully,
+&ldquo;an&rsquo; then bought me a ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them,
+don&rsquo;t you think? Couldn&rsquo;t have been more decent. I knew that fellow
+Kopf had a heart. That&rsquo;s why I trusted him with my money. It wasn&rsquo;t
+his fault he lost it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a
+fact.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You killed him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran&rsquo;s place. Mighty sorry. Didn&rsquo;t think then how decent it was
+of him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the moment. He
+did me a favor in cleanin&rsquo; me, Alan. He did, so help me! You don&rsquo;t
+realize how free an&rsquo; easy an&rsquo; beautiful everything is until
+you&rsquo;re busted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw the grim
+look in Alan&rsquo;s eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other&rsquo;s arm and shook it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, I mean it!&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I think
+money is a fool thing. It ain&rsquo;t <i>spendin&rsquo;</i> money that makes me
+happy. It&rsquo;s <i>findin&rsquo;</i> it&mdash;the gold in the
+mountains&mdash;that makes the blood run fast through my gizzard. After
+I&rsquo;ve found it, I can&rsquo;t find any use for it in particular. I want to
+go broke. If I didn&rsquo;t, I&rsquo;d get lazy and fat, an&rsquo; some
+newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I&rsquo;d die. They&rsquo;re doing a
+lot of that operatin&rsquo; down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and
+they wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen to a man
+when he&rsquo;s got money!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean all that, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On my life, I do. I&rsquo;m just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that&rsquo;s going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody&rsquo;ll grub-stake me in Nome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Alan suddenly. &ldquo;Not if I can help
+it. Stampede, I want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains.
+I&rsquo;ve got ten thousand reindeer up there. It&rsquo;s No Man&rsquo;s Land,
+and we can do as we please in it. I&rsquo;m not after gold. I want another sort
+of thing. But I&rsquo;ve fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow
+playmate of yours. It&rsquo;s a new country. You&rsquo;ve never seen it. God
+only knows what you may find. Will you come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede&rsquo;s eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will I <i>come?</i> Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me.
+Say it all over ag&rsquo;in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last of the
+fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges rose up
+against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was flashing in rose
+and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded. Speech was unnecessary.
+They both understood, and the thrill of the life they loved passed from one to
+the other in the grip of their hands.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There were
+only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other belonged to Mary
+Standish. There was something almost aggressively suggestive in their
+simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He nodded as he sat down, a flash
+of amusement in his eyes when he observed the look in the young
+engineer&rsquo;s face. It was both envious and accusing, and yet Alan was sure
+the young man was unconscious of betraying an emotion. The fact lent to the
+eating of his grapefruit an accompaniment of pleasing and amusing thought. He
+recalled the young man&rsquo;s name. It was Tucker. He was a clean-faced,
+athletic, likable-looking chap. And an idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan
+told himself. The young engineer was more than casually interested in Mary
+Standish; he was in love. It was not a discovery which Alan made. It was a
+decision, and as soon as possible he would remedy the unfortunate omission of a
+general introduction at their table by bringing the two together. Such an
+introduction would undoubtedly relieve him of a certain responsibility which
+had persisted in attaching itself to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get the empty
+chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be obliterated, and when
+other chairs became vacant as their owners left the table, this one straight
+across from him continued to thrust itself upon him. Until this morning it had
+been like other empty chairs. Now it was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he
+had no desire to be so constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve
+o&rsquo;clock tryst of Mary Standish with Graham&rsquo;s agent, Rossland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of seeing
+Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had made their exit
+through the door leading from the dining salon when the young engineer paused.
+Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his face. In a moment it was
+explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed Tucker without appearing to notice
+him, and gave Alan a cool little nod as she seated herself at the table. She
+was very pale. He could see nothing of the flush of color that had been in her
+cheeks last night. As she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool
+of sunlight played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her
+eyes. They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without embarrassment.
+Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It seemed inconceivable that
+such eyes could play a part in fraud and deception, yet he was in possession of
+quite conclusive proof of it. If they had lowered themselves an instant, if
+they had in any way betrayed a shadow of regret, he would have found an
+apology. Instead of that, his fingers touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. &ldquo;I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I am
+afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. &ldquo;This is the first morning I
+have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have slept well.
+Is this yours, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his fingers.
+In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was the quick
+response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was disappointed not to
+catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In front of my cabin door a little after midnight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some kind of
+result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on her lips a moment
+longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the clear depths of her eyes.
+Her level glance was as innocent as a child&rsquo;s and as he looked at her, he
+thought of a child&mdash;a most beautiful child&mdash;and so utterly did he
+feel the discomfiture of his mental analysis of her that he rose to his feet
+with a frigid bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank you, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can imagine my sense
+of obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the ship
+with me. And this is my favorite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard her give
+the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot, but the flush of
+it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable sensation of her eyes
+following him as he stalked through the door. He did not look back. Something
+was wrong with him, and he knew it. This chit of a girl with her smooth hair
+and clear eyes had thrown a grain of dust into the satisfactory mechanism of
+his normal self, and the grind of it was upsetting certain specific formulae
+which made up his life. He was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself
+names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning match. He
+looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a smile on his lips. In
+his eyes was a coolly appraising look as he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beg pardon.&rdquo; The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him
+over Rossland&rsquo;s shoulder. He might as well have said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+sorry, Boy, but you must keep out of my way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness, Keok had
+told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a humor to kill. They
+were like that now as they flashed their smile at Rossland. The sneering twist
+left Rossland&rsquo;s lips as he entered the dining-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham&rsquo;s
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the tables, and
+the scheme was that Rossland should be served t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted him
+with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table before Rossland
+appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he understood the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland&rsquo;s interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was successful, and
+he was about to extinguish the burning end when he hesitated and held it until
+the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish was coming through the door. Amazed
+by the suddenness of her appearance, he made no movement except to drop the
+match. Her eyes were flaming, and two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw
+him and gave the slightest inclination to her head as she passed. When she had
+gone, he could not resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland was
+seated in a chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly engaged in
+looking over the breakfast card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he was a
+little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in upon Rossland. At
+the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing reception which Miss
+Standish had evidently given to the dislikable individual who had jostled him
+in passing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the snowy
+peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach out his arms
+and touch them. The <i>Nome</i> appeared to be drifting in the heart of a
+paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the mainland; so close on the
+other hand that he could hear the shout of a man was Douglas Island, and ahead,
+reaching out like a silver-blue ribbon was Gastineau Channel. The mining towns
+of Treadwell and Douglas were in sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Bill Treadwell&rsquo;s place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Once
+the richest gold mines in Alaska. They&rsquo;re flooded now. I knew Bill when
+he was worrying about the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand
+pair an&rsquo; patched &rsquo;em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four
+hundred dollars somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named
+French Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An&rsquo; there was a time when there
+were nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It&rsquo;s worth
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow Stampede&rsquo;s voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and Alan
+wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment pressing upon
+him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual interest for Mary
+Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into an old acquaintance and
+permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased with the discovery, and yet he
+was compelled to acknowledge the truth of it. The grain of dust had become more
+than annoying. It did not wear away, as he had supposed it would, but was
+becoming an obsessive factor in his thoughts. And the half-desire it built up
+in him, while aggravatingly persistent, was less disturbing than before. The
+little drama in the dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of
+himself. He liked fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in her quiet
+prettiness, had shown her mettle in those few moments when he had seen her
+flashing eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland. He began to look for
+Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty, literally
+terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go down to the lower
+deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship gathered near the gangway with
+their luggage. Alan was about to pass them when he suddenly stopped. A short
+distance from him, where he could see every person who disembarked, stood
+Rossland. There was something grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled
+his watch-fob and eyed the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an
+unexpected thrill through Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He
+stepped to Rossland&rsquo;s side and touched his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Watching for Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo; There was no evasion in Rossland&rsquo;s words. They
+possessed the hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable
+authority behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if she goes ashore?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Miss Standish hasn&rsquo;t done that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then please attend to your own business. If you haven&rsquo;t enough to
+take up your time, I&rsquo;ll lend you some books. I have several in my
+cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not follow.
+There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to imprecate but his own
+folly. Rossland&rsquo;s words were not an insult. They were truth. He had
+deliberately intruded in an affair which was undoubtedly of a highly private
+nature. Possibly it was a domestic tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation
+swept over him, and he was glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He
+tried to whistle as he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he
+detested the man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted
+to be amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it was
+something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found old Donald
+Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the <i>Nome</i> had
+landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way out of Gastineau
+Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the smoking-room and remained there
+until luncheon hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with her back
+toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up behind her, so
+near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across at her and smiled as he
+seated himself. She returned the smile, but it seemed to him an apologetic
+little effort. She did not look well, and her presence at the table struck him
+as being a brave front to hide something from someone. Casually he looked over
+his left shoulder. Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the
+room. Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes shaded her
+eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her hair first. It had a
+peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been observant enough to know that
+she had rearranged it since breakfast, and the smooth coils twisted in
+mysterious intricacy at the crown of her head were like softly glowing velvet.
+The ridiculous thought came to him that he would like to see them tumbling down
+about her. They must be even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light fell upon
+her through the window. But when she looked across at him again, he caught for
+an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He began telling her something
+about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he had seen nothing which she might want
+to conceal. The light in her eyes changed, and it was almost a glow of
+gratitude he caught in them. He had broken a tension, relieved her of some
+unaccountable strain she was under. He noticed that her ordering of food was
+merely a pretense. She scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person
+at the table had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about her lack
+of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an angelic virtue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a splendid
+effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the breaking-point.
+When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own chair. At the same time he
+saw Rossland get up and advance rather hurriedly from the opposite side of the
+room. The girl passed through the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps
+behind, and Alan came last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was
+amusing in a way, yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim
+line about the corners of his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining salon to
+the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon Rossland. For only
+an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they flashed past him, and with a
+swift movement she came toward Alan. A flush had leaped into her cheeks, but
+there was no excitement in her voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and
+clearly heard by Rossland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Will you take me on deck, and tell me about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few hours before
+at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a meddler, words refused
+to form quickly on Alan&rsquo;s lips. Before he was ready with an answer Mary
+Standish had confidently taken his arm. He could see the red flush deepening in
+her upturned face. She was amazingly unexpected, bewilderingly pretty, and as
+cool as ice except for the softly glowing fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland
+staring with his cigarette half poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in
+the face of danger, and he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed
+softly. She gave his arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past
+Rossland, amazed but obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that sent a
+gentle thrill through him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: &ldquo;You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm, were like
+a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer see them, unless he
+had followed. The girl had played her part, and a second time he had accepted
+the role of a slow-witted fool. But the thought did not anger him. There was a
+remarkable element of humor about it for him, viewing himself in the matter,
+and Mary Standish heard him chuckling as they came out on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t
+funny,&rdquo; she reproved. &ldquo;It is tragic to be bored by a man like
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask, and he
+wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her know he had
+seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at her, and she met
+his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him, and her eyes, he thought,
+were the loveliest liars he had ever looked into. He felt the stir of an
+unusual sentiment&mdash;a sort of pride in her, and he made up his mind to say
+nothing about Rossland. He was still absurdly convinced that he had not the
+smallest interest in affairs which were not entirely his own. Mary Standish
+evidently believed he was blind, and he would make no effort to spoil her
+illusion. Such a course would undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the stair. A
+softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan
+fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon
+the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the
+narrow waterway to Skagway&rsquo;s door, while on both sides rose high
+mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like
+white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above
+the slow throb of the ship&rsquo;s engines the liquid music of innumerable
+cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their
+heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and
+twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle
+happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and
+the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a
+guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into
+the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and thrilling
+deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place. Alan turned to speak, but what
+he saw in the girl&rsquo;s face held him silent. Her lips were parted, and she
+was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that
+bewildered her and even startled her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a tense
+whisper: &ldquo;I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago. Maybe it
+was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I have lived under
+that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at him, and he
+was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go ashore here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know I
+would find it so soon. Please&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and saw the
+strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance he saw
+Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand was
+resting confidently in the crook of Alan&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?&rdquo; she asked with an icy little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered rather unexpectedly. &ldquo;And some day, if the
+right opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man&mdash;the man who
+murdered my father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a little gasp of horror. &ldquo;Your
+father&mdash;was&mdash;murdered&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indirectly&mdash;yes. It wasn&rsquo;t done with knife or gun, Miss
+Standish. Money was the weapon. Somebody&rsquo;s money. And John Graham was the
+man who struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>No</i>.&rdquo; Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew
+it away. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you to ask an explanation of him,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;If he should make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway,
+Mr. Holt. That will be pleasanter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western mountains,
+and the <i>Nome</i> was churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails to
+the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon fully impress itself
+upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to an impulse which he could
+not understand, and which in ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had
+taken Mary Standish ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking
+him questions and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or
+listened to him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he
+pictured the wind-racked ca&ntilde;on where Skagway grew from one tent to
+hundreds in a day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her
+the old days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and
+his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy&rsquo;s sunken
+grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about <i>himself</i>.
+And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had confided in
+her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and beautiful girl who
+had walked at his side had urged him on to the indiscretion of personal
+confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart beating with his own as he
+described his beloved land under the Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras,
+his herds, and his people. There, he had told her, a new world was in the
+making, and the glow in her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had
+urged him on until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship&rsquo;s
+gangway to see when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the
+air, and the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the building
+of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few years before. It
+was then, when he had pictured progress and civilization and the breaking down
+of nature&rsquo;s last barriers before science and invention, that he had seen
+a cloud of doubt in her gray eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the <i>Nome</i> looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight, doubt and
+perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would always love tents and old trails and nature&rsquo;s barriers. I
+envy Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am sorry to
+see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this man&mdash;John
+Graham!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words startled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I want you to tell me what he is doing&mdash;with his
+money&mdash;now.&rdquo; Her voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed,
+was clenched at the edge of the rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case well
+within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children by robbing
+the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives have subsisted
+for centuries. I know. I have seen them die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that&mdash;is all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed grimly. &ldquo;Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in Alaska. His
+agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a gentleman outlaw
+compared with these men and their master. If men like John Graham are allowed
+to have their way, in ten years greed and graft will despoil what two hundred
+years of Rooseveltian conservation would not be able to replace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the ghost-peaks
+of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom of evening.
+&ldquo;I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a woman like
+her. She could fight, couldn&rsquo;t she? She could make a man&rsquo;s
+fight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and did make it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring which
+she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then this, too, for luck&mdash;the luck of Mary Standish,&rdquo; she
+laughed softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had done.
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t melodrama,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I mean it. And I
+believe in it. I want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this
+gateway to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
+at the bottom of the Yukon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a moment the
+warm thrill of it lay in his own. &ldquo;Thank you for the wonderful afternoon
+you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget it. It is dinner time. I must
+say good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In returning
+to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was irritating.
+Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan&rsquo;s look
+squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan&rsquo;s
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was a
+growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of poise
+which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be, but a cool brain
+was at work inside his head&mdash;a brain not easily disturbed by unimportant
+things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an agent of John Graham Alan looked
+upon him as an enemy, and as an acquaintance of Mary Standish he was as much of
+a mystery as the girl herself. And only now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning
+to sense the presence of a real authority behind Rossland&rsquo;s attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing about the
+relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it involved himself,
+and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to please him. He could see
+no sport in an adventure of the kind it suggested, and the possibility that he
+had been misjudged by both Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger
+into his cheeks. He cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to
+wipe him out of existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of way. He
+had made no effort to discover her history. He had not questioned her. At no
+time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon her personal affairs, and at no
+time had she offered information about herself, or an explanation of the
+singular espionage which Rossland had presumed to take upon himself. He
+grimaced as he reflected how dangerously near that hazard he had been&mdash;and
+he admired her for the splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had
+saved him the possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the dining
+salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any increasing
+intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his experience had been, he
+resented the idea of being commandeered at unexpected moments. Had Mary
+Standish read his thoughts, her bearing toward him during the dinner hour could
+not have been more satisfying. There was, in a way, something seductively
+provocative about it. She greeted him with the slightest inclination of her
+head and a cool little smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either
+from him or from his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate
+reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he found
+himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation he had set down
+for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing glimpses at her hair when
+her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed it tonight until it was like
+softest velvet, with rich glints in it, and the amazing thought came to him
+that it would be sweetly pleasant to touch with one&rsquo;s hand. The discovery
+was almost a shock. Keok and Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never
+thought of it in this way. And he had never thought of Keok&rsquo;s pretty
+mouth as he was thinking of the girl&rsquo;s opposite him. He shifted uneasily
+and was glad Mary Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental
+unbalance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as if she
+had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He tried to laugh as
+he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an hour later, feeding a
+captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he thought, that a captive bear
+should be going north. Stampede explained. The animal was a pet and belonged to
+the Thlinkit Indians. There were seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed
+that the two girls watched him closely and whispered together. They were very
+pretty, with large, dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not
+look at him at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they discussed
+the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan&rsquo;s plans for the
+future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his cabin to get maps and
+photographs. Stampede&rsquo;s eyes glistened as his mind seized upon the
+possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast land. An unknown country. And
+Alan was its first pioneer. The old thrill ran in Stampede&rsquo;s blood, and
+its infectiousness caught Alan, so that he forgot Mary Standish, and all else
+but the miles that lay between them and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward
+Peninsula. It was midnight when Alan went to his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his body, and
+he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through his open port
+from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the comradeship which he
+had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and half-savage desires always
+smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and
+his soul was filled with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too
+late. Another generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years
+more and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention
+and what the human race called progress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in that
+history which would go down through the eons of time, written in the red blood
+of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown. After him, there would be
+no more frontiers. No more mysteries of unknown lands to solve. No more
+pioneering hazards to make. The earth would be tamed. And suddenly he thought
+of Mary Standish and of what she had said to him in the dusk of evening.
+Strange that it had been <i>her</i> thought, too&mdash;that she would always
+love tents and old trails and nature&rsquo;s barriers, and hated to see cities
+and railroads and automobiles come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders.
+Probably she had guessed what was in his own mind, for she was clever, very
+clever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was a
+quarter after twelve o&rsquo;clock, an unusual hour for someone to be tapping
+at his door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was repeated&mdash;a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again, quick
+and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And then he
+saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without waiting for him to
+speak or give her permission to enter. And it was Mary Standish herself who
+closed the door, while he stared at her in stupid wonderment&mdash;and stood
+there with her back against it, straight and slim and deathly pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I come in?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God, you&rsquo;re in!&rdquo; gasped Alan. &ldquo;<i>You&rsquo;re
+in</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to his room,
+entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of invitation from
+him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first explosion of astonishment he
+stood mute, while the girl looked at him steadily and her breath came a little
+quickly. But she was not excited. Even in his amazement he could see that. What
+he had thought was fright had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her
+so white, and never had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as
+while she stood there in these astounding moments with her back against the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even her lips
+were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear and unafraid now,
+and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness of purpose that staggered
+him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal resentment, began to possess him as
+he waited for her to speak. This, at last, was the cost of his courtesies to
+her, The advantage she was taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and
+his mind flashed to the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her quiet
+face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips tremble, and
+then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes tears were gathering.
+Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her face in her hands, but
+looked at him bravely while the tear-drops glistened like diamonds on her
+cheeks. He felt his heart give way. She read his thoughts, had guessed his
+suspicion, and he was wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you will have a seat, Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked lamely,
+inclining his head toward the cabin chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Please let me stand.&rdquo; She drew in a deep breath. &ldquo;It is
+late, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this,&rdquo; he assured
+her. &ldquo;Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb in her
+white throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have come to
+your cabin at midnight&mdash;even aboard ship? And it is that with me&mdash;a
+matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that decision. I
+could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why me?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle,
+or some other? Is it because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes, as if for
+an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but it was gone as
+quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without emotion, she answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to you as
+I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances, if I were a man.
+If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind about you is taking an
+advantage&mdash;then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But I am not sorry. I trust
+you. I know you will believe me good until I am proved bad. I have come to ask
+you to help me. Would you make it possible for another human being to avert a
+great tragedy if you found it in your power to do so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing such a
+situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he would have called
+any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door and show his visitor out.
+But such a thought did not occur to him now. He was thinking of the
+handkerchief he had found the preceding midnight. Twice she had come to his
+cabin at a late hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible,&rdquo; he
+said, answering her question. &ldquo;Tragedy is a nasty thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the tilt of
+her dainty chin a bit higher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, I can&rsquo;t pay you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are the
+sort of man who would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you
+to do. But I must have help. If I don&rsquo;t have it, and
+quickly&rdquo;&mdash;she shuddered slightly and tried to
+smile&mdash;&ldquo;something very unpleasant will happen, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she
+finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I may have
+your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you, whether you help me
+or not. Will you give me that pledge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not see the
+sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or the quicker
+throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint flush was gathering in
+her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to leave the ship,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night&mdash;before we reach
+Cordova.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that&mdash;your problem?&rdquo; he demanded, astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am dead.
+I can not reach Cordova alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were insane. Her
+quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching steadiness. His brain all at
+once was crowded with questioning, but no word of it came to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can help me,&rdquo; he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm
+voice, softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door.
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t a plan. But I know you can arrange one&mdash;if you
+will. It must appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard,
+anything, just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can
+not tell you why. I can not. Oh, I <i>can not</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant, leaving
+it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He could see
+courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I am
+mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven&rsquo;t gone to
+Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only answer I can make is
+that I have come to you because you are the only man in the world&mdash;in this
+hour&mdash;that I have faith in. Some day you will understand, if you help me.
+If you do not care to help me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if I don&rsquo;t? What will happen then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be forced to the inevitable,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It is
+rather unusual, isn&rsquo;t it, to be asking for one&rsquo;s life? But that is
+what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid&mdash;I don&rsquo;t quite understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it clear, Mr. Holt? I don&rsquo;t like to appear
+spectacular, and I don&rsquo;t want you to think of me as theatrical&mdash;even
+now. I hate that sort of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it
+is impossible for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to
+disappear, help me to live&mdash;and at the same time give all others the
+impression that I am dead&mdash;then I must do the other thing. I must really
+die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the shoulders
+and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of a child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat of
+suicide?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you want to call it that&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you expect me to believe you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had hoped you would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed her and
+half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the smallest effort to work
+upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved utterly. But he was not blind to
+the fact that she was making a brave fight, even though a lie was behind it,
+and with a consciousness of pride that bewildered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going on within
+him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She had stated the
+facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her long lashes glistened a
+little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair glowed softly, so softly that he
+would never forget it, as she stood there with her back against the door, nor
+the strange desire that came to him&mdash;even then&mdash;to touch it with his
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. &ldquo;It is
+Rossland,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re afraid of Rossland?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it were
+not for the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>other</i>! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had
+no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What other?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can not tell you. I don&rsquo;t want you to hate me. And you would
+hate me if I told you the truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you confess you are lying,&rdquo; he suggested brutally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not anger her or
+shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little handkerchief to her eyes,
+and he turned toward the open port, puffing at his cigar, knowing she was
+fighting to keep the tears back. And she succeeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you have
+given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is a kindness
+which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How could I bring about what you ask?&rdquo; he interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but
+I see now how foolish I have been. It is impossible.&rdquo; Her hand reached
+slowly for the knob of the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you are foolish,&rdquo; he agreed, and his voice was softer.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to
+your cabin and get a night&rsquo;s sleep. Don&rsquo;t let Rossland worry you.
+If you want me to settle with that man&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and looked at
+him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half a minute
+he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at ease. Mary
+Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left him like a soldier.
+But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught for an instant something
+which she had not betrayed in his cabin&mdash;a stab of what he thought was
+pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud regret, possibly a shadow of
+humiliation at last&mdash;or it may have been a pity for him. He was not sure.
+But it was not despair. Not once had she whimpered in look or word, even when
+the tears were in her eyes, and the thought was beginning to impress itself
+upon him that it was he&mdash;and not Mary Standish&mdash;who had shown a
+yellow streak this night. A half shame fell upon him as he smoked. For it was
+clear he had not come up to her judgment of him, or else he was not so big a
+fool as she had hoped he might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a
+loss to decide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in the
+analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and bred of the
+open country, it was as natural for him to recognize courage as it was for him
+to breathe. And the girl&rsquo;s courage was unusual, now that he had time to
+think about it. It was this thought of her coolness and her calm refusal to
+impose her case upon him with greater warmth that comforted him after a little.
+A young and beautiful woman who was actually facing death would have urged her
+necessity with more enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated
+it intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the moment, to
+give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea of a girl like
+Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously impossible. Her quiet and
+wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite care which she gave to herself
+emphasized the absurdity of such a supposition. She had come to him bravely.
+There was no doubt of that. She had merely exaggerated the importance of her
+visit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this
+conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain
+unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and
+unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his
+thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color to his visionings he
+exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled pipe, which he filled and
+lighted. Then he began walking back and forth in his cabin, like a big animal
+in a small cage, until at last he stood with his head half out of the open
+port, looking at the clear stars and setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift
+with the soft sea wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him again, with
+sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little harsh with Miss
+Standish tonight, he would make up for it by apologizing tomorrow. She would
+probably have recovered her balance by that time, and they would laugh over her
+excitement and their little adventure. That is, he would. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+at all curious in the matter,&rdquo; some persistent voice kept telling him,
+&ldquo;and I haven&rsquo;t any interest in knowing what irrational whim drove
+her to my cabin.&rdquo; But he smoked viciously and smiled grimly as the voice
+kept at him. He would have liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But
+Rossland persisted in bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish&rsquo;s words,
+&ldquo;If I should make an explanation, you would hate me,&rdquo; or something
+to that effect. He couldn&rsquo;t remember exactly. And he didn&rsquo;t want to
+remember exactly, for it was none of his business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and half on
+the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began thinking of the
+Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he figured out how long it would
+be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of the Endicott Mountains rose up in
+first welcome to his home-coming. Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would
+join him at Unalaska. They would go on to Nome together. After that he would
+spend a week or so in the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big
+portage to the Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still
+farther&mdash;beyond the last trails of civilized men&mdash;to his herds and
+his people. And Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of
+homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams.
+But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede
+Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok, laughing,
+changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan
+thought drowsily&mdash;she was always tormenting someone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his cabin,
+when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open sea. Eastward
+the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white peaks of the St. Elias
+Range flung themselves high up against the sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy
+banners. The <i>Nome</i> was pounding ahead at full speed, and Alan&rsquo;s
+blood responded suddenly to the impelling thrill of her engines, beating like
+twin hearts with the mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business.
+It meant miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were losing time
+by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with Cordova he thought of
+Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of her. The
+thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now that the time of
+that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded moments of embarrassment
+even when he was not directly accountable for them. But Mary Standish saved him
+any qualms of conscience which he might have had because of his lack of
+chivalry the preceding night. She was at the table. And she was not at all
+disturbed when he seated himself opposite her. There was color in her cheeks, a
+fragile touch of that warm glow in the heart of the wild rose of the tundras.
+And it seemed to him there was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than
+he had ever seen before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had evidently
+broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was the first time Alan
+had seen her interested in this way. He had no intention of listening, but
+something perverse and compelling overcame his will. He discovered the lady was
+going up to teach in a native school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that
+for many years she had taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda
+Mulrooney. He gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss
+Robson, the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she possessed of
+Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an address. The girl
+hesitated, then said she was not certain of her destination, but would write
+Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will surely keep your promise?&rdquo; urged Miss Robson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will keep my promise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that he
+thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few hours&rsquo;
+sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her mental attitude,
+and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility which had persisted in
+attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured himself, could possibly see a
+note of tragedy in her appearance now. Nor was she different at luncheon or at
+dinner. During the day he saw nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of
+the fact that she was purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not
+displease him. It allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a
+normal sort of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked
+his black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of the
+ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his first
+meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked his two-mile
+promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a peculiar impression of
+aloneness. Something was missing. He did not acknowledge to himself what it was
+until, as if to convict him, he saw Mary Standish come out of the door leading
+from her cabin passageway, and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a
+moment he hesitated, then quietly he came up beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+Cordova is only a few hours ahead of us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the shrouding
+darkness of the sea. &ldquo;Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she repeated
+after him, &ldquo;and Cordova is only a few hours ahead.&rdquo; Then, in the
+same soft, unemotional voice, she added: &ldquo;I want to thank you for last
+night. You brought me to a great decision.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear I did not help you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he caught a
+shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought there were two ways,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you made me
+see there was only <i>one</i>.&rdquo; She emphasized that word. It seemed to
+come with a little tremble in her voice. &ldquo;I was foolish. But please let
+us forget. I want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will win, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he said in a sure voice. &ldquo;In
+whatever you undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of
+is the adventure of coming to Alaska&mdash;seeking your fortune&mdash;finding
+your life here&mdash;it will be glorious. I can assure you of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under the
+mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith which I have.
+I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when America was very young. At
+times the feeling is so strong that I must have faith in it. Possibly I am
+foolish. But when the mountain swung back, like a great door, and we saw
+Skagway, I knew that sometime&mdash;somewhere&mdash;I had seen a thing like
+that before. And I have had strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of
+madness in me. But it is that faith which gives me courage to go on with my
+experiment. That&mdash;and <i>you</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;and your suspicions and your brutality,&rdquo; she went on,
+her voice trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before
+him. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me
+the opportunity, and it may do you good&mdash;after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like your
+mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as clean and
+unafraid and believing all things good until you found them bad&mdash;and I
+lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when I came to your
+cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+<i>afraid</i>&mdash;fearful of something happening which you didn&rsquo;t want
+to happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was a
+liar, and told me so. It wasn&rsquo;t fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn&rsquo;t
+<i>fair</i>. There were things which I couldn&rsquo;t explain to you, but I
+told you Rossland knew. I didn&rsquo;t keep everything back. And I believed you
+were big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with
+my&mdash;friendship, even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much
+faith in myself&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t think I would be mistaken for something
+unclean and lying!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Listen to me&mdash;Miss
+Standish&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile, and
+she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he called her
+name, but her footsteps were almost running up the passageway. He dropped back,
+his blood cold, his hands clenched in the darkness, and his face as white as
+the girl&rsquo;s had been. Her words had held him stunned and mute. He saw
+himself stripped naked, as she believed him to be, and the thing gripped him
+with a sort of horror. And she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to
+be good judgment and common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed
+fool&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door. When he
+knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried again, listening
+for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he was readjusting himself.
+He was half glad, in the end, that the door did not open. He believed Miss
+Standish was inside, and she would undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming
+without an apology in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its
+disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes, her
+smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had faced him
+remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away from the vision of her
+as she had stood against the door with tears like diamonds on her cheeks.
+Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it. Something had escaped him which he
+could not understand. And she was holding him accountable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts to
+become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string music in
+the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the dancing with
+such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw Rossland whirling round
+the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his arms. The girl was looking up
+into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay unashamed against his shoulder, while
+Rossland&rsquo;s face rested against her fluffy hair when they mingled closely
+with the other dancers. Alan turned away, an unpleasant thought of
+Rossland&rsquo;s association with Mary Standish in his mind. He strolled down
+into the steerage. The Thlinkit people had shut themselves in with a curtain of
+blankets, and from the stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed
+slowly for him after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to
+interest himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was himself. The
+thrill he had always experienced with this particular writer was missing. There
+was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even the tobacco in his pipe seemed to
+lack something, and he changed it for a cigar&mdash;and chose another book. The
+result was the same. His mind refused to function, and there was no comfort in
+his cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously lied to
+himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a fight between
+himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his door. Mary
+Standish&mdash;the slim beauty of her&mdash;her courage&mdash;a score of things
+that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on his
+smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions that were
+struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad and entirely a fool,
+he told himself. But the assurance did him no good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made another effort
+to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o&rsquo;clock music and dancing
+ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that he found himself becoming
+more interested in the first book he had started to read. His old satisfaction
+slowly returned to him. He relighted his cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he
+heard the ship&rsquo;s bells, eleven o&rsquo;clock, and after that the
+half-hour and midnight. The printed pages were growing dim, and drowsily he
+marked his book, placed it on the table, and yawned. They must be nearing
+Cordova. He could feel the slackened speed of the <i>Nome</i> and the softer
+throb of her engines. Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing
+inshore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman&rsquo;s scream. A piercing cry of
+terror, of agony&mdash;and of something else that froze the blood in his veins
+as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending in a moaning
+wail and a man&rsquo;s husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his window. He heard
+another shout and then a voice of command. He could not distinguish the words,
+but the ship herself seemed to respond. There came the sudden smoothness of
+dead engines, followed by the pounding shock of reverse and the clanging alarm
+of a bell calling boats&rsquo; crews to quarters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was overboard.
+And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of his body, for the
+pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an instant before him, and in her
+quiet voice she was telling him again that <i>this was the other way.</i> His
+face went white as he caught up his smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran
+down the dimly lighted corridor.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship when Alan
+reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept slowly ahead against
+the force struggling to hold her back. He heard running feet, voices, and the
+rattle of davit blocks, and came up as the starboard boat aft began swinging
+over the smooth sea. Captain Rifle was ahead of him, half-dressed, and the
+second officer was giving swift commands. A dozen passengers had come from the
+smoking-room. There was only one woman. She stood a little back, partly
+supported in a man&rsquo;s arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at
+the man, and he knew from his appearance that she was the woman who had
+screamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of oars, but
+the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to him distinctly in
+the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was the terrible sobbing of the
+woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed to sway under his feet. He was
+conscious of a crowd gathering about the empty davits, but he had eyes only for
+these two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it a man&mdash;or a woman?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced from
+his lips. And the other man, with the woman&rsquo;s head crumpled against his
+shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A woman,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;This is my wife. We were sitting here
+when she climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw her
+going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her eyes,
+but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband&rsquo;s arm. She
+struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to comfort her. And
+then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was haggard, and a glance told
+Alan that he knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This lady thinks it was Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a moment in
+his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind him, and before
+him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed swiftly, with no sign of
+it in the immobility of his pale face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then&mdash;then&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a choking
+breath:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering.&rdquo;
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and a
+strange calmness began to possess him. &ldquo;You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?&rdquo; he found himself saying. &ldquo;Is it possible you
+might be mistaken?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;She was so quiet and pretty that I
+have noticed her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I&rsquo;m almost sure she smiled at
+me and was going to speak. And then&mdash;then&mdash;she was gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know until my wife screamed,&rdquo; added the man.
+&ldquo;I was seated facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see
+nothing behind but the wash of the ship. I think she went down
+instantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely sensed the
+presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had left him, and he
+walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary Standish would be if the
+woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had leaped into the sea. He knocked
+at the door only once. Then he opened it. There was no cry of fear or protest
+from within, and he knew the room was empty before he turned on the electric
+light. He had known it from the beginning, from the moment he heard the
+woman&rsquo;s scream. Mary Standish was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the pillow.
+A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted. Her few
+possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he saw her shoes
+and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked up one of the shoes
+and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little shoe. His fingers closed
+about it until it crushed like paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly to
+confront Captain Rifle. The little man&rsquo;s face was like gray wax. For a
+moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe crumpled in
+Alan&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The boats got away quickly,&rdquo; he said in a husky voice. &ldquo;We
+stopped inside the third-mile. If she can swim&mdash;there is a chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t swim,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t jump
+in for that. She is gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of his own
+voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched hands and in
+his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy of one kind and
+another. It was not strange to him. But a look of wonderment shot into his eyes
+at Alan&rsquo;s words. It took only a few seconds to tell what had happened the
+preceding night, without going into details. The captain&rsquo;s hand was on
+Alan&rsquo;s arm when he finished, and the flesh under his fingers was rigid
+and hard as steel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk with Rossland after the boats return,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held the
+crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It took him only
+a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain. Half an hour later the
+first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a second came in. And then a
+third. Alan stood back, alone, while the passengers crowded the rail. He knew
+what to expect. And the murmur of it came to him&mdash;failure! It was like a
+sob rising softly out of the throats of many people. He drew away. He did not
+want to meet their eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be
+saying. And as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an
+agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first
+law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the desire to
+reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to rise up out of it
+and forgive him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask through
+which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly coldness.
+Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she would have been
+right. His heart was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two people were at Rossland&rsquo;s door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship&rsquo;s doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t rouse him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I did not see him
+among the passengers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor did I,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think the circumstances permit,&rdquo; he explained. In a moment he
+looked up, puzzled. &ldquo;The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in
+the lock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his knuckles
+were red. There was still no response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Odd,&rdquo; he muttered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very odd,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash sent it
+in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp, and the men
+stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly, upturned, as if
+staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement and spoke no word.
+Marston entered and turned on the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle close
+the door behind them, and from Marston&rsquo;s lips came a startled whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His arms were
+stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the white sheet under
+him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges and to the floor. His
+eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly.
+He bent over Rossland, and in that moment, when his back was toward them,
+Captain Rifle&rsquo;s eyes met Alan&rsquo;s. The same thought&mdash;and in
+another instant disbelief&mdash;flashed from one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. &ldquo;A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not dead.
+Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and dressing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The door was locked on the inside,&rdquo; said Alan, as soon as the
+doctor was gone. &ldquo;And the window is closed. It looks like&mdash;suicide.
+It is possible&mdash;there was an understanding between them&mdash;and Rossland
+chose this way instead of the sea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into the
+corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. &ldquo;There is no
+knife,&rdquo; he said stonily. And in a moment he added: &ldquo;There are red
+stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Murder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window. Or it is
+possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a long-armed man might have
+reached him. It was a man, Alan. We&rsquo;ve got to believe that. It was a
+<i>man</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, a man,&rdquo; Alan nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle made a
+gesture toward the door. &ldquo;Better go,&rdquo; he advised. &ldquo;This is a
+ship&rsquo;s matter, and you won&rsquo;t want to be unnecessarily mixed up in
+it. Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan passed
+them, and he heard the door of Rossland&rsquo;s room close behind him. The ship
+was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He went to Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings and put them in
+the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard. Without any effort at
+concealment he carried the bag to his room and packed his own dunnage. After
+that he hunted up Stampede Smith and explained to him that an unexpected change
+in his plans compelled them to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his
+appointment with the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He nodded
+toward a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll reach Cordova inside of an hour,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Doctor Marston says Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold
+the <i>Nome</i> in port until he is able to talk. He was struck through the
+window. I will make oath to that. Have you anything&mdash;in mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only one thing,&rdquo; replied Alan, &ldquo;a determination to go ashore
+as soon as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it.
+As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or
+dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon him. It was merely
+coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me our location
+when she leaped into the sea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let Captain Rifle
+see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east of Eyak
+River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a chance. And I hope
+you will find her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bad blow for the ship&mdash;her first trip,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not thinking of the <i>Nome</i>. I&rsquo;m thinking of
+Mary Standish. My God, it is terrible! If it had been anyone
+else&mdash;<i>anyone</i>&mdash;&rdquo; His words seemed to choke him, and he
+made a despairing gesture with his hands. &ldquo;It is hard to
+believe&mdash;almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill herself.
+Tell me again what happened in your cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain details of
+the girl&rsquo;s visit. But a number of things which she had trusted to his
+confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon Rossland&rsquo;s influence
+or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort, and when he had finished, he
+gripped his hand, understanding in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not responsible&mdash;not so much as you believe,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find
+her if you can, and let me know. You will do that&mdash;you will let me
+know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I shall let you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his assailant
+is still on board.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Undoubtedly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: &ldquo;There is
+nothing in Miss Standish&rsquo;s room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your hand.
+But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into the
+sea&mdash;before she went.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Such a thought is possible,&rdquo; agreed Alan evasively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face looked
+haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all,
+Alan. God knows I&rsquo;d give this old life of mine to bring her back if I
+could. To me she was much like&mdash;someone&mdash;a long time dead.
+That&rsquo;s why I broke ship&rsquo;s regulations when she came aboard so
+strangely at Seattle, without reservation. I&rsquo;m sorry now. I should have
+sent her ashore. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to
+ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you
+do&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall send you word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle&rsquo;s fingers still held to Alan&rsquo;s
+as they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky. The
+stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the darkened sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thunder-storm,&rdquo; said the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note in his
+voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And then he said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he went
+through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the whispered
+moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A vast distance away
+he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin. Stampede
+Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin bag. Alan explained
+the unexpected change in his plans. Business in Cordova would make him miss a
+boat and would delay him at least a month in reaching the tundras. It was
+necessary for Stampede to go on to the range alone. He could make a quick trip
+by way of the Government railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to
+Allakakat, and thence still farther north into the Endicott country. It would
+be easy for a man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him
+certain written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to go
+ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until morning. And
+Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of his
+action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for physical
+action and that he must have it immediately or break. The desire was a touch of
+madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding back by sheer force of will.
+He tried to shut out the vision of a pale face floating in the sea; he fought
+to keep a grip on the dispassionate calmness which was a part of him. But the
+ship itself was battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour&mdash;since he
+had heard the scream of the woman&mdash;he had come to hate it. He wanted the
+feel of solid earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that
+narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And not until
+Alan&rsquo;s feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a great hole in
+the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After he had left the wharf,
+he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply of the mountain smell and
+getting his bearings. It was more than darkness about him. An occasional light
+burning dimly here and there gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink
+threatening to inundate him. The storm had not broken, but it was close, and
+the air was filled with a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and
+yet very near, as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take
+the earth unaware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years ago he
+had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen, half a mile up
+the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be there, where he had squatted for
+twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay until the sea itself was ready to
+claim him. So he felt his way instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke
+over his head. The forces of the night were unleashing. He could hear a
+gathering tumult in the mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and
+there came a sudden glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him.
+He saw a white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea
+he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between
+two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced to
+deadly combat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder that
+gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled away, echo
+upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of signal-guns, each more
+distant than the other. A cold breath of air struck Alan in the face, and
+something inside him rose up to meet the thrill of storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and the fire
+of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash of the elements
+about his father&rsquo;s cabin and the roaring voices of the ranges filling the
+darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into the world. Love of it was
+in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this
+&ldquo;talk of the mountains&rdquo; as others yearn for the coming of spring.
+He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the
+light that always burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen&rsquo;s cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky wall.
+A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face, and a flash
+of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he could hear the
+patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his bags and began hammering
+with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he flung open the unlocked door and
+entered, tossing his dunnage to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that
+Ericksen would not have forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had
+passed since he and Alan&rsquo;s father had tramped the mountains together.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="332"></a>
+<img src="images/332.jpg" width="600" height="386" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the frame of
+an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent shoulders, his massive
+head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard streaming over his naked chest.
+He stared for a moment, and Alan flung off his hat, and as the storm broke,
+beating upon the cabin in a mighty shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow
+of recognition came from Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing the
+sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan&rsquo;s face made him pause
+to hear other words than his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea, bracing his
+arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening beard over his
+shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that drenched him as he stood
+there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan, a great, gray ghost of a man in
+the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn the long,
+black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out to sea.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its downpour, and
+the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was blotted out, and fifty
+feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch Alan could see only a gray wall.
+Water ran in streams from his rubber slicker, and Olaf&rsquo;s great beard was
+dripping like a wet rag. He was like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the
+face of impenetrable gloom he opened speed until the <i>Norden</i> was shooting
+with the swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Olaf&rsquo;s cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary
+Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered reefs and
+rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet might have found a
+hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty years Ericksen had never
+known of the finding of a body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief
+that the girl was at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no
+less in Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the <i>Norden</i> as
+the slim craft leaped through the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him there was
+nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the least he could do,
+and the only honest thing he could do, he kept telling himself. And there was a
+chance that he would find her. All through his life had run that element of
+chance; usually it was against odds he had won, and there rode with him in the
+gray dawn a conviction he was going to win now&mdash;that he would find Mary
+Standish somewhere in the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the
+first of the islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he
+found her&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in moments it
+overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting to keep out of his
+mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his mental pictures of her. A strip
+of white beach persisted in his mind, and waiting for him on this beach was the
+slim body of the girl, her pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long
+hair streaming over the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled
+to keep away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he
+would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking
+down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had
+sent Mary Standish to her death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in which
+he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to <i>him</i> in her
+hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the <i>Nome</i>. She
+had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her confidence, and at
+the last had placed her life in his hands. And when he had failed her, she had
+not gone to another. She had kept her word, proving to him she was not a liar
+and a fraud, and he knew at last the courage of womanhood and the truth of her
+words, &ldquo;You will understand&mdash;tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn lightened
+swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the tense lines of
+his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf did not press his folly
+upon him, but kept the <i>Norden</i> pointed seaward, adding still greater
+speed as the huge shadow of the headland loomed up in the direction of
+Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day the rain subsided; it fell in a
+drizzle for a time and then stopped. Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the
+water from his eyes and hair. White mists began to rise, and through them shot
+faint rose-gleams of light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his
+beard. The sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above,
+as the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had washed the
+air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the sea; and Olaf stood
+up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his body as he drank the
+sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the mountains taking form, and one
+after another they rose up like living things, their crests catching the fire
+of the sun. Dark inundations of forest took up the shimmering gleam, green
+slopes rolled out from behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly&mdash;in a
+final triumph of the sun&mdash;the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its
+glory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning at his
+companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But in Alan&rsquo;s
+there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of sunlight breaking
+over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was missing. The soul of it
+was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips
+tightened even as he met the other&rsquo;s smile, for he no longer made an
+effort to blind himself to the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan&rsquo;s
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay naked
+in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it inspired by the
+captain of the <i>Nome</i>, as Alan had given him reason to believe. There was
+more than grimness in the other&rsquo;s face, and a strange sort of sickness
+lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the straining eagerness with which
+those eyes scanned the softly undulating surface of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he said, &ldquo;If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+<i>out there</i>,&rdquo; and he pointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan stood up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she wouldn&rsquo;t be there now,&rdquo; Olaf added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down&mdash;at the bottom. He turned
+his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains was the white
+sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of an hour later a spiral
+of smoke detached itself from the rocks and timber that came down close to the
+sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s McCormick&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf&rsquo;s binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman&rsquo;s cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who knew
+every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes shut could find
+Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who came down to greet them
+when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of the
+cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly. Sandy himself
+was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man. They shook hands. Then
+Alan told of the tragedy aboard the <i>Nome</i> and what his mission was. He
+made a great effort to speak calmly, and believed that he succeeded. Certainly
+there was no break of emotion in his cold, even voice, and at the same time no
+possibility of evading its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of
+livelihood were frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer
+of pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty dollars a
+day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if he found the
+girl&rsquo;s body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he had
+said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not have
+impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in the Nome
+banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he would as
+willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have guaranteed him the
+possession of what he sought. In Olaf&rsquo;s face McCormick caught a look
+which explained the situation a little. Alan Holt was not mad. He was as any
+other man might be who had lost the most precious thing in the world. And
+unconsciously, as he pledged his services in acceptance of the offer, he
+glanced in the direction of the little woman standing in the doorway of the
+cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled gravely at
+Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when she heard what had
+happened aboard the <i>Nome</i>. Alan left the three together and returned to
+the beach, while between the loading and the lighting of his pipe the Swede
+told what he had guessed&mdash;that this girl whose body would never be washed
+ashore was the beginning and the end of the world to Alan Holt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch. He
+was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch canniness
+made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left details of the
+drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the finding of the
+body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many women were seeking before
+nightfall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And remember,&rdquo; Sandy told each of them, &ldquo;the chances are
+she&rsquo;ll wash ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she
+comes ashore at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast. He was
+alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It was a different
+Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the western sea, with the golden
+slopes of the mountains reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had
+passed through a great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land
+had crept slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was
+despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an
+obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed
+their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a
+consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each
+mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to
+him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change
+the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would
+not give up its dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy&rsquo;s wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had softened
+him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others had been. He
+knew. The woman&rsquo;s eyes told him, the almost mothering eagerness in them
+when he came through the door. She had coffee and food ready for him, and he
+forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked
+his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming
+tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause of it,
+so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen McCormick about the
+splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and how fortunate she was to have
+her home in this little corner of paradise. He caught a flash of something
+unspoken in her eyes. It was a lonely place for a woman, alone, without
+children, and he spoke about children to Sandy, smiling. They should have
+children&mdash;a lot of them. Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of
+laughter. But the woman&rsquo;s face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes
+betrayed her, something wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re building a new cabin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+there&rsquo;s two rooms in it specially for kids.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that was
+already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A moment later
+Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something which lay on a little
+table near the door through which Alan had to pass to enter his sleeping-room.
+Olaf&rsquo;s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see. Only he knew there should be
+children here, where there was surely love. It did not occur to him as being
+strange that he, Alan Holt, should think of such a matter at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of certain
+hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents tossed the
+flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with Olaf at the wheel of
+the <i>Norden</i>. It was sunset when they returned, and in the calm of a
+wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the mountains smiling down at
+them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak what was in his mind. He spoke
+first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep
+down under the surface which he had never had explained to him, and of how he
+had lost a cask once upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon
+its way to Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows
+and the treachery of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if Mary
+Standish never did come ashore. It would be days&mdash;probably weeks&mdash;if
+it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan to
+recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea. That was
+what he called it&mdash;&ldquo;a peaceful resting-place&rdquo;&mdash;and in his
+earnestness to soothe another&rsquo;s grief he blundered still more deeply into
+the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and bone could
+and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond the power of
+speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was in his
+face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in suspense. But the
+Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to Olaf Ericksen. Alan did
+not see the look that passed between them. He went to the cabin, and Ellen
+McCormick put a hand on his arm when he entered. It was an unusual thing for
+her to do. And there was a glow in her eyes which had not been there last
+night, and a flush in her cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she
+spoke to him. It was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you didn&rsquo;t find her?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo; His voice was tired and a little old. &ldquo;Do you think I
+shall ever find her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not as you have expected,&rdquo; she answered quietly. &ldquo;She will
+never come like that.&rdquo; She seemed to be making an effort.
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you would give a great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child looking at
+him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course. Everything I possess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you&mdash;loved her&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the probing
+did not sting him; it was not a woman&rsquo;s curiosity that inspired them, and
+the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not realized before
+how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for himself, but for
+someone else&mdash;aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to be
+making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief acquaintance.
+But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s face and eyes was a
+tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which had been his
+sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of this he took the bag
+in which were Mary Standish&rsquo;s belongings, and gave it to Sandy&rsquo;s
+wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to speak in a businesslike
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after I
+am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you don&rsquo;t
+find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day.&rdquo; It seemed hard for
+him to give his simple instructions. He went on: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I
+shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova, and it
+will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you do find her,
+you will look after her yourself, won&rsquo;t you, Mrs. McCormick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do what he
+asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little thing, and half an
+hour later, after he had explained everything to Sandy, he wished her happiness
+when he took her hand in saying good-by. Her hand was trembling. He wondered at
+it and said something to Sandy about the priceless value of a happiness such as
+his, as they went down to the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars, when
+the <i>Norden&rsquo;s</i> shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan
+looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that lay above
+him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full. But now it seemed
+so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away, that a great loneliness
+seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look back at the dimly white
+shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that lay beneath the mountains.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+That night, in Olaf&rsquo;s cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his life,
+and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and that Mary
+Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what happened in the
+years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part of himself wither up and
+die because of a blow that had darkened his mental visions of things. His plans
+lay ahead of him, his old ambitions and his dreams of achievement. They seemed
+pulseless and dead now, but he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily
+burned out. And he realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he
+first wrote a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter&mdash;carefully sealed&mdash;which was not to be opened unless they
+found Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy&rsquo;s cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the final
+arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the <i>Norden</i>, for Captain
+Rifle&rsquo;s ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of Captain Rifle
+urged him to write another letter in which he told briefly the disappointing
+details of his search.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely forgotten
+Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank, Olaf secured
+information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the hospital and had not
+one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan&rsquo;s intention to see him. He
+wanted to hear nothing he might have to say about Mary Standish. To associate
+them in any way, as he thought of her now, was little short of sacrilege. He
+was conscious of the change in himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting
+of the original Alan Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the
+deliberate and businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that
+he might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes.
+In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break down with
+cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had unconsciously built up.
+But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry the thing away with him, he
+wanted it to live, and so it went with him, uncontaminated by any truths or
+lies which Rossland might have told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening camped on
+the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland. Olaf knew the
+island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was primitive and alive
+with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of their vesper song and
+bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax, and for the first time in
+seven months his muscles responded to the swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his
+years in the way of the north, whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song
+through his beard as he lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open
+was getting its hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of
+home once more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the
+sputtering of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him. He
+loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he mothered the
+half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A thousand times the
+two must have camped like this in the days when Alaska was new and there were
+no maps to tell them what lay beyond the next range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor, and
+after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old days as if
+they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always the pot of gold at
+the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for thirty years. He was sixty just
+a week ago this evening, he said, and he was beginning to doubt if he would
+remain on the beach at Cordova much longer. Siberia was dragging him&mdash;that
+forbidden world of adventure and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay
+only a few miles across the strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm
+he forgot Alan&rsquo;s tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory
+measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been
+dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was
+going if he lived another year or two&mdash;going to find his fortune or his
+end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes. Twice he had tried
+it since his old comrade had died, and twice he had been driven out. The next
+time he would know how to go about it, and he invited Alan to go with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night ride across
+the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred plains of Tibet. It
+stirred old desires in Alan&rsquo;s blood, for he knew that of all frontiers
+the Siberian would be the last and the greatest, and that not only men, but
+nations, would play their part in the breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of
+firelight in Olaf&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if we don&rsquo;t go in first from <i>this side</i>, Alan, the
+yellow fellows will come out some day from <i>that,&rdquo;</i> rumbled the old
+sour-dough, striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. &ldquo;And when they
+do, they won&rsquo;t come over to us in ones an&rsquo; twos an&rsquo; threes,
+but in millions. That&rsquo;s what the yellow fellows will do when they once
+get started, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s up to a few Alaska Jacks an&rsquo; Tough-Nut
+Bills to get their feet planted first on the other side. Will you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shook his head. &ldquo;Some day&mdash;but not now.&rdquo; The old flash
+was in his eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again&mdash;the fight
+to do his bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re right about the danger,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t come from Japan to California. It will pour like a
+flood through Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn&rsquo;t the danger
+of the yellow man alone, Olaf. You&rsquo;ve got to combine that with
+Bolshevism, the menace of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the
+little neck of water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American continent
+to bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a century, but it&rsquo;s
+coming sure as God makes light&mdash;if we let Alaska go down and out. And my
+way of preventing it is different from yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+not proud of the States,&rdquo; he went on, as if speaking to something which
+he saw in the flames. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be, after the ruin their
+unintelligent propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But
+they&rsquo;re our salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have
+factions in Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It&rsquo;s
+going to be largely a matter of education. We can&rsquo;t take Alaska down to
+the States&mdash;we&rsquo;ve got to bring them up to us. We must make a large
+part of a hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the Gulf of
+Anadyr. It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s own country we have north of Fifty-eight, Olaf.
+And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a million
+people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in Alaska and at
+Washington won&rsquo;t let them come. With coal enough under our feet to last a
+thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We&rsquo;ve got billions in
+copper and oil, but can&rsquo;t touch them. We should have some of the
+world&rsquo;s greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not, because everything
+up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn&rsquo;t conservation. If they
+had applied a little of it to the salmon industry&mdash;but they didn&rsquo;t.
+And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of the plains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and common
+sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring about an honest
+and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will take place right
+here&mdash;in Alaska&mdash;and not in Siberia. And if we don&rsquo;t
+win&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf&rsquo;s bearded
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr,&rdquo; he finished. &ldquo;And if it ever does come, the people
+of the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska could
+have meant to the nation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after that, for
+an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the fire which Olaf
+kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her quiet, beautiful eyes
+gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His
+mind pictured her in the flame-glow as she had listened to him that day in
+Skagway, when he had told her of this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him
+to think she would have made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It
+was a thought which brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always
+these visions which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had
+faced him in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling, and her
+eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last moment of her
+plea for life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him in his
+restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was looking at the
+stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the grief in his soul they
+were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle force were at work in him
+subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of tragedy. Mary Standish was with him
+again, between the mountains at Skagway; she was at his side in the heart of
+the tundras, the sun in her shining hair and eyes, and all about them the
+wonder of wild roses and purple iris and white seas of sedge-cotton and
+yellow-eyed daisies, and birds singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the
+birds. And he heard the girl&rsquo;s voice, answering them in her happiness and
+turning that happiness from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke,
+it was with a little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was building
+a fire, and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the mountains.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p>
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new import
+of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach and Kenai
+ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan out of the pit into
+which he had fallen. He understood, now, how it was that through many long
+years his father had worshiped the memory of a woman who had died, it seemed to
+him, an infinity ago. Unnumbered times he had seen the miracle of her presence
+in his father&rsquo;s eyes, and once, when they had stood overlooking a
+sun-filled valley back in the mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek, with the
+great rock in the sun? We rested there&mdash;before you were born!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan recalled
+the strange happiness in his father&rsquo;s face as he had looked down upon
+something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that began to
+build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan&rsquo;s heart. It would
+never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be alone. He knew at last it
+was an undying part of him, as it had been a part of his father, clinging to
+him in sweet pain, encouraging him, pressing gently upon him the beginning of a
+great faith that somewhere beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days
+that followed, it grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a
+secret about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf could see
+farther than others, because he had known Alan&rsquo;s father as a brother. It
+had always been that way with the elder Holt&mdash;straight, clean,
+deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt. Olaf had seen
+him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with awesome courage from the
+beautiful form that had turned to clay under his eyes, and fight forth again
+into a world burned to ashes. Something of that look which he had seen in the
+eyes of the father he saw in Alan&rsquo;s, in these days when they nosed their
+way up the Alaskan coast together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of
+Mary Standish, just as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt&rsquo;s name sacred
+in his own heart. Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of
+memories, observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his tongue,
+and he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He talked of Siberia&mdash;always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were soft with
+the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and filled with stars.
+Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty castles whose battlements
+reached up into the cloud-draperies of the sky. They kept close to the mainland
+and among the islands, camping early each evening. Birds were coming northward
+by the thousand, and each night Olaf&rsquo;s camp-fire sent up the delicious
+aroma of flesh-pots and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time
+came for Olaf to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede&rsquo;s
+eyes, and as a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably
+come when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+<i>Norden</i> until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country. And he
+was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer which carried
+mail and the necessities of life to the string of settlements reaching a
+thousand miles out into the Pacific left Resurrection Bay, and he was given
+passage. Thereafter the countless islands of the North Pacific drifted behind,
+while always northward were the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the
+ramparted ranges beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional
+volcanoes, and at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the clouds.
+First touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at Uyak and
+Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island of Unga, and
+thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch Harbor and Unalaska.
+Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was berthed on a freighter, and on the
+twelfth day of June set foot in Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its peculiar,
+black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two solitary brick chimneys,
+brought a lump of joy into his throat as he watched its growing outlines from
+the small boat that brought him ashore. He could see one of the only two brick
+chimneys in northern Alaska gleaming in the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away,
+were the ragged peaks of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to
+them in half an hour, and over all the world between seemed to hover a misty
+gloom. But it was where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and
+unforgetable memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its frame
+buildings, its crooked streets, and what to others might have been ugliness,
+was a warm and thrilling thing. For here were his <i>people</i>. Here were the
+men and women who were guarding the northern door of the world, an epic place,
+filled with strong hearts, courage, and a love of country as inextinguishable
+as one&rsquo;s love of life. From this drab little place, shut out from all the
+world for half the year, young men and women went down to southern
+universities, to big cities, to the glamor and lure of &ldquo;outside.&rdquo;
+But they always came back. Nome called them. Its loneliness in winter. Its gray
+gloom in springtime. Its glory in summer and autumn. It was the breeding-place
+of a new race of men, and they loved it as Alan loved it. To him the black
+wireless tower meant more than the Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten
+church spires more than the architectural colossi of New York and Washington.
+Beside one of the churches he had played as a boy. He had seen the steeples
+painted. He had helped make the crooked streets. And his mother had laughed and
+lived and died here, and his father&rsquo;s footprints had been in the white
+sands of the beach when tents dotted the shore like gulls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He was
+unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the grip which
+men&rsquo;s hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs down in the
+States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement. Small boys ran up
+to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo, grinning and shaking his
+hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt had come back from the States.
+Before the day was over, it was on its way to Shelton and Candle and Keewalik
+and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the
+news of his arrival Alan walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke&rsquo;s
+restaurant for a cup of coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen&rsquo;s
+offices in the Tin Bank Building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days before, and
+his brothers were &ldquo;in&rdquo; from the big ranges over on the Choris
+Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a tremendously
+successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty thousand head, when the
+final figures were in. A hundred other herds were prospering, and the Eskimo
+and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump with good feeding and prosperity. A third
+of a million reindeer were on the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were
+exultant. Pretty good, when compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less
+than five thousand! In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for the
+future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome. After
+waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best men fighting
+for Alaska&rsquo;s salvation at Washington, word was traveling from mouth to
+mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to range, that the
+Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of miles away was not lifting
+a hand to relieve them. Federal office-holders refused to surrender their
+deadly power, and their strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should
+cost ten dollars a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty
+dollars; cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
+when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters of
+marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and in the
+turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man just outside the reach of
+all the milk and honey in a wonderful land. Pauperizing, degrading, actually
+killing, the political misrule that had already driven 25 per cent of
+Alaska&rsquo;s population from their homes was to continue indefinitely. A
+President of the United States had promised to visit the mighty land of the
+north and see with his own eyes. But would he come? There had been other
+promises, many of them, and promises had always been futile. But it was a hope
+that crept through Alaska, and upon this hope men whose courage never died
+began to build. Freedom was on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph
+ultimately, as it always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned in the
+locks which had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their
+country, and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they
+might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when it came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged, and not
+smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of gigantic
+financial interests like that controlled by John Graham&mdash;interests
+fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever had, the Biological
+Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous legislation to put Alaska
+in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly
+than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished.
+Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith.
+The blackest days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence
+was creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska&rsquo;s serfdom
+was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth, for
+what remained of Alaska&rsquo;s men after years of hopelessness and distress
+were fighting men. And the women who had remained with them were the mothers
+and wives of a new nation in the making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have given
+his life if a few million people in the States could have known these women.
+Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of half a
+continent&mdash;possessing the power of the ballot&mdash;would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of existence;
+Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women were of the kind who
+greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter, with something greater than
+hope in their hearts. They, too, were builders. Fear of God and love of land
+lay deep in their souls, and side by side with their men-folk they went on in
+this epic struggle for the building of a nation at the top of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape his
+lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part of him, and a
+secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even made evasions when
+questioned about his business and experiences at Cordova and up the coast.
+Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he was away from other men and women.
+He remembered it had been that way with his father, who was always happiest
+when in the deep mountains or the unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with
+an inner gladness when his business was finished and the day came for him to
+leave Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula. For one
+hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge, four-foot railway
+on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan, at times, as though Mary
+Standish were with him, riding in this strange way through a great wilderness.
+He could <i>see</i> her. That was the strange thing which began to possess him.
+There were moments when her eyes were shining softly upon him, her lips
+smiling, her presence so real he might have spoken to her if Lomen had not been
+at his side. He did not fight against these visionings. It pleased him to think
+of her going with him into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque
+&ldquo;pup-mobile,&rdquo; losing herself in the mountains and in his tundras,
+with all the wonder and glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a
+time, like the unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder and
+glory in these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind, and the
+miracle of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night, as Mary Standish
+had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of June there were twenty
+hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight between the hours of eleven and
+one. Sleep was no longer a matter of the rising and setting of the sun, but was
+regulated by the hands of the watch. A world frozen to the core for seven
+months was bursting open like a great flower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety people at
+Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to Keewalik, on Kotzebue
+Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried them to Choris Peninsula,
+where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and his huge herd of fifteen thousand
+reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide his impatience. Something
+was urging him, whipping him on to greater haste. For the first time in months
+he heard the crackling thunder of reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like
+a wild call from his own herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end
+came and his business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It was
+night, as his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta of the
+Kobuk River with him in a lighterage company&rsquo;s boat. But there was no
+darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the Redstone, two
+hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river winds. They had supper
+together on the shore. After that Paul Davidovich turned back with the slow
+sweep of the current, waving his hand until he was out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until the sound of the Russian&rsquo;s motor-boat was lost in distance did
+Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him. At last,
+after months that had seemed like so many years, he was <i>alone</i>. North and
+eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew so well, a hundred and
+fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost unmapped, unpeopled, right up
+to the doors of his range in the slopes of the Endicott Mountains. A little cry
+from his own lips gave him a start. It was as if he had called out aloud to
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and to Keok and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his
+way home and would soon be there. Never had this hidden land which he had found
+for himself seemed so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something
+about it that was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to that other
+thing which had become a part of him now. It was holding out its arms to him,
+understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel strongly and swiftly the
+space between. And he was ready to answer its call.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at his watch. It was five o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or sleep. The
+musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin timber of the
+river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It was the tundra he
+wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his face to the stars. He was
+eager to get away from timber and to feel the immeasurable space of the big
+country, the open country, about him. What fool had given to it the name of
+<i>Barren Lands</i>? What idiots people were to lie about it in that way on the
+maps! He strapped his pack over his shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren
+Lands!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight hours of
+sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their glory&mdash;the Barren
+Lands of the map-makers, <i>his</i> paradise. On a knoll he stood in the golden
+sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and stood with bared head, a
+whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary Standish could have lived to see
+<i>this</i>! He stretched out his arms, as if pointing for her eyes to follow,
+and her name was in his heart and whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable
+the tundras reached ahead of him&mdash;rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and
+golden and a glory of flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever
+known. Under his feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple
+violets, their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay
+a white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees in
+between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze, was the
+cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few days they would be
+opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody of
+bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly aglow in the
+sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird instinct, the
+going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and months when there was no
+real night. He picked up his pack and went on. From a pool hidden in the lush
+grasses of a distant hollow came to him the twilight honking of nesting geese
+and the quacking content of wild ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes
+of a lone &ldquo;organ-duck&rdquo; and the plaintive cries of plover, and
+farther out, where the shadows seemed deepening against the rim of the horizon,
+rose the harsh, rolling notes of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And
+then, from a clump of willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush
+whose throat was tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song of a
+robin. <i>Night!</i> Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in his
+face. <i>Bedtime!</i> He looked at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nine o&rsquo;clock. Nine o&rsquo;clock, and the flowers still answering
+to the glow of the sun! And the people down there&mdash;in the
+States&mdash;called it a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the
+earth, a place of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even though men
+called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and knowledge. It was
+humorous. And it was tragic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in this
+velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup. A little
+creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass and spread out his
+blankets. A great stillness drew in about him, broken only by the old squaws
+and the loons. At eleven o&rsquo;clock he could still see clearly the sleeping
+water-fowl on the surface of the pool. But the stars were appearing. It grew
+duskier, and the rose-tint of the sun faded into purple gloom as pale night
+drew near&mdash;four hours of rest that was neither darkness nor day. With a
+pillow of sedge and grass under his head he slept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the pool,
+with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among the grasses
+and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that he traveled steadily
+into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and almost without rest. It
+seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that country where all the bird-life
+of the world was born, for wherever there was water, in the pools and little
+streams and the hollows between the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was
+a babel of sound. Out of the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the
+irresistible pulse of motherhood filling him with its strength and its courage,
+and whispering to him its everlasting message that because of the glory and
+need and faith of life had God created this land of twenty-hour day and
+four-hour twilight. In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for
+gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place of
+darkness which its light could not quite enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless spaces, in
+the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision, she seemed to be
+walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At times it was like a
+torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when he visioned what might have
+been, and recalled too vividly that it was he who had stilled with death that
+living glory which dwelt with him in spirit now, a crying sob of which he was
+not ashamed came from his lips. For when he thought too deeply, he knew that
+Mary Standish would have lived if he had said other things to her that night
+aboard the ship. She had died, not for him, but <i>because</i> of
+him&mdash;because, in his failure to live up to what she believed she had found
+in him, he had broken down what must have been her last hope and her final
+faith. If he had been less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a
+greater wisdom, she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the
+rose-tinted dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear
+stars&mdash;happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things. At least so
+he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her even
+had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to fight for.
+He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains that might have
+bound her, or other inclinations that might have led her. He claimed her, now
+that she was dead, and knew that living he would have possessed her. Nothing
+could have kept him from that. But she was gone. And for that he was
+accountable, and the fifth night he lay sleepless under the stars, and like a
+boy he cried for her with his face upon his arm, and when morning came, and he
+went on, never had the world seemed so vast and empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he traveled
+slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within him. He could not
+laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra call to Amuk Toolik and
+his people, who would be riotous in their happiness at his return. They loved
+him. He knew that. Their love had been a part of his life, and the knowledge
+that his response to this love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled
+him with dread. A strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his
+head, so that when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had come to
+these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great tundras, and he had
+built himself a little camp among them. He loved the place. It had seemed to
+him that now and then he must visit the forlorn trees to give them cheer and
+comradeship. His father&rsquo;s name was carved in the bole of the greatest of
+them all, and under it the date and day when the elder Holt had discovered them
+in a land where no man had gone before. And under his father&rsquo;s name was
+his mother&rsquo;s, and under that, his own. He had made of the place a sort of
+shrine, a green and sweet-flowered tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song
+and peace in summer and the weird aloneness of it in winter had played their
+parts in the making of his soul. Through many months he had anticipated this
+hour of his home-coming, when in the distance he would see the beckoning
+welcome of the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills and frosted peaks of
+the Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was looking at the trees and the
+mountains, and something was lacking in the thrill of them. He came up from the
+west, between two willow ridges through which ran the little creek from the
+warm springs, and he was within a quarter of a mile of them when something
+stopped him in his tracks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment he knew
+it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him. This day was the
+Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was shooting firecrackers!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok&rsquo;s mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness Nawadlook
+never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his home-coming with a
+celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably imported a supply of
+&ldquo;bing-bangs&rdquo; from Allakakat or Tanana. The oppressive weight inside
+him lifted, and the smile remained on his lips. And then as if commanded by a
+voice, his eyes turned to the dead cottonwood stub which had sentineled the
+little oasis of trees for many years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely
+in the breeze that came with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of him, who
+wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old happiness, and he
+drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that grew almost up to the
+cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would walk suddenly in among them,
+unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing that would amaze and delight
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He heard the
+popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one of the
+&ldquo;giants&rdquo; that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
+ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then up
+again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see Keok a
+hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and as he looked,
+she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from her. The others were
+probably circled about her, out of his sight, watching her performance. He
+continued cautiously, making his way so that he could come up behind a thick
+growth of bush unseen, within a dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as
+that to her, and Keok was still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something about
+Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and seemed to
+stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not Nawadlook! He
+stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The slender figure of the girl
+on the log turned a little, and he saw the glint of golden sunshine in her
+hair. He called out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keok!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;<i>Mary Standish</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt&rsquo;s face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that had
+risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on the old
+cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his home-coming.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+After that one calling of her name Alan&rsquo;s voice was dead, and he made no
+movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary
+upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve
+in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange
+relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his
+arms hung limp. She was there, <i>alive!</i> He could see the whiteness leave
+her face and a flush of color come into it, and he heard a little cry as she
+jumped down from the log and came toward him. It had all happened in a few
+seconds, but it seemed a long time to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating up to
+him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step away from
+him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must have been
+something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made an effort to
+recover himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You almost frightened me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We have been expecting
+you and watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn&rsquo;t see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same voice,
+unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him yesterday and
+with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again today. It was
+impossible for him to realize in these moments the immeasurable distance that
+lay between their viewpoints. He was simply Alan Holt&mdash;she was the dead
+risen to life. Many times in his grief he had visualized what he would do if
+some miracle could bring her back to him like this; he had thought of taking
+her in his arms and never letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to
+pass, and she was within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to
+speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;Mary Standish!&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I
+thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another individual
+within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack of physical
+expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout with joy, yet the
+directing soul of action in him was stricken. She touched his arm hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think you would care,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I thought
+you wouldn&rsquo;t mind&mdash;if I came up here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain, and the
+touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard himself cry out, a
+strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his breast. He held her close,
+crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers buried in her hair, her slender
+body almost broken in his arms. She was alive&mdash;she had come back to
+him&mdash;and he forgot everything in these blind moments but that great truth
+which was sweeping over him in a glorious inundation. Then, suddenly, he found
+that she was fighting him, struggling to free herself and putting her hands
+against his face in her efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing
+but her eyes, and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of
+finding&mdash;but horror. It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms
+relaxed. She staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her
+breath, her face very white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at him, as if
+he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not taken the
+strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing the red of his
+kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his hands mutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think&mdash;I came here for <i>that?</i>&rdquo; she panted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Forgive me. I am sorry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of shock
+and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him, which
+recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back against his cabin
+door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together. Even subconsciously that
+was impossible, for all life in him was centered in the one stupendous thought
+that she was not dead, but living, and he did not wonder why. There was no
+question in his mind as to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea.
+He felt a weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give
+himself up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his flesh. She
+saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his face, and his quicker
+breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was too completely possessed by
+the one great thing to discover the astonishment growing in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are alive,&rdquo; he said, giving voice again to the one thought
+pounding in his brain. &ldquo;<i>Alive!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number of
+times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your letter? At Nome?&rdquo; He repeated the words, shaking his head.
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And all this time&mdash;you have been thinking&mdash;I was dead?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form of
+speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wrote you there,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wrote the letter before I
+jumped into the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle&rsquo;s ship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t get it?&rdquo; There was wonderment in her voice, and
+then, if he had observed it, understanding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you didn&rsquo;t mean that just now? You didn&rsquo;t intend to do
+it? It was because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great
+relief to find me alive. That was it, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stupidly he nodded again. &ldquo;Yes, it was a great relief.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn&rsquo;t help me,&rdquo;
+she went on. &ldquo;So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the
+letter I wrote. To all the world but you I am dead&mdash;to Rossland, Captain
+Rifle, everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit
+Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and picked
+me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the boats were
+making their search.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side of
+which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few moments ago
+he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had done this thing, and
+that she was looking at him now as if it had never happened, filled him with a
+smothering sense of humiliation. She made it impossible for him to speak about
+it, even to apologize more fully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I am here,&rdquo; she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way.
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my
+mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the <i>Nome</i>. And
+so&mdash;I am your guest, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she smoothed
+back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she belonged here, and had
+always belonged here, and was giving him permission to enter her domain. Shock
+was beginning to pass away from him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth
+once more. His spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him
+during the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of things, her
+almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his hands, but there was a
+different light in his eyes, and she placed her own in them confidently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was like a bolt of lightning,&rdquo; he said, his voice free at last
+and trembling. &ldquo;Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of
+you, and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find you
+alive. And <i>here!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But reason
+had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake up and
+find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the other
+things&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of tears
+at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a lingering of her
+finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in her throat revealed itself
+clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step,&rdquo;
+he said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come.
+&ldquo;Then I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when I found you here, and you didn&rsquo;t fade away like a ghost,
+I thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been wrong, I
+guess, or I wouldn&rsquo;t have done <i>that</i>. You see, it puzzled me that a
+ghost should be setting off firecrackers&mdash;and I suppose that was the first
+impulse I had of making sure you were real.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a clear, wild
+voice with a sweet trill in it. &ldquo;<i>Maa-rie!</i>&rdquo; it called.
+&ldquo;<i>Maa-rie!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Supper,&rdquo; nodded the girl. &ldquo;You are just in time. And then we
+are going home in the twilight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his place as
+home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft coils of her
+hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and soul filled only with
+the beauty of her slim figure&mdash;a glory of life where for a long time he
+had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came into an open, soft with grass and
+strewn with flowers, and in this open a man was kneeling beside a fire no
+larger than his two hands, and at his side, watching him, stood a girl with two
+braids of black hair rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first
+and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little
+screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She
+dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight
+for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner of
+her coming, was only a moment behind. And then he was shaking hands with
+Stampede, and Keok had slipped down among the flowers and was crying. That was
+like Keok. She always cried when he went away, and cried when he returned; and
+then, in another moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed
+she no longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in
+doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of way. No
+one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and nerves were
+fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming back one by one to a
+vital point from which they had been swept by an unexpected sea, gripping
+rather incoherently at unimportant realities as they assembled themselves. In
+the edge of the tundra beyond the cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer
+grazing at the ends of ropes which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads.
+He drew off his pack as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen
+sticks. Nawadlook was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began
+to fill a pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today
+then tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had experienced
+shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back and dragged the old
+Alan Holt into existence again. It was like bringing an intelligence out of
+darkness into light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was difficult for him&mdash;afterward&mdash;to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper things
+between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful Mary Standish who
+had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon of the <i>Nome</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of the
+cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the tundra in the
+direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had been gathering begin
+to sweep upon him. It had been Keok&rsquo;s suggestion that she and Mary and
+Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how quickly Mary Standish had
+caught at the idea. She had smiled at him as she left, and a little farther out
+had waved her hand at him, as Keok and Nawadlook both had done, but not another
+word had passed between them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of
+sunset Alan stood watching them, and would have stared without speech until
+they were out of sight, if Stampede&rsquo;s fingers had not gripped his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, go to it, Alan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready. Give me
+hell!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that Stampede
+brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and awakening
+inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man&rsquo;s invitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been a damn fool,&rdquo; he confessed. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m
+waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things began to
+rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he had been one. His
+mind went back to the <i>Nome</i>. It seemed only a few hours ago&mdash;only
+yesterday&mdash;that the girl had so artfully deceived them all, and he had
+gone through hell because of that deception. The trickery had been simple, and
+exceedingly clever because of its simplicity; it must have taken a tremendous
+amount of courage, now that he clearly understood that at no time had she
+wanted to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;why she did a thing like that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan&rsquo;s mind.
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree.&rdquo;
+And he added, &ldquo;The little witch even threatened to shoot me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. &ldquo;Begin, Alan. I&rsquo;m
+waiting. Go the limit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin&rsquo; her in the bush. You can&rsquo;t take it out of <i>her</i>
+hide, can you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent. Mary
+Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a quarter of a mile
+away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They trotted up a low ridge and
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business,&rdquo; persisted Stampede, &ldquo;but
+you didn&rsquo;t seem to expect her&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack.
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect her. I thought she was dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A low whistle escaped Stampede&rsquo;s lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his shoulders.
+Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the girl who had jumped
+overboard from the <i>Nome</i>, and if she had kept her secret, it was not his
+business just now to explain, even though he guessed that Stampede&rsquo;s
+quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A light was beginning to dispel the
+little man&rsquo;s bewilderment as they started toward the Range. He had seen
+Mary Standish frequently aboard the <i>Nome</i>; a number of times he had
+observed her in Alan&rsquo;s company, and he knew of the hours they had spent
+together in Skagway. Therefore, if Alan had believed her dead when they went
+ashore at Cordova, a few hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been
+she who jumped into the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his
+failure to discover this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It beats the devil!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the happiness
+that possessed him, and questions which he had found no interest in asking when
+aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling force. Why was it so tragically
+important to Mary Standish that the world should believe her dead? What was it
+that had driven her to appeal to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What
+was her mysterious association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska&rsquo;s
+deadliest enemy, John Graham&mdash;the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance
+if opportunity ever came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with its
+insistence, rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible for him to
+make. Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained silent in the
+lengthening twilight, while Alan&rsquo;s mind struggled to bring coherence and
+reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt. Why had she come to <i>his</i>
+cabin aboard the <i>Nome</i>? Why had she played him with such conspicuous
+intent against Rossland, and why&mdash;in the end&mdash;had she preceded him to
+his home in the tundras? It was this question which persisted, never for an
+instant swept aside by the others. She had not come because of love for him. In
+a brutal sort of way he had proved that, for when he had taken her in his arms,
+he had seen distress and fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and
+more mysterious force had driven her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon him. He
+was like a man who had found life after a period of something that was worse
+than death, and with his happiness he felt himself twisted upon an upheaval of
+conflicting sensations and half convictions out of which, in spite of his
+effort to hold it back, suspicion began to creep like a shadow. But it was not
+the sort of suspicion to cool the thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he
+was quite ready to concede that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her
+flight from Seattle had been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had
+happened aboard ship was further proof, and her presence at his range a final
+one. Forces had driven her which it had been impossible for her to combat, and
+in desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had chosen him out of all
+the world to help her; she believed in him; she had faith that with him no harm
+could come, and his muscles tightened with sudden desire to fight for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras and the
+soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He strained his eyes to
+catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when they came up out of hollows
+to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of evening were drawing closer, and he
+looked in vain. Bird-song grew softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and
+pools; the fire of the sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling
+of vivid rose and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet
+day, and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish. What
+had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with the thrilling
+fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her would be explained
+tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in him. Now that she had so
+utterly placed herself under his protection, she would tell him what she had
+not dared to disclose aboard the <i>Nome</i>. So he thought only of the silvery
+distance of twilight that separated them, and spoke at last to Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather glad you brought her,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t bring her,&rdquo; protested Stampede. &ldquo;She
+<i>came</i>.&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders with a grunt. &ldquo;And
+furthermore I didn&rsquo;t manage it. She did that herself. She didn&rsquo;t
+come with me. I came with <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he glared
+fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed him. Alan saw it
+and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His keen vision and sense of
+humor were returning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and drew in a
+deep breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn&rsquo;t get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn&rsquo;t rain. You couldn&rsquo;t call it
+that, Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three other
+oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming, coach floating,
+driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I got in for Chitina. There
+was one other climbed in after me, and I wondered what sort of fool he was. I
+said something about being starved or I&rsquo;d have hung to the train. The
+other didn&rsquo;t answer. Then I began to swear. I did, Alan. I cursed
+terrible. Swore at the Government for building such a road, swore at the rain,
+an&rsquo; I swore at myself for not bringin&rsquo; along grub. I said my belly
+was as empty as a shot-off cartridge, and I said it good an&rsquo; loud. I was
+mad. Then a big flash of lightning lit up the coach. Alan, it was <i>her</i>
+sittin&rsquo; there with a box in her lap, facing me, drippin&rsquo; wet, her
+eyes shining&mdash;and she was smiling at me! Yessir, <i>smiling</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan stared at him in amazement. &ldquo;The fourth
+night&mdash;after&mdash;&rdquo; He caught himself. &ldquo;Go on,
+Stampede!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin&rsquo; to
+sneak out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin&rsquo; come again.
+But it caught me. An&rsquo; there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her
+saying she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An&rsquo; she called me Stampede,
+like she&rsquo;d known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an&rsquo;
+rocking and the thunder an&rsquo; lightning an&rsquo; rain piling up against
+each other like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me.
+She did that, Alan&mdash;<i>fed</i> me. When the lightning fired up, I could
+see her eyes shining and her lips smilin&rsquo; as if all that hell about us
+made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she
+was that I was goin&rsquo; her way. <i>Her</i> way, mind you, Alan, not
+<i>mine.</i> And that&rsquo;s just the way she&rsquo;s kept me goin&rsquo; up
+to the minute you hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted his pipe again. &ldquo;Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the happiest
+moment of her life, because <i>she</i> was on her way up to your range, and
+I&rsquo;d be such jolly good company for her. &lsquo;Jolly
+good&rsquo;&mdash;them were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew
+she was coming up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a
+grand surprise. Said it was possible she&rsquo;d buy your range, and she wanted
+to look it over before you arrived. An&rsquo; it seems queer I can&rsquo;t
+remember anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and
+Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin&rsquo; a million
+questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to,
+Alan&mdash;but everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and
+Fairbanks, and she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I&rsquo;d have eat
+soap out of her hand if she&rsquo;d offered it to me. Then, sort of sly and
+soft-like, she began asking questions about John Graham&mdash;and I woke
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham!&rdquo; Alan repeated the name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin&rsquo; aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please&mdash;with her hand on my arm&mdash;she
+said she wasn&rsquo;t quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain&rsquo;t a lie what
+I&rsquo;m going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a
+wonderful idea she had for surprisin&rsquo; <i>you</i>. Said she knew you would
+return to the Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some fireworks.
+Said you was such a good American you&rsquo;d be disappointed if you
+didn&rsquo;t have &rsquo;em. So she took me in a store an&rsquo; bought it out.
+Asked the man what he&rsquo;d take for everything in his joint that had powder
+in it. Five hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk
+something out of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar bills in
+it an inch think. Then she asked <i>me</i> to get them firecrackers
+&rsquo;n&rsquo; wheels &rsquo;n&rsquo; skyrockets &rsquo;n&rsquo; balloons
+&rsquo;n&rsquo; other stuff down to the boat, and she asked me just as if I was
+a sweet little boy who&rsquo;d be tickled to death to do it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne in
+secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his words upon his
+companion. Incredulity shot into Alan&rsquo;s eyes, and the humorous lines
+about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that Stampede was not drawing upon
+his imagination. Yet what he had told him seemed impossible. Mary Standish had
+come aboard the <i>Nome</i> a fugitive. All her possessions she had brought
+with her in a small hand-bag, and these things she had left in her cabin when
+she leaped into the sea. How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of
+money at Fairbanks as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian
+had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she
+played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died? And was
+this money&mdash;possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle&mdash;the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It was like
+thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was cut under his
+father&rsquo;s in the old cottonwood tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem
+interested, Alan. But I&rsquo;m going on, or I&rsquo;ll bust. I&rsquo;ve got to
+tell you what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I
+won&rsquo;t say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; urged Alan. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m interested.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I got &rsquo;em on the boat,&rdquo; continued Stampede viciously.
+&ldquo;And she with me every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not
+letting me out of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one
+hole to go in an&rsquo; come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a
+little shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin&rsquo;
+something, an&rsquo; I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin&rsquo; to do with it, she said, &lsquo;Stampede,
+that&rsquo;s for you,&rsquo; an&rsquo; when I went to thank her, she said:
+&lsquo;No, I don&rsquo;t mean it that way. I mean that if you try to run away
+from me again I&rsquo;m going to fill you full of holes.&rsquo; She said that!
+Threatened me. Then she bought me a new outfit from toe to summit&mdash;boots,
+pants, shirt, hat <i>and</i> a necktie! And I didn&rsquo;t say a word, not a
+word. She just led me in an&rsquo; bought what she wanted and made me put
+&rsquo;em on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on his pipe.
+&ldquo;I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana,&rdquo; he half
+groaned. &ldquo;Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote the
+luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+goin&rsquo; to have a rest, Stampede,&rsquo; she says to me, smiling so cool
+and sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. &lsquo;All you&rsquo;ve got to do
+is show us the way and carry the bums.&rsquo; &lsquo;Carry the what?&rsquo; I
+asks. &lsquo;The bums,&rsquo; she says, an&rsquo; then she explains that a bum
+is a thing filled with powder which makes a terrible racket when it goes off.
+So I took the bums, and the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and
+dropped out. He had the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we
+whacked up his load among us. I couldn&rsquo;t stand up straight when we
+camped. We had crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range. And
+<i>would</i> she let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she
+wouldn&rsquo;t! And all the time while they was puffing an&rsquo; panting them
+Indians was worshipin&rsquo; her with their eyes. The last day, when we camped
+with the Range almost in sight, she drew &rsquo;em all up in a circle about her
+and gave &rsquo;em each a handful of money above their pay. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s
+because I love you,&rsquo; she says, and then she begins asking them funny
+questions. Did they have wives and children? Were they ever hungry? Did they
+ever know about any of their people starving to death? And just <i>why</i> did
+they starve? And, Alan, so help me thunder if them Indians didn&rsquo;t talk!
+Never heard Indians tell so much. And in the end she asked them the funniest
+question of all, asked them if they&rsquo;d heard of a man named John Graham.
+One of them had, and afterward I saw her talking a long time with him alone,
+and when she come back to me, her eyes were sort of burning up, and she
+didn&rsquo;t say good night when she went into her tent. That&rsquo;s all,
+Alan, except&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Except what, Stampede?&rdquo; said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw a flash
+of humor in the little man&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Except that she&rsquo;s done with everyone on the Range just what she
+did with me between Chitina and here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Alan, if she wants
+to say the word, why, <i>you</i> ain&rsquo;t boss any more, that&rsquo;s all.
+She&rsquo;s been there ten days, and you won&rsquo;t know the place. It&rsquo;s
+all done up in flags, waiting for you. She an&rsquo; Nawadlook and Keok are
+running everything but the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her,
+and the men&mdash;&rdquo; He chuckled again. &ldquo;Why, the men even go to the
+Sunday school she&rsquo;s started! I went. Nawadlook sings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, &ldquo;Alan,
+you&rsquo;ve been a big fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a&mdash;a flower, Alan. She&rsquo;s worth more than all the
+gold in the world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it&rsquo;s
+too late now. I&rsquo;m warnin&rsquo; you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because she likes me,&rdquo; declared Stampede a bit fiercely.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m after her myself, Alan. You can&rsquo;t butt in now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo; gasped Alan. &ldquo;You mean that Mary
+Standish&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not talking about Mary Standish,&rdquo; said Stampede.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Nawadlook. If it wasn&rsquo;t for my whiskers&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale gloom
+ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long distance away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of them cussed bums,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why
+they hurried on ahead of us, Alan. <i>She</i> says this Fourth of July
+celebration is going to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named Ghost
+Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running down from the
+foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and in the depths lay
+abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn smooth by reindeer and
+caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet below the twilight of the plains,
+Alan dropped on his knees beside a little spring that he groped for among the
+stones, and as he drank he could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of
+water up and down the kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls
+and eternally dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede&rsquo;s face in
+the glow of another match, and the little man&rsquo;s eyes were staring into
+the black chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, you&rsquo;ve been up this gorge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill
+our fawns,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is
+supposed to be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will
+enter it. The bones of dead men lie up there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never prospected it?&rdquo; persisted Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan heard the other&rsquo;s grunt of disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re reindeer-crazy,&rdquo; he grumbled. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+gold in this canyon. Twice I&rsquo;ve found it where there were dead
+men&rsquo;s bones. They bring me good luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But these were Eskimos. They didn&rsquo;t come for gold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I&rsquo;m
+telling you there wasn&rsquo;t any of it left out of her when she was
+born!&rdquo; He was silent for a moment, and then added: &ldquo;When we came to
+that dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin&rsquo; there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn&rsquo;t screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until it
+hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and soppy with
+the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to pieces, and I guess I
+would if she hadn&rsquo;t put a hand on my gun. An&rsquo; with a funny little
+smile she says: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t do it, Stampede. It makes me think of
+someone I know&mdash;and I wouldn&rsquo;t want you to shoot him.&rsquo; Darned
+funny thing to say, wasn&rsquo;t it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now,
+who the devil could look like a rotten skull?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They climbed up
+out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the tundra was gone on
+this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a low hill, and mountainward
+hills piled one upon another until they were lost in misty distance. From the
+crest of the ridge they looked out into a vast sweep of tundra which ran in
+among the out-guarding billows and hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form
+of a wide, semicircular bay. Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range,
+and scarcely had they reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its
+holster. Twice he blazed in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Orders,&rdquo; he said a little sheepishly. &ldquo;Orders, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from beyond
+the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra. It was joined
+by another, and still another, until there was such a sound that Alan knew
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and all the others were splitting
+their throats in welcome, and with it very soon came a series of explosions
+that set the earth athrill under their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bums!&rdquo; growled Stampede. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s got Chink lanterns
+hanging up all about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found
+there was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until it
+seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then burst into
+innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed away with his
+forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied the magazine of his gun,
+the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning the chorus of sound that came
+from the range. A second rocket answered them. Two columns of flame leaped up
+from the earth as huge fires gained headway, and Alan could hear the shrill
+chorus of children&rsquo;s voices mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All
+the people of his range were there. They had come in from the timber-naked
+plateaux and high ranges where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying
+shacks of the tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration
+of effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it all! He
+knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that fact from choking
+up his heart a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying&mdash;that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for the big
+fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms were booming their
+hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his steps. Over a little knoll,
+and he was looking at the buildings of the range, wildly excited figures
+running about, women and children flinging moss on the fires, the tom-tom
+beaters squatted in a half-circle facing the direction from which he would
+come, and fifty Chinese lanterns swinging in the soft night-breeze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of them.
+Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children. Nawadlook and
+Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for him in any fight or
+stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede his rifle and hastened on,
+determined to keep his eyes from questing for Mary Standish in these first
+minutes of his return. He sounded the tundra call, and men, women, and little
+children came running to meet him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the
+beaters leaped to their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of
+voice, laughter, children&rsquo;s squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands
+with both his own&mdash;hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men&rsquo;s shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty around
+him counting the children. First, last, and always these were <i>his
+people</i>. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power and
+possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great family, and he
+shook hands twice and three times with the same men and women, and lifted the
+same children from the arms of delighted mothers, and cried out greetings and
+familiarities with an abandon which a few minutes ago knowledge of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s presence would have tempered. Then, suddenly, he saw her under
+the Chinese lanterns in front of his cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled
+double and looked like a witch, stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+head disappeared, and there came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the
+crowd had gathered about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in
+their semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his cabin
+came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the one thing
+intended for his understanding alone. It was playing &ldquo;When Johnny Comes
+Marching Home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was alone. She
+was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear, the quiet pallor of
+her face, and the strain and repression which had seemed to be a part of her
+were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it was not with voice or action that
+she revealed herself. It was in her eyes, the flush of her cheeks and lips, the
+poise of her slim body as she waited for him. A thought flashed upon him that
+for a space she had forgotten herself and the shadow which had driven her to
+leap into the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is splendid!&rdquo; she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t guess how badly they wanted you back.
+It must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I thank you for your part,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Stampede has
+told me. It was quite a bit of trouble, wasn&rsquo;t it, with nothing more than
+the hope of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?&rdquo; He nodded at the
+half-dozen flags over his cabin. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re rather pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was no trouble. And I hope you don&rsquo;t mind. It has been great
+fun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It seemed to
+him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to speak what was
+in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do mind,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I mind so much that I
+wouldn&rsquo;t trade what has happened for all the gold in these mountains.
+I&rsquo;m sorry because of what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I
+wouldn&rsquo;t trade that, either. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re alive. I&rsquo;m
+glad you&rsquo;re here. But something is missing. You know what it is. You must
+tell me about yourself. It is the only fair thing for you to do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She touched his arm with her hand. &ldquo;Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please&mdash;let us wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then&mdash;tomorrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine&mdash;just you&mdash;and your
+people&mdash;and their happiness.&rdquo; He bent his head to catch her words,
+almost drowned by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers.
+She nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin. &ldquo;I am with Keok and
+Nawadlook. They have given me a home.&rdquo; And then swiftly she added,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you love your people more than I do, Alan
+Holt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on his arm
+she drew away from him. His face did not show his disappointment, nor did he
+make a movement to keep her with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your people are expecting things of you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A
+little later, if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the
+tom-toms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him and
+smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart beating faster.
+She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not afraid of tomorrow.
+Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not frighten her, and a
+happiness which he had persistently held away from himself triumphed in a
+sudden, submerging flood. It was as if something in her eyes and voice had
+promised him that the dreams he had dreamed through weeks of torture and living
+death were coming true, and that possibly in her ride over the tundra that
+night she had come a little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant
+to him. Surely he would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to
+him tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and he
+could not let her go away from him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to discover
+himself doing things which he had never done before. His nature was an aloof
+one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less detached. At his
+people&rsquo;s dances it was his habit to stand on the side-line, smiling and
+nodding encouragement, but never taking a part. His habit of reserve fell from
+him now, and he seemed possessed of a new sense of freedom and a new desire to
+give physical expression to something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was
+kicking his feet and howling with the men, while the women dancers went through
+the muscular movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan.
+They had always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place
+between Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half breathless, did
+he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok was frankly amazed.
+Mary Standish&rsquo;s eyes were shining, and she clapped her hands when she saw
+that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and waved his hand, but he felt
+too foolish to go to her. And then the balloon went up, a big, six-foot
+balloon, and with all its fire made only a pale glow in the sky, and after
+another hour of hand-shaking, shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about
+health and domestic matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never had
+seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he had left
+it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in the middle of
+the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack filled with polished
+weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor&mdash;and then, one at a time, he
+began to observe things that were different. In place of dark shades there were
+soft curtains at his windows, and new covers on his table and the home-made
+couch in the corner. On his desk were two pictures in copper-colored frames,
+one of George Washington and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them
+crisscrossed against the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny
+American flags. They recalled Alan&rsquo;s mind to the evening aboard the
+<i>Nome</i> when Mary Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an
+Alaskan and not an American. Only she would have thought of those two pictures
+and the little flags. There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them
+there. She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the
+hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had
+purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He went into his bedroom
+and found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair of
+red morocco slippers that he had never seen before. He took them up in his
+hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size of his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok&rsquo;s phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was gone.
+Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing stillness drew
+him to the window from which he could see the cabin where lived Keok and
+Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and shriveled Sokwenna. It was
+there Mary Standish had said she was staying. For a long time Alan watched it
+while the final sounds of the night drifted away into utter silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer to his
+invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly his eyes
+traveled about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They seemed to be. I&rsquo;m happy to be home again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guessed as much,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;Of course Keok and
+Nawadlook helped her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an&rsquo; thoughtful, hasn&rsquo;t
+she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And somewhat unusual,&rdquo; added Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she is pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Most decidedly so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede&rsquo;s eyes. He twisted nervously in his
+chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s on your mind, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hell, mostly,&rdquo; shot back Stampede with sudden desperation.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come loaded down with a dirty job, and I&rsquo;ve kept it
+back this long because I didn&rsquo;t want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a
+man ought to keep to himself what he knows about a woman, but I&rsquo;m
+thinking this is a little different. I hate to do it. I&rsquo;d rather take the
+chance of a snake-bite. But you&rsquo;d shoot me if you knew I was keeping it
+to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keeping what to yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The truth, Alan. It&rsquo;s up to me to tell you what I know about this
+young woman who calls herself Mary Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede&rsquo;s face, and the stolid effort he
+was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into words,
+did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion&rsquo;s promised disclosure.
+Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation and relief. What he
+had passed through recently had burned out of him a certain demand upon human
+ethics which had been almost callous in its insistence, and while he believed
+that something very real and very stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary
+Standish north, he was now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with
+any force of circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to know the
+truth, yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell it to him,
+and the fact that Stampede had in some way discovered this truth, and was about
+to make disclosure of it, was a tremendous lightening of the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;What do you know about Mary
+Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way
+I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to oughta be shot, and if it was anything
+else&mdash;<i>anything</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;d keep it to myself. But you&rsquo;ve
+got to know. And you can&rsquo;t understand just how rotten it is, either; you
+haven&rsquo;t ridden in a coach with her during a storm that was blowing the
+Pacific outa bed, an&rsquo; you haven&rsquo;t hit the trail with her all the
+way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you&rsquo;d done that, Alan,
+you&rsquo;d feel like killing a man who said anything against her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not inquiring into your personal affairs,&rdquo; reminded
+Alan. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your own business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the trouble,&rdquo; protested Stampede. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+not my business. It&rsquo;s yours. If I&rsquo;d guessed the truth before we hit
+the Range, everything would have been different. I&rsquo;d have rid myself of
+her some way. But I didn&rsquo;t find out what she was until this evening, when
+I returned Keok&rsquo;s music machine to their cabin. I&rsquo;ve been trying to
+make up my mind what to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from
+the States, a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody&rsquo;s bunco pigeon chased by the
+police&mdash;almost anything&mdash;we could forgive her. Even if she&rsquo;d
+shot up somebody&mdash;&rdquo; He made a gesture of despair. &ldquo;But she
+didn&rsquo;t. She&rsquo;s worse than that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s one of John Graham&rsquo;s tools sent up here to sneak and
+spy on you,&rdquo; he finished desperately. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry&mdash;but
+I&rsquo;ve got the proof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm opened, and
+when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them. &ldquo;Found it on the
+floor when I took the phonograph back,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It was
+twisted up hard. Don&rsquo;t know why I unrolled it. Just chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper, watching
+closely the slight tensing of the other&rsquo;s face. After a moment Alan
+dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There was no
+longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been accepted as a guest.
+Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the sudden and almost
+imperceptible shrug of Alan&rsquo;s shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. &ldquo;Rather a missing
+link, isn&rsquo;t it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I&rsquo;m
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost&mdash;you didn&rsquo;t tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Almost,&rdquo; admitted Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I wouldn&rsquo;t have blamed you. She&rsquo;s that kind&mdash;the
+kind that makes you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I&rsquo;m
+going to believe that paper is a lie&mdash;until tomorrow. Will you take a
+message to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I&rsquo;m having breakfast
+at seven. Tell them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at
+eight. Later I&rsquo;m going up into the foothills to look over the
+herds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan&rsquo;s part, and it was just the
+way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed of the
+weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course they could do
+nothing with a woman; it wasn&rsquo;t a shooting business&mdash;yet. But there
+was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their
+unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like that was in Alan&rsquo;s
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened the door. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at
+eight. Good night, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan watched Stampede&rsquo;s figure until it had disappeared before he closed
+the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the anxiety
+which the prospector&rsquo;s unexpected revealment had aroused in him. The
+other&rsquo;s footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the paper in his
+hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of ordinary business size
+and had been carelessly torn from the larger part of the page, so that nothing
+more than the signature and half a dozen lines of writing in a man&rsquo;s
+heavy script remained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have possessed,
+read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>&mdash;If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing
+facts and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands within a
+year</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore for its
+maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself like a fibrous
+plant through all his plans for the future, had made of it an unforgetable
+writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand words written by his enemy,
+and the man who had been his father&rsquo;s enemy, all that he had kept away
+from Stampede&rsquo;s sharp eyes blazed in a sudden fury in his face. He
+dropped the paper as if it had been a thing unclean, and his hands clenched
+until his knuckles snapped in the stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the
+window through which a few moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made in the
+one hour of his father&rsquo;s triumph&mdash;that hour in which the elder Holt
+might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not revolted in the last
+of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had witnessed. And Mary Standish
+was the instrument he had chosen to work his ends!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend the
+absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or still the
+tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense to deny the fact
+that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary Standish; inadvertently
+she had kept it, had finally attempted to destroy it, and Stampede, by chance,
+had discovered a small but convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought
+he pieced together things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from
+the beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose, her
+boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor to work
+herself into his confidence&mdash;and with John Graham&rsquo;s signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and irrefutable
+evidence. The &ldquo;industry&rdquo; which Graham had referred to could mean
+only his own and Carl Lomen&rsquo;s, the reindeer industry which they had built
+up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his beef-baron friends
+were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this game of destruction clever
+Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>But why had she leaped into the sea?</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan&rsquo;s brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against his
+arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad convictions that
+possessed him. If Mary Standish&rsquo;s mission was to pave the way for his
+ruin, and if she was John Graham&rsquo;s agent sent for that purpose, what
+reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting to give the world the
+impression that she had ended her life at sea? Surely such an act could in no
+way have been related with any plot which she might have had against him! In
+building up this structure of her defense he made no effort to sever her
+relationship with John Graham; that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her
+actions, and many of the things she had said were links inevitably associating
+her with his enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John Graham, was
+working <i>against</i> him? Could some conflict between them have been the
+reason for her flight aboard the <i>Nome</i>, and was it because she discovered
+Rossland there&mdash;John Graham&rsquo;s most trusted servant&mdash;that she
+formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what he knew
+to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated John Graham now,
+had at one time&mdash;and not very long ago&mdash;been an instrument of his
+trust; the letter he had written to her was positive proof of that. What it was
+that had caused a possible split between them and had inspired her flight from
+Seattle, and, later, her effort to bury a past under the fraud of a
+make-believe death, he might never learn, and just now he had no very great
+desire to look entirely into the whole truth of the matter. It was enough to
+know that of the past, and of the things that happened, she had been afraid,
+and it was in the desperation of this fear, with Graham&rsquo;s cleverest agent
+at her heels, that she had appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win
+him to her assistance, had taken the matter so dramatically into her own hands.
+And within that same hour a nearly successful attempt had been made upon
+Rossland&rsquo;s life. Of course the facts had shown that she could not have
+been directly responsible for his injury, but it was a haunting thing to
+remember as happening almost simultaneously with her disappearance into the
+sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the night.
+Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper lanterns, and
+he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary Standish had placed
+over his cabin. There was something comforting in the sound, a solace to the
+dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a reminder of their day in Skagway when
+she had walked at his side with her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes
+and face filled with the inspiration of the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously admirable
+about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine loveliness. She
+had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by courage&mdash;a courage
+which he would have been compelled to respect even in a man like John Graham,
+and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed to him as a virtue to be laid up
+apart and aside from any of the motives which might be directing it. From the
+beginning it had been a bewildering part of her&mdash;a clean, swift,
+unhesitating courage that had leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment
+would have hung waveringly; that one courage in all the world&mdash;a
+woman&rsquo;s courage&mdash;which finds in the effort of its achievement no
+obstacle too high and no abyss too wide though death waits with outreaching
+arms on the other side. And, surely, where there had been all this, there must
+also have been some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of
+physical gain, or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan&rsquo;s lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above his
+cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede&rsquo;s discovery had proclaimed her
+to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of reasoning on their
+part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and the injustice of their
+suspicions. He tried to force the conviction upon himself, and reentering the
+cabin he went to bed, still telling himself that a great lie had built itself
+up out of nothing, and that the God of all things was good to him because Mary
+Standish was alive, and not dead.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the preceding day
+did not make him overreach the time he had set for himself, and he was up at
+six o&rsquo;clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her old habits, and a tub filled
+with cold water was waiting for him. He bathed, shaved himself, put on fresh
+clothes, and promptly at seven was at breakfast. The table at which he
+ordinarily sat alone was in a little room with double windows, through which,
+as he enjoyed his meals, he could see most of the habitations of the range.
+Unlike the average Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber
+brought down from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of flowers
+lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a little knoll that
+looked down into one of the watered hollows of the tundra, was Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+cabin. Because Sokwenna was the &ldquo;old man&rdquo; of the community and
+therefore the wisest&mdash;and because with him lived his foster-daughters,
+Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan&rsquo;s tribal
+colony&mdash;Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin was next to Alan&rsquo;s in size. And Alan,
+looking at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than half-way
+between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent miracle of rising
+in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan knew the men-folk of the
+village had departed hours ago for the distant herds. Always, when the reindeer
+drifted into the higher and cooler feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was
+this apparent abandonment, and after last night&rsquo;s celebration the women
+and children were not yet awake to the activities of the long day, where the
+rising and setting of the sun meant so little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the sun on
+the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes, he knew it was
+Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For half an
+hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in preparation for the
+coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they arrived, the minute hand of his
+watch was at the hour of eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by the
+smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they spread out the
+papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion, set down a record of the
+winter&rsquo;s happenings. Tautuk&rsquo;s voice, slow and very deliberate in
+its unfailing effort to master English without a slip, had in it a subdued note
+of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk Toolik, who was quick and staccato in
+his manner of speech, using sentences seldom of greater length than three or
+four words, and who picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with
+pride as he lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound
+that always sent a chill up Alan&rsquo;s back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A ver&rsquo; fine and prosper&rsquo; year,&rdquo; said Tautuk in
+response to Alan&rsquo;s first question as to general conditions. &ldquo;We
+bean ver&rsquo; fortunate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One hell-good year,&rdquo; backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a
+gun. &ldquo;Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year&mdash;she peach!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the affairs of
+the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through achievement, and
+the pioneer&rsquo;s pride in marking a new frontier with the creative forces of
+success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the passing of time. A hundred
+questions he had to ask, and the tongues of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded
+with the things they desired to tell him. Their voices filled the room with a
+paean of triumph. His herds had increased by a thousand head during the fawning
+months of April and May, and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild,
+woodland caribou had produced a hundred calves of the super-animal whose flesh
+was bound to fill the markets of the States within a few years. Never had the
+moss been thicker under the winter snow; there had been no destructive fires;
+soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records had been beaten, and dairying in
+the edge of the Arctic was no longer an experiment, but an established fact,
+for Tautuk now had seven deer giving a pint and a half of milk each twice a
+day, nearly as rich as the best of cream from cattle, and more than twenty that
+were delivering from a cupful to a pint at a milking. And to this Amuk Toolik
+added the amazing record of their running-deer, Kauk, the three-year-old, had
+drawn a sledge five miles over unbeaten snow in thirteen minutes and
+forty-seven seconds; Kauk and Olo, in team, had drawn the same sledge ten miles
+in twenty-six minutes and forty seconds, and one day he had driven the two
+ninety-eight miles in a mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka, the
+first of their inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and heavier beasts,
+he had drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three consecutive days at the
+rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks, Tanana, and the ranges of the Seward
+Peninsula agents of the swiftly spreading industry had offered as high as a
+hundred and ten dollars a head for breeding stock with the blood of the
+woodland caribou, and of these native and larger caribou of the tundras and
+forests seven young bulls and nine female calves had been captured and added to
+their own propagative forces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the way of
+ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the vast expanse of
+unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness of a hundred million
+people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory and reward of the conqueror
+through such achievement as this; a land betrayed rising at last out of the
+slime of political greed and ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening,
+that was destined in his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was
+Alaska rising up slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep,
+mountain-sealed forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth
+coming into possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in
+that long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its ultimate
+ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with the song
+of success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he looked at
+his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished with his papers and
+books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk&rsquo;s voice coming from the dark
+mouth of the underground icebox dug into the frozen subsoil of the tundra, and
+pausing at the glimmer of his old housekeeper&rsquo;s candle, he turned aside,
+descended the few steps, and entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight
+feet under the surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for
+some hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when alone,
+but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself that the
+tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness and luxuriance,
+never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below which point remained the icy
+cold placed there so long ago that &ldquo;even the spirits did not know.&rdquo;
+He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring time and faith in terms of
+&ldquo;spirits,&rdquo; which she had never quite given up for the missionaries,
+and was about to make his presence known when a voice interrupted him, so close
+at his side that the speaker, concealed in the shadow of the wall, could have
+reached out a hand and touched him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Holt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in the
+gloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I was on my way to your place
+when Wegaruk&rsquo;s voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems
+like a friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak,
+Mammy?&rdquo; he called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wegaruk&rsquo;s strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the light
+from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell clearly upon Mary
+Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was as if a spotlight had
+been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit of darkness, and something
+about her, which was not her prettiness or the beauty that was in her eyes and
+hair, sent a sudden and unaccountable thrill through Alan. It remained with him
+when they drew back out of gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving
+Wegaruk to snuff her tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did
+not leave him when they walked over the tundra together toward Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+cabin. It was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which it was impossible
+for him to subdue or explain; something which he knew he should understand but
+could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge of this mystery was in the
+girl&rsquo;s face, glowing in a gentle embarrassment, as she told him she had
+been expecting him, and that Keok and Nawadlook had given up the cabin to them,
+so that he might question her uninterrupted. But with this soft flush of her
+uneasiness, revealing itself in her eyes and cheeks, he saw neither fear nor
+hesitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the &ldquo;big room&rdquo; of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin, which was patterned
+after his own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You love flowers,&rdquo; he said lamely. &ldquo;I want to thank you for
+the flowers you placed in my cabin. And the other things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Flowers are a habit with me,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and I have never
+seen such flowers as these. Flowers&mdash;and birds. I never dreamed that there
+were so many up here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor the world,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;It is ignorant of Alaska.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something about
+her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely thrilling emotion
+that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from his eyes. The color was
+fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a little tense, yet in her
+attitude of suspense and of waiting there was no longer a suspicion of
+embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign that a moment was at hand when her
+confidence was on the ebb. In this moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It
+seemed to him that she was like a child again, the child who had come to him in
+his cabin, and who had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating
+him to achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
+her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
+heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in the
+greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the pitilessness of
+what had been in his mind to say and do, together with an inundating sense of
+his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in sudden desperation he reached out
+his hands toward her and cried:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Standish, in God&rsquo;s name tell me the truth. Tell me why you
+have come up here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; she said, looking at him steadily, &ldquo;because I
+know that a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you didn&rsquo;t know that&mdash;not until&mdash;the
+cottonwoods!&rdquo; he protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at her like
+a man who had been struck, while intelligence&mdash;a dawning reason&mdash;an
+understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning, sent the still
+greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an exclamation of amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were at Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s! She gave
+you&mdash;<i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don&rsquo;t
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I am
+going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you returned from
+searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn&rsquo;t know. But <i>she</i>
+did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a woman, would promise
+not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a great deal of my faith, and
+my courage was about gone, and I was afraid of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Afraid of me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick when
+she asked you&mdash;that question; and when you answered as you did, I was like
+stone. I was amazed and didn&rsquo;t believe, for I was certain that after what
+had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a peculiar sense of
+honor were making the search for me. Not until two days later, when your
+letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we read them&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You opened both?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found&mdash;and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn&rsquo;t exactly fair, but you
+couldn&rsquo;t expect two women to resist a temptation like that.
+And&mdash;<i>I wanted to know</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the confession.
+Her gaze met Alan&rsquo;s with beautiful steadiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give me a
+fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my courage&mdash;and in
+the end you will drive me away&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering eyes, tears
+which she did not brush away, but through which, in a moment, she smiled at him
+as no woman had ever smiled at him before. And with the tears there seemed to
+possess her a pride which lifted her above all confusion, a living spirit of
+will and courage and womanhood that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and
+fear that had gathered in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have come&mdash;because you know I love you, and you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you that
+inspired me, Alan Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must have been more than that,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;Some
+other reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two,&rdquo; she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the
+dissolution of tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And those&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has to do with John Graham?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head. &ldquo;Yes, with John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment it
+seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the import of the
+thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed red instead of
+paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes burned with a lustrous fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;The man you hate and want to
+kill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly he turned toward the door. &ldquo;I am leaving immediately after dinner
+to inspect the herds up in the foothills,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And
+you&mdash;<i>are welcome here</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at the
+door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, Alan Holt,&rdquo; she cried softly, &ldquo;<i>Oh, I thank
+you!</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last something
+had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a moment they stood in
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry&mdash;sorry I said to you what I did that night on the
+<i>Nome</i>,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I accused you of brutality, of unfairness,
+of&mdash;of even worse than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big
+and clean and splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, <i>and you say I am
+welcome!</i> And I don&rsquo;t want you to go. You have made me <i>want</i> to
+tell you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will think as
+kindly of me as you can when you have heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the world.
+There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came like a sob to
+the girl&rsquo;s lips as she turned to the window and looked out into the blaze
+of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard Tautuk&rsquo;s voice,
+calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and he heard clearly
+Keok&rsquo;s merry laughter as she answered him. A gray-cheeked thrush flew up
+to the roof of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin and began to sing. It was as if these
+things had come as a message to both of them, relieving a tension, and
+significant of the beauty and glory and undying hope of life. Mary Standish
+turned from the window with shining eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is&mdash;possibly&mdash;because you are here,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She regarded him seriously. &ldquo;I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure, if I
+were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me. Hopelessness cannot be
+so deep that bird-song will not reach it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She closed the
+door which he had left partly open, and made a little gesture for him to resume
+the chair which he had left a few moments before. She seated herself first and
+smiled at him wistfully, half regretfully, as she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should have
+told you aboard the <i>Nome</i>. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid, but
+ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am not sorry it
+happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up here, and all
+this&mdash;your world, your people, and you&mdash;have meant a great deal to
+me. You will understand when I have made my confession.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t want that,&rdquo; he protested almost roughly.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you
+wish to tell me as a friend, that&rsquo;s different. I don&rsquo;t want a
+confession, which would imply that I have no faith in you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have faith in me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the same
+if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, <i>you mean that</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed to see
+only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of the tundra daises
+behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to say tugging at his heart,
+he wondered why she was so white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean that,&rdquo; her lips repeated slowly, &ldquo;after all that
+has happened&mdash;even after&mdash;that part of a letter&mdash;which Stampede
+brought to you last night&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret between
+himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she saw it written
+in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it wasn&rsquo;t Stampede,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t
+tell me. It&mdash;just happened. And after this letter&mdash;you still believe
+in me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am&mdash;most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham&rsquo;s signature was a lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t that&mdash;quite. But it didn&rsquo;t refer to you, or
+to me. It was part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while
+I was on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of them
+as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the whole of it.
+The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper which you did not
+return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the conventional thing for a woman
+to do&mdash;to use paper for padding in a soft-toed slipper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the tom-toms last
+night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer happiness. But Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s voice, continuing in its quiet and matter-of-fact way, held
+him speechless, though she could not fail to see the effect upon him of this
+simple explanation of the presence of Graham&rsquo;s letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in Nawadlook&rsquo;s room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of
+paper from the floor,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;I was looking at the
+slipper a few minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin
+on the ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it, and
+the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and went out. I
+hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the few words when I
+heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had laid it, hid myself in
+Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, and saw Stampede when he carried it to you. I
+don&rsquo;t know why I allowed it to be done. I had no reason. Maybe it was
+just&mdash;intuition, and maybe it was because&mdash;just in that hour&mdash;I
+so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and I thought that what
+Stampede had found would make you do it. And I deserve it! I deserve nothing
+better at your hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t true,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;The letter was to
+Rossland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. &ldquo;Better that it were true,
+and all that <i>is</i> true were false,&rdquo; she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. &ldquo;I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative would I
+accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;I can not.&rdquo; Even as he persisted in denial, the
+pain which had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. &ldquo;I understand&mdash;only&mdash;that I
+am glad you are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an hour
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of rich
+color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining lashes that lay
+against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her breath, and her hands
+grew steady in her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you mind&mdash;if I asked you first&mdash;to tell me <i>your</i>
+story of John Graham?&rdquo; she spoke softly. &ldquo;I know it, a little, but
+I think it would make everything easier if I could hear it from
+you&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light playing in
+her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she had not changed
+her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She raised her eyes, and the
+question her lips had formed was glowing in them as clearly as if she had
+voiced it again in words. A desire rose in him to speak to her as he had never
+spoken to another human being, and to reveal for her&mdash;and for her
+alone&mdash;the thing that had harbored itself in his soul for many years.
+Looking up at him, waiting, partial understanding softening her sweet face, a
+dusky glow in her eyes, she was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then
+laughed in a strange repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I know how my father must have loved my mother,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t make you feel it. I can&rsquo;t hope for that. She
+died when I was so young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me.
+But for my father she <i>never</i> died, and as I grew older she became more
+and more alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if
+she were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned. And
+never could my father remain away from the place where she was buried very long
+at a time. He called it <i>home</i>, that little cup at the foot of the
+mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a paradise of birds and
+flowers keeping her company, and all the great, wild world she loved about her.
+There was the cabin, too; the little cabin where I was born, with its back to
+the big mountain, and filled with the handiwork of my mother as she had left it
+when she died. And my father too used to laugh and sing there&mdash;he had a
+clear voice that would roll half-way up the mountain; and as I grew older the
+miracle at times stirred me with a strange fear, so real to my father did my
+dead mother seem when he was home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish! Oh,
+it may seem weird and ghostly now, but it was <i>true</i>&mdash;so true that I
+have lain awake nights thinking of it and wishing that it had never been
+so!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you have wished a great sin,&rdquo; said the girl in a voice that
+seemed scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. &ldquo;I hope someone will
+feel toward me&mdash;some day&mdash;like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about,&rdquo; he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins. &ldquo;Interests
+were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were reaching out, encroaching
+steadily a little nearer to our cup at the foot of the mountain. But my father
+did not dream of what might happen. It came in the spring of the year he took
+me on my first trip to the States, when I was eighteen. We were gone five
+months, and they were five months of hell for him. Day and night he grieved for
+my mother and the little home under the mountain. And when at last we came
+back&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the tundra
+or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When we came back,&rdquo; he repeated in a cold, hard voice, &ldquo;a
+construction camp of a hundred men had invaded my father&rsquo;s little
+paradise. The cabin was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and
+this channel ran where my mother&rsquo;s grave had been. They had treated it
+with that same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand Indian
+graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud. And from the
+moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun rose in the heavens
+for him. His heart died, yet he went on living&mdash;for a time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her slim
+shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was as if he
+beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the man who committed that crime&mdash;was John Graham,&rdquo; she
+said, in the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer would
+be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work rather
+than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power; they say he
+laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a grave should be
+considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my father and I went to
+see him; yes, <i>laughed</i>, in that noiseless, oily, inside way of his, as
+you might think of a snake laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We found him among the men. My God, you don&rsquo;t know how I hated
+him!&mdash;Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool he was to
+think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I wanted to kill him,
+but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet, steady hand, and said:
+&lsquo;It is my duty, Alan. <i>My duty</i>.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then&mdash;it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham,
+but God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and with
+his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not unlocked them with
+my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of helpless pulp, and from the
+ground, with the last of the breath that was in him, he cursed my father, and
+he cursed me. He said that all the days of his life he would follow us, until
+we paid a thousand times for what we had done. And then my father dragged him
+as he would have dragged a rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he
+tore his clothes from him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he
+scourged him with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was
+unconscious and like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we went into
+the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him, and now
+her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face were aflame, as if
+she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after that, Alan; after that&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it, scarcely
+understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham kept his promise,&rdquo; he answered grimly. &ldquo;The
+influence and money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was interested
+were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most heavily interested
+was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he partly owned in Dawson was
+bankrupted. One after another things happened, and after each happening my
+father would receive a polite note of regret from Graham, written as if the
+word actually came from a friend. But my father cared little for money losses
+now. His heart was drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and
+the grave that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at Nome,
+dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Dead</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary Standish,
+for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He
+didn&rsquo;t do it personally, but it was <i>his money</i> that accomplished
+the end. Of course nothing ever came of it. I won&rsquo;t tell you how his
+influence and power have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of
+reindeer I had, and how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about
+me when I was down in the States last winter in an effort to make <i>your</i>
+people see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him under our
+mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that won&rsquo;t save him
+when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I loosened my
+father&rsquo;s. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and his money have
+become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as he destroyed the life
+of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power ends, he will make of this
+great land nothing more than a shell out of which he and his kind have taken
+all the meat. And the hour of deadliest danger is now upon us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her where she
+sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it frightened him.
+And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and never had he seen such
+living pools of torture and of horror. He was amazed at the quietness of her
+voice when she began to speak, and startled by the almost deadly coldness of
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you can understand&mdash;now&mdash;why I leaped into the sea,
+why I wanted the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you
+the truth,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;<i>I am John Graham&rsquo;s wife.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan&rsquo;s first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a m&eacute;salliance of the sort Mary Standish
+had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes that
+from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in life, and
+behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, the pitiless iron-man,
+without conscience and without soul, coarsened by power, fiendish in his
+iniquities, and old enough to be her father!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled himself
+together without letting her see the physical part of the effort it was taking.
+And he tried to find something to say that would help clear her eyes of the
+agony that was in them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&mdash;is a most unreasonable thing&mdash;to be true,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the words
+were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said, or acted,
+under the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;It is. But the world doesn&rsquo;t look at it in that way.
+Such things just happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies were
+heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer life in
+Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical worth, dryly but
+carefully written&mdash;and she had been reading it. It struck him as a symbol
+of the fight she was making, of her courage, and of her desire to triumph in
+the face of tremendous odds that must have beset her. He still could not
+associate her completely with John Graham. Yet his face was cold and white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a newspaper
+clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young and beautiful
+girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the girl&rsquo;s shoulder, was a
+picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were strangers to him. He read their
+names, and then the headlines. &ldquo;A Hundred-Million-Dollar Love&rdquo; was
+the caption, and after the word love was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty
+and the other thing, two great fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked
+at Mary Standish. It was impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tore that from a paper in Cordova,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They have
+nothing to do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don&rsquo;t you see
+something in her eyes? Can&rsquo;t you see it, even in the picture? She has on
+her wedding things. But it seemed to me&mdash;when I saw her face&mdash;that in
+her eyes were agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely
+trying to hide them from the world. It&rsquo;s just another proof, one of
+thousands, that such unreasonable things do happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism which
+came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable. He sat down,
+and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp, little hands that lay in
+Mary Standish&rsquo;s lap. The warmth had gone out of it. It was cold and
+lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between his brown, muscular hands,
+staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in particular. It was only the ticking of
+Keok&rsquo;s clock that broke the silence for a time. Then he released the
+hand, and it dropped in the girl&rsquo;s lap again. She had been looking
+steadily at the streak of gray in his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a
+light which he did not see, and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost
+imperceptible inclination of her head toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I didn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I realize
+now how you must have felt back there in the cottonwoods.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, you don&rsquo;t realize&mdash;<i>you don&rsquo;t!</i>&rdquo; she
+protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her again.
+It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as if he had
+unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was amazed at the
+swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand, and I am determined that you
+<i>shall</i>,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I would die before I let you go away
+thinking what is now in your mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be
+hated for the truth than because of the horrible thing which you must believe
+if I remain silent.&rdquo; She forced a wan smile to her lips. &ldquo;You know,
+Belinda Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don&rsquo;t fit in
+now, do they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when Alaska
+was young&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have committed a great folly,&rdquo; she said, hesitating an instant
+in his silence. &ldquo;I see very clearly now the course I should have taken.
+You will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard what I am
+going to say. Your face is like&mdash;a rock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is because your tragedy is mine,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a vivid,
+feverish glow. &ldquo;I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich,&rdquo; she
+said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish and my
+Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter, who was
+grandfather&rsquo;s brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle Peter. He was
+a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a wheel-chair, and he was nearly
+seventy-five when he died. As a baby that wheel-chair, and my rides in it with
+him about the great house in which we lived, were my delights. He was my father
+and mother, everything that was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as
+a child, that if God was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God. It was
+Uncle Peter who told me, year after year, the old stories and legends of the
+Standishes. And he was always happy&mdash;always happy and glad and seeing
+nothing but sunshine though he hadn&rsquo;t stood on his feet for nearly sixty
+years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen, five days before my
+birthday came. I think he must have been to me what your father was to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his face
+now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish,&rdquo; she went
+on. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I
+don&rsquo;t think I loved him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole
+world must have stood in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the
+world <i>was</i> afraid of him&mdash;bankers, presidents, even the strongest
+men in great financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the
+Grahams, and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the cleverest
+lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of the two families.
+My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died, so it was John Graham who
+was the actual working force behind the combined fortunes of the two families.
+Sometimes, as I now recall it, Uncle Peter was like a little child. I remember
+how he tried to make me understand just how big my grandfather&rsquo;s
+interests were by telling me that if two dollars were taken from every man,
+woman, and child in the United States, it would just about add up to what he
+and the Grahams possessed, and my Grandfather Standish&rsquo;s interests were
+three-quarters of the whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my
+Uncle Peter&rsquo;s face at times when I asked him how all this money was used,
+and where it was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and I
+never understood. I didn&rsquo;t know <i>why</i> people feared my grandfather
+and John Graham. I didn&rsquo;t know of the stupendous power my
+grandfather&rsquo;s money had rolled up for them. I didn&rsquo;t
+know&rdquo;&mdash;her voice sank to a shuddering whisper&mdash;&ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t know how they were using it in Alaska, for instance. I
+didn&rsquo;t know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and death. I
+don&rsquo;t think even Uncle Peter knew <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a slow
+fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the biggest
+factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to suspect that John
+Graham was <i>anticipating</i> a little girl of thirteen, and I didn&rsquo;t
+guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so grandly white of beard and
+hair, so like a god of power when he stood among men, was even then planning
+that I should be given to him, so that a monumental combination of wealth might
+increase itself still more in that juggernaut of financial achievement for
+which he lived. And to bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not
+fail, they set Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of
+face, and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had confidence in
+him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a brain which matched in
+cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham himself. And he did his work
+well, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without embarrassment. With
+her nervous fingers tying and untying the two corners of a little handkerchief
+in her lap, she went on, after a moment of silence in which the ticking of
+Keok&rsquo;s clock seemed tense and loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to Sharpleigh
+as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently he educated me to
+the thought that it was right and just, and my greatest duty in life, to carry
+out the stipulation of my grandfather&rsquo;s will and marry John Graham.
+Otherwise, he told me&mdash;if that union was not brought about before I was
+twenty-two&mdash;not a dollar of the great fortune would go to the house of
+Standish; and because he was clever enough to know that money alone would not
+urge me, he showed me a letter which he said my Uncle Peter had written, and
+which I was to read on my seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter
+urged me to live up to the Standish name and join in that union of the two
+great fortunes which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I
+didn&rsquo;t dream the letter was a forgery. And in the end they won&mdash;and
+I promised.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her fingers.
+&ldquo;Do you despise me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. &ldquo;I love
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I promised,&rdquo; she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse
+that had made her ask him the question. &ldquo;But it was to be business, a
+cold, unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him. In
+the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I would
+remain his wife&mdash;but never more than that. They agreed, and I in my
+ignorance believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see the trap. I didn&rsquo;t see the wicked triumph in
+John Graham&rsquo;s heart. No power could have made me believe then that he
+wanted to possess only <i>me</i>; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly lured into
+his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since Uncle Peter died I
+had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in a make-believe world of my
+own, and I read, read, read; and the thought grew stronger and stronger in me
+that I had lived another life somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years
+when the world was clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein
+money and power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of
+manhood and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these things,
+and yet because others had molded me, and because of my misguided Standish
+sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more of
+the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I investigated a
+little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason for it, which has come
+to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost knew, at the last, that he was a
+monster, but the world had been told I was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with
+his fatherly hypocrisy was behind me, and John Graham treated me so courteously
+and so coolly that I did not suspect the terrible things in his heart and
+mind&mdash;and I went on with the bargain. <i>I married him.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal of what
+she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless expression of
+Alan&rsquo;s face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her like a flash
+of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back crushed against the
+tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she continued, while he stood up and
+faced her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t go on,&rdquo; he interrupted in a voice so low and
+terribly hard that she felt the menacing thrill of it. &ldquo;You
+needn&rsquo;t. I will settle with John Graham, if God gives me the
+chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have me stop <i>now</i>&mdash;before I have told you of the
+only shred of triumph to which I may lay claim!&rdquo; she protested.
+&ldquo;Oh, you may be sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of
+it all, but I swear before my God that I didn&rsquo;t realize it then, until it
+was too late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem&mdash;that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a deadly
+hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was a duty; that I
+should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the hands of those I
+trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or suspect that I was
+sacrificing <i>myself</i>; at no time, blind though you may call me, did I see
+a hint of that sickening danger into which I was voluntarily going. No, not
+even an hour before the wedding did I suspect that, for it had all been so
+coldly planned, like a great deal in finance&mdash;so carefully adjudged by us
+all as a business affair, that I felt no fear except that sickness of soul
+which comes of giving up one&rsquo;s life. And no hint of it came until the
+last of the few words were spoken which made us man and wife, and then I saw in
+John Graham&rsquo;s eyes something which I had never seen there before. And
+Sharpleigh&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went to my room. I didn&rsquo;t lock my door, because never had it
+been necessary to do that. I didn&rsquo;t cry. No, I didn&rsquo;t cry. But
+something strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It
+seemed to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I saw the
+door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind him, and locked
+it. My room. He had come into <i>my room!</i> The unexpectedness of
+it&mdash;the horror&mdash;the insult roused me from my stupor. I sprang up to
+face him, and there he stood, within arm&rsquo;s reach of me, a look in his
+face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to suspect&mdash;or
+fear. His arms were reaching out&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;You are my wife,&rsquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I knew, then. &lsquo;<i>You are my wife</i>,&rsquo; he repeated. I
+wanted to scream, but I couldn&rsquo;t; and then&mdash;then&mdash;his arms
+reached me; I felt them crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the
+poison of his lips was at my face&mdash;and I believed that I was lost, and
+that no power could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my
+room&mdash;the man who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me
+voice, who put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh&mdash;yes, laugh,
+and almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned him,
+and he freed me&mdash;while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that evening, and
+that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I said these things,
+smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a great, gloating, triumphant
+beast, believing that the obedience of wifehood was about to give him what he
+had expected to find through dishonor&mdash;and I was left alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought of only one thing then&mdash;escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived with Uncle
+Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never been&mdash;and it
+was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I wanted never to face
+it again, never to look into the eyes of those I had known. And even as these
+thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was filling a traveling bag in a fever of
+madness, and Uncle Peter was at my side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had
+no minutes to lose, for the man who had left me was clever and might guess the
+truth that lay hid behind my smiles and cajolery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh&rsquo;s low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of laughter,
+and with it I heard John Graham&rsquo;s voice. I was thinking only of the
+sea&mdash;to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I drew money.
+I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any ship, and it seemed
+to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came to a great ship that was
+leaving for Alaska&mdash;and you know&mdash;what happened then&mdash;Alan
+Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was there,
+and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her eyes, but a soft
+glory of pride and exultation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am clean of John Graham,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;<i>Clean!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort of way,
+and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head that the tears
+might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining and clear as stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you despise me now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad,&rdquo; she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland was on the <i>Nome</i>, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham,&rdquo; he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped into
+the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland was hurt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood looking
+toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests of the mountains
+behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch
+upon his arm. &ldquo;You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only
+one. That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom in the
+old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I must return
+with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry. I dread it.
+I&mdash;would rather die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&mdash;&rdquo; he began, then caught himself and pointed to the
+distant hills and mountains. &ldquo;The herds are there,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;I am going to them. I may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to
+be here when I return?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if that is your desire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that&mdash;alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be alone,&rdquo; he said quietly, still looking at the
+far-away hills. &ldquo;If you go, I am going with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and then,
+with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at the half-opened
+door of Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, and the glory in her eyes was the glory of his
+dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over the tundras in those days
+of grief and half-madness when he had thought she was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s cabin the day you
+came,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;And I thank God for giving me the madness
+and courage to come to <i>you</i>. I am not afraid of anything in the world
+now&mdash;because&mdash;<i>I love you, Alan</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as Nawadlook&rsquo;s door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that twisted
+the world about him until for a little it held neither vision nor space nor
+sound.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<p>
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden tundra
+haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream, Alan Holt set
+off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and Keok and Nawadlook at the
+corral bars, with Stampede little regretting that he was left behind to guard
+the range. For a mighty resolution had taken root in the prospector&rsquo;s
+heart, and he felt himself thrilled and a bit trembling at the nearness of the
+greatest drama that had ever entered his life. Alan, looking back after the
+first few minutes, saw that Keok and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ridge beyond the coul&eacute;e out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan set the
+pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven pack-deer behind him,
+bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force which was
+sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an
+inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his head
+and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind which he was
+putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go back. The urge was
+upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish
+was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim to his selfishness and passion in the
+moment when she stood at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door, telling him that she loved
+him. An iron hand had drawn him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand
+that kept his face to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated
+the words that had set his world on fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing with
+him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully to
+understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental calmness
+for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so unexpected that
+the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the mountains had bred in
+him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His happiness was almost an insanity.
+The dream wherein he had wandered with a spirit of the dead had come true; it
+was the old idyl in the flesh again, his father, his mother&mdash;and back in
+the cabin beyond the ridge such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid
+to return. He laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed
+exultation as he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words
+came to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would fight for
+her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and he walked so
+swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind with the deer, so that
+in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over him in
+its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what he had
+done&mdash;justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her as Mary
+Graham. But she was Graham&rsquo;s wife. And if he had gone to her in that
+moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door, if
+he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid the world at his
+feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham himself. Thought of the
+narrowness of his escape and of the first mad desire to call her back from
+Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, to hold her in his arms again as he had held her in the
+cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into his face. Something greater than his own
+fighting instinct had turned him to the open door of the cabin. It was Mary
+Standish&mdash;her courage, the-glory of faith and love shining in her eyes,
+her measurement of him as a man. She had not been afraid to say what was in her
+heart, because she knew what he would do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge of a
+slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows of
+sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were sweating.
+Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the sun had sunk to
+its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott foothills. Here they
+rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when a golden twilight filled the
+land, and then resumed the journey toward the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the herds
+steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and valleys. Here
+they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in slowly moving streams
+wherever the doors of the hills and mountains opened into new grazing fields,
+until Alan&rsquo;s ten thousand reindeer were in three divisions, two of the
+greatest traveling westward, and one, of a thousand head, working north and
+east. The first and second days Alan remained with the nearest and southward
+herd. The third day he went on with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in
+the mountains and joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of
+feeding animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was becoming
+stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A multitude of
+emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary Standish must leave the
+range when he returned. He had a grim sense of honor, and a particularly devout
+one when it had to do with women, and though he conceded nothing of right and
+justice in the relationship which existed between the woman he loved and John
+Graham, he knew that she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible
+thing for her to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the
+States. The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent way, and
+when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his will held
+down, and yet never quite throttled completely&mdash;that something which urged
+him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own hands what a
+glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John Graham, if it ever came to
+that, in the madly desirable way he visioned for himself in those occasional
+moments when the fires of temptation blazed hottest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman&rsquo;s eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his stolid mind
+a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a reassuring hand
+upon his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean she&rsquo;s going to, Tautuk,&rdquo; he laughed.
+&ldquo;She loves you. I know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so
+hopeless as a lover that she is punishing you while she has the
+right&mdash;before she marries you. But if she <i>should</i> marry someone
+else, what would you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother?&rdquo; asked Tautuk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A relative?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone Keok
+hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would kill him,&rdquo; said Tautuk quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should Mary
+Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything to escape
+from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and friends. She had
+scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled her life in the hazard, and
+in the end had come to him! Why should he not keep her? John Graham and the
+world believed she was dead. And he was master here. If&mdash;some
+day&mdash;Graham should happen to cross his path, he would settle the matter in
+Tautuk&rsquo;s way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and the world lay about him in a
+soft glow, and the valley below was filled with misty billows of twilight out
+of which came to him faintly the curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and
+the grunting contentment of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had
+known it would come in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd, and on the
+sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of white in him, and
+when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley where the deer were grazing,
+he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee Doodle on a mouth-organ. It was Tatpan
+who told him that an hour or two before an exhausted stranger had come into
+camp, looking for him, and that the man was asleep now, apparently more dead
+than alive, but had given instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours,
+and not a minute later. Together they had a look at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a peculiarly boyish
+appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife, profoundly asleep. Tatpan
+looked at his big, silver watch and in a low voice described how the stranger
+had stumbled into camp, so tired he could scarcely put one foot ahead of the
+other; and that he had dropped down where he now lay when he learned Alan was
+with one of the other herds.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="333"></a>
+<img src="images/333.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must have come a long distance,&rdquo; said Tatpan, &ldquo;and he has
+traveled fast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place him. He
+wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of his hand on the
+grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in sleep the mysterious
+stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about his revolver in a way that
+spoke of caution and experience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him,&rdquo; said
+Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water that ran
+down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing the stranger. By
+the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the little man with the
+carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and the little man grinned.
+His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes twinkled, and in what seemed to be
+a moment of embarrassment he gave his gun a sudden snap that drew an
+exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only one man in the world had he ever seen
+throw a gun into its holster like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his
+own countenance, and all at once Tatpan&rsquo;s eyes began to bulge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stampede!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; he conceded. &ldquo;I had to do it. It was give
+one or t&rsquo;other up&mdash;my whiskers <i>or her</i>. They went hard, too. I
+flipped dice, an&rsquo; the whiskers won. I cut cards, an&rsquo; the whiskers
+won. I played Klondike ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; &rsquo;em, an&rsquo; the whiskers
+busted the bank. Then I got mad an&rsquo; shaved &rsquo;em. Do I look so bad,
+Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look twenty years younger,&rdquo; declared Alan, stifling his desire
+to laugh when he saw the other&rsquo;s seriousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. &ldquo;Then why the devil did they
+laugh!&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Mary Standish didn&rsquo;t laugh. She cried.
+Just stood an&rsquo; cried, an&rsquo; then sat down an&rsquo; cried, she
+thought I was that blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an&rsquo;
+had to go to bed. That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss
+Standish says it wasn&rsquo;t because I was funny that she laughed, but that
+the change in me was so sudden she couldn&rsquo;t help it. Nawadlook says
+I&rsquo;ve got a character-ful chin&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede&rsquo;s face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened. Nature no
+longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill
+and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This, at last, was the man
+whose name had gone before him up and down the old trails; the man whose cool
+and calculating courage, whose fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun
+had written pages in Alaskan history which would never be forgotten. Where his
+first impulse had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of
+men of other days, who, when in Stampede&rsquo;s presence, knew they were in
+the presence of a master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan
+knew why. The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some day, if we&rsquo;re lucky, there always comes a woman to make the
+world worth living in, Stampede,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There does,&rdquo; replied Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I take it you love Mary Standish,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and that
+you&rsquo;d fight for her if you had to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s time you were traveling,&rdquo; advised Stampede
+significantly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been twelve hours on the trail without a rest.
+She told me to move fast, and I&rsquo;ve moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said
+it was almost a matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted
+to stay, but she wouldn&rsquo;t let me. It&rsquo;s <i>you</i> she wants.
+Rossland is at the range.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Rossland</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rossland. And it&rsquo;s my guess John Graham isn&rsquo;t far away.
+I smell happenings, Alan. We&rsquo;d better hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range, but to
+ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and specific direction
+was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and within the first half-dozen
+miles he had abandoned the adventure to continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan
+had no saddle-deer in his herd, and the swiftest messenger would require many
+hours in which to reach Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an
+hour after his arrival at Tatpan&rsquo;s camp. Stampede, declaring himself a
+new man after his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen
+to Alan&rsquo;s advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter&rsquo;s eyes
+as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race through the
+foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the grimness that had
+settled in the face behind him. His own mind was undergoing an upheaval of
+conjecture and wild questioning. That Rossland had discovered Mary Standish was
+not dead was the least astonishing factor in the new development. The
+information might easily have reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife
+Ellen. The astonishing thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up
+the trail of her flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more amazing
+fact that he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly at his range.
+His heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be directly under
+Graham&rsquo;s orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to reveal all
+that had happened on the day of his departure for the mountains. He proceeded
+to do this without equivocation or hesitancy, for there now pressed upon him a
+grim anticipation of impending events ahead of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other&rsquo;s disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face unchanged.
+Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish&rsquo;s confession of
+love at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door did the fighting lines soften about his
+comrade&rsquo;s eyes and mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede&rsquo;s lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. &ldquo;I knew
+that a long time ago,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guessed it that first night of
+storm in the coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana.
+She didn&rsquo;t tell me, but I wasn&rsquo;t blind. It was the note that
+puzzled and frightened me&mdash;the note she stuffed in her slipper. And
+Rossland told me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as
+he intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you left her alone after <i>that</i>?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan&rsquo;s
+suddenly quickened pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sokwenna won&rsquo;t sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And
+he&rsquo;s watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick
+off a duck the other day at two hundred yards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could not
+name clutching at his heart, &ldquo;Why did you say Graham might not be far
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In my bones,&rdquo; replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again.
+&ldquo;In my bones!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes, too.
+Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he owns it. I
+take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something big to reckon with.
+He asked me how many men we had. I told him, stretching it a little. He
+grinned. He couldn&rsquo;t keep back that grin. It was as if a devil in him
+slipped out from hiding for an instant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he caught Alan&rsquo;s arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men stared at
+each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, we&rsquo;re short-sighted. I&rsquo;m damned if I don&rsquo;t think
+we ought to call the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think it&rsquo;s that bad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might be. If Graham&rsquo;s behind Rossland and has men with
+him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re two and a half hours from Tatpan,&rdquo; said Alan, in a
+cold, unemotional voice. &ldquo;He has only half a dozen men with him, and it
+will take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk Toolik.
+There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two with the upper.
+I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All are armed. It may be
+foolish, but I&rsquo;m following your hunch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They gripped hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more than a hunch, Alan,&rdquo; breathed Stampede softly.
+&ldquo;And for God&rsquo;s sake keep off the music as long as you can!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run toward the
+foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter of an hour they
+were lost to each other in the undulating distances of the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence from
+the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan&rsquo;s camp had
+not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of the country gave
+him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he could make the distance
+in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled to add a rest of at least three
+or four hours during the night. It was now eight o&rsquo;clock. By nine or ten
+the next morning he would be facing Rossland, and at about that same hour
+Tatpan&rsquo;s swift messengers would be closing in about Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik. He knew the speed with which his herdsmen would sweep out of the
+mountains and over the tundras. Two years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his
+Eskimo people had traveled fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a
+hundred and nineteen miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He
+couldn&rsquo;t do that. But his people could&mdash;and <i>would</i>. He could
+see them sweeping in from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word
+went among them; he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then,
+like wolves scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting the
+tundra in their race for home&mdash;and war, if it was war that lay ahead of
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out of the
+horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of pemmican when he
+grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coul&eacute;es when he came to them,
+where the water was cold and clear. Not until a telltale cramp began to bite
+warningly in his leg did he stop for the rest which he knew he must take. It
+was one o&rsquo;clock. Counting his journey to Tatpan&rsquo;s camp, he had been
+traveling almost steadily for seventeen hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where a
+little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize how tired he
+had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all he wanted; he dared
+not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at last, and he slept. When he
+awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting him. He sat up with a jerk, then
+leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch told the story. He had slept soundly for
+six hours, instead of resting three or four with his eyes open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret what had
+happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate a breakfast of
+pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost time. The interval between
+fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he almost ran. That quarter of an hour
+brought him to the crest of the ridge from which he could look upon the
+buildings of the range. Nothing had happened that he could see. He gave a great
+gasp of relief, and in his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told
+him more than anything else the tension he had been under.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin
+and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock, and he called
+out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he stepped in. Nawadlook
+stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands. Keok faced him, holding grimly
+to a long knife, and between them, staring white-faced at him as he entered,
+was Mary Standish. She came forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from
+Nawadlook, and saw Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the tremble in
+her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle she was making to
+keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at his coming. It was that
+look that sent a flood of joy into his heart, even when he saw the torture and
+hopelessness behind it. He held her hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in
+such a way that he saw them widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she
+drew in a sudden quick breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the
+hope that had deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not
+excited. He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her eyes and
+knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt the force of it
+behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at her. She gave a little
+sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken breath; a little cry that came
+of wonder&mdash;understanding&mdash;and unspeakable faith in this man who was
+smiling at her so confidently in the face of the tragedy that had come to
+destroy her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland is in your cabin,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;And John Graham
+is back there&mdash;somewhere&mdash;coming this way. Rossland says that if I
+don&rsquo;t go to him of my own free will&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand the rest,&rdquo; he said. They stood silent for a moment.
+The gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a little, so
+that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that he could feel the
+sweet warmth of her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t make a mistake the day I went away?&rdquo; he asked.
+&ldquo;You&mdash;love me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from her. Even
+Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they thought&mdash;Keok
+with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun&mdash;for the bird was singing, and
+Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little window in
+the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across his knees, old
+Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and something in the manner of
+his going brought back a vision of another day long ago when Ghost Kloof had
+rung with the cries of battle, and the hands now gnarled and twisted with age
+had played their part in the heroic stand of his people against the oppressors
+from the farther north.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his fingers
+drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His eyes fixed
+themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath he mumbled the old
+chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in Sokwenna&rsquo;s brain, and after
+that his eyes closed, and again the vision grew out of darkness like a picture
+for him, a vision of twisting trails and of fighting men gathering with their
+faces set for war.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+At the desk in Alan&rsquo;s living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed when he
+saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his sleeves rolled up,
+and it was evident he was making no effort to conceal his freedom with
+Alan&rsquo;s books and papers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had told
+Alan to attend to his own business on board the <i>Nome</i>. His attitude was
+that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even before he spoke.
+Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind that smile he was admiring
+the man&rsquo;s nerve. His hand met Rossland&rsquo;s casually, but there was no
+uncertainty in the warmth of the other&rsquo;s grip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How d&rsquo; do, Paris, old boy?&rdquo; he greeted good-humoredly.
+&ldquo;Saw you going in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I&rsquo;ve been waiting
+for you. She&rsquo;s a little frightened. And we can&rsquo;t blame her.
+Menelaus is mightily upset. But mind me, Holt, I&rsquo;m not blaming you.
+I&rsquo;m too good a sport. Clever, I call it&mdash;damned clever. She&rsquo;s
+enough to turn any man&rsquo;s head. I only wish I were in your boots right
+now. I&rsquo;d have turned traitor myself aboard the <i>Nome</i> if she had
+shown an inclination.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was inspiration
+again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was racing. But Rossland
+saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the cool smile on Alan&rsquo;s
+lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was meeting the situation. It
+pleased Graham&rsquo;s agent. He reseated himself in the desk-chair and
+motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you were badly hurt,&rdquo; said Alan. &ldquo;Nasty knife
+wound you got.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;There you have it again, Holt&mdash;the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit girls down
+in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn&rsquo;t she? Tricked her
+into my cabin all right, but she wasn&rsquo;t like some other Indian girls
+I&rsquo;ve known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or whoever it was
+got me through the open port. It wasn&rsquo;t bad. I was out of the hospital
+within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I wouldn&rsquo;t have seen
+Mrs. Graham one morning&mdash;through the window. What a little our fortunes
+hang to at times, eh? If it hadn&rsquo;t been for the girl and the knife and
+the hospital, I wouldn&rsquo;t be here now, and Graham wouldn&rsquo;t be
+bleeding his heart out with impatience&mdash;and you, Holt, wouldn&rsquo;t be
+facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into your life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Alan, hiding his
+face in the smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which
+had its effect upon Rossland. &ldquo;Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland&rsquo;s eyes, and his voice became cool
+and hard. &ldquo;Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don&rsquo;t you
+think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Decidedly,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham&rsquo;s wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you probably know&mdash;now&mdash;why she jumped into the sea, and
+why she ran away from Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don&rsquo;t know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn&rsquo;t care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It&rsquo;s the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the day she
+was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the thought of possessing
+her. You know how he got her to marry him, and you know what happened
+afterward. But it makes no difference to him whether she hates him or not. He
+<i>wants</i> her. And this&rdquo;&mdash;he swept his arms out, &ldquo;is the
+most beautiful place in the world in which to have her returned to him.
+I&rsquo;ve been figuring from your books. Your property isn&rsquo;t worth over
+a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today. I&rsquo;m here to offer
+you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is willing to forfeit all
+action he might have personally against you for stealing his wife, and in place
+of that will pay you five hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of having
+his honeymoon here, and making of this place a country estate where his wife
+may reside indefinitely, subject to her husband&rsquo;s visits when he is so
+inclined. There will be a stipulation, of course, requiring that the personal
+details of the deal be kept strictly confidential, and that you leave the
+country. Do I make myself clear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as he
+watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out proposition
+upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to the point without an
+effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient dramatic sense to appreciate
+what the offer of half a million dollars meant to an individual who was
+struggling for existence at the edge of a raw frontier. Alan stood with his
+back toward him, facing a window. His voice was oddly strained when he
+answered. But that was quite natural, too, Rossland thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am wondering if I understand you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you mean
+that if I sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has his
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan tried to laugh. &ldquo;I think I see the point&mdash;now. He isn&rsquo;t
+paying five hundred thousand for Miss Standish&mdash;I mean Mrs. Graham.
+He&rsquo;s paying it for the <i>isolation</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him&mdash;to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to <i>get</i>
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one we&rsquo;re
+using now. You hit the word when you said &lsquo;isolation.&rsquo; What a damn
+fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of it&mdash;half a
+million dollars!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It sounds unreal,&rdquo; mused Alan, keeping his face to the window.
+&ldquo;Why should he offer so much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a normal
+price wouldn&rsquo;t guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like that,
+you&rsquo;re a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your health
+depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep smoke in
+front of his eyes. &ldquo;Of course, I don&rsquo;t suppose he&rsquo;d allow
+Mrs. Graham to escape back to the States&mdash;where she might do a little
+upsetting on her own account?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t throwing the money away,&rdquo; replied Rossland
+significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would remain here indefinitely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indefinitely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Probably never would return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The little
+secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a beautiful
+summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely flowers. Birds. And the
+girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since she was fourteen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And who hates him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That&rsquo;s not
+our business. If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get your
+range back pretty cheap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s partial payment&mdash;two hundred and fifty thousand. I
+have the papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give
+possession, I&rsquo;ll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining
+payment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan took the check. &ldquo;I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, only a fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>And I am that fool</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his words did
+not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared away from before
+Alan&rsquo;s face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he stepped on it with
+his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The fury he had held back with
+almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could have Graham where you are now&mdash;<i>in that
+chair</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;d give ten years of my life, Rossland. I would kill
+him. And you&mdash;<i>you</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance of the
+beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn&rsquo;t necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish&mdash;<i>not</i> Mary
+Graham&mdash;is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to <i>me</i>. I love her. She is mine&mdash;do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn&rsquo;t buy one hair from her
+head. I&rsquo;m going to take her back to the States. She is going to get a
+square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has nothing to
+conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent the
+table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go&mdash;before I kill you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and the man
+before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten power and courage
+in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed quickly to the door and
+escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan watched from his door until he saw
+him departing southward, accompanied by two men who bore packs on their
+shoulders. Not until then did Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop
+and look back. His breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan.
+But he did not return for his coat and hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the table.
+Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at work. He hated
+Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he hated John Graham, and
+that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him. He felt the strain he had been
+under. But he was glad. Some little god of common sense had overruled his
+passion, and he had acted wisely. Graham would now get his message, and there
+could be no misunderstanding of purpose between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at the door
+turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You sent him away,&rdquo; she cried softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful glow.
+She saw the overturned table, Rossland&rsquo;s hat and coat on a chair, the
+evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and then she
+turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the last of that grim
+resolution which he had measured for himself, so that in a moment he was at her
+side, and had her in his arms. She made no effort to free herself as she had
+done in the cottonwoods, but turned her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid
+her face against his shoulder&mdash;while he, fighting vainly to find utterance
+for the thousand words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then buried
+his face in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it that he loved
+her, and was going to fight for her, and that no power on earth could take her
+away from him now. And these things he repeated until she raised her flushed
+face from his breast, and let him kiss her lips once more, and then freed
+herself gently from his arms.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s face and in Alan&rsquo;s quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier which
+convention had raised against them, and now they felt the inevitable thrill of
+joy and triumph, and not the humiliating embarrassment of dishonor. They made
+no effort to draw a curtain upon their happiness, or to hide the swift
+heart-beat of it from each other. It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they
+stood apart, and something pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little
+freedom of space between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker
+and deeper grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her eyes
+when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she gave him her
+own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile, and she bowed her head
+a little, so that he was looking at her smooth hair, soft and sweet where he
+had caressed it a few moments before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank God!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech seemed
+trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking God for that
+moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had come to him. This, it
+seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as he had known it, the
+beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands trembled. For something to
+do he set up the overturned table, and Mary Standish watched him with a quiet,
+satisfied wonder. She loved him, and she had come into his arms. She had given
+him her lips to kiss. And he laughed softly as he came to her side again, and
+looked over the tundra where Rossland had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long before you can prepare for the journey?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland lied,
+Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand pressed his arm. &ldquo;We are going&mdash;<i>back?</i> Is that it,
+Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With you there&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will return with me&mdash;when it is over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek touch his
+shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will come back with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will be ready?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ready now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist rising
+out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions&mdash;the breath of
+life, of warmth, of growing things&mdash;all between him and the hidden
+cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without another minute
+of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek against his shoulder, and
+the weight of her hand on his arm. That she had come to him utterly was in the
+low surrender of her voice. She had ceased to fight&mdash;she had given to him
+the precious right to fight for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of the
+obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the grimmer
+realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the significance of
+what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even more terrible now that he
+was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of hatred crept into his face again as he
+looked steadily in the direction which the other man had taken, and he wondered
+how much of that same horror&mdash;of the unbelievable menace stealing upon
+her&mdash;Rossland had divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his
+side. Had he done right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he
+would have exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of
+Graham&rsquo;s flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of
+womanhood and the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him, out
+there in the hollows of the tundra&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had seen what
+was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that brought him to
+himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told her a great deal. Yet
+she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what had been in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ready,&rdquo; she reminded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must wait for Stampede,&rdquo; he said, reason returning to him.
+&ldquo;He should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland
+is off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like Stampede
+between us and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to her. She
+stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her
+in his arms again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is between here and Tanana,&rdquo; she said with a little gesture of
+her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland told you that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you were not afraid that I&mdash;I might let them have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that second
+letter at Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone before
+he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were approaching
+hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still grimly clutching the
+long knife; and beyond them, at the little window under the roof, he saw the
+ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a death&rsquo;s-head on guard. His blood ran
+a little faster. The emptiness of the tundras, the illimitable spaces without
+sign of human life, the vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its
+sunshine, its song of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck
+a new note in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat
+like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare
+of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space which
+seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered his cabin,
+waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came hobbling over the
+open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet
+with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points of flame, and a quickness of
+movement that made Alan shiver as he watched him through the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that jumble
+of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand&mdash;and which
+Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries&rsquo; teachings&mdash;that he
+could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood was
+near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the old kloof where
+yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that had once run red. Alan
+was one of the few who, by reason of much effort, had learned the story of the
+kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a
+hostile tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the
+women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with
+what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day
+that was golden and filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had
+ambushed their enemies and killed them to a man. All were dead now, all but
+Sokwenna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was no
+longer the cheerful and gentle &ldquo;old man&rdquo; of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook, who
+loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish
+boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before Alan an
+embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his breath, a spirit of
+evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin hands gripping like
+bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the uncomfortable feeling that had
+gripped him for a moment, and set him to an appointed task&mdash;the watching
+of the southward plain from the crest of a tall ridge two miles back on the
+Tanana trail. He was to return when the sun reached its horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which stirred
+him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon as Sokwenna had
+started on his mission. The desire to leave at once, without the delay of an
+hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced himself to see the folly of such
+haste. He would be away many months, possibly a year this time. There was much
+to do, a mass of detail to attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to
+leave behind him. He must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write
+down certain laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation
+progressed, and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he fell into a
+habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and the impossibility of
+danger. He tried to make himself feel uncomfortably foolish at the thought of
+having ordered the herdsmen in. In all probability Graham would not appear at
+all, he told himself, or at least not for many days&mdash;or weeks; and if he
+did come, it would be to war in a legal way, and not with murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the afternoon
+lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly to take the trail
+beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his side. Twice he saw her
+between noon and five o&rsquo;clock, and by that time his writing was done. He
+looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his favorite rifle and automatic were
+working smoothly, and he called himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest
+with an extravagant number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this
+ammunition and two of his extra guns to Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin, with the
+thought that it was this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted
+for defense in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it,
+and for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on their
+way to Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of the
+horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food which Wegaruk
+had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of the ravine, watching
+the twilight gathering where the coul&eacute;e ran narrower and deeper between
+the distant breasts of the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to leave you for a little while,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But
+Sokwenna has returned, and you will not be alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As far as the cottonwoods, I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I am going with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I expect to walk very fast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not faster than I, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will help you.&rdquo; Her hand crept into his. &ldquo;I am going with
+you, Alan,&rdquo; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I&mdash;think you are,&rdquo; he laughed joyously, and suddenly he
+bent his head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand
+in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together since
+the day he had come from Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and sweet in
+her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made him forget the
+cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and Sokwenna&rsquo;s advice
+to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost Kloof and the country
+beyond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking a great deal today,&rdquo; she was saying,
+&ldquo;because you have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of
+<i>you</i>. And&mdash;my thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I have been&mdash;in paradise,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do not think that I am wicked?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor that I have been unwomanly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet I have followed you&mdash;have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For which I thank God,&rdquo; He breathed devoutly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your arms,
+and have kissed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am walking now with my hand in yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And will continue to do so, if I can hold it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am another man&rsquo;s wife,&rdquo; she shuddered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are mine,&rdquo; he declared doggedly. &ldquo;You know it, and the
+Almighty God knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham&rsquo;s
+wife. You are legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and
+body you are free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am not free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: &ldquo;Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am not. It
+is because&mdash;heart and soul&mdash;I belong to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary Standish
+looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and repeated softly,
+&ldquo;Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still hand in
+hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky, and the birds,
+and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them, while Alan scanned the
+shortening horizons for a sign of human life. One mile, and then another, and
+after that a third, and they were looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay
+the kloof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now&mdash;the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick&mdash;but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall of gloom
+that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to
+<i>you</i>&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I think that if you hadn&rsquo;t come
+back to me I would have gone mad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have the letter. It is here&rdquo;&mdash;and she placed a hand upon
+her breast. &ldquo;Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you meant more to me than life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that&mdash;particularly&mdash;you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a
+tress of my hair for you if they found me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. &ldquo;When I sat across the table from you aboard the <i>Nome</i>,
+I worshiped it and didn&rsquo;t know it. And since then&mdash;since I&rsquo;ve
+had you here&mdash;every time. I&rsquo;ve looked at you&mdash;&rdquo; He
+stopped, choking the words back in his throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say it, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve wanted to see it down,&rdquo; he finished desperately.
+&ldquo;Silly notion, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is it?&rdquo; she asked, her eyes widening a little. &ldquo;If you
+love it, why is it a silly notion to want to see it down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I though possibly you might think it so,&rdquo; he added lamely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned suddenly
+from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back, and with deft,
+swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until its radiant masses
+tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a silken glory that awed him with
+its beauty and drew from his lips a cry of gladness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in her
+hair. &ldquo;Do you think it is nice, Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed them to
+his lips and face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It was like
+a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand which she had
+placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When he raised his head to
+look at her, she was staring past him into the deepening twilight of the
+tundra, and it seemed as if something had stricken her so that for a space she
+was powerless to speak or move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to
+see what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over the
+earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night&mdash;and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between it and
+the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach of summer storm
+on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift as now. Where there
+had been golden light, he saw his companion&rsquo;s face now pale in a sea of
+dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its suddenness and unexpectedness,
+that had startled her, he thought, and he laughed softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her hand clutched his arm. &ldquo;I saw them,&rdquo; she cried, her voice
+breaking. &ldquo;I saw them&mdash;out there against the sun&mdash;before the
+cloud came&mdash;and some of them were running, like animals&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shadows!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;The long shadows of foxes running
+against the sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, they were not that,&rdquo; she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. &ldquo;They were not shadows. <i>They were
+men</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to have
+stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of the
+twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot striking
+against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that sound; none but
+Stampede Smith&rsquo;s or his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were they many?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were
+running&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they saw us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the
+dusk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he could
+hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his automatic holster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think <i>they have come</i>?&rdquo; she whispered, and a cold dread
+was in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, I am not afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you are trembling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is this strange gloom, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen times had
+he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and
+the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of
+near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest
+play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a
+miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall
+was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been.
+It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird chaos,
+neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes strained futilely to
+penetrate its mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing circle of
+vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a moment to accept the
+significance of the running figures his companion had seen. Graham&rsquo;s men
+were near, had seen them, and were getting between them and the range. Possibly
+it was a scouting party, and if there were no more than five or six, the number
+which Mary had counted, he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be
+a dozen or fifty of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing
+upon the range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the overwhelming
+influence behind him, both political and financial, and fired by a passion for
+Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little short of madness, Graham would
+hesitate at no convention of law or humanity to achieve his end. Probably he
+was playing the game so that he would be shielded by the technicalities of the
+law, if it came to a tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a
+certain extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband
+&ldquo;rescuing&rdquo; his wife, while he&mdash;Alan Holt&mdash;was the
+woman&rsquo;s abductor and paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight ahead.
+The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of what that
+&ldquo;rescue&rdquo; would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and deadly
+definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered itself in
+readiness for whatever might happen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Graham&rsquo;s men had seen them, and were getting between them and retreat,
+the neck of the trap lay ahead&mdash;and in this direction Alan walked so
+swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could not hear her
+footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined about his own, and he
+could feel the silken caress of her loose hair. For half a mile he kept on,
+watching for a moving shadow, listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew
+Mary into his arms and held her there, so that her head lay against his breast.
+She was panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her
+parted lips and kissed them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not afraid?&rdquo; he asked again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. &ldquo;Even if
+they saw us, and are Graham&rsquo;s men, we have given them the slip,&rdquo; he
+comforted her. &ldquo;Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am sorry
+I hurried you so. We will go more slowly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must travel faster,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;I want to run.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At intervals
+they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and listening. Twice Alan
+thought he heard sounds which did not belong to the night. The second time the
+little fingers tightened about his own, but his companion said no word, only
+her breath seemed to catch in her throat for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath of storm
+seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and about them were
+gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing to the sudden change.
+It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to be distributing itself over
+the whole heaven, thinning out where its solid opaqueness had lain against the
+sun. Alan could see the girl&rsquo;s face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows
+and ridges of the tundra were taking more distinct shape when they came into a
+dip, and Alan recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge of the
+willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel, and showed her
+how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands. While she inclined her
+head to drink, he held back her hair and rested with his lips pressed to it. He
+heard the trickle of water running between her fingers, her little laugh of
+half-pleasure, half-fear, which in another instant broke into a startled scream
+as he half gained his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from
+the concealment of the willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another voice,
+crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found himself on
+his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to loosen a pair of
+gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl struggling, but she did
+not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his brain was reeling. He was
+conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun, and could see the face over him,
+grim and horrible in the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from
+him. Then he heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as
+he was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled,
+and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in
+him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers
+loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was killing him
+sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as he drew great
+breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his pistol. The holster was
+empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and
+life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was
+advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a
+lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he
+struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a
+second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little spring from
+which she had been drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to
+kill now; he wanted to kill&mdash;to destroy what was already under his hands
+that he might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his
+hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a
+club the bearded man&rsquo;s head sagged backward, and Alan&rsquo;s fingers dug
+into his throat. It was a bull&rsquo;s neck. He tried to break it. Ten
+seconds&mdash;twenty&mdash;half a minute at the most&mdash;and flesh and bone
+would have given way&mdash;but before the bearded man&rsquo;s gasping cry was
+gone from his lips the second figure leaped upon Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was half
+gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out and
+grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he realize
+how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening horror filled
+his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan broke from his lips.
+Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have
+kept it from the girl. She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could
+not see. Her long hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water
+of the spring, and her hands were groping&mdash;groping&mdash;until they found
+what they were seeking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands had
+rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to his knees,
+reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself over Alan and his
+assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he heard the one swift,
+terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him, limply and without sound. He
+staggered to his feet and for a moment caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his throat
+again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a heavier one,
+and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By chance his hand had come
+in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked the safety down; he was ready to
+shoot, ready to continue the fight with a gun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and put her
+hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud from the spring.
+Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from the pool and the
+willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the strange
+twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of storm, borne from
+the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from straight ahead. Alan
+held the muddied little hand closer in his own and set out for the
+range-houses, from which direction the last voice had come. He knew what was
+happening. Graham&rsquo;s men were cleverer than he had supposed; they had
+encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of them were closing in on the
+willow pool, from which the triumphant shout of the bearded man&rsquo;s
+companion had come. They were wondering why the call was not repeated, and were
+hallooing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every nerve in Alan&rsquo;s body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him like a
+breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows they would have
+killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his life. Wolves and not men
+were about them on the plain; wolves headed by two monsters of the human pack,
+Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and mad passion were hidden in the
+darkness; law and order and civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham
+won, only the unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark
+kloof remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century
+ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their
+hands&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from his
+lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up suddenly in
+their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out as voices commanded
+them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an arm, but his own was
+quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning flashes from his pistol, and
+the man who had raised his arm crumpled to the earth, while the other dissolved
+swiftly into the storm-gloom. A moment later his wild shouts were assembling
+the pack, while the detonations of Alan&rsquo;s pistol continued to roll over
+the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the
+stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary Standish.
+But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish gloom she turned
+her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair
+covered her like a shining veil, and where it clustered in a disheveled mass
+upon her breast Alan saw her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging
+concealment, and in it&mdash;to his amazement&mdash;was a pistol. He recognized
+the weapon&mdash;one of a brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl
+Lomen, had presented to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange
+exultation swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all
+along she had prepared to fight&mdash;to fight with <i>him</i> against their
+enemies! He wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell
+her how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and
+they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier between
+them and the range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through the
+sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and shovels of
+his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing that safety lay
+ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was almost a dead weight
+in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken the strength from her body.
+Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and
+kissed her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his breast.
+Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in
+his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not
+immediately find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed
+at her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little goddess
+hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried
+toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck,
+feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by
+her helplessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching rain
+touched his face. He could see farther now&mdash;half-way back over the narrow
+trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from his arms and
+stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath was coming in little
+breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out the shadows of the corral
+buildings. Beyond them were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of
+the range of houses. The silence of the place was death-like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow cry
+followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and loud enough
+only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly.
+Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and spectral in his
+appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little
+points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked
+in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished,
+he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the
+range houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; asked the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what else?&rdquo; she persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Sokwenna is superstitious&mdash;and nervous. He said some things
+that you wouldn&rsquo;t understand. You would probably think him mad if he told
+you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here
+with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has been
+cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every woman and child
+in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and Nawadlook wouldn&rsquo;t
+go. I&rsquo;m glad of that, for if they were pursued and overtaken by men like
+Graham and Rossland&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Death would be better,&rdquo; finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung
+more tightly to his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna&rsquo;s place until Stampede and
+the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won&rsquo;t dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now; we can
+shoot, but they won&rsquo;t risk the use of their rifles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had reached Sokwenna&rsquo;s door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices came
+suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at concealment. The
+buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly and were answered from
+half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could hear running feet and sharp
+commands; some were cursing where they were entangled among the nigger-heads,
+and the sound of hurrying foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan&rsquo;s
+heart stood still. There was something terribly swift and businesslike in this
+gathering of their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A
+window fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna&rsquo;s rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied his gun.
+Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in the cabin,
+barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside
+them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The
+room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready to be used; heaps of cartridges were
+piled near them, and in the eyes of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady
+fires as they held shining cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust
+them into the rifle chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so they
+would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and unbound
+hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham&rsquo;s
+men would fire upon the cabin&mdash;when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna&rsquo;s fusillade, and a hail
+of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way through
+the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement Alan was at
+Mary&rsquo;s side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside Keok and
+Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden, consuming fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought they wouldn&rsquo;t shoot at women,&rdquo; he said, and his
+voice was terrifying in its strange hardness. &ldquo;I was mistaken. And I am
+sure&mdash;now&mdash;that I understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer guessing
+at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he was planning,
+what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both he and Rossland knew
+there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish in Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin;
+they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing that Alan Holt would find a
+safe place for her, while he fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever
+scheming, nothing less than murder, and he, by this combination of
+circumstances and plot, was the victim marked for death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a significance
+for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to care for those
+under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin.
+It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in turn possessed an air
+vent leading to the outside, overlooking the ravine. In the candle-glow Alan
+saw the door of this trap propped open with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever.
+Sokwenna had foreseen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in her
+hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic, and began to
+climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan pointed to the open
+trap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quick, get into that!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It is the only safe place.
+You can load there and hand out the guns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was clutching a
+rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok climbed steadily and
+disappeared in the darkness above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go into the cellar!&rdquo; commanded Alan. &ldquo;Good God, if you
+don&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile lit up Mary&rsquo;s face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet and
+gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the rifle in
+one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from his feet she
+still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her shining hair, and in a
+quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said, &ldquo;I am going to help you
+fight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="334"></a>
+<img src="images/334.jpg" width="600" height="377" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an apron
+heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and his rifle
+sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men. What followed
+struck a smile from Mary&rsquo;s lips, and a moaning sob rose from her breast
+as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open window to face the
+winged death that was again beating a tattoo against the log walls of the
+cabin.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his power John
+Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that he believed Holt
+would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death, there could no longer be a
+doubt after the first few swift moments following Sokwenna&rsquo;s rifle-shots
+from the attic window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old warrior
+until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan thrust his rifle
+as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening mist of night. He could
+hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them singing like angry bees as
+they passed with the swiftness of chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and
+their patter against the log walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles
+against the side of a ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and
+almost gentle about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death
+was riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the
+direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at which to
+shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these he fired as fast
+as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull the trigger. Then he
+crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary Standish who held out a freshly
+loaded weapon to him. Her face was waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes,
+staring at him so strangely, never for an instant leaving his face, were
+lustrous with the agony of fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid
+for herself. It was for <i>him</i>. His name was on her lips, a whisper
+unspoken, a breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the
+opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing, writhing
+serpent of death that struck something behind them in its venomous wrath. With
+a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God, they will kill you if you stand there!&rdquo; she moaned.
+&ldquo;Give me up to them, Alan. If you love me&mdash;give me up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then
+another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were finding their
+way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs of the cabin. His arms
+closed in a fierce embrace about the girl&rsquo;s slim body, and before she
+could realize what was happening, he leaped to the trap with her and almost
+flung her into its protection. Then he forced Nawadlook down beside her, and
+after them he thrust in the empty gun and the apron with its weight of
+cartridges. His face was demoniac in its command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t stay there, I&rsquo;ll open the door and go outside
+to fight! Do you understand? <i>Stay there!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw another
+white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and following the crash
+came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna&rsquo;s gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered hands was
+clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath suddenly came in a
+panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and said something reassuring
+to Keok, and faced the window again with the gun which she had loaded for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok&rsquo;s lips when Alan was at the top of
+the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness of the
+room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and seized her, and
+dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the power
+to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for light and vision
+he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow radiance silhouetted the
+windows, and a stream of it billowed out through an open door into the night.
+It was so bright he could see the rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense,
+slowly descending fog, a wet blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart
+jumped as with each second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to
+his cabin. They were no longer white men, but savages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He watched with
+the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was
+still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a
+shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He
+waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking&mdash;that
+the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was
+Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth
+as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others&mdash;one, two, three,
+four&mdash;and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed
+upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for him, head
+and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands. She was sobbing as
+she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or tears in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep down!&rdquo; he warned. &ldquo;Keep down below the floor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still existed in
+the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now&mdash;from the shelter of the
+other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light of his flaming home, the
+rifle fire continued to grow until it filled the night with a horrible din. He
+flung himself face-down upon the floor, so that the lower log of the building
+protected him. No living thing could have stood up against what was happening
+in these moments. Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked
+logs, crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles
+sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary Standish
+coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself down quickly, and
+she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his heart froze with horror as
+he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the floor as she stood there in that
+frightful moment, white and glorious in the face of the gun-fire. Before she
+could move another step, he was at her side, and with her in his arms leaped
+into the pit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or two life
+seemed to leave her body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In the
+deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a faint
+square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can get away&mdash;there!&rdquo; she cried in a low voice. &ldquo;I
+have opened the little door. We can crawl through it and into the
+ravine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not dreamed that
+Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and Nawadlook&rsquo;s words
+filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle fire was dying away again as
+he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift words. He would hold the cabin. As
+long as he was there Graham and his men would not dare to rush it. At least
+they would hesitate a considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the
+girls could steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to
+intercept them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the
+trails into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in
+the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless. Something
+in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that Mary Standish
+would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips move in the effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go&mdash;for <i>their</i> sakes, if not for your own and mine,&rdquo; he
+insisted, holding her away from him. &ldquo;Good God, think what it will mean
+if beasts like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no hope,
+no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They will be
+like&mdash;like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves&mdash;broken&mdash;destroyed&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she
+bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>you!</i>&rdquo; whispered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must remain here. It is the only way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok went
+through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last. She did not
+touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no word, and all he
+remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was her eyes. In that last
+look she had given him her soul, and no whisper, no farewell caress came with
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains,&rdquo; were his last words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing that he
+must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that way could he hold
+Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance for their lives. Cautiously
+he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin was a furnace red with flame;
+streams of fire were licking out at the windows and through the door, and as he
+sought vainly for a movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his
+ears, and so swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became
+sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire
+whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white sheet at
+the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little hesitatingly at first, as
+if doubtful of what might happen; and then it stopped, full in the light, an
+easy mark for a rifle aimed from Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. He saw who it was
+then, and drew in his rifle and watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement.
+The man was Rossland. In spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan
+could not repress the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of
+illogical resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled
+ignominiously through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that
+could not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That he owed
+this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant possess Alan. A
+murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer if such a creature
+existed on earth, and for such a man death was a righteous end. Only
+Rossland&rsquo;s nerve, and what he might have to say, held back the vengeance
+within reach of Alan&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was within a
+hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he
+heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond
+Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of
+Sokwenna&rsquo;s place. Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and
+the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would
+reveal their treachery? He shuddered and held himself below the opening of the
+window. Graham and his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland&rsquo;s voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+&ldquo;Alan Holt! Are you there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I am here,&rdquo; shouted Alan, &ldquo;and I have a line on your
+heart, Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing had at
+last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: &ldquo;We are giving you a last
+chance, Holt. For God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t be a fool! The offer I made you
+today is still good. If you don&rsquo;t accept it&mdash;the law must take its
+course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>The law!</i>&rdquo; Alan&rsquo;s voice was a savage cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with felonious
+intent. But we don&rsquo;t want to press the law unless we are forced to do so.
+You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men and wounded two others.
+That means the hangman, if we take you alive. But we are willing to forget that
+if you will accept the offer I made you today. What do you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous assurance with
+which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And when he made no answer
+Rossland continued to drive home his arguments, believing that at last Alan was
+at the point of surrender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old
+Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was creeping
+over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange voices, but voices
+which came up out of a past of many years ago, calling upon him, urging him,
+persisting in his ears with cries of vengeance and of triumph, the call of
+familiar names, a moaning of women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped
+him, and a last time he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled
+with the glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind
+him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill and
+with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him and the
+blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning cabin. And then,
+slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna&rsquo;s last
+shot sped on its mission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment Rossland
+stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped, and fell to the
+earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound, and lay a dark and
+huddled blot on the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from life into
+death shocked every nerve in Alan&rsquo;s body. Horror for a brief space
+stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and motionless blot,
+forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible silence followed the
+shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry broke that silence, though it was
+made up of many men&rsquo;s voices. Deadly and thrilling, it was a message that
+set Alan into action. Rossland had been killed under a flag of truce, and even
+the men under Graham had something like respect for that symbol. He could
+expect no mercy&mdash;nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their
+hands, and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in another
+moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come below!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;We must be ready to leave
+through the cellar-pit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand touched Sokwenna&rsquo;s face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior&rsquo;s heart. There was no tremor or
+beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guns of Graham&rsquo;s men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets tearing
+through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the shelter of the pit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting for him
+there.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the astonishment with which Mary&rsquo;s unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her pale
+face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the cabin. That she
+had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back to him, filled him with
+instant dread, for the precious minutes he had fought for were lost, and the
+priceless time gained during the parley with Rossland counted for nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his hand and
+pull him down beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t expect me to go,&rdquo; she said, in a voice
+that no longer trembled or betrayed excitement. &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t want me
+to be a coward. My place is with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him as they
+were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up chokingly in his
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there&mdash;shot under a flag of
+truce,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t have many minutes left to
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the cellar-pit
+opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it&mdash;alone&mdash;and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side
+it would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are Keok and Nawadlook?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your plan
+that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to give myself up
+unless they did as I commanded them. And&mdash;Alan&mdash;the ravine is filled
+with the rain-mist, and dark&mdash;&rdquo; She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is our one chance,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And aren&rsquo;t you glad&mdash;a little glad&mdash;that I didn&rsquo;t
+run away without you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they smiled at him
+in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that was almost playfully
+chiding; and the glory of her love as she had proved it to him there drew from
+him what he knew to be the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep forth into
+the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the wet particles of
+it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets cut like knives over his
+head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on each side of Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine, and a few seconds later they
+stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog that hid the coul&eacute;e.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely. This was
+not what Alan had hoped for. Graham&rsquo;s men, enraged and made desperate by
+Rossland&rsquo;s death, would rush the cabin immediately. Scarcely had the
+thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly approaching shouts, the
+trampling of feet, and then the battering of some heavy object at the
+barricaded door of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. In another minute or two their
+escape would be discovered and a horde of men would pour down into the ravine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary tugged at his hand. &ldquo;Let us hurry,&rdquo; she pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with her
+hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine, apparently in the
+face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden fear when their course
+came almost within the circle of light made by the burning cabin. Like shadows
+they sped into the deeper shelter of the corral buildings, and not until they
+paused there did she understand the significance of the hazardous chance they
+had taken. Already Graham&rsquo;s men were pouring into the ravine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t suspect we&rsquo;ve doubled on them until it is too
+late,&rdquo; said Alan exultantly. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make for the kloof.
+Stampede and the herdsmen should arrive within a few hours, and when that
+happens&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled figure lay
+huddled against one of the corral gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is hurt,&rdquo; whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; replied Alan pitilessly. &ldquo;It will be unfortunate
+for us if he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing point
+of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She heard the
+wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper shadows of the corrals
+toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she noticed that the mist was no longer
+in her face. The sky was clearing. She could see Alan more clearly, and when
+they came to the narrow trail over which they had fled once before that night
+it reached out ahead of them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they
+reached this point when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by
+a second and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout.
+There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly
+to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wounded man,&rdquo; said Alan, in a voice of dismay. &ldquo;He is
+calling the others. I should have killed him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All her
+courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and quickened her
+steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They passed along the crest
+of the ridge under which lay the willows and the pool, and at the end of this
+they paused to rest and listen. Trained to the varied night whisperings of the
+tundras Alan&rsquo;s ears caught faint sounds which his companion did not hear.
+The wounded man had succeeded in giving his message, and pursuers were
+scattering over the plain behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you run a little farther?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a cloud
+that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran a little
+behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved them this night,
+and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to clear twilight and
+the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached the kloof he would have to
+fight in the open. With Stampede at his side he would have welcomed such an
+opportunity of matching rifles with their enemies, for there were many vantage
+points in the open tundra from which they might have defied assault. But the
+nearness of the girl frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He
+was only an incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of
+death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her remained the
+unspeakable horror of Graham&rsquo;s lust and passion. But if they could reach
+the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the cliff, they could laugh at
+Graham&rsquo;s pack of beasts while they waited for the swift vengeance that
+would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the hollows
+were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution came faintly
+rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a golden glow over
+the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay between it and the tundras,
+and objects a hundred paces away no longer held shadow or illusionment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with surprising speed,
+heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her endurance amazed him. And he
+knew that without questioning him she had guessed the truth of what lay behind
+them. Then, all at once, she stopped, swayed like a reed, and would have fallen
+if his arms had not caught her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was a
+swiftly beating little dynamo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a mile of
+the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary&rsquo;s splendid
+courage had won it for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried her
+through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of progress, counted
+now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight were flecking the plains.
+In another quarter of an hour moving objects would be distinctly visible a mile
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could feel their
+breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of the incongruity of
+the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It seemed inconceivable that
+this day, glorious in its freshness, and welcomed by the glad voice of all
+living things, should be a day of tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for
+him. He wanted to shout out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it
+seemed absurd that he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient
+bulk of his rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure which
+they bore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then on he
+climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge and scanned the
+tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he concluded their enemies
+believed they were hidden somewhere on the tundra not far from the
+range-houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow ravine, and
+half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof. For a space they
+rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long hair and plaited it in two
+braids. In these moments Alan encouraged her, but he did not lie. He told her
+the half-mile of tundra was their greatest hazard, and described the risks they
+would run. Carefully he explained what she was to do under certain
+circumstances. There was scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but
+they might be so far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to
+the kloof. If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be
+necessary to find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from
+behind succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue in the
+direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he followed more slowly,
+holding Graham&rsquo;s men back with his rifle until she reached the edge of
+the gorge. After that he would come to her as swiftly as he could run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra. About
+them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile back toward the
+range were moving figures; farther west were others, and eastward, almost at
+the edge of the ravine, were two men who would have discovered them in another
+moment if they had not descended into the hollow. Alan could see them kneeling
+to drink at the little coul&eacute;e which ran through it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hurry,&rdquo; he said, with a sudden swift thought.
+&ldquo;Keep parallel with me and a distance away. They may not discover you are
+a woman and possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I
+stop. Follow my movements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
+bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were soiled with
+muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her thus Alan laughed
+and cried out softly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You beautiful little vagabond!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and after
+that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so cleverly that her
+action was better than his own&mdash;and so they had made their way over a
+third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly and cried, &ldquo;Now,
+<i>run!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the ravine
+and were running toward them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock which he
+had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Close behind her, he said: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hesitate a second. Keep on going.
+When they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn&rsquo;t
+stop.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them. Then he
+drew close to Mary&rsquo;s side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See that level place ahead? We&rsquo;ll cross it in another minute or
+two. When they come to it I&rsquo;m going to stop, and catch them where they
+can&rsquo;t find shelter. But you must keep on going. I&rsquo;ll overtake you
+by the time you reach the edge of the kloof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level space
+she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready to choke her
+when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their enemies. But in her
+mind burned the low words of his command, his warning, and she did not look
+back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle of rock, which was now very near. She
+had almost reached it when the first shot came from behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and made
+pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned, and then
+rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham&rsquo;s men saw his ruse when his
+leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their pursuit was their
+undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might use their rifles, or
+fling themselves upon the ground, they brought themselves into a brief but
+deadly interval of inaction, and in that flash one of the men went down under
+Alan&rsquo;s first shot. Before he could fire again the second had flattened
+himself upon the earth, and swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for
+the kloof. Mary stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping for breath,
+when he joined her. A bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He
+did not return the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t dare to stand up until the others join him,&rdquo; he
+encouraged her. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re beating them to it, little girl! If you can
+keep up a few minutes longer&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed to her
+there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the gloomy walls
+of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught her by her hands and
+lowered her over the face of a ledge to a table-like escarpment below. He
+laughed at her fear when he dropped down beside her, and held her close as they
+crept back under the shelving face of the cliff to a hidden path that led
+downward, with a yawning chasm at their side. The trail widened as they
+descended, and at the last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter
+of a million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they picked their
+way, while the trickle and drip of water and the flesh-like clamminess of the
+air sent a strange shiver of awe through Mary Standish. There was no life
+here&mdash;only an age-old whisper that seemed a part of death; and when voices
+came from above, where Graham&rsquo;s men were gathering, they were ghostly and
+far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked their
+way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages between the
+Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides an uncontrollable
+impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though she sensed the protection
+of their presence. They were like colossi, carved by hands long dead, and now
+guarded by spirits whose voices guttered low and secretly in the mysterious
+drip and trickle of unseen water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm
+death and vengeance had glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a
+rock crashed behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a cry
+broke from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never known
+before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from which she had
+escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable, for which she would
+never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan, and when at last the narrow
+fissure widened over their heads, and light came down and softened their way,
+he saw that her face was deathly white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are almost there,&rdquo; he comforted. &ldquo;And&mdash;some
+day&mdash;you will love this gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it
+together all the way to the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that was
+heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this climbed until
+they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a great depression in
+the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a floor as level as a table
+and covered with soft white sand. Mary would never forget her first glimpse of
+this place; it was unreal, strange, as if a band of outlaw fairies had brought
+the white sand for a carpet, and had made this their hiding-place, where wind
+and rain and snow could never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to
+make her thought more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only
+fairies&rsquo; feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain. So
+they were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight through that
+fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof itself that they must
+have hidden themselves. Something in the humor and gentle thought of it all
+made her smile at Alan. But his face had turned suddenly grim, and she looked
+up the kloof, where they had traveled through danger and come to safety. And
+then she saw that which froze all thought of fairies out of her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many of
+them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer light, and
+at their head was a man upon whom Mary&rsquo;s eyes fixed themselves in horror.
+White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That man in front?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that from here I can easily kill
+him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone out of
+them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a prayer to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am thinking of tomorrow&mdash;the next day&mdash;the years and years
+to come, <i>with you</i>,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Alan, you can&rsquo;t
+kill John Graham&mdash;not until God shows us it is the only thing left for us
+to do. You can&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl of a
+bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart stopped beating,
+and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body as she saw the swift and
+terrible change in the stricken face of the man she loved. He tried to smile at
+her, even as a red blot came where the streak of gray in his hair touched his
+forehead. And then he crumpled down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against
+the rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill her brain
+with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below hesitated and their
+hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible cry of a woman rang between
+the rock walls of the chasm. And following the cry a voice came down to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham, I&rsquo;m going to kill you&mdash;<i>kill
+you</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task of
+vengeance.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her soul, and
+she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed. But she did not fire
+blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham. The troublesome thing was a
+strange film that persisted in gathering before her eyes, something she tried
+to brush away, but which obstinately refused to go. She did not know she was
+sobbing as she looked over the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she
+had lost sight of John Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock and
+began climbing it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated she stood
+above the rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked alike, jumping and
+dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly it
+occurred to her that <i>all</i> of them were John Grahams, and that she must
+kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding fairies might have guessed how her
+reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when she began firing.
+Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one,
+and a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she
+continued to fire until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun
+was empty. The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her
+vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so near she
+could see their faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in its desire to
+kill John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His face was
+hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster, and sprang
+back to her rock. There was no time to wait or choose now, for his murderers
+were almost upon her. With all her strength she tried to fire accurately, but
+Alan&rsquo;s big gun leaped and twisted in her hand as she poured its fire
+wildly down among the rocks until it was empty. Her own smaller weapon she had
+lost somewhere in the race to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired
+her last shot she waited through another instant of horror, until she was
+striking at faces that came within the reach of her arm. And then, like a
+monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a
+moment&rsquo;s vision of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a
+passion that was almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his
+arms came about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
+against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless weight
+against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone, and if the
+arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she could hear&mdash;clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came from
+up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that the strange,
+wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies&rsquo; hiding-place
+with its white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martens, it couldn&rsquo;t happen in a better place,&rdquo; he said to a
+man who stood near him. &ldquo;Leave me five men. Take the others and help
+Schneider. If you don&rsquo;t clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles
+from this ambuscade will do the business in a hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others hurried
+away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no cries, no
+shouts&mdash;nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged inward,
+making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of day, he laid her
+upon the carpet of sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its first step
+in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to climb down from the
+edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy, very red in the face,
+breathing fast from hard running, but making not a sound as he came like a
+gopher where it seemed no living thing could find a hold. And the fairy was
+Stampede Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the tragedy
+below, and where death would have claimed him in a more reasonable moment he
+came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the old tingling of years ago,
+and in his blood the thrill which he had thought was long dead&mdash;the thrill
+of looking over leveled guns into the eyes of other men. Time had rolled back,
+and he was the old Stampede Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and
+murder, as in other days he had seen them, and between him and desire there was
+neither law nor conscience to bar the way, and his dream&mdash;a last great
+fight&mdash;was here to fill the final unwritten page of a life&rsquo;s drama
+that was almost closed. And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft,
+white sand unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides and
+rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a woman&mdash;and
+Alan Holt!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men&rsquo;s faces turned that
+way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the scraping of rock
+and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He was almost down when a
+larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge. Two of the men turned, but in
+that same instant came a more thrilling interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a
+woman&rsquo;s voice filled with madness and despair, came from the depth of the
+cavern, and the five men stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the
+cries came Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for
+her. The girl&rsquo;s hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand,
+and Graham&rsquo;s eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her.
+He caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully weak
+hands beat futilely in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet of sand,
+and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and scarcely had his feet
+touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge when death crashed from them
+swift as lightning flashes, and three of the five were tottering or falling
+before the other two could draw or swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a
+shot. The other went down as if his legs had been knocked from under him by a
+club, and the one who fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and
+pitched on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl crushed
+against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body, her head
+protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a gun, his dark
+face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other could not shoot without
+killing the girl. The horror of the situation gripped Stampede. He saw
+Graham&rsquo;s pistol rise slowly and deliberately. He watched it, fascinated.
+And the look in Graham&rsquo;s face was the cold and unexcited triumph of a
+devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was four inches&mdash;perhaps
+five&mdash;away from the girl&rsquo;s. There was only that&mdash;and the
+extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the automatic seeking
+his heart. And then, in that last second, straight into the girl&rsquo;s
+staring eyes blazed Stampede&rsquo;s gun, and the four inches of leering face
+behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede, and not the girl, who
+closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and saw Mary Standish sobbing
+over Alan&rsquo;s body, and Graham lying face down in the sand, he reverently
+raised the gun from which he had fired the last shot, and pressed its hot
+barrel to his thin lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her face in her
+hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die, for in this hour of
+triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for her. Alan was gone. Only death
+could have come with that terrible red blot on his forehead, just under the
+gray streak in his hair. And without him there was no longer a reason for her
+to live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reached out her arms. &ldquo;Give him to me,&rdquo; she whispered.
+&ldquo;Give him to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede&rsquo;s face. But she heard his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a bullet that hit him,&rdquo; Stampede was saying.
+&ldquo;The bullet hit a rock, an&rsquo; it was a chip from the rock that caught
+him square between the eyes. He isn&rsquo;t dead, <i>and he ain&rsquo;t going
+to die!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies&rsquo; hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was riding
+through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a girl with
+streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at last this cloud
+broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged into the immeasurable
+depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped after her. Then came strange
+lights, and darkness, and sounds like the clashing of cymbals, and voices; and
+after those things a long sleep, from which he opened his eyes to find himself
+in a bed, and a face very near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a
+sea of tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, &ldquo;Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed against his
+own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth and eyes, and
+sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end of the race had
+come, and he had won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he sat up
+in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him, and then Keok
+and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old housekeeper, and only
+for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik
+did not come, and he saw the strange change in Keok, and knew that they were
+dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the question, for more than any others of his
+people did he love these two missing comrades of the tundras.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened&mdash;but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told him of
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the
+corrals. Now that Graham is dead, they&rsquo;re frightened stiff&mdash;afraid
+we&rsquo;re going to hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland
+to fight for them, they know they&rsquo;re lost.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And our men&mdash;my people?&rdquo; asked Alan faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fought like devils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I know. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t rest an hour in coming from the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna,&rdquo; and he
+counted over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Tautuk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone else
+attempts to do anything for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then&mdash;I am glad Tautuk was hit,&rdquo; smiled Alan. And he asked,
+&ldquo;Where is Amuk Toolik?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to ask <i>her</i>, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that puzzled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must wait,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and with his
+hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she told him the
+secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she nestled her pink face
+against his neck, and whispered that she was content to accept the punishment.
+So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t need a doctor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it was mighty
+thoughtful of you to send Amuk Toolik for one.&rdquo; Then he caught himself
+suddenly. &ldquo;What a senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who
+need a doctor more than I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary nodded. &ldquo;But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now.&rdquo; And
+she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of her ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Then we will start for the States, as we planned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the
+new house,&rdquo; she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he
+was stunned. &ldquo;I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in
+the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very soon.
+I am sorry you find your business in the States so important, Alan. It will be
+a little lonesome with you away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gasped. &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not turn. &ldquo;<i>Mary!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she faced
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips pressed
+to his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need
+one to marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that brought a
+little sob of joy from her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little
+reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which he
+believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her desire to
+return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She wanted nothing
+down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he
+could find some way of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was
+afraid it might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing
+that would make her happy, and that was <i>his</i> world. She wanted it just as
+it was&mdash;the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains&mdash;with
+the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She now
+understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not an
+American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would
+go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed
+until it seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes
+and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his
+breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot flood of
+tears filled his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary&rsquo;s
+head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she stood a
+vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and glory of her
+hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were shining like stars
+as she looked at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Amuk Toolik,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He has returned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And&mdash;is he alone?&rdquo; Alan asked, and his heart stood still
+while he waited for her answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back his
+hair. &ldquo;I must go and do up my hair, Alan,&rdquo; she said then. &ldquo;It
+would never do for them to find me like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on the
+roof of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was singing
+again.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11867 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11867 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11867)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Alaskan, by James Oliver Curwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Alaskan
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Illustrator: Walt Louderback
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11867]
+[Most recently updated: May 31, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN ***
+
+
+
+
+The Alaskan
+
+A Novel of the North
+
+By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+With Illustrations by Walt Louderback
+
+
+
+
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska,
+the new empire rising in the North, it is for me
+an honor and a privilege to dedicate this work.
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+_Owosso, Michigan
+August 1, 1923_
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+[Illustration: It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.]
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.
+ The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.
+ The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.
+ Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.
+
+
+
+
+THE ALASKAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not
+lost the spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead
+in him, and the fire which is built up of clean adventure and the
+association of strong men and a mighty country had not died out of his
+veins. He could still see the picturesque, feel the thrill of the
+unusual, and—at times—warm memories crowded upon him so closely that
+yesterday seemed today, and Alaska was young again, thrilling the world
+with her wild call to those who had courage to come and fight for her
+treasures, and live—or die.
+
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and
+the yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan
+mountains, something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+
+“That is Alaska.”
+
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment
+did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the
+almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled
+with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body
+was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the
+cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds lay like
+shimmering draperies.
+
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. “Yes, Alaska,” she said,
+and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor
+in her voice. “Your Alaska, Captain Rifle.”
+
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the
+low moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now
+she asked: “What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon
+like that, and the stars so clear above!”
+
+“It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are
+in the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it
+were day you could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the
+Inside Passage. I have always called it the water-wonderland of the
+world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken—for we are
+almost alone on this side of the ship. Is it not proof? If I were
+right, the men and women in there—dancing, playing cards,
+chattering—would be crowding this rail. Can you imagine humans like
+that? But they can’t see what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who
+remembers things. Ah, do you catch that in the air, Miss Standish—the
+perfume of flowers, of forests, of green things ashore? It is faint,
+but I catch it.”
+
+“And so do I.”
+
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she
+stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy;
+she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the
+rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted
+windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in
+her face which he could not understand.
+
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute—defying the necessity of making reservation where half a
+thousand others had been turned away—and chance had brought her under
+his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered
+a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he
+had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom
+of years. And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant
+poise of her head with which she was regarding the cabin windows now.
+
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives
+in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was
+impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all
+official regulations in coming aboard.
+
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his
+experience, he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew
+that in some way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom
+of three and sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the
+truth.
+
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very
+pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly
+attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted
+clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her
+eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her
+exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of
+beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he
+doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty
+he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused
+speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many
+things which others might not see—and hold his tongue.
+
+“We are not quite alone,” she was saying. “There are others,” and she
+made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
+
+“Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway,” he said. “And the other is Alan
+Holt.”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of
+the moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain’s arm. “Listen,” she
+whispered.
+
+“Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the
+shore, and there are glaciers all the way up.”
+
+“And that other sound, like low wind—on a night so still and calm! What
+is it?”
+
+“You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets
+rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the
+mountains, you hear that song.”
+
+“And this man, Alan Holt,” she reminded him. “He is a part of these
+things?”
+
+“Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in
+Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him—”
+
+“Thirty-eight,” she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+
+Then he chuckled. “You are very good at figures.”
+
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+
+“This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone—like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of
+ghosts as we talked there in the dusk.”
+
+“Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse
+ate up men’s lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish,” said Captain Rifle. “You will meet many like
+him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their faces—always
+the memory of those days that are gone.”
+
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. “And Alan Holt? You
+know him well?”
+
+“Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him.
+All northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond
+the Endicott Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier.”
+
+“He must be very brave.”
+
+“Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish.”
+
+“And honorable men—men you can trust and believe in?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It is odd,” she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a
+bird-note in her throat. “I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a
+long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going
+home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan.”
+
+“And you are—”
+
+“An American,” she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her
+voice. “A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am
+going north—to learn.”
+
+“Only that, Miss Standish?”
+
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer.
+His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was
+filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his
+eyes.
+
+“I must press the question,” he said. “As the captain of this ship, and
+as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me—in confidence, if you will have it so?”
+
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. “There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle.”
+
+“And yet—you came aboard very strangely,” he urged. “You will recall
+that it was most unusual—without reservation, without baggage—”
+
+“You forget the hand-bag,” she reminded him.
+
+“Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish.”
+
+“But I did, Captain Rifle.”
+
+“True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent.”
+
+“I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass.”
+
+“Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship’s regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from
+something!”
+
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+
+“Yes, I was running away—from something.”
+
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed
+the thrill of the fight she was making.
+
+“And you will not tell me why—or from what you were escaping?”
+
+“I can not—tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But—it is
+possible—”
+
+“What?”
+
+“That I shall never reach Nome.”
+
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung
+to him, and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged
+the hand to her breast. “I know just how good you have been to me,” she
+cried. “I should like to tell you why I came aboard—like that. But I
+can not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!” With one free hand
+she pointed.
+
+“Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery
+of centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those
+things, Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or
+feel what you have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know
+it. And after all that, can’t you—won’t you—forget the strange manner
+in which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to
+put out of your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look back—and
+think. Please Captain Rifle—please!”
+
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his
+hand to her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant,
+leaving him speechless, his resolution gone.
+
+“I love you because you have been so good to me,” she whispered, and as
+suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone at
+the rail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid
+light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching
+her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture
+which she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain
+Rifle. To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that
+went to make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first
+ships of the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the
+purser, had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the
+others; that was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had
+been at the same table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both
+breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of
+neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words
+of speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not
+talkative or communicative of his own free will. There was a certain
+cynicism back of his love of silence. He was a good listener and a
+first-rate analyst. Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and
+others, to trim the balance, were burdened with the necessity of
+holding their tongues. For him silence was not a burden.
+
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very
+quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course,
+escape the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long
+lashes that darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill
+him, but merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even
+more than her gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to
+discuss the matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one
+thing, it would have been her hair—not so much the color of it as the
+care she evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He
+noted that it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the
+dinner lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth,
+silky coils in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an
+intense relief after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and
+marcelled, during his six months’ visit in the States. So he liked her,
+generally speaking, because there was not a thing about her that he
+might dislike.
+
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of
+him—with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather
+Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his
+thick, blond hair. His interest had not reached anywhere near that
+point.
+
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have
+interested him, except as the always casual observer of humanity.
+Another and greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he
+first felt the throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship
+_Nome_ under his feet at Seattle. He was going _home_. And home meant
+Alaska. It meant the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable
+spaces into which civilization had not yet come with its clang and
+clamor. It meant friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he
+loved. Such was his reaction after six months of exile, six months of
+loneliness and desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+
+“I’ll not make the trip again—not for a whole winter—unless I’m sent at
+the point of a gun,” he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after Mary
+Standish had left the deck. “An Eskimo winter is long enough, but one
+in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer—for me.”
+
+“I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington.”
+
+“Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He
+has forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they
+had to listen to him. We may get action.”
+
+“May!” Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. “Alaska has been waiting ten
+years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you’ll get anything.
+When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and
+what we need north of Fifty-eight—why, what’s the use? Alaska might as
+well shut up shop!”
+
+“But she isn’t going to do that,” said Alan Holt, his face grimly set
+in the moonlight. “They’ve tried hard to get us, and they’ve made us
+shut up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites
+in the Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven
+out nine thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left
+are hard-boiled. We’re not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are
+Alaskans, and we are not afraid to fight.”
+
+“You mean—”
+
+“That we’ll have a square deal within another five years, or know the
+reason why. And another five years after that, we’ll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within
+twenty years we’ll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef
+barons, eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million
+Americans who are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation
+systems.”
+
+One of Alan Holt’s hands was clenched at the rail. “Until I went down
+this winter, I didn’t realize just how bad it was,” he said, a note
+hard as iron in his voice. “Lomen is a diplomat, but I’m not. I want to
+fight when I see such things—fight with a gun. Because we happened to
+find gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as
+quickly as possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the
+skin will be worthless. That’s modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for
+you!”
+
+“And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?”
+
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned
+and stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with
+the moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+
+“You ask me a question, madam,” said Alan Holt, bowing courteously.
+“No, I am not an American. I am an Alaskan.”
+
+The girl’s lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+“Please pardon me for listening,” she said. “I couldn’t help it. I am
+an American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything else
+in the world—more than my religion, even. _America,_ Mr. Holt. And
+America doesn’t necessarily mean a great many of America’s people. I
+love to think that I first came ashore in the _Mayflower_. That is why
+my name is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska _is_
+America.”
+
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl’s face was no longer placidly
+quiet. Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her
+voice, and he knew that in the light of day he would have seen fire in
+her cheeks. He smiled, and in that smile he could not quite keep back
+the cynicism of his thought.
+
+“And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?”
+
+“Nothing,” she said. “And yet I love it.” She pointed to the mountains.
+“I wish I might have been born among them. You are fortunate. You
+should love America.”
+
+“Alaska, you mean!”
+
+“No, America.” There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was not
+speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+
+The irony on Alan’s lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+“If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came
+over in the _Mayflower_, I stand reproved,” he said. “You should be an
+authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship.”
+
+“You are correct,” she replied with a proud, little tilt of her glossy
+head, “though I think that only lately have I come to an understanding
+of its significance—and its responsibility. I ask your pardon again for
+interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just happened.”
+
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a
+swift smile and passed down the promenade.
+
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of
+life.
+
+“A remarkable young woman,” Alan remarked. “I imagine that the spirit
+of Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost
+suppose he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite
+though rather indirect result.”
+
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation
+of humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one
+could not miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a
+sting which he did not altogether intend.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the
+captain a question which was in his mind.
+
+“The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?”
+
+“Yes—rather,” acknowledged Captain Rifle. “Hereafter she will ply
+directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we’re doing the Inside
+Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven’t seen fit
+to explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have
+something to do with it. We’re landing them at Skagway, where they make
+the Yukon by way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people
+nowadays, Holt. I can remember—”
+
+“So can I,” nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay
+the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. “I
+remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget.”
+
+“Men don’t forget such women as Jane Hope,” said the captain softly.
+
+“You knew her?”
+
+“Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five
+years ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn’t it? And when I look at
+Mary Standish and hear her voice—” He hesitated, as if betraying a
+secret, and then he added: “—I can’t help thinking of the girl Donald
+Hardwick fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It’s too
+bad she had to die.”
+
+“She isn’t dead,” said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. “She
+isn’t dead,” he repeated. “That’s the pity of it. She is as much a
+living thing to him today as she was twenty years ago.”
+
+After a moment the captain said, “She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan.”
+
+“Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?”
+
+“Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you.”
+
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. “Not at all. I think she is a most
+admirable young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I’m going to
+promenade a bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs.”
+
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his
+way, while the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship _Nome_ was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing
+with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was
+a human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded
+passenger list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names
+represented more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of
+the land he loved, its heart’s blood, its very element—“giving in.” He
+knew that with the throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy,
+and hope were on their way north—and with these things also arrogance
+and greed. On board were a hundred conflicting elements—some that had
+fought for Alaska, others that would make her, and others that would
+destroy.
+
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and
+women whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew
+the tourists almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north
+had not yet seized upon them. They were voluble and rather excitedly
+enthusiastic in the face of beauty and awesomeness. The sour-doughs
+were tucked away here and there in shadowy nooks, watching in silence,
+or they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking their cigars or
+pipes, and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these two, the
+newcomers and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for
+Alan, the flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life
+north of Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked
+out those who belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over
+the edge of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he
+recognized them as the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to
+work on the government railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of
+them was talking, filled with the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+
+“I tell you,” he said, “people don’t know what they ought to know about
+Alaska. In school they teach us that it’s an eternal icebox full of
+gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that’s where
+reindeer come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing. Why”—he
+drew in a deep breath—“it’s nine times as large as the state of
+Washington, twelve times as big as the state of New York, and we bought
+it from Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it down on
+the face of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St.
+Augustine, Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That’s how
+big it is, and the geographical center of our country isn’t Omaha or
+Sioux City, but exactly San Francisco, California.”
+
+“Good for you, sonny,” came a quiet voice from beyond the group. “Your
+geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your
+people that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia,
+and wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our
+people to rise against the Washington government. We’ve asked
+Washington for a few guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh
+at us. Do you see a moral?”
+
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He
+caught a glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did
+not know him. And as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the
+moonlight, the same deep, quiet voice came back very clearly:
+
+“And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to
+hang a few such men as John Graham, sonny.”
+
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot.
+Only one man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred,
+and that man was John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the
+identity of the stranger whose words had temporarily stunned the young
+engineers, when he saw a slim figure standing between him and the light
+of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary Standish. He knew by her
+attitude that she had heard the words of the young engineer and the old
+graybeard, but she was looking at _him_. And he could not remember that
+he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman’s face before. It was
+not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from
+thought and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it
+annoyed Alan Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too
+susceptible reaction in matters which did not concern her. So he said,
+speaking to the silent young men a few steps away:
+
+“He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful.”
+
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had
+scarcely gone out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind
+him, and the girl’s hand touched his arm lightly.
+
+“Mr. Holt, please—”
+
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was
+not altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again,
+only her finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so
+that for a moment he could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth
+hair. Then she was meeting his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in
+the gray depths of her own.
+
+“I am alone on the ship,” she said. “I have no friends here. I want to
+see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?”
+
+“You mean ... escort you?”
+
+“Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable.”
+
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him,
+and he wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not
+smile. Her eyes were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same
+time very lovely.
+
+“The way you put it, I don’t see how I can refuse,” he said. “As for
+the questions—probably Captain Rifle can answer them better than I.”
+
+“I don’t like to trouble him,” she replied. “He has much to think
+about. And you are alone.”
+
+“Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about.”
+
+“You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won’t try. But I’m going into a new country, and I have a passionate
+desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get there.
+I want to know about many things. For instance—”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?”
+
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment
+astonished him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her
+slim figure seemed possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she
+waited for an answer. They had turned a little, so that in the light of
+the moon the almost flowerlike whiteness of her face was clear to him.
+With her smooth, shining hair, the pallor of her face under its
+lustrous darkness, and the clearness of her eyes she held Alan
+speechless for a moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon and
+understand the something about her which made him interested in spite
+of himself. Then he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+
+“Did you ever see a dog fight?” he asked.
+
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly.
+“Once.”
+
+“What happened?”
+
+“It was my dog—a little dog. His throat was torn—”
+
+He nodded. “Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He’s the dog—a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth
+from a new land and enslave it to his own desires and political
+ambitions. That is what John Graham is doing from his money-throne down
+there in the States. It’s the financial support he represents, curse
+him! Money—and a man without conscience. A man who would starve
+thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A man who, in every sense of
+the word, is a murderer—”
+
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone
+whiter, and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the
+look in her eyes brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+
+“There, I’ve hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish,” he said,
+bowing a little. “In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I
+suppose I must apologize for swearing and calling another man a
+murderer. Well, I do. And now—if you care to stroll about the ship—”
+
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and
+Mary Standish as they walked forward.
+
+“A corking pretty girl,” said one of them, drawing a deep breath. “I
+never saw such hair and eyes—”
+
+“I’m at the same table with them,” interrupted another. “I’m second on
+her left, and she hasn’t spoken three words to me. And that fellow she
+is with is like an icicle out of Labrador.”
+
+And Mary Standish was saying: “Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those
+young engineers. I wish I were a man.”
+
+“I wish you were,” agreed Alan amiably.
+
+Whereupon Mary Standish’s pretty mouth lost its softness for an
+instant. But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and
+the sweet air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman’s man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or
+die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his
+sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born
+and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with
+the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious
+laps of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him.
+Men of the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But
+only now and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any
+given moment a supreme physical crisis had come, women would have
+turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
+
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
+The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle
+meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he
+could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his
+face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
+There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more
+forcefully than speech.
+
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present
+situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment
+Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the
+intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of
+the young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He
+chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement,
+gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed
+once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As
+if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a
+decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl’s hand did not
+merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was
+necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils
+of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her,
+together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to
+his stoicism.
+
+“It’s not half bad,” he expressed himself frankly. “I really believe I
+am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish.”
+
+“Oh!” He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. “You
+thought—possibly—I might be dangerous?”
+
+“A little. I don’t understand women. Collectively I think they are
+God’s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don’t care much about
+them. But you—”
+
+She nodded approvingly. “That is very nice of you. But you needn’t say
+I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike.”
+
+“Possibly—except in the way they dress their hair.”
+
+“You like mine?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge
+cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard
+the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation
+parlor built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their
+husbands while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+
+“If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let’s go in,” he suggested. “I know; of no better place. Are you afraid
+of smoke?”
+
+“No. If I were a man, I would smoke.”
+
+“Perhaps you do?”
+
+“I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair.”
+
+“Which would be a crime,” he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they
+entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue
+with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as
+many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up
+and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A
+few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed
+Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled
+blankets that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it
+with her toe.
+
+“What do they mean?” she asked.
+
+“We are overloaded,” he explained. “Alaskan steam-ships have no
+steerage passengers as we generally know them. It isn’t poverty that
+rides steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or
+two on the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in
+there will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an
+earl?”
+
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her
+in, and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three
+men were seated at this table.
+
+“The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl—I forget his name,” he said. “He doesn’t look it, but he is a real
+sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
+The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men,
+and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with
+whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of
+George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The
+thud of Carmack’s spade, as it hit first pay, was the ‘sound heard
+round the world,’ Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled
+whiskers was the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and
+Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the
+strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love
+with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came into
+the north.”
+
+“Why was she courageous?”
+
+“Because she came alone into a man’s land, without a soul to fight for
+her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did.
+As long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney.”
+
+“She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt.”
+
+“Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who
+posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. _Finis_,
+I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his
+big whiskers—”
+
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a
+table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except
+his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her
+and was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than
+impudent in its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he
+shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away.
+
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and
+her cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he
+could not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
+
+“If you will pardon me a moment,” he said quietly, “I shall demand an
+explanation.”
+
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+
+“Please don’t,” she entreated. “It is kind of you, and you are just the
+sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would
+be absurd to notice it. Don’t you think so?”
+
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her
+voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went
+from her face, leaving it strangely white.
+
+“I am at your service,” he replied with a rather cold inclination of
+his head. “But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged.”
+
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon
+the deck.
+
+“One of John Graham’s men,” he said. “A fellow named Rossland, going up
+to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They’ll choke
+the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff
+we call money can do, isn’t it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian
+villages starving, and women and little children dying by the score
+because of this John Graham’s money. Over-fishing did it, you
+understand. If you could have seen some of those poor little devils,
+just skin and bones, crying for a rag to eat—”
+
+Her hand clutched at his arm. “How could John Graham—do that?” she
+whispered.
+
+He laughed unpleasantly. “When you have been a year in Alaska you won’t
+ask that question, Miss Standish. _How_? Why, simply by glutting his
+canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the natives
+have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he
+handles represents the fish trust—and many other things. Please don’t
+misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without it
+we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the
+face of the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska
+does today. Ten thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men
+who have money to invest.
+
+“But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a
+despoiler, one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource
+into dollars as fast as he can, even though those operations make both
+land and water barren. You must remember until recently the government
+of Alaska as manipulated by Washington politicians was little better
+than that against which the American colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard
+thing for one to say about the country he loves, isn’t it? And John
+Graham stands for the worst—he and the money which guarantees his
+power.
+
+“As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics,
+that capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be
+interested. Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate
+bureaus at Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is
+it a wonder the patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like
+John Graham, dishonest and corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to
+work in?
+
+“But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska’s interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of
+the Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska
+is a mighty empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go
+ahead in spite of all our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear.
+Some day—”
+
+Suddenly he caught himself. “There—I’m talking politics, and I should
+entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things,” he
+apologized. “Shall we go to the lower decks?”
+
+“Or the open air,” she suggested. “I am afraid this smoke is upsetting
+me.”
+
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to
+the thickness of the air. Rossland’s inexplicable rudeness had
+disturbed her more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+
+“There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?” he
+asked, when they were outside. “The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are—well—unusually good-looking, the Captain says.”
+
+“And he has already made me acquainted with them,” she laughed softly.
+“Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them. I had
+breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake.”
+
+“The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before—”
+
+“You noticed my absence?” she asked demurely.
+
+“It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought,
+I think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if
+you were ill.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it
+would be only charity and good-will to change seats with him.”
+
+“In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer.”
+
+“Probably not.”
+
+“Have they ever suffered?”
+
+“I think not.”
+
+“When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?”
+
+“I haven’t seen them.”
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+
+“Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking
+me to my cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck.”
+
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. “What is your
+room?” she asked.
+
+“Twenty-seven, Miss Standish.”
+
+“This deck?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her
+hand, did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and
+lighted a fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once,
+as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his
+cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These
+were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen
+before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington.
+
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary
+Standish was asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by
+the recurring insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a
+clever girl, he admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and
+she had told him nothing, while he had been quite garrulous. He was a
+little ashamed when he recalled how he had unburdened his mind to a
+girl who could not possibly be interested in the political affairs of
+John Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his fault. She had
+fairly catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under the
+circumstances, he thought.
+
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole.
+Only the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly
+through the last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears.
+The ship, at last, was asleep. The moon was straight overhead, no
+longer silhouetting the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light
+the world was dark. Out of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow,
+Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island. And he
+wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider
+than the length of the ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course
+instead of going around by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land
+was more distant now, but the _Nome_ was still pushing ahead under slow
+bell, and he could smell the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of
+the scent of forests that came from both east and west.
+
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps.
+They seemed to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a
+man’s voice—and in answer to it a woman’s. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of
+voices. In silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him
+in the moonlight. One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was
+Rossland, who had stared at her so boldly in the smoking-room.
+
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary
+Standish or Graham’s agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud
+and humbug, and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew
+more about Rossland than she had allowed him to believe. She had not
+lied to him. She had said nothing at all—except to restrain him from
+demanding an apology. Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but
+beyond that fact her affairs had nothing to do with his own business in
+life. Possibly she and Rossland had quarreled, and now they were making
+up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of him to think over the matter
+at all.
+
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great
+desire to sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with
+the soothing movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical
+thrum of it. And it was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going
+home. How infernally long those seven months had been, down in the
+States! And how he had missed everyone he had ever known—even his
+enemies!
+
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of
+miles away—the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the
+Endicott Mountains, and “Alan’s Range” at the beginning of them. Spring
+was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like
+corn from a hopper.
+
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people—the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as
+he did. He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief
+herdsmen, would care for things as well as himself. But much could
+happen in seven months. Nawadlook, the little beauty of his distant
+kingdom, was not looking well when he left. He was worried about her.
+The pneumonia of the previous winters had left its mark. And Keok, her
+rival in prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how Tautuk’s
+sometimes hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a little
+heart-breaker and had long reveled in Tautuk’s sufferings. An archangel
+of iniquity, Alan thought, as he grinned—but worth any man’s risk of
+life, if he had but a drop of brown blood in him! As for his herds,
+they had undoubtedly fared well. Ten thousand head was something to be
+proud of—
+
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door
+and had paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each
+time they had passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a
+sound under him. He heard movement then, a swift, running movement—and
+he switched on his light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was
+there. The long corridor was empty. And then—a distance away—he heard
+the soft opening and closing of another door.
+
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He
+picked it up and reentered his room. It was a woman’s handkerchief. And
+he had seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that
+evening in the smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should
+now find it at his door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan
+experienced a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment—also a
+certain resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in
+spite of himself was not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a
+certain point, had been fairly entertaining. It was true he might have
+passed a pleasanter hour recalling old times with Stampede Smith, or
+discussing Kadiak bears with the English earl, or striking up an
+acquaintance with the unknown graybeard who had voiced an opinion about
+John Graham. But he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he holding
+Mary Standish accountable for them. It was, last of all, the
+handkerchief that momentarily upset him.
+
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking
+affair, to be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous
+diminutiveness. As the question came to him, he was wondering how even
+as dainty a nose as that possessed by Mary Standish could be much
+comforted by it. But it was pretty. And, like Mary Standish, there was
+something exquisitely quiet and perfect about it, like the simplicity
+of her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It was a thought that
+came to him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying bit of
+fabric on the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the
+dropping of it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At
+least he told himself so. And he also assured himself, with an
+involuntary shrug of his shoulders, that any woman or girl had the
+right to pass his door if she so desired, and that he was an idiot for
+thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan
+was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with
+woman—and such an absurdly inconsequential thing as a handkerchief.
+
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and
+Nawadlook and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given
+the priceless heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real,
+with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook’s big, soft
+eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as
+usual over the heartlessness of Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that
+gave out the peculiar sound of bells, and to this Amuk Toolik was
+dancing the Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in exaggerated
+admiration. Even in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was
+happening, and that out of the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was
+enjoying Tautuk’s jealousy. Tautuk was so stupid he would never
+understand. That was the funny part of it. And he beat his drum
+savagely, scowling so that he almost shut his eyes, while Keok laughed
+outright.
+
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship’s
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his
+watch. Tautuk’s drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it
+was four o’clock in the morning.
+
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a
+chill air which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few
+minutes after awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and
+he got up quietly and dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar
+he had laid aside at midnight. Not until he had finished dressing did
+he notice the handkerchief on the table. If its presence had suggested
+a significance a few hours before, he no longer disturbed himself by
+thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the girl’s part, that was
+all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the crumpled bit of
+cambric in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted.
+Through the ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty
+chairs, and lights burning dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and
+the drifting warmth of the Japan current had brought an early spring to
+the Alexander Archipelago, and May had stolen much of the flowering
+softness of June. But the dawns of these days were chilly and gray.
+Mists and fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke rolled down
+the sides of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the
+inner waters felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery
+of it was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure.
+He could feel the care with which the _Nome_ was picking her way
+northward. Her engines were thrumming softly, and her movement was a
+slow and cautious glide, catlike and slightly trembling, as if every
+pound of steel in her were a living nerve widely alert. He knew Captain
+Rifle would not be asleep and that straining eyes were peering into the
+white gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them, hazardously
+near, must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the still
+more pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that
+deadly finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they
+must creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager
+for his work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except
+that they were Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide
+tundras, and the mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His
+blood sang to the surety of it now, and for that reason he was not
+sorry he had spent seven months of loneliness in the States. He had
+proved with his own eyes that the day was near when Alaska would come
+into her own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its romance, its
+thrill, but what was all the gold the mountains might possess compared
+with this greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the
+people he had met in the south had thought only of gold when they
+learned he was from Alaska. Always gold—that first, and then ice, snow,
+endless nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning
+everlastingly upon a blasted land in which men fought against odds and
+only the fittest survived. It was gold that had been Alaska’s doom.
+When people thought of it, they visioned nothing beyond the old
+stampede days, the Chilkoot, White Horse, Dawson, and Circle City.
+Romance and glamor and the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs.
+But they were beginning to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even
+the Government was waking up, after proving there was something besides
+graft in railroad building north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and
+Congressmen at Washington had listened to him seriously, and especially
+to Carl Lomen. And the beef barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him
+off and had offered a fortune for Lomen’s forty thousand head of
+reindeer in the Seward Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening.
+Absolute proof.
+
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist
+into the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore
+Roosevelt for putting what they called “the conservation shackles” on
+their country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt’s far-sightedness
+had kept the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what
+money-power and greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today,
+but lay ready to serve with all her mighty resources the mother who had
+neglected her for a generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this
+opening up of a great land. It must be done resourcefully and with
+intelligence. Once the bars were down, Roosevelt’s shadow-hand could
+not hold back such desecrating forces as John Graham and the syndicate
+he represented.
+
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in
+the sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed
+plunderers. And it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging
+work of these financial brigands in a dozen states during the past
+winter—states raped of their forests, their lakes and streams robbed
+and polluted, their resources hewn down to naked skeletons. He had been
+horrified and a little frightened when he looked over the desolation of
+Michigan, once the richest timber state in America. What if the
+Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing to happen in
+Alaska? Politics—and money—were already fighting for just that thing.
+
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was _his_
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a
+physical thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if
+it took every year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to
+the world that the millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north
+were not the cast-off ends of the earth. They would populate them, and
+the so-called “barrens” would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of
+reindeer herds as the American plains had never thundered to the beat
+of cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure he would find at the end
+of this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money, simply as money,
+he hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped him; the
+passion to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into
+its own, and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a
+half of that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was
+down.
+
+The tolling of the ship’s bell roused him from the subconscious
+struggle into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he
+had no sympathy with himself when he fell into one of these mental
+spasms, as he called them. Without knowing it, he was a little proud of
+a certain dispassionate tolerance which he possessed—a philosophical
+mastery of his emotions which at times was almost cold-blooded, and
+which made some people think he was a thing of stone instead of flesh
+and blood. His thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly disturbing
+sensation passed through him now, when he found that unconsciously his
+fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his
+pocket. He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it
+overboard. Then, with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing,
+he replaced it in his pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of
+the ship.
+
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have
+been had he possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at
+all, for that matter—even an uncle or two who might have been
+interested in him. He remembered his father vividly, his mother a
+little less so, because his mother had died when he was six and his
+father when he was twenty. It was his father who stood out above
+everything else, like the mountains he loved. The father would remain
+with him always, inspiring him, urging him, encouraging him to live
+like a gentleman, fight like a man, and die at last unafraid. In that
+fashion the older Alan Holt had lived and died. But his mother, her
+face and voice scarcely remembered in the passing of many years, was
+more a hallowed memory to him than a thing of flesh and blood. And
+there had been no sisters or brothers. Often he had regretted this lack
+of brotherhood. But a sister.... He grunted his disapprobation of the
+thought. A sister would have meant enchainment to civilization. Cities,
+probably. Even the States. And slavery to a life he detested. He
+appreciated the immensity of his freedom. A Mary Standish, even though
+she were his sister, would be a catastrophe. He could not conceive of
+her, or any other woman like her, living with Keok and Nawadlook and
+the rest of his people in the heart of the tundras. And the tundras
+would always be his home, because his heart was there.
+
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd
+figure crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light
+that came with the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not
+asleep. He paused, unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself,
+groaned, and stood up. He was a little man, and his fiercely bristling
+red whiskers, wet with dew, were luxuriant enough for a giant. His head
+of tawny hair, bristling like his whiskers, added to the piratical
+effect of him above the neck, but below that part of his anatomy there
+was little to strike fear into the hearts of humanity. Some people
+smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their man, laughed
+outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny on
+Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart
+was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this
+little man who had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan
+history.
+
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the
+swiftest gunman between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic
+reminder of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy
+Smith and his gang—days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields
+meant a stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the
+same breath with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome
+Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their
+compasses by his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he
+stood in the gray of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew
+that Stampede Smith was broke again.
+
+“Good morning,” he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days.
+“Why so much loneliness, Stampede?”
+
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale’s under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. “I’m thinkin’,” said he, “what a fool thing is money. Good
+mornin’, Alan!”
+
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the
+lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been
+Stampede’s last asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside
+him, so that their shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+
+“Alan,” said Stampede, “it ain’t often I have a big thought, but I’ve
+been having one all night. Ain’t forgot Bonanza, have you?”
+
+Alan shook his head. “As long as there is an Alaska, we won’t forget
+Bonanza, Stampede.”
+
+“I took a million out of it, next to Carmack’s Discovery—an’ went
+busted afterward, didn’t I?”
+
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+
+“But that wasn’t a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the Divide,”
+Stampede continued ruminatively. “Ain’t forgot old Aleck McDonald, the
+Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the ‘wash’ of Ninety-eight we took up
+seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked thirty of doin’
+the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single clean-up, and that
+was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old Aleck went
+busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle. I
+had to grub-stake.”
+
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted
+the first rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them
+and the unseen mountain tops.
+
+“Five times after that I made strikes and went busted,” he said a
+little proudly. “And I’m busted again!”
+
+“I know it,” sympathized Alan.
+
+“They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an’ Frisco,”
+chuckled Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully, “an’ then
+bought me a ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them, don’t you think?
+Couldn’t have been more decent. I knew that fellow Kopf had a heart.
+That’s why I trusted him with my money. It wasn’t his fault he lost
+it.”
+
+“Of course not,” agreed Alan.
+
+“And I’m sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a fact.”
+
+“You killed him?”
+
+“Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran’s place. Mighty sorry. Didn’t think then how decent it was of
+him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the
+moment. He did me a favor in cleanin’ me, Alan. He did, so help me! You
+don’t realize how free an’ easy an’ beautiful everything is until
+you’re busted.”
+
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw
+the grim look in Alan’s eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other’s arm and shook it.
+
+“Alan, I mean it!” he declared. “That’s why I think money is a fool
+thing. It ain’t _spendin’_ money that makes me happy. It’s _findin’_
+it—the gold in the mountains—that makes the blood run fast through my
+gizzard. After I’ve found it, I can’t find any use for it in
+particular. I want to go broke. If I didn’t, I’d get lazy and fat, an’
+some newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I’d die. They’re doing
+a lot of that operatin’ down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and
+they wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen
+to a man when he’s got money!”
+
+“You mean all that, Stampede?”
+
+“On my life, I do. I’m just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that’s going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody’ll grub-stake me in Nome.”
+
+“They won’t,” said Alan suddenly. “Not if I can help it. Stampede, I
+want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains. I’ve got
+ten thousand reindeer up there. It’s No Man’s Land, and we can do as we
+please in it. I’m not after gold. I want another sort of thing. But
+I’ve fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow playmate of
+yours. It’s a new country. You’ve never seen it. God only knows what
+you may find. Will you come?”
+
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede’s eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+
+“Will I _come?_ Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me. Say
+it all over ag’in.”
+
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last
+of the fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges
+rose up against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was
+flashing in rose and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded.
+Speech was unnecessary. They both understood, and the thrill of the
+life they loved passed from one to the other in the grip of their
+hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There
+were only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other
+belonged to Mary Standish. There was something almost aggressively
+suggestive in their simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He
+nodded as he sat down, a flash of amusement in his eyes when he
+observed the look in the young engineer’s face. It was both envious and
+accusing, and yet Alan was sure the young man was unconscious of
+betraying an emotion. The fact lent to the eating of his grapefruit an
+accompaniment of pleasing and amusing thought. He recalled the young
+man’s name. It was Tucker. He was a clean-faced, athletic,
+likable-looking chap. And an idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan
+told himself. The young engineer was more than casually interested in
+Mary Standish; he was in love. It was not a discovery which Alan made.
+It was a decision, and as soon as possible he would remedy the
+unfortunate omission of a general introduction at their table by
+bringing the two together. Such an introduction would undoubtedly
+relieve him of a certain responsibility which had persisted in
+attaching itself to him.
+
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get
+the empty chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be
+obliterated, and when other chairs became vacant as their owners left
+the table, this one straight across from him continued to thrust itself
+upon him. Until this morning it had been like other empty chairs. Now
+it was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he had no desire to be so
+constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve o’clock tryst of Mary
+Standish with Graham’s agent, Rossland.
+
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of
+seeing Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had
+made their exit through the door leading from the dining salon when the
+young engineer paused. Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his
+face. In a moment it was explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed
+Tucker without appearing to notice him, and gave Alan a cool little nod
+as she seated herself at the table. She was very pale. He could see
+nothing of the flush of color that had been in her cheeks last night.
+As she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool of sunlight
+played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her
+eyes. They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without
+embarrassment. Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It
+seemed inconceivable that such eyes could play a part in fraud and
+deception, yet he was in possession of quite conclusive proof of it. If
+they had lowered themselves an instant, if they had in any way betrayed
+a shadow of regret, he would have found an apology. Instead of that,
+his fingers touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+
+“Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?” he asked politely.
+
+“Not at all,” she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. “I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I
+am afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?”
+
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. “This is the first morning
+I have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have
+slept well. Is this yours, Miss Standish?”
+
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his
+fingers. In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was
+the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was
+disappointed not to catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+“It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?”
+
+“In front of my cabin door a little after midnight.”
+
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some
+kind of result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on
+her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the
+clear depths of her eyes. Her level glance was as innocent as a child’s
+and as he looked at her, he thought of a child—a most beautiful
+child—and so utterly did he feel the discomfiture of his mental
+analysis of her that he rose to his feet with a frigid bow.
+
+“I thank you, Mr. Holt,” she said. “You can imagine my sense of
+obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the
+ship with me. And this is my favorite.”
+
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard
+her give the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot,
+but the flush of it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable
+sensation of her eyes following him as he stalked through the door. He
+did not look back. Something was wrong with him, and he knew it. This
+chit of a girl with her smooth hair and clear eyes had thrown a grain
+of dust into the satisfactory mechanism of his normal self, and the
+grind of it was upsetting certain specific formulae which made up his
+life. He was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself names.
+
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning
+match. He looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a
+smile on his lips. In his eyes was a coolly appraising look as he
+nodded.
+
+“Beg pardon.” The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him
+over Rossland’s shoulder. He might as well have said, “I’m sorry, Boy,
+but you must keep out of my way.”
+
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness,
+Keok had told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a
+humor to kill. They were like that now as they flashed their smile at
+Rossland. The sneering twist left Rossland’s lips as he entered the
+dining-room.
+
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham’s
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the
+tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tête-à-tête
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had
+greeted him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the
+table before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he
+understood the situation.
+
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland’s interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was
+successful, and he was about to extinguish the burning end when he
+hesitated and held it until the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish
+was coming through the door. Amazed by the suddenness of her
+appearance, he made no movement except to drop the match. Her eyes were
+flaming, and two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw him and gave
+the slightest inclination to her head as she passed. When she had gone,
+he could not resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland
+was seated in a chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly
+engaged in looking over the breakfast card.
+
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he
+was a little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in
+upon Rossland. At the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing
+reception which Miss Standish had evidently given to the dislikable
+individual who had jostled him in passing.
+
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the
+snowy peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach
+out his arms and touch them. The _Nome_ appeared to be drifting in the
+heart of a paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the
+mainland; so close on the other hand that he could hear the shout of a
+man was Douglas Island, and ahead, reaching out like a silver-blue
+ribbon was Gastineau Channel. The mining towns of Treadwell and Douglas
+were in sight.
+
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+
+“That’s Bill Treadwell’s place,” he said. “Once the richest gold mines
+in Alaska. They’re flooded now. I knew Bill when he was worrying about
+the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand pair an’ patched
+’em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four hundred dollars
+somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named French
+Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An’ there was a time when there were
+nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It’s worth it.”
+
+Somehow Stampede’s voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and
+Alan wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment
+pressing upon him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual
+interest for Mary Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into
+an old acquaintance and permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased
+with the discovery, and yet he was compelled to acknowledge the truth
+of it. The grain of dust had become more than annoying. It did not wear
+away, as he had supposed it would, but was becoming an obsessive factor
+in his thoughts. And the half-desire it built up in him, while
+aggravatingly persistent, was less disturbing than before. The little
+drama in the dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of
+himself. He liked fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in
+her quiet prettiness, had shown her mettle in those few moments when he
+had seen her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland.
+He began to look for Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty,
+literally terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go
+down to the lower deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship
+gathered near the gangway with their luggage. Alan was about to pass
+them when he suddenly stopped. A short distance from him, where he
+could see every person who disembarked, stood Rossland. There was
+something grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled his watch-fob
+and eyed the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an unexpected
+thrill through Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He
+stepped to Rossland’s side and touched his arm.
+
+“Watching for Miss Standish?” he asked.
+
+“I am.” There was no evasion in Rossland’s words. They possessed the
+hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable authority
+behind him.
+
+“And if she goes ashore?”
+
+“I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so—”
+
+“No, Miss Standish hasn’t done that.”
+
+“Then please attend to your own business. If you haven’t enough to take
+up your time, I’ll lend you some books. I have several in my cabin.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not
+follow. There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to
+imprecate but his own folly. Rossland’s words were not an insult. They
+were truth. He had deliberately intruded in an affair which was
+undoubtedly of a highly private nature. Possibly it was a domestic
+tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation swept over him, and he was
+glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He tried to whistle
+as he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he detested
+the man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted
+to be amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it
+was something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found
+old Donald Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the
+_Nome_ had landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way
+out of Gastineau Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the
+smoking-room and remained there until luncheon hour.
+
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with
+her back toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up
+behind her, so near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across
+at her and smiled as he seated himself. She returned the smile, but it
+seemed to him an apologetic little effort. She did not look well, and
+her presence at the table struck him as being a brave front to hide
+something from someone. Casually he looked over his left shoulder.
+Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the room.
+Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes
+shaded her eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her
+hair first. It had a peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been
+observant enough to know that she had rearranged it since breakfast,
+and the smooth coils twisted in mysterious intricacy at the crown of
+her head were like softly glowing velvet. The ridiculous thought came
+to him that he would like to see them tumbling down about her. They
+must be even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light
+fell upon her through the window. But when she looked across at him
+again, he caught for an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He
+began telling her something about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he
+had seen nothing which she might want to conceal. The light in her eyes
+changed, and it was almost a glow of gratitude he caught in them. He
+had broken a tension, relieved her of some unaccountable strain she was
+under. He noticed that her ordering of food was merely a pretense. She
+scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person at the table
+had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about
+her lack of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an angelic
+virtue.
+
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a
+splendid effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the
+breaking-point. When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own
+chair. At the same time he saw Rossland get up and advance rather
+hurriedly from the opposite side of the room. The girl passed through
+the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps behind, and Alan came
+last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was amusing in a way,
+yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim line about
+the corners of his mouth.
+
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining
+salon to the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon
+Rossland. For only an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they
+flashed past him, and with a swift movement she came toward Alan. A
+flush had leaped into her cheeks, but there was no excitement in her
+voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and clearly heard by
+Rossland.
+
+“I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt,” she said. “Will
+you take me on deck, and tell me about it?”
+
+Graham’s agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few
+hours before at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a
+meddler, words refused to form quickly on Alan’s lips. Before he was
+ready with an answer Mary Standish had confidently taken his arm. He
+could see the red flush deepening in her upturned face. She was
+amazingly unexpected, bewilderingly pretty, and as cool as ice except
+for the softly glowing fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland staring with
+his cigarette half poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in the
+face of danger, and he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed
+softly. She gave his arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past
+Rossland, amazed but obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that
+sent a gentle thrill through him.
+
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: “You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt.”
+
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm,
+were like a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer
+see them, unless he had followed. The girl had played her part, and a
+second time he had accepted the role of a slow-witted fool. But the
+thought did not anger him. There was a remarkable element of humor
+about it for him, viewing himself in the matter, and Mary Standish
+heard him chuckling as they came out on deck.
+
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. “It isn’t funny,” she
+reproved. “It is tragic to be bored by a man like that.”
+
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask,
+and he wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her
+know he had seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at
+her, and she met his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him,
+and her eyes, he thought, were the loveliest liars he had ever looked
+into. He felt the stir of an unusual sentiment—a sort of pride in her,
+and he made up his mind to say nothing about Rossland. He was still
+absurdly convinced that he had not the smallest interest in affairs
+which were not entirely his own. Mary Standish evidently believed he
+was blind, and he would make no effort to spoil her illusion. Such a
+course would undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the
+stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the
+ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she
+looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like
+a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway’s door, while on
+both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy
+crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this
+melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship’s
+engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain
+that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of
+water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the
+sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which
+even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the
+mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were
+opening a guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white
+cottages floated into the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance,
+monument to brave men and thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its
+hiding-place. Alan turned to speak, but what he saw in the girl’s face
+held him silent. Her lips were parted, and she was staring as if an
+unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that bewildered
+her and even startled her.
+
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a
+tense whisper: “I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago.
+Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I
+have lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it—”
+
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at
+him, and he was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+
+“I must go ashore here,” she said. “I didn’t know I would find it so
+soon. Please—”
+
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and
+saw the strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her
+glance he saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand
+was resting confidently in the crook of Alan’s arm. “Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?” she asked with an icy little laugh.
+
+“Yes,” he answered rather unexpectedly. “And some day, if the right
+opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man—the man who
+murdered my father.”
+
+She gave a little gasp of horror. “Your father—was—murdered—”
+
+“Indirectly—yes. It wasn’t done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money
+was the weapon. Somebody’s money. And John Graham was the man who
+struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland—”
+
+“_No_.” Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away.
+“I don’t want you to ask an explanation of him,” she said. “If he
+should make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway, Mr. Holt.
+That will be pleasanter.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western
+mountains, and the _Nome_ was churning slowly back through the narrow
+water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that
+afternoon fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered
+himself to an impulse which he could not understand, and which in
+ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish
+ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions
+and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to
+him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured
+the wind-racked cañon where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a
+day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old
+days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and
+his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy’s sunken
+grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about
+_himself_. And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much
+he had confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this
+slim and beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to
+the indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her
+heart beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the
+Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people.
+There, he had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in
+her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on
+until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship’s gangway to see
+when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and
+the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the
+building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few
+years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and
+civilization and the breaking down of nature’s last barriers before
+science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her gray
+eyes.
+
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the _Nome_ looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight,
+doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+
+“I would always love tents and old trails and nature’s barriers. I envy
+Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am
+sorry to see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this
+man—John Graham!”
+
+Her words startled him.
+
+“And I want you to tell me what he is doing—with his money—now.” Her
+voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed, was clenched at the
+edge of the rail.
+
+“He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the
+case well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little
+children by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which
+the natives have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them
+die.”
+
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+
+“And that—is all?”
+
+He laughed grimly. “Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in
+Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was
+a gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men
+like John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and
+graft will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation
+would not be able to replace.”
+
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
+ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
+of evening. “I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney,” she said.
+“I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
+woman like her. She could fight, couldn’t she? She could make a man’s
+fight?”
+
+“Yes, and did make it.”
+
+“And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck.”
+
+“Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger.”
+
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
+which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+
+“Then this, too, for luck—the luck of Mary Standish,” she laughed
+softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
+done. “It isn’t melodrama,” she said. “I mean it. And I believe in it.
+I want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this
+gateway to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest
+forever at the bottom of the Yukon.”
+
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
+moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. “Thank you for the
+wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget
+it. It is dinner time. I must say good night.”
+
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In
+returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was
+irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan’s
+look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan’s
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was
+a growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of
+poise which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be,
+but a cool brain was at work inside his head—a brain not easily
+disturbed by unimportant things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an
+agent of John Graham Alan looked upon him as an enemy, and as an
+acquaintance of Mary Standish he was as much of a mystery as the girl
+herself. And only now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning to sense the
+presence of a real authority behind Rossland’s attitude.
+
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing
+about the relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it
+involved himself, and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to
+please him. He could see no sport in an adventure of the kind it
+suggested, and the possibility that he had been misjudged by both
+Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger into his cheeks. He
+cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to wipe him out
+of existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of
+way. He had made no effort to discover her history. He had not
+questioned her. At no time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon
+her personal affairs, and at no time had she offered information about
+herself, or an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had
+presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how
+dangerously near that hazard he had been—and he admired her for the
+splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the
+possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the
+dining salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any
+increasing intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his
+experience had been, he resented the idea of being commandeered at
+unexpected moments. Had Mary Standish read his thoughts, her bearing
+toward him during the dinner hour could not have been more satisfying.
+There was, in a way, something seductively provocative about it. She
+greeted him with the slightest inclination of her head and a cool
+little smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either from him
+or from his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate
+reserve.
+
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he
+found himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation
+he had set down for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing
+glimpses at her hair when her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed
+it tonight until it was like softest velvet, with rich glints in it,
+and the amazing thought came to him that it would be sweetly pleasant
+to touch with one’s hand. The discovery was almost a shock. Keok and
+Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never thought of it in this
+way. And he had never thought of Keok’s pretty mouth as he was thinking
+of the girl’s opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary
+Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance.
+
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as
+if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He
+tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an
+hour later, feeding a captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he
+thought, that a captive bear should be going north. Stampede explained.
+The animal was a pet and belonged to the Thlinkit Indians. There were
+seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed that the two girls watched
+him closely and whispered together. They were very pretty, with large,
+dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not look at him
+at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned away.
+
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they
+discussed the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan’s
+plans for the future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his
+cabin to get maps and photographs. Stampede’s eyes glistened as his
+mind seized upon the possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast
+land. An unknown country. And Alan was its first pioneer. The old
+thrill ran in Stampede’s blood, and its infectiousness caught Alan, so
+that he forgot Mary Standish, and all else but the miles that lay
+between them and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward Peninsula. It was
+midnight when Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his
+body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in
+through his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last
+found the comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to
+the wild and half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He
+looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled
+with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another
+generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more
+and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and
+invention and what the human race called progress.
+
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in
+that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in
+the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown.
+After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of
+unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth
+would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what
+she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been
+_her_ thought, too—that she would always love tents and old trails and
+nature’s barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and
+automobiles come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had
+guessed what was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.
+
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was
+a quarter after twelve o’clock, an unusual hour for someone to be
+tapping at his door.
+
+It was repeated—a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again,
+quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened the
+door.
+
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And
+then he saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without
+waiting for him to speak or give her permission to enter. And it was
+Mary Standish herself who closed the door, while he stared at her in
+stupid wonderment—and stood there with her back against it, straight
+and slim and deathly pale.
+
+“May I come in?” she asked.
+
+“My God, you’re in!” gasped Alan. “_You’re in_.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to
+his room, entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of
+invitation from him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first
+explosion of astonishment he stood mute, while the girl looked at him
+steadily and her breath came a little quickly. But she was not excited.
+Even in his amazement he could see that. What he had thought was fright
+had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her so white, and never
+had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as while she stood
+there in these astounding moments with her back against the door.
+
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even
+her lips were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear
+and unafraid now, and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness
+of purpose that staggered him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal
+resentment, began to possess him as he waited for her to speak. This,
+at last, was the cost of his courtesies to her, The advantage she was
+taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and his mind flashed to
+the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the door.
+
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but
+her quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her
+lips tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful
+eyes tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or
+bury her face in her hands, but looked at him bravely while the
+tear-drops glistened like diamonds on her cheeks. He felt his heart
+give way. She read his thoughts, had guessed his suspicion, and he was
+wrong.
+
+“You—you will have a seat, Miss Standish?” he asked lamely, inclining
+his head toward the cabin chair.
+
+“No. Please let me stand.” She drew in a deep breath. “It is late, Mr.
+Holt?”
+
+“Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this,” he assured her.
+“Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish.”
+
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb
+in her white throat.
+
+“Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have
+come to your cabin at midnight—even aboard ship? And it is that with
+me—a matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that
+decision. I could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight.”
+
+“And why me?” he asked. “Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some
+other? Is it because—”
+
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes,
+as if for an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but
+it was gone as quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without
+emotion, she answered him.
+
+“I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to
+you as I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances,
+if I were a man. If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind
+about you is taking an advantage—then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But
+I am not sorry. I trust you. I know you will believe me good until I am
+proved bad. I have come to ask you to help me. Would you make it
+possible for another human being to avert a great tragedy if you found
+it in your power to do so?”
+
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing
+such a situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he
+would have called any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door
+and show his visitor out. But such a thought did not occur to him now.
+He was thinking of the handkerchief he had found the preceding
+midnight. Twice she had come to his cabin at a late hour.
+
+“It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible,” he said,
+answering her question. “Tragedy is a nasty thing.”
+
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the
+tilt of her dainty chin a bit higher.
+
+“Of course, I can’t pay you,” she said. “You are the sort of man who
+would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you to do.
+But I must have help. If I don’t have it, and quickly”—she shuddered
+slightly and tried to smile—“something very unpleasant will happen, Mr.
+Holt,” she finished.
+
+“If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle—”
+
+“No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I
+may have your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you,
+whether you help me or not. Will you give me that pledge?”
+
+“Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish.”
+
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not
+see the sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or
+the quicker throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint
+flush was gathering in her cheeks.
+
+“I want to leave the ship,” she said.
+
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+
+“And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night—before we reach
+Cordova.”
+
+“Is that—your problem?” he demanded, astonished.
+
+“No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am
+dead. I can not reach Cordova alive.”
+
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were
+insane. Her quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching
+steadiness. His brain all at once was crowded with questioning, but no
+word of it came to his lips.
+
+“You can help me,” he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm voice,
+softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door. “I
+haven’t a plan. But I know you can arrange one—if you will. It must
+appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard, anything,
+just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can
+not tell you why. I can not. Oh, I _can not_.”
+
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant,
+leaving it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He
+could see courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+
+“I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I
+am mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven’t
+gone to Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only
+answer I can make is that I have come to you because you are the only
+man in the world—in this hour—that I have faith in. Some day you will
+understand, if you help me. If you do not care to help me—”
+
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+
+“Yes, if I don’t? What will happen then?”
+
+“I shall be forced to the inevitable,” she said. “It is rather unusual,
+isn’t it, to be asking for one’s life? But that is what I mean.”
+
+“I’m afraid—I don’t quite understand.”
+
+“Isn’t it clear, Mr. Holt? I don’t like to appear spectacular, and I
+don’t want you to think of me as theatrical—even now. I hate that sort
+of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it is impossible
+for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to disappear, help
+me to live—and at the same time give all others the impression that I
+am dead—then I must do the other thing. I must really die.”
+
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the
+shoulders and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of a
+child.
+
+“You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat
+of suicide?”
+
+“If you want to call it that—yes.”
+
+“And you expect me to believe you?”
+
+“I had hoped you would.”
+
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed
+her and half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the
+smallest effort to work upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved
+utterly. But he was not blind to the fact that she was making a brave
+fight, even though a lie was behind it, and with a consciousness of
+pride that bewildered him.
+
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going
+on within him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She
+had stated the facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her
+long lashes glistened a little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair
+glowed softly, so softly that he would never forget it, as she stood
+there with her back against the door, nor the strange desire that came
+to him—even then—to touch it with his hand.
+
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. “It is
+Rossland,” he said. “You’re afraid of Rossland?”
+
+“In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it
+were not for the other.”
+
+The _other_! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she
+had no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+
+“What other?” he demanded.
+
+“I can not tell you. I don’t want you to hate me. And you would hate me
+if I told you the truth.”
+
+“Then you confess you are lying,” he suggested brutally.
+
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not
+anger her or shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little
+handkerchief to her eyes, and he turned toward the open port, puffing
+at his cigar, knowing she was fighting to keep the tears back. And she
+succeeded.
+
+“No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you
+have given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is
+a kindness which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I
+thought—”
+
+“How could I bring about what you ask?” he interrupted.
+
+“I don’t know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but I
+see now how foolish I have been. It is impossible.” Her hand reached
+slowly for the knob of the door.
+
+“Yes, you are foolish,” he agreed, and his voice was softer. “Don’t let
+such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to your cabin and
+get a night’s sleep. Don’t let Rossland worry you. If you want me to
+settle with that man—”
+
+“Good night, Mr. Holt.”
+
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and
+looked at him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in her
+eyes.
+
+“Good night.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half
+a minute he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at
+ease. Mary Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left
+him like a soldier. But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught
+for an instant something which she had not betrayed in his cabin—a stab
+of what he thought was pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud
+regret, possibly a shadow of humiliation at last—or it may have been a
+pity for him. He was not sure. But it was not despair. Not once had she
+whimpered in look or word, even when the tears were in her eyes, and
+the thought was beginning to impress itself upon him that it was he—and
+not Mary Standish—who had shown a yellow streak this night. A half
+shame fell upon him as he smoked. For it was clear he had not come up
+to her judgment of him, or else he was not so big a fool as she had
+hoped he might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a loss to
+decide.
+
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in
+the analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and
+bred of the open country, it was as natural for him to recognize
+courage as it was for him to breathe. And the girl’s courage was
+unusual, now that he had time to think about it. It was this thought of
+her coolness and her calm refusal to impose her case upon him with
+greater warmth that comforted him after a little. A young and beautiful
+woman who was actually facing death would have urged her necessity with
+more enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated it
+intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the
+moment, to give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea
+of a girl like Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously
+impossible. Her quiet and wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite
+care which she gave to herself emphasized the absurdity of such a
+supposition. She had come to him bravely. There was no doubt of that.
+She had merely exaggerated the importance of her visit.
+
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up
+this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled
+certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under
+sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd
+stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color
+to his visionings he exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled
+pipe, which he filled and lighted. Then he began walking back and forth
+in his cabin, like a big animal in a small cage, until at last he stood
+with his head half out of the open port, looking at the clear stars and
+setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift with the soft sea wind.
+
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him
+again, with sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little
+harsh with Miss Standish tonight, he would make up for it by
+apologizing tomorrow. She would probably have recovered her balance by
+that time, and they would laugh over her excitement and their little
+adventure. That is, he would. “I’m not at all curious in the matter,”
+some persistent voice kept telling him, “and I haven’t any interest in
+knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin.” But he smoked
+viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have
+liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in
+bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish’s words, “If I should make an
+explanation, you would hate me,” or something to that effect. He
+couldn’t remember exactly. And he didn’t want to remember exactly, for
+it was none of his business.
+
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and
+half on the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began
+thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he
+figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of
+the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming.
+Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska.
+They would go on to Nome together. After that he would spend a week or
+so in the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big portage to
+the Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still
+farther—beyond the last trails of civilized men—to his herds and his
+people. And Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of
+homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant
+dreams. But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations
+tonight. Stampede Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his
+place. And Keok, laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing
+deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan thought drowsily—she was always
+tormenting someone.
+
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his
+cabin, when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open
+sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white
+peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the
+sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The _Nome_ was pounding
+ahead at full speed, and Alan’s blood responded suddenly to the
+impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the
+mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant
+miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were
+losing time by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with
+Cordova he thought of Mary Standish.
+
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of
+her. The thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now
+that the time of that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded
+moments of embarrassment even when he was not directly accountable for
+them. But Mary Standish saved him any qualms of conscience which he
+might have had because of his lack of chivalry the preceding night. She
+was at the table. And she was not at all disturbed when he seated
+himself opposite her. There was color in her cheeks, a fragile touch of
+that warm glow in the heart of the wild rose of the tundras. And it
+seemed to him there was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than
+he had ever seen before.
+
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had
+evidently broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was
+the first time Alan had seen her interested in this way. He had no
+intention of listening, but something perverse and compelling overcame
+his will. He discovered the lady was going up to teach in a native
+school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that for many years she had
+taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda Mulrooney. He
+gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss
+Robson, the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she
+possessed of Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an
+address. The girl hesitated, then said she was not certain of her
+destination, but would write Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+
+“You will surely keep your promise?” urged Miss Robson.
+
+“Yes, I will keep my promise.”
+
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that
+he thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few
+hours’ sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her
+mental attitude, and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured
+himself, could possibly see a note of tragedy in her appearance now.
+Nor was she different at luncheon or at dinner. During the day he saw
+nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of the fact that she was
+purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not displease him. It
+allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a normal sort
+of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked his
+black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of
+the ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his
+first meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked
+his two-mile promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a
+peculiar impression of aloneness. Something was missing. He did not
+acknowledge to himself what it was until, as if to convict him, he saw
+Mary Standish come out of the door leading from her cabin passageway,
+and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a moment he hesitated,
+then quietly he came up beside her.
+
+“It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish,” he said, “and Cordova is
+only a few hours ahead of us.”
+
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the
+shrouding darkness of the sea. “Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt,” she
+repeated after him, “and Cordova is only a few hours ahead.” Then, in
+the same soft, unemotional voice, she added: “I want to thank you for
+last night. You brought me to a great decision.”
+
+“I fear I did not help you.”
+
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he
+caught a shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+
+“I thought there were two ways,” she said, “but you made me see there
+was only _one_.” She emphasized that word. It seemed to come with a
+little tremble in her voice. “I was foolish. But please let us forget.
+I want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage.”
+
+“You will win, Miss Standish,” he said in a sure voice. “In whatever
+you undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of
+is the adventure of coming to Alaska—seeking your fortune—finding your
+life here—it will be glorious. I can assure you of that.”
+
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+
+“The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under
+the mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith
+which I have. I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when
+America was very young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must
+have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung
+back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that
+sometime—somewhere—I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had
+strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is
+that faith which gives me courage to go on with my experiment. That—and
+_you_!”
+
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+
+“You—and your suspicions and your brutality,” she went on, her voice
+trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before
+him. “I wasn’t going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me the
+opportunity, and it may do you good—after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like
+your mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as
+clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them
+bad—and I lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when
+I came to your cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+_afraid_—fearful of something happening which you didn’t want to
+happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was
+a liar, and told me so. It wasn’t fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn’t _fair_.
+There were things which I couldn’t explain to you, but I told you
+Rossland knew. I didn’t keep everything back. And I believed you were
+big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my—friendship,
+even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much faith in myself—I
+didn’t think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!”
+
+“Good God!” he cried. “Listen to me—Miss Standish—”
+
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was
+futile, and she passed through the door before he could reach her.
+Again he called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the
+passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the
+darkness, and his face as white as the girl’s had been. Her words had
+held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she
+believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror.
+And she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment
+and common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool—
+
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door.
+When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried
+again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he
+was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door
+did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would
+undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology in
+words.
+
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in
+its disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes,
+her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she
+had faced him remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away
+from the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears
+like diamonds on her cheeks. Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it.
+Something had escaped him which he could not understand. And she was
+holding him accountable.
+
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts
+to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string
+music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the
+dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw
+Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his
+arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay
+unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland’s face rested against
+her fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan
+turned away, an unpleasant thought of Rossland’s association with Mary
+Standish in his mind. He strolled down into the steerage. The Thlinkit
+people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the
+stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him
+after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest
+himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was
+himself. The thrill he had always experienced with this particular
+writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even
+the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for
+a cigar—and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind
+refused to function, and there was no comfort in his cigar.
+
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously
+lied to himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a
+fight between himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his
+door. Mary Standish—the slim beauty of her—her courage—a score of
+things that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on
+his smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions
+that were struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad
+and entirely a fool, he told himself. But the assurance did him no
+good.
+
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made
+another effort to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o’clock
+music and dancing ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that
+he found himself becoming more interested in the first book he had
+started to read. His old satisfaction slowly returned to him. He
+relighted his cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he heard the ship’s
+bells, eleven o’clock, and after that the half-hour and midnight. The
+printed pages were growing dim, and drowsily he marked his book, placed
+it on the table, and yawned. They must be nearing Cordova. He could
+feel the slackened speed of the _Nome_ and the softer throb of her
+engines. Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing
+inshore.
+
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman’s scream. A piercing cry
+of terror, of agony—and of something else that froze the blood in his
+veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time
+ending in a moaning wail and a man’s husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past
+his window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He
+could not distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to
+respond. There came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by
+the pounding shock of reverse and the clanging alarm of a bell calling
+boats’ crews to quarters.
+
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was
+overboard. And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of
+his body, for the pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an
+instant before him, and in her quiet voice she was telling him again
+that _this was the other way._ His face went white as he caught up his
+smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran down the dimly lighted
+corridor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship
+when Alan reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept
+slowly ahead against the force struggling to hold her back. He heard
+running feet, voices, and the rattle of davit blocks, and came up as
+the starboard boat aft began swinging over the smooth sea. Captain
+Rifle was ahead of him, half-dressed, and the second officer was giving
+swift commands. A dozen passengers had come from the smoking-room.
+There was only one woman. She stood a little back, partly supported in
+a man’s arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at the man, and
+he knew from his appearance that she was the woman who had screamed.
+
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of
+oars, but the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to
+him distinctly in the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was
+the terrible sobbing of the woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed
+to sway under his feet. He was conscious of a crowd gathering about the
+empty davits, but he had eyes only for these two.
+
+“Was it a man—or a woman?” he asked.
+
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced
+from his lips. And the other man, with the woman’s head crumpled
+against his shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+
+“A woman,” he replied. “This is my wife. We were sitting here when she
+climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw her
+going.”
+
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her
+eyes, but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband’s arm.
+She struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to
+comfort her. And then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was
+haggard, and a glance told Alan that he knew.
+
+“Who was it?” he demanded.
+
+“This lady thinks it was Miss Standish.”
+
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a
+moment in his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind
+him, and before him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed
+swiftly, with no sign of it in the immobility of his pale face.
+
+“Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then—then—”
+
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a
+choking breath:
+
+“It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering.”
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and
+a strange calmness began to possess him. “You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?” he found himself saying. “Is it possible you might
+be mistaken?”
+
+“No,” said the woman. “She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed
+her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I’m almost sure she smiled
+at me and was going to speak. And then—then—she was gone!”
+
+“I didn’t know until my wife screamed,” added the man. “I was seated
+facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind
+but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly.”
+
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely
+sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had
+left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary
+Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had
+leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened
+it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the
+room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it
+from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman’s scream. Mary
+Standish was gone.
+
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the
+pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and
+twisted. Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table.
+Then he saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he
+picked up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a
+little shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.
+
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned
+slowly to confront Captain Rifle. The little man’s face was like gray
+wax. For a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the
+shoe crumpled in Alan’s hand.
+
+“The boats got away quickly,” he said in a husky voice. “We stopped
+inside the third-mile. If she can swim—there is a chance.”
+
+“She won’t swim,” replied Alan. “She didn’t jump in for that. She is
+gone.”
+
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of
+his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched
+hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy
+of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of
+wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan’s words. It took only a few
+seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going
+into details. The captain’s hand was on Alan’s arm when he finished,
+and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.
+
+“We’ll talk with Rossland after the boats return,” he said.
+
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held
+the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It
+took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain.
+Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a
+second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the
+passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of
+it came to him—failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the
+throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their
+eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And
+as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an
+agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the
+first law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against
+the desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish
+to rise up out of it and forgive him.
+
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask
+through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly
+coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And
+she would have been right. His heart was gone.
+
+Two people were at Rossland’s door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship’s doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+
+“I can’t rouse him,” he said. “And I did not see him among the
+passengers.”
+
+“Nor did I,” said Alan.
+
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+
+“I think the circumstances permit,” he explained. In a moment he looked
+up, puzzled. “The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in the
+lock.”
+
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his
+knuckles were red. There was still no response.
+
+“Odd,” he muttered.
+
+“Very odd,” agreed Alan.
+
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash
+sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp,
+and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly,
+upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no
+movement and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.
+
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain
+Rifle close the door behind them, and from Marston’s lips came a
+startled whisper:
+
+“Good God!”
+
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His
+arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the
+white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the
+edges and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first
+shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in
+that moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle’s eyes met
+Alan’s. The same thought—and in another instant disbelief—flashed from
+one to the other.
+
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. “A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is
+not dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and
+dressing.”
+
+“The door was locked on the inside,” said Alan, as soon as the doctor
+was gone. “And the window is closed. It looks like—suicide. It is
+possible—there was an understanding between them—and Rossland chose
+this way instead of the sea?”
+
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into
+the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. “There is no
+knife,” he said stonily. And in a moment he added: “There are red
+stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was—”
+
+“Murder.”
+
+“Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window.
+Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a
+long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We’ve got to
+believe that. It was a _man_.”
+
+“Of course, a man,” Alan nodded.
+
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle
+made a gesture toward the door. “Better go,” he advised. “This is a
+ship’s matter, and you won’t want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it.
+Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you.”
+
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan
+passed them, and he heard the door of Rossland’s room close behind him.
+The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He
+went to Mary Standish’s cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings
+and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard.
+Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and
+packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and
+explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them
+to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with
+the captain.
+
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He
+nodded toward a chair.
+
+“We’ll reach Cordova inside of an hour,” he said. “Doctor Marston says
+Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the _Nome_ in port
+until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make
+oath to that. Have you anything—in mind?”
+
+“Only one thing,” replied Alan, “a determination to go ashore as soon
+as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it.
+As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he
+lives or dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon
+him. It was merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will
+you tell me our location when she leaped into the sea.”
+
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let
+Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to
+him.
+
+“We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east
+of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a
+chance. And I hope you will find her.”
+
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+“It’s a bad blow for the ship—her first trip,” he said. “But I’m not
+thinking of the _Nome_. I’m thinking of Mary Standish. My God, it is
+terrible! If it had been anyone else—_anyone_—” His words seemed to
+choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. “It is hard
+to believe—almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill
+herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin.”
+
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain
+details of the girl’s visit. But a number of things which she had
+trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon
+Rossland’s influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort,
+and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in his
+eyes.
+
+“You’re not responsible—not so much as you believe,” he said. “Don’t
+take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and
+let me know. You will do that—you will let me know?”
+
+“Yes, I shall let you know.”
+
+“And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his
+assailant is still on board.”
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: “There is
+nothing in Miss Standish’s room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your
+hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into
+the sea—before she went.”
+
+“Such a thought is possible,” agreed Alan evasively.
+
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His
+face looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. “That’s
+all, Alan. God knows I’d give this old life of mine to bring her back
+if I could. To me she was much like—someone—a long time dead. That’s
+why I broke ship’s regulations when she came aboard so strangely at
+Seattle, without reservation. I’m sorry now. I should have sent her
+ashore. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to
+ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if
+you do—”
+
+“I shall send you word.”
+
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle’s fingers still held to Alan’s as
+they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the
+sky. The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the
+darkened sea.
+
+“A thunder-storm,” said the captain.
+
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous
+note in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into
+darkness. And then he said,
+
+“Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives.”
+
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he
+went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the
+whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A
+vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin.
+Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin
+bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in
+Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month
+in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the
+range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government
+railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence
+still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a
+man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain
+written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to
+go ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until
+morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of
+his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for
+physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The
+desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was
+holding back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of
+a pale face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the
+dispassionate calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was
+battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour—since he had heard the
+scream of the woman—he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid
+earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that
+narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And
+not until Alan’s feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a
+great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After
+he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply
+of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than
+darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there
+gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him.
+The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with
+a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near,
+as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the
+earth unaware.
+
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three
+years ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf
+Ericksen, half a mile up the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be
+there, where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn
+to stay until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way
+instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces
+of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the
+mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden
+glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a
+white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea
+he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked
+between two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as
+they advanced to deadly combat.
+
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder
+that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled
+away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of
+signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air
+struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the
+thrill of storm.
+
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and
+the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the
+crash of the elements about his father’s cabin and the roaring voices
+of the ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought
+him into the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul,
+and there were times when he yearned for this “talk of the mountains”
+as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his
+eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always
+burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen’s cabin.
+
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an
+inky wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his
+face, and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of
+silence he could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he
+dropped his bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede.
+Then he flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage
+to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have
+forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he and
+Alan’s father had tramped the mountains together.
+
+[Illustration: The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.]
+
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the
+frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent
+shoulders, his massive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard
+streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung
+off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty
+shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from
+Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+
+The Swede’s voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing
+the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan’s face made him
+pause to hear other words than his own.
+
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea,
+bracing his arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening
+beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that
+drenched him as he stood there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan,
+a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn
+the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out
+to sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its
+downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was
+blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch
+Alan could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber
+slicker, and Olaf’s great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was
+like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable
+gloom he opened speed until the _Norden_ was shooting with the
+swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.
+
+In Olaf’s cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find
+Mary Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of
+battered reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a
+pirate fleet might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his
+experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a
+body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was
+at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in
+Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the
+slim craft leaped through the water.
+
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him
+there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the
+least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept
+telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All
+through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against
+odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction
+he was going to win now—that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in
+the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the
+islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he found
+her—
+
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in
+moments it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting
+to keep out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his
+mental pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind,
+and waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her
+pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over
+the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep
+away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he
+would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the
+breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and
+self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
+
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in
+which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to _him_
+in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the
+_Nome_. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her
+confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when
+he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word,
+proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the
+courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, “You will
+understand—tomorrow.”
+
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn
+lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the
+tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf
+did not press his folly upon him, but kept the _Norden_ pointed
+seaward, adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland
+loomed up in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day
+the rain subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped.
+Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair.
+White mists began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of
+light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The
+sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as
+the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had
+washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the
+sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his
+body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the
+mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living
+things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of
+forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from
+behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly—in a final triumph of the
+sun—the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.
+
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm,
+grinning at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded
+face. But in Alan’s there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of
+day and of sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but
+something was missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was
+dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met
+the other’s smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to
+the truth.
+
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan’s
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay
+naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it
+inspired by the captain of the _Nome_, as Alan had given him reason to
+believe. There was more than grimness in the other’s face, and a
+strange sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed
+the straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly
+undulating surface of the sea.
+
+At last he said, “If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+_out there_,” and he pointed.
+
+Alan stood up.
+
+“But she wouldn’t be there now,” Olaf added.
+
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down—at the bottom. He
+turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the
+mountains was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A
+quarter of an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the
+rocks and timber that came down close to the sea.
+
+“That’s McCormick’s,” he said.
+
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf’s binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman’s cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who
+knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes
+shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who
+came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow
+water.
+
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of
+the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly.
+Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man.
+They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the _Nome_ and
+what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and
+believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in
+his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading
+its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were
+frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of
+pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty
+dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if
+he found the girl’s body.
+
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he
+had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not
+have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in
+the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable
+he would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have
+guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf’s face
+McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan
+Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the
+most precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his
+services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the
+little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.
+
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled
+gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when
+she heard what had happened aboard the _Nome_. Alan left the three
+together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the
+lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed—that this girl
+whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end
+of the world to Alan Holt.
+
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light
+shore-launch. He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence,
+and with Scotch canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen
+cabins he left details of the drowning and offered a reward of five
+hundred dollars for the finding of the body, so that twenty men and
+boys and half as many women were seeking before nightfall.
+
+“And remember,” Sandy told each of them, “the chances are she’ll wash
+ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes
+ashore at all.”
+
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the
+coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite
+direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping
+into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains
+reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a
+great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept
+slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was
+despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of
+an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer
+concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man
+chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening
+twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him
+that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew
+would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the
+night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.
+
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy’s wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had
+softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the
+others had been. He knew. The woman’s eyes told him, the almost
+mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had
+coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave
+a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to
+speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not
+one of them spoke of Mary Standish.
+
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the
+cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to
+Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River,
+and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of
+paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a
+lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about
+children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children—a lot of them.
+Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman’s
+face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something
+wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+
+“We’re building a new cabin,” he said, “and there’s two rooms in it
+specially for kids.”
+
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that
+was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A
+moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something
+which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to
+pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf’s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not
+see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely
+love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt,
+should think of such a matter at all.
+
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of
+certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents
+tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with
+Olaf at the wheel of the _Norden_. It was sunset when they returned,
+and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of
+the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to
+speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the
+Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which
+he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once
+upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to
+Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and
+the treachery of them.
+
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if
+Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days—probably weeks—if
+it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan
+to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea.
+That was what he called it—“a peaceful resting-place”—and in his
+earnestness to soothe another’s grief he blundered still more deeply
+into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and
+bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him
+beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick
+cabin.
+
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual
+was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in
+suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to
+Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He
+went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he
+entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in
+her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her
+cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It
+was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+
+“You—you didn’t find her?” she asked.
+
+“No.” His voice was tired and a little old. “Do you think I shall ever
+find her?”
+
+“Not as you have expected,” she answered quietly. “She will never come
+like that.” She seemed to be making an effort. “You—you would give a
+great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?”
+
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child
+looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips
+and nodded.
+
+“Of course. Everything I possess.”
+
+“You—you—loved her—”
+
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the
+probing did not sting him; it was not a woman’s curiosity that inspired
+them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not
+realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only
+for himself, but for someone else—aloud.
+
+“Yes, I did.”
+
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to
+be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief
+acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick’s face and
+eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which
+had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of
+this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish’s belongings, and gave
+it to Sandy’s wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to
+speak in a businesslike way.
+
+“Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after
+I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you
+don’t find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day.” It seemed
+hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: “I don’t
+think I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at
+Cordova, and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found.
+And if you do find her, you will look after her yourself, won’t you,
+Mrs. McCormick?”
+
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do
+what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little
+thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to
+Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by.
+Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy
+about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down
+to the beach.
+
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of
+stars, when the _Norden’s_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea.
+Alan looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity
+that lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too
+full. But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far
+away, that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to
+look back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom
+that lay beneath the mountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+That night, in Olaf’s cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his
+life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and
+that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what
+happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part
+of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his
+mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions
+and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but
+he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he
+realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote
+a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter—carefully sealed—which was not to be opened unless they found
+Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy’s cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the
+final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for
+Captain Rifle’s ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of
+Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told
+briefly the disappointing details of his search.
+
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely
+forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank,
+Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the
+hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan’s
+intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say
+about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
+now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
+himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
+Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
+businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he
+might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own
+eyes. In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to
+break down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had
+unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry
+the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him,
+uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told
+him.
+
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening
+camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland.
+Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was
+primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of
+their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax,
+and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the
+swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north,
+whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he
+lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its
+hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once
+more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering
+of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about
+him. He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he
+mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father.
+A thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when
+Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the
+next range.
+
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor,
+and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old
+days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always
+the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for
+thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and
+he was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova
+much longer. Siberia was dragging him—that forbidden world of adventure
+and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles
+across the strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he
+forgot Alan’s tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory
+measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever
+been dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed;
+and he was going if he lived another year or two—going to find his
+fortune or his end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi
+tribes. Twice he had tried it since his old comrade had died, and twice
+he had been driven out. The next time he would know how to go about it,
+and he invited Alan to go with him.
+
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night
+ride across the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred
+plains of Tibet. It stirred old desires in Alan’s blood, for he knew
+that of all frontiers the Siberian would be the last and the greatest,
+and that not only men, but nations, would play their part in the
+breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of firelight in Olaf’s eyes.
+
+“And if we don’t go in first from _this side_, Alan, the yellow fellows
+will come out some day from _that,”_ rumbled the old sour-dough,
+striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. “And when they do, they
+won’t come over to us in ones an’ twos an’ threes, but in millions.
+That’s what the yellow fellows will do when they once get started, an’
+it’s up to a few Alaska Jacks an’ Tough-Nut Bills to get their feet
+planted first on the other side. Will you go?”
+
+Alan shook his head. “Some day—but not now.” The old flash was in his
+eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again—the fight to do his
+bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. “But you’re right about the danger,” he said. “It
+won’t come from Japan to California. It will pour like a flood through
+Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn’t the danger of the
+yellow man alone, Olaf. You’ve got to combine that with Bolshevism, the
+menace of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the little
+neck of water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American
+continent to bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a
+century, but it’s coming sure as God makes light—if we let Alaska go
+down and out. And my way of preventing it is different from yours.”
+
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. “I’m not
+proud of the States,” he went on, as if speaking to something which he
+saw in the flames. “I can’t be, after the ruin their unintelligent
+propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But they’re our
+salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have factions in
+Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It’s going to
+be largely a matter of education. We can’t take Alaska down to the
+States—we’ve got to bring them up to us. We must make a large part of a
+hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the
+Gulf of Anadyr. It’s God’s own country we have north of Fifty-eight,
+Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a
+million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in
+Alaska and at Washington won’t let them come. With coal enough under
+our feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States.
+We’ve got billions in copper and oil, but can’t touch them. We should
+have some of the world’s greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not,
+because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn’t
+conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon
+industry—but they didn’t. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of
+the plains.
+
+“The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and
+common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring
+about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will
+take place right here—in Alaska—and not in Siberia. And if we don’t
+win—”
+
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf’s bearded
+face.
+
+“Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr,” he finished. “And if it ever does come, the people of
+the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska
+could have meant to the nation.”
+
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after
+that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the
+fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her
+quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the
+lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as
+she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of
+this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have
+made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It was a thought
+which brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always these
+visions which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had
+faced him in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling,
+and her eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last
+moment of her plea for life.
+
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him
+in his restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was
+looking at the stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the
+grief in his soul they were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle
+force were at work in him subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of
+tragedy. Mary Standish was with him again, between the mountains at
+Skagway; she was at his side in the heart of the tundras, the sun in
+her shining hair and eyes, and all about them the wonder of wild roses
+and purple iris and white seas of sedge-cotton and yellow-eyed daisies,
+and birds singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the birds. And he
+heard the girl’s voice, answering them in her happiness and turning
+that happiness from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke,
+it was with a little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was
+building a fire, and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the
+mountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new
+import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the
+Chugach and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which
+drew Alan out of the pit into which he had fallen. He understood, now,
+how it was that through many long years his father had worshiped the
+memory of a woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago.
+Unnumbered times he had seen the miracle of her presence in his
+father’s eyes, and once, when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled
+valley back in the mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+
+“Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek,
+with the great rock in the sun? We rested there—before you were born!”
+
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan
+recalled the strange happiness in his father’s face as he had looked
+down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that
+began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan’s
+heart. It would never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be
+alone. He knew at last it was an undying part of him, as it had been a
+part of his father, clinging to him in sweet pain, encouraging him,
+pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
+beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
+grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
+about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
+could see farther than others, because he had known Alan’s father as a
+brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt—straight,
+clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
+Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
+awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
+his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
+of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
+Alan’s, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
+together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish,
+just as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt’s name sacred in his own
+heart. Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of
+memories, observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his
+tongue, and he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his
+mind.
+
+He talked of Siberia—always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were
+soft with the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and
+filled with stars. Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty
+castles whose battlements reached up into the cloud-draperies of the
+sky. They kept close to the mainland and among the islands, camping
+early each evening. Birds were coming northward by the thousand, and
+each night Olaf’s camp-fire sent up the delicious aroma of flesh-pots
+and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time came for
+Olaf to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede’s eyes,
+and as a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably
+come when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+_Norden_ until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country.
+And he was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer
+which carried mail and the necessities of life to the string of
+settlements reaching a thousand miles out into the Pacific left
+Resurrection Bay, and he was given passage. Thereafter the countless
+islands of the North Pacific drifted behind, while always northward
+were the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the ramparted
+ranges beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional
+volcanoes, and at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the
+clouds. First touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at
+Uyak and Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island
+of Unga, and thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch
+Harbor and Unalaska. Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was
+berthed on a freighter, and on the twelfth day of June set foot in
+Nome.
+
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its
+peculiar, black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two
+solitary brick chimneys, brought a lump of joy into his throat as he
+watched its growing outlines from the small boat that brought him
+ashore. He could see one of the only two brick chimneys in northern
+Alaska gleaming in the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away, were the
+ragged peaks of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to
+them in half an hour, and over all the world between seemed to hover a
+misty gloom. But it was where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy
+and unforgetable memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its
+frame buildings, its crooked streets, and what to others might have
+been ugliness, was a warm and thrilling thing. For here were his
+_people_. Here were the men and women who were guarding the northern
+door of the world, an epic place, filled with strong hearts, courage,
+and a love of country as inextinguishable as one’s love of life. From
+this drab little place, shut out from all the world for half the year,
+young men and women went down to southern universities, to big cities,
+to the glamor and lure of “outside.” But they always came back. Nome
+called them. Its loneliness in winter. Its gray gloom in springtime.
+Its glory in summer and autumn. It was the breeding-place of a new race
+of men, and they loved it as Alan loved it. To him the black wireless
+tower meant more than the Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten
+church spires more than the architectural colossi of New York and
+Washington. Beside one of the churches he had played as a boy. He had
+seen the steeples painted. He had helped make the crooked streets. And
+his mother had laughed and lived and died here, and his father’s
+footprints had been in the white sands of the beach when tents dotted
+the shore like gulls.
+
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He
+was unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the
+grip which men’s hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs
+down in the States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement.
+Small boys ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
+grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt
+had come back from the States. Before the day was over, it was on its
+way to Shelton and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the
+beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the news of his arrival Alan
+walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke’s restaurant for a cup of
+coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen’s offices in the Tin Bank
+Building.
+
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days
+before, and his brothers were “in” from the big ranges over on the
+Choris Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a
+tremendously successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty
+thousand head, when the final figures were in. A hundred other herds
+were prospering, and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
+with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a million reindeer were on
+the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when
+compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five thousand!
+In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
+the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in
+Nome. After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their
+best men fighting for Alaska’s salvation at Washington, word was
+traveling from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from
+range to range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from
+thousands of miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
+office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
+strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten
+dollars a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty
+dollars; cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars
+a ton, when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given
+letters of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater
+power, and in the turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man
+just outside the reach of all the milk and honey in a wonderful land.
+Pauperizing, degrading, actually killing, the political misrule that
+had already driven 25 per cent of Alaska’s population from their homes
+was to continue indefinitely. A President of the United States had
+promised to visit the mighty land of the north and see with his own
+eyes. But would he come? There had been other promises, many of them,
+and promises had always been futile. But it was a hope that crept
+through Alaska, and upon this hope men whose courage never died began
+to build. Freedom was on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph
+ultimately, as it always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned
+in the locks which had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources
+of their country, and these men were determined to go on building
+against odds that they might be better prepared for that freedom of
+human endeavor when it came.
+
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged,
+and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of
+gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John
+Graham—interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever
+had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the
+ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men
+that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of
+conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread
+the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest
+days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was
+creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska’s serfdom
+was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth,
+for what remained of Alaska’s men after years of hopelessness and
+distress were fighting men. And the women who had remained with them
+were the mothers and wives of a new nation in the making.
+
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have
+given his life if a few million people in the States could have known
+these women. Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of
+half a continent—possessing the power of the ballot—would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of
+existence; Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women
+were of the kind who greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter,
+with something greater than hope in their hearts. They, too, were
+builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and
+side by side with their men-folk they went on in this epic struggle for
+the building of a nation at the top of the world.
+
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape
+his lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part
+of him, and a secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even
+made evasions when questioned about his business and experiences at
+Cordova and up the coast. Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he
+was away from other men and women. He remembered it had been that way
+with his father, who was always happiest when in the deep mountains or
+the unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with an inner gladness when
+his business was finished and the day came for him to leave Nome.
+
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula.
+For one hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge,
+four-foot railway on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan,
+at times, as though Mary Standish were with him, riding in this strange
+way through a great wilderness. He could _see_ her. That was the
+strange thing which began to possess him. There were moments when her
+eyes were shining softly upon him, her lips smiling, her presence so
+real he might have spoken to her if Lomen had not been at his side. He
+did not fight against these visionings. It pleased him to think of her
+going with him into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque
+“pup-mobile,” losing herself in the mountains and in his tundras, with
+all the wonder and glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a
+time, like the unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder
+and glory in these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind,
+and the miracle of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night,
+as Mary Standish had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of
+June there were twenty hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight
+between the hours of eleven and one. Sleep was no longer a matter of
+the rising and setting of the sun, but was regulated by the hands of
+the watch. A world frozen to the core for seven months was bursting
+open like a great flower.
+
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety
+people at Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to
+Keewalik, on Kotzebue Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried
+them to Choris Peninsula, where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and
+his huge herd of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but
+tried to hide his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on
+to greater haste. For the first time in months he heard the crackling
+thunder of reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like a wild call
+from his own herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end
+came and his business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It
+was night, as his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta
+of the Kobuk River with him in a lighterage company’s boat. But there
+was no darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the
+Redstone, two hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river
+winds. They had supper together on the shore. After that Paul
+Davidovich turned back with the slow sweep of the current, waving his
+hand until he was out of sight.
+
+Not until the sound of the Russian’s motor-boat was lost in distance
+did Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him.
+At last, after months that had seemed like so many years, he was
+_alone_. North and eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew
+so well, a hundred and fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost
+unmapped, unpeopled, right up to the doors of his range in the slopes
+of the Endicott Mountains. A little cry from his own lips gave him a
+start. It was as if he had called out aloud to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik,
+and to Keok and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his way home and
+would soon be there. Never had this hidden land which he had found for
+himself seemed so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something
+about it that was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to
+that other thing which had become a part of him now. It was holding out
+its arms to him, understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel
+strongly and swiftly the space between. And he was ready to answer its
+call.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or
+sleep. The musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin
+timber of the river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It
+was the tundra he wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his
+face to the stars. He was eager to get away from timber and to feel the
+immeasurable space of the big country, the open country, about him.
+What fool had given to it the name of _Barren Lands_? What idiots
+people were to lie about it in that way on the maps! He strapped his
+pack over his shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren Lands!
+
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight
+hours of sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their
+glory—the Barren Lands of the map-makers, _his_ paradise. On a knoll he
+stood in the golden sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and
+stood with bared head, a whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary
+Standish could have lived to see _this_! He stretched out his arms, as
+if pointing for her eyes to follow, and her name was in his heart and
+whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable the tundras reached ahead
+of him—rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and golden and a glory of
+flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever known. Under his
+feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple violets,
+their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay
+a white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees
+in between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze,
+was the cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few
+days they would be opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody
+of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly
+aglow in the sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird
+instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and
+months when there was no real night. He picked up his pack and went on.
+From a pool hidden in the lush grasses of a distant hollow came to him
+the twilight honking of nesting geese and the quacking content of wild
+ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes of a lone “organ-duck” and
+the plaintive cries of plover, and farther out, where the shadows
+seemed deepening against the rim of the horizon, rose the harsh,
+rolling notes of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And then,
+from a clump of willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush
+whose throat was tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song
+of a robin. _Night!_ Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in
+his face. _Bedtime!_ He looked at his watch.
+
+It was nine o’clock. Nine o’clock, and the flowers still answering to
+the glow of the sun! And the people down there—in the States—called it
+a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the earth, a place
+of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even
+though men called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and
+knowledge. It was humorous. And it was tragic.
+
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in
+this velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup.
+A little creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass
+and spread out his blankets. A great stillness drew in about him,
+broken only by the old squaws and the loons. At eleven o’clock he could
+still see clearly the sleeping water-fowl on the surface of the pool.
+But the stars were appearing. It grew duskier, and the rose-tint of the
+sun faded into purple gloom as pale night drew near—four hours of rest
+that was neither darkness nor day. With a pillow of sedge and grass
+under his head he slept.
+
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the
+pool, with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among
+the grasses and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that
+he traveled steadily into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and
+almost without rest. It seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that
+country where all the bird-life of the world was born, for wherever
+there was water, in the pools and little streams and the hollows
+between the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was a babel of
+sound. Out of the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the
+irresistible pulse of motherhood filling him with its strength and its
+courage, and whispering to him its everlasting message that because of
+the glory and need and faith of life had God created this land of
+twenty-hour day and four-hour twilight. In it, in these days of summer,
+was no abiding place for gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer
+to his home, was a place of darkness which its light could not quite
+enter.
+
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless
+spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision,
+she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At
+times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when
+he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was
+he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in
+spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his
+lips. For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would
+have lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the
+ship. She had died, not for him, but _because_ of him—because, in his
+failure to live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had
+broken down what must have been her last hope and her final faith. If
+he had been less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a
+greater wisdom, she would have been walking with him now, laughing in
+the rose-tinted dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under
+the clear stars—happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things.
+At least so he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her
+even had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to
+fight for. He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains
+that might have bound her, or other inclinations that might have led
+her. He claimed her, now that she was dead, and knew that living he
+would have possessed her. Nothing could have kept him from that. But
+she was gone. And for that he was accountable, and the fifth night he
+lay sleepless under the stars, and like a boy he cried for her with his
+face upon his arm, and when morning came, and he went on, never had the
+world seemed so vast and empty.
+
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he
+traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within
+him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra
+call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their
+happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that. Their love had
+been a part of his life, and the knowledge that his response to this
+love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled him with dread. A
+strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his head, so that
+when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had
+come to these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great
+tundras, and he had built himself a little camp among them. He loved
+the place. It had seemed to him that now and then he must visit the
+forlorn trees to give them cheer and comradeship. His father’s name was
+carved in the bole of the greatest of them all, and under it the date
+and day when the elder Holt had discovered them in a land where no man
+had gone before. And under his father’s name was his mother’s, and
+under that, his own. He had made of the place a sort of shrine, a green
+and sweet-flowered tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song and peace
+in summer and the weird aloneness of it in winter had played their
+parts in the making of his soul. Through many months he had anticipated
+this hour of his home-coming, when in the distance he would see the
+beckoning welcome of the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills
+and frosted peaks of the Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was
+looking at the trees and the mountains, and something was lacking in
+the thrill of them. He came up from the west, between two willow ridges
+through which ran the little creek from the warm springs, and he was
+within a quarter of a mile of them when something stopped him in his
+tracks.
+
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment
+he knew it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him.
+This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was
+shooting firecrackers!
+
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok’s mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness
+Nawadlook never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his
+home-coming with a celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably
+imported a supply of “bing-bangs” from Allakakat or Tanana. The
+oppressive weight inside him lifted, and the smile remained on his
+lips. And then as if commanded by a voice, his eyes turned to the dead
+cottonwood stub which had sentineled the little oasis of trees for many
+years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely in the breeze that
+came with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of
+him, who wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old
+happiness, and he drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that
+grew almost up to the cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would
+walk suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of
+thing that would amaze and delight them.
+
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He
+heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one
+of the “giants” that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her
+pretty ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow,
+and then up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He
+could see Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen
+tree, and as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers
+away from her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his
+sight, watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his
+way so that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen,
+within a dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her,
+and Keok was still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something
+about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and
+seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not
+Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The
+slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the
+glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.
+
+“Keok!”
+
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+
+And then:
+
+“Mary!” he called. “_Mary Standish_!”
+
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt’s face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
+had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on
+the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his
+home-coming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+After that one calling of her name Alan’s voice was dead, and he made
+no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
+temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was
+rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of
+wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed
+to pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there,
+_alive!_ He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color
+come into it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log
+and came toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it
+seemed a long time to Alan.
+
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating
+up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
+away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must
+have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and
+made an effort to recover himself.
+
+“You almost frightened me,” she said. “We have been expecting you and
+watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn’t see you.”
+
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same
+voice, unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him
+yesterday and with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again
+today. It was impossible for him to realize in these moments the
+immeasurable distance that lay between their viewpoints. He was simply
+Alan Holt—she was the dead risen to life. Many times in his grief he
+had visualized what he would do if some miracle could bring her back to
+him like this; he had thought of taking her in his arms and never
+letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to pass, and she was
+within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to speak.
+
+“You—Mary Standish!” he said at last. “I thought—”
+
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another
+individual within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack
+of physical expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout
+with joy, yet the directing soul of action in him was stricken. She
+touched his arm hesitatingly.
+
+“I didn’t think you would care,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t
+mind—if I came up here.”
+
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain,
+and the touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard
+himself cry out, a strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his
+breast. He held her close, crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers
+buried in her hair, her slender body almost broken in his arms. She was
+alive—she had come back to him—and he forgot everything in these blind
+moments but that great truth which was sweeping over him in a glorious
+inundation. Then, suddenly, he found that she was fighting him,
+struggling to free herself and putting her hands against his face in
+her efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing but her
+eyes, and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of finding—but
+horror. It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms relaxed.
+She staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her
+breath, her face very white.
+
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at
+him, as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had
+not taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips
+showing the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held
+out his hands mutely.
+
+“You think—I came here for _that?_” she panted.
+
+“No,” he said. “Forgive me. I am sorry.”
+
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling
+of shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at
+him, which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her
+back against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things
+together. Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him
+was centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
+living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
+to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
+weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
+up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
+flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
+face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
+too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
+astonishment growing in her eyes.
+
+“You are alive,” he said, giving voice again to the one thought
+pounding in his brain. “_Alive!_”
+
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
+of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to the
+girl.
+
+“Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?” she asked.
+
+“Your letter? At Nome?” He repeated the words, shaking his head. “No.”
+
+“And all this time—you have been thinking—I was dead?”
+
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form
+of speech.
+
+“I wrote you there,” she said. “I wrote the letter before I jumped into
+the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle’s ship.”
+
+“I didn’t get it.”
+
+“You didn’t get it?” There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he
+had observed it, understanding.
+
+“Then you didn’t mean that just now? You didn’t intend to do it? It was
+because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief
+to find me alive. That was it, wasn’t it?”
+
+Stupidly he nodded again. “Yes, it was a great relief.”
+
+“You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn’t help me,” she went
+on. “So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I
+wrote. To all the world but you I am dead—to Rossland, Captain Rifle,
+everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young
+Thlinkit Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I
+leaped in, and picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me
+ashore while the boats were making their search.”
+
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side
+of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few
+moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had
+done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never
+happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made
+it impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.
+
+“Now I am here,” she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. “I
+didn’t think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind
+afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the _Nome_. And
+so—I am your guest, Mr. Holt.”
+
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she
+smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she
+belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him
+permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pass away from
+him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His
+spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during
+the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of
+things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his
+hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her
+own in them confidently.
+
+“It was like a bolt of lightning,” he said, his voice free at last and
+trembling. “Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of you,
+and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find
+you alive. And _here!_”
+
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But
+reason had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+
+“It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake
+up and find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the other
+things—”
+
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of
+tears at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a
+lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in
+her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+
+“I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step,” he
+said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come. “Then
+I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!”
+
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+
+“And when I found you here, and you didn’t fade away like a ghost, I
+thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been
+wrong, I guess, or I wouldn’t have done _that_. You see, it puzzled me
+that a ghost should be setting off firecrackers—and I suppose that was
+the first impulse I had of making sure you were real.”
+
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a
+clear, wild voice with a sweet trill in it. “_Maa-rie!_” it called.
+“_Maa-rie!_”
+
+“Supper,” nodded the girl. “You are just in time. And then we are going
+home in the twilight.”
+
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his
+place as home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft
+coils of her hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and
+soul filled only with the beauty of her slim figure—a glory of life
+where for a long time he had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came
+into an open, soft with grass and strewn with flowers, and in this open
+a man was kneeling beside a fire no larger than his two hands, and at
+his side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair
+rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who
+it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little
+screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was
+Keok. She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire
+and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild
+creature in the manner of her coming, was only a moment behind. And
+then he was shaking hands with Stampede, and Keok had slipped down
+among the flowers and was crying. That was like Keok. She always cried
+when he went away, and cried when he returned; and then, in another
+moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed she no
+longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in
+doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her
+own.
+
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of
+way. No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and
+nerves were fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming
+back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an
+unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities
+as they assembled themselves. In the edge of the tundra beyond the
+cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes
+which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads. He drew off his pack
+as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks. Nawadlook
+was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began to fill a
+pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today then
+tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had
+experienced shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back
+and dragged the old Alan Holt into existence again. It was like
+bringing an intelligence out of darkness into light.
+
+It was difficult for him—afterward—to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper
+things between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful
+Mary Standish who had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon
+of the _Nome_.
+
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of
+the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the
+tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which
+had been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok’s
+suggestion that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had
+noticed how quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea. She had
+smiled at him as she left, and a little farther out had waved her hand
+at him, as Keok and Nawadlook both had done, but not another word had
+passed between them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of
+sunset Alan stood watching them, and would have stared without speech
+until they were out of sight, if Stampede’s fingers had not gripped his
+arm.
+
+“Now, go to it, Alan,” he said. “I’m ready. Give me hell!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that
+Stampede brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and
+awakening inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man’s
+invitation.
+
+“I’ve been a damn fool,” he confessed. “And I’m waiting.”
+
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things
+began to rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he
+had been one. His mind went back to the _Nome_. It seemed only a few
+hours ago—only yesterday—that the girl had so artfully deceived them
+all, and he had gone through hell because of that deception. The
+trickery had been simple, and exceedingly clever because of its
+simplicity; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage, now that
+he clearly understood that at no time had she wanted to die.
+
+“I wonder,” he said, “why she did a thing like that?”
+
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan’s mind. “I
+couldn’t keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree.” And he added,
+“The little witch even threatened to shoot me!”
+
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. “Begin, Alan. I’m waiting.
+Go the limit.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin’ her in the bush. You can’t take it out of _her_ hide, can
+you?”
+
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent.
+Mary Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a
+quarter of a mile away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They
+trotted up a low ridge and disappeared.
+
+“It’s none of my business,” persisted Stampede, “but you didn’t seem to
+expect her—”
+
+“You’re right,” interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack. “I didn’t
+expect her. I thought she was dead.”
+
+A low whistle escaped Stampede’s lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his
+shoulders. Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the
+girl who had jumped overboard from the _Nome_, and if she had kept her
+secret, it was not his business just now to explain, even though he
+guessed that Stampede’s quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A
+light was beginning to dispel the little man’s bewilderment as they
+started toward the Range. He had seen Mary Standish frequently aboard
+the _Nome_; a number of times he had observed her in Alan’s company,
+and he knew of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore,
+if Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few
+hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into
+the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to
+discover this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+
+“It beats the devil!” he exclaimed suddenly.
+
+“It does,” agreed Alan.
+
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the
+happiness that possessed him, and questions which he had found no
+interest in asking when aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling
+force. Why was it so tragically important to Mary Standish that the
+world should believe her dead? What was it that had driven her to
+appeal to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What was her
+mysterious association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska’s deadliest
+enemy, John Graham—the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance if
+opportunity ever came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with
+its insistence, rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible
+for him to make. Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained
+silent in the lengthening twilight, while Alan’s mind struggled to
+bring coherence and reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt.
+Why had she come to _his_ cabin aboard the _Nome_? Why had she played
+him with such conspicuous intent against Rossland, and why—in the
+end—had she preceded him to his home in the tundras? It was this
+question which persisted, never for an instant swept aside by the
+others. She had not come because of love for him. In a brutal sort of
+way he had proved that, for when he had taken her in his arms, he had
+seen distress and fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and
+more mysterious force had driven her.
+
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon
+him. He was like a man who had found life after a period of something
+that was worse than death, and with his happiness he felt himself
+twisted upon an upheaval of conflicting sensations and half convictions
+out of which, in spite of his effort to hold it back, suspicion began
+to creep like a shadow. But it was not the sort of suspicion to cool
+the thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he was quite ready to
+concede that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her flight from
+Seattle had been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had
+happened aboard ship was further proof, and her presence at his range a
+final one. Forces had driven her which it had been impossible for her
+to combat, and in desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had
+chosen him out of all the world to help her; she believed in him; she
+had faith that with him no harm could come, and his muscles tightened
+with sudden desire to fight for her.
+
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras
+and the soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He
+strained his eyes to catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when
+they came up out of hollows to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of
+evening were drawing closer, and he looked in vain. Bird-song grew
+softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and pools; the fire of the
+sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling of vivid rose
+and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet day,
+and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish.
+What had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with
+the thrilling fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her
+would be explained tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in
+him. Now that she had so utterly placed herself under his protection,
+she would tell him what she had not dared to disclose aboard the
+_Nome_. So he thought only of the silvery distance of twilight that
+separated them, and spoke at last to Stampede.
+
+“I’m rather glad you brought her,” he said.
+
+“I didn’t bring her,” protested Stampede. “She _came_.” He shrugged his
+shoulders with a grunt. “And furthermore I didn’t manage it. She did
+that herself. She didn’t come with me. I came with _her_.”
+
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he
+glared fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed
+him. Alan saw it and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His
+keen vision and sense of humor were returning.
+
+“How did it happen?”
+
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and
+drew in a deep breath.
+
+“First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn’t get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn’t rain. You couldn’t call it
+that, Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three
+other oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming,
+coach floating, driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I
+got in for Chitina. There was one other climbed in after me, and I
+wondered what sort of fool he was. I said something about being starved
+or I’d have hung to the train. The other didn’t answer. Then I began to
+swear. I did, Alan. I cursed terrible. Swore at the Government for
+building such a road, swore at the rain, an’ I swore at myself for not
+bringin’ along grub. I said my belly was as empty as a shot-off
+cartridge, and I said it good an’ loud. I was mad. Then a big flash of
+lightning lit up the coach. Alan, it was _her_ sittin’ there with a box
+in her lap, facing me, drippin’ wet, her eyes shining—and she was
+smiling at me! Yessir, _smiling_.”
+
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+
+Alan stared at him in amazement. “The fourth night—after—” He caught
+himself. “Go on, Stampede!”
+
+“I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin’ to sneak
+out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin’ come again. But it
+caught me. An’ there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her saying
+she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An’ she called me Stampede, like
+she’d known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an’ rocking
+and the thunder an’ lightning an’ rain piling up against each other
+like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me.
+She did that, Alan—_fed_ me. When the lightning fired up, I could see
+her eyes shining and her lips smilin’ as if all that hell about us made
+her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how
+happy she was that I was goin’ her way. _Her_ way, mind you, Alan, not
+_mine._ And that’s just the way she’s kept me goin’ up to the minute
+you hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!”
+
+He lighted his pipe again. “Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?”
+
+“She didn’t,” replied Alan.
+
+“But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the
+happiest moment of her life, because _she_ was on her way up to your
+range, and I’d be such jolly good company for her. ‘Jolly good’—them
+were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew she was coming
+up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand
+surprise. Said it was possible she’d buy your range, and she wanted to
+look it over before you arrived. An’ it seems queer I can’t remember
+anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and
+Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin’ a million
+questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to,
+Alan—but everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and
+Fairbanks, and she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I’d have
+eat soap out of her hand if she’d offered it to me. Then, sort of sly
+and soft-like, she began asking questions about John Graham—and I woke
+up.”
+
+“John Graham!” Alan repeated the name.
+
+“Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin’ aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please—with her hand on my arm—she
+said she wasn’t quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain’t a lie what
+I’m going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a
+wonderful idea she had for surprisin’ _you_. Said she knew you would
+return to the Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some
+fireworks. Said you was such a good American you’d be disappointed if
+you didn’t have ’em. So she took me in a store an’ bought it out. Asked
+the man what he’d take for everything in his joint that had powder in
+it. Five hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk
+something out of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar
+bills in it an inch think. Then she asked _me_ to get them firecrackers
+’n’ wheels ’n’ skyrockets ’n’ balloons ’n’ other stuff down to the
+boat, and she asked me just as if I was a sweet little boy who’d be
+tickled to death to do it!”
+
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne
+in secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his
+words upon his companion. Incredulity shot into Alan’s eyes, and the
+humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that
+Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination. Yet what he had told him
+seemed impossible. Mary Standish had come aboard the _Nome_ a fugitive.
+All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and
+these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea.
+How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at
+Fairbanks as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian
+had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night
+she played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died?
+And was this money—possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle—the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It
+was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was
+cut under his father’s in the old cottonwood tree.
+
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: “You don’t seem
+interested, Alan. But I’m going on, or I’ll bust. I’ve got to tell you
+what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I
+won’t say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!”
+
+“Go on,” urged Alan. “I’m interested.”
+
+“I got ’em on the boat,” continued Stampede viciously. “And she with me
+every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not letting me out
+of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one hole to
+go in an’ come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a little
+shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin’
+something, an’ I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin’ to do with it, she said, ‘Stampede, that’s
+for you,’ an’ when I went to thank her, she said: ‘No, I don’t mean it
+that way. I mean that if you try to run away from me again I’m going to
+fill you full of holes.’ She said that! Threatened me. Then she bought
+me a new outfit from toe to summit—boots, pants, shirt, hat _and_ a
+necktie! And I didn’t say a word, not a word. She just led me in an’
+bought what she wanted and made me put ’em on.”
+
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on
+his pipe. “I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana,” he
+half groaned. “Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote
+the luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. ‘You’re
+goin’ to have a rest, Stampede,’ she says to me, smiling so cool and
+sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. ‘All you’ve got to do is show
+us the way and carry the bums.’ ‘Carry the what?’ I asks. ‘The bums,’
+she says, an’ then she explains that a bum is a thing filled with
+powder which makes a terrible racket when it goes off. So I took the
+bums, and the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and dropped
+out. He had the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we
+whacked up his load among us. I couldn’t stand up straight when we
+camped. We had crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range.
+And _would_ she let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she
+wouldn’t! And all the time while they was puffing an’ panting them
+Indians was worshipin’ her with their eyes. The last day, when we
+camped with the Range almost in sight, she drew ’em all up in a circle
+about her and gave ’em each a handful of money above their pay. ‘That’s
+because I love you,’ she says, and then she begins asking them funny
+questions. Did they have wives and children? Were they ever hungry? Did
+they ever know about any of their people starving to death? And just
+_why_ did they starve? And, Alan, so help me thunder if them Indians
+didn’t talk! Never heard Indians tell so much. And in the end she asked
+them the funniest question of all, asked them if they’d heard of a man
+named John Graham. One of them had, and afterward I saw her talking a
+long time with him alone, and when she come back to me, her eyes were
+sort of burning up, and she didn’t say good night when she went into
+her tent. That’s all, Alan, except—”
+
+“Except what, Stampede?” said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw
+a flash of humor in the little man’s eyes.
+
+“Except that she’s done with everyone on the Range just what she did
+with me between Chitina and here,” he said. “Alan, if she wants to say
+the word, why, _you_ ain’t boss any more, that’s all. She’s been there
+ten days, and you won’t know the place. It’s all done up in flags,
+waiting for you. She an’ Nawadlook and Keok are running everything but
+the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her, and the men—” He
+chuckled again. “Why, the men even go to the Sunday school she’s
+started! I went. Nawadlook sings.”
+
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, “Alan,
+you’ve been a big fool.”
+
+“I know it, Stampede.”
+
+“She’s a—a flower, Alan. She’s worth more than all the gold in the
+world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it’s too late
+now. I’m warnin’ you.”
+
+“I don’t quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?”
+
+“Because she likes me,” declared Stampede a bit fiercely. “I’m after
+her myself, Alan. You can’t butt in now.”
+
+“Great Scott!” gasped Alan. “You mean that Mary Standish—”
+
+“I’m not talking about Mary Standish,” said Stampede. “It’s Nawadlook.
+If it wasn’t for my whiskers—”
+
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale
+gloom ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long
+distance away.
+
+“One of them cussed bums,” he explained. “That’s why they hurried on
+ahead of us, Alan. _She_ says this Fourth of July celebration is going
+to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?”
+
+“I wonder,” said Alan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named
+Ghost Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running
+down from the foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and
+in the depths lay abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn
+smooth by reindeer and caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet
+below the twilight of the plains, Alan dropped on his knees beside a
+little spring that he groped for among the stones, and as he drank he
+could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of water up and down the
+kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls and eternally
+dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede’s face in the glow of
+another match, and the little man’s eyes were staring into the black
+chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+
+“Alan, you’ve been up this gorge?”
+
+“It’s a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill our
+fawns,” replied Alan. “I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is supposed to
+be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will enter
+it. The bones of dead men lie up there.”
+
+“Never prospected it?” persisted Stampede.
+
+“Never.”
+
+Alan heard the other’s grunt of disgust.
+
+“You’re reindeer-crazy,” he grumbled. “There’s gold in this canyon.
+Twice I’ve found it where there were dead men’s bones. They bring me
+good luck.”
+
+“But these were Eskimos. They didn’t come for gold.”
+
+“I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I’m
+telling you there wasn’t any of it left out of her when she was born!”
+He was silent for a moment, and then added: “When we came to that
+dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin’ there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn’t screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until
+it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and
+soppy with the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to
+pieces, and I guess I would if she hadn’t put a hand on my gun. An’
+with a funny little smile she says: ‘Don’t do it, Stampede. It makes me
+think of someone I know—and I wouldn’t want you to shoot him.’ Darned
+funny thing to say, wasn’t it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now,
+who the devil could look like a rotten skull?”
+
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They
+climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the
+tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a
+low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were
+lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge they looked out
+into a vast sweep of tundra which ran in among the out-guarding billows
+and hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form of a wide, semicircular
+bay. Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range, and scarcely
+had they reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its holster.
+Twice he blazed in the air.
+
+“Orders,” he said a little sheepishly. “Orders, Alan!”
+
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from
+beyond the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra.
+It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a
+sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and
+all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it
+very soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under
+their feet.
+
+“Bums!” growled Stampede. “She’s got Chink lanterns hanging up all
+about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found there
+was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!”
+
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until
+it seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then
+burst into innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed
+away with his forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied
+the magazine of his gun, the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning
+the chorus of sound that came from the range. A second rocket answered
+them. Two columns of flame leaped up from the earth as huge fires
+gained headway, and Alan could hear the shrill chorus of children’s
+voices mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All the people of his
+range were there. They had come in from the timber-naked plateaux and
+high ranges where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying shacks
+of the tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration
+of effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it
+all! He knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that
+fact from choking up his heart a little.
+
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying—that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for
+the big fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms
+were booming their hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his
+steps. Over a little knoll, and he was looking at the buildings of the
+range, wildly excited figures running about, women and children
+flinging moss on the fires, the tom-tom beaters squatted in a
+half-circle facing the direction from which he would come, and fifty
+Chinese lanterns swinging in the soft night-breeze.
+
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of
+them. Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children.
+Nawadlook and Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for
+him in any fight or stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede
+his rifle and hastened on, determined to keep his eyes from questing
+for Mary Standish in these first minutes of his return. He sounded the
+tundra call, and men, women, and little children came running to meet
+him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the beaters leaped to
+their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of voice,
+laughter, children’s squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands with
+both his own—hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men’s shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty
+around him counting the children. First, last, and always these were
+_his people_. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power
+and possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great
+family, and he shook hands twice and three times with the same men and
+women, and lifted the same children from the arms of delighted mothers,
+and cried out greetings and familiarities with an abandon which a few
+minutes ago knowledge of Mary Standish’s presence would have tempered.
+Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his
+cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch,
+stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna’s head disappeared, and there
+came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered
+about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their
+semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his
+cabin came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the
+one thing intended for his understanding alone. It was playing “When
+Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
+
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was
+alone. She was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear,
+the quiet pallor of her face, and the strain and repression which had
+seemed to be a part of her were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it
+was not with voice or action that she revealed herself. It was in her
+eyes, the flush of her cheeks and lips, the poise of her slim body as
+she waited for him. A thought flashed upon him that for a space she had
+forgotten herself and the shadow which had driven her to leap into the
+sea.
+
+“It is splendid!” she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. “I didn’t guess how badly they wanted you back. It
+must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that.”
+
+“And I thank you for your part,” he replied. “Stampede has told me. It
+was quite a bit of trouble, wasn’t it, with nothing more than the hope
+of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?” He nodded at the half-dozen
+flags over his cabin. “They’re rather pretty.”
+
+“It was no trouble. And I hope you don’t mind. It has been great fun.”
+
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It
+seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty
+to speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+
+“Yes, I do mind,” he said. “I mind so much that I wouldn’t trade what
+has happened for all the gold in these mountains. I’m sorry because of
+what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn’t trade that,
+either. I’m glad you’re alive. I’m glad you’re here. But something is
+missing. You know what it is. You must tell me about yourself. It is
+the only fair thing for you to do now.”
+
+She touched his arm with her hand. “Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please—let us wait.”
+
+“And then—tomorrow—”
+
+“It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine—just you—and your people—and
+their happiness.” He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned
+by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers. She
+nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin. “I am with Keok and
+Nawadlook. They have given me a home.” And then swiftly she added, “I
+don’t think you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!”
+
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on
+his arm she drew away from him. His face did not show his
+disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him.
+
+“Your people are expecting things of you,” she said. “A little later,
+if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms.”
+
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him
+and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart
+beating faster. She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not
+afraid of tomorrow. Thought of it and the questions he would ask did
+not frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away
+from himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood. It was as if
+something in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had
+dreamed through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and
+that possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a
+little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him. Surely
+he would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to him
+tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and
+he could not let her go away from him again.
+
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to
+discover himself doing things which he had never done before. His
+nature was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or
+less detached. At his people’s dances it was his habit to stand on the
+side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part.
+His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a
+new sense of freedom and a new desire to give physical expression to
+something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was kicking his feet and
+howling with the men, while the women dancers went through the muscular
+movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan. They had
+always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place between
+Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half
+breathless, did he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok
+was frankly amazed. Mary Standish’s eyes were shining, and she clapped
+her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and
+waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the
+balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made
+only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking,
+shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic
+matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never
+had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he
+had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table
+in the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack
+filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor—and
+then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In
+place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new
+covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk
+were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington
+and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against
+the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags.
+They recalled Alan’s mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary
+Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an
+American. Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the
+little flags. There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them
+there. She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them
+waiting the hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana,
+where she had purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He
+went into his bedroom and found new curtains at the window, a new
+coverlet on his bed, and a pair of red morocco slippers that he had
+never seen before. He took them up in his hands and laughed when he saw
+how she had misjudged the size of his feet.
+
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok’s phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was
+gone. Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing
+stillness drew him to the window from which he could see the cabin
+where lived Keok and Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and
+shriveled Sokwenna. It was there Mary Standish had said she was
+staying. For a long time Alan watched it while the final sounds of the
+night drifted away into utter silence.
+
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer
+to his invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly
+his eyes traveled about the room.
+
+“Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you.”
+
+“They seemed to be. I’m happy to be home again.”
+
+“Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room.”
+
+“I guessed as much,” replied Alan. “Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped
+her.”
+
+“Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an’ thoughtful, hasn’t she?”
+
+“And somewhat unusual,” added Alan.
+
+“And she is pretty.”
+
+“Most decidedly so.”
+
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede’s eyes. He twisted nervously in
+his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+
+“What’s on your mind, Stampede?”
+
+“Hell, mostly,” shot back Stampede with sudden desperation. “I’ve come
+loaded down with a dirty job, and I’ve kept it back this long because I
+didn’t want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to
+himself what he knows about a woman, but I’m thinking this is a little
+different. I hate to do it. I’d rather take the chance of a snake-bite.
+But you’d shoot me if you knew I was keeping it to myself.”
+
+“Keeping what to yourself?”
+
+“The truth, Alan. It’s up to me to tell you what I know about this
+young woman who calls herself Mary Standish.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede’s face, and the stolid effort
+he was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put
+into words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion’s
+promised disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of
+anticipation and relief. What he had passed through recently had burned
+out of him a certain demand upon human ethics which had been almost
+callous in its insistence, and while he believed that something very
+real and very stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary Standish
+north, he was now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with
+any force of circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to
+know the truth, yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself
+must tell it to him, and the fact that Stampede had in some way
+discovered this truth, and was about to make disclosure of it, was a
+tremendous lightening of the situation.
+
+“Go on,” he said at last. “What do you know about Mary Standish?”
+
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes. “It’s
+rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way I’m goin’ to
+oughta be shot, and if it was anything else—_anything_—I’d keep it to
+myself. But you’ve got to know. And you can’t understand just how
+rotten it is, either; you haven’t ridden in a coach with her during a
+storm that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an’ you haven’t hit the
+trail with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you’d
+done that, Alan, you’d feel like killing a man who said anything
+against her.”
+
+“I’m not inquiring into your personal affairs,” reminded Alan. “It’s
+your own business.”
+
+“That’s the trouble,” protested Stampede. “It’s not my business. It’s
+yours. If I’d guessed the truth before we hit the Range, everything
+would have been different. I’d have rid myself of her some way. But I
+didn’t find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok’s
+music machine to their cabin. I’ve been trying to make up my mind what
+to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States,
+a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody’s bunco pigeon chased by the
+police—almost anything—we could forgive her. Even if she’d shot up
+somebody—” He made a gesture of despair. “But she didn’t. She’s worse
+than that!”
+
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+
+“She’s one of John Graham’s tools sent up here to sneak and spy on
+you,” he finished desperately. “I’m sorry—but I’ve got the proof.”
+
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm
+opened, and when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them.
+“Found it on the floor when I took the phonograph back,” he explained.
+“It was twisted up hard. Don’t know why I unrolled it. Just chance.”
+
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper,
+watching closely the slight tensing of the other’s face. After a moment
+Alan dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There
+was no longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been
+accepted as a guest. Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the
+sudden and almost imperceptible shrug of Alan’s shoulders.
+
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. “Rather a
+missing link, isn’t it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I’m
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost—you didn’t tell me.”
+
+“Almost,” admitted Stampede.
+
+“And I wouldn’t have blamed you. She’s that kind—the kind that makes
+you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I’m going to believe
+that paper is a lie—until tomorrow. Will you take a message to Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I’m having breakfast at seven. Tell
+them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at eight. Later
+I’m going up into the foothills to look over the herds.”
+
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan’s part, and it was just
+the way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather
+ashamed of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of
+course they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn’t a shooting
+business—yet. But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note
+on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of
+something like that was in Alan’s eyes.
+
+He opened the door. “I’ll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight.
+Good night, Alan!”
+
+“Good night!”
+
+Alan watched Stampede’s figure until it had disappeared before he
+closed the door.
+
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the
+anxiety which the prospector’s unexpected revealment had aroused in
+him. The other’s footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the
+paper in his hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of
+ordinary business size and had been carelessly torn from the larger
+part of the page, so that nothing more than the signature and half a
+dozen lines of writing in a man’s heavy script remained.
+
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have
+possessed, read as follows:
+
+“_—If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing facts
+and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands within
+a year_.”
+
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John
+Graham.
+
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore
+for its maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself
+like a fibrous plant through all his plans for the future, had made of
+it an unforgetable writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand
+words written by his enemy, and the man who had been his father’s
+enemy, all that he had kept away from Stampede’s sharp eyes blazed in a
+sudden fury in his face. He dropped the paper as if it had been a thing
+unclean, and his hands clenched until his knuckles snapped in the
+stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the window through which a
+few moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary Standish’s
+cabin.
+
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made
+in the one hour of his father’s triumph—that hour in which the elder
+Holt might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not
+revolted in the last of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had
+witnessed. And Mary Standish was the instrument he had chosen to work
+his ends!
+
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend
+the absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or
+still the tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense
+to deny the fact that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary
+Standish; inadvertently she had kept it, had finally attempted to
+destroy it, and Stampede, by chance, had discovered a small but
+convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought he pieced together
+things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from the
+beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose,
+her boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor
+to work herself into his confidence—and with John Graham’s signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and
+irrefutable evidence. The “industry” which Graham had referred to could
+mean only his own and Carl Lomen’s, the reindeer industry which they
+had built up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his
+beef-baron friends were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this
+game of destruction clever Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+
+_But why had she leaped into the sea?_
+
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan’s brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against
+his arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad
+convictions that possessed him. If Mary Standish’s mission was to pave
+the way for his ruin, and if she was John Graham’s agent sent for that
+purpose, what reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting
+to give the world the impression that she had ended her life at sea?
+Surely such an act could in no way have been related with any plot
+which she might have had against him! In building up this structure of
+her defense he made no effort to sever her relationship with John
+Graham; that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her actions, and many
+of the things she had said were links inevitably associating her with
+his enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John
+Graham, was working _against_ him? Could some conflict between them
+have been the reason for her flight aboard the _Nome_, and was it
+because she discovered Rossland there—John Graham’s most trusted
+servant—that she formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what
+he knew to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated
+John Graham now, had at one time—and not very long ago—been an
+instrument of his trust; the letter he had written to her was positive
+proof of that. What it was that had caused a possible split between
+them and had inspired her flight from Seattle, and, later, her effort
+to bury a past under the fraud of a make-believe death, he might never
+learn, and just now he had no very great desire to look entirely into
+the whole truth of the matter. It was enough to know that of the past,
+and of the things that happened, she had been afraid, and it was in the
+desperation of this fear, with Graham’s cleverest agent at her heels,
+that she had appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win him to
+her assistance, had taken the matter so dramatically into her own
+hands. And within that same hour a nearly successful attempt had been
+made upon Rossland’s life. Of course the facts had shown that she could
+not have been directly responsible for his injury, but it was a
+haunting thing to remember as happening almost simultaneously with her
+disappearance into the sea.
+
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the
+night. Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper
+lanterns, and he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary
+Standish had placed over his cabin. There was something comforting in
+the sound, a solace to the dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a
+reminder of their day in Skagway when she had walked at his side with
+her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes and face filled with
+the inspiration of the mountains.
+
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously
+admirable about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine
+loveliness. She had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by
+courage—a courage which he would have been compelled to respect even in
+a man like John Graham, and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed
+to him as a virtue to be laid up apart and aside from any of the
+motives which might be directing it. From the beginning it had been a
+bewildering part of her—a clean, swift, unhesitating courage that had
+leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment would have hung
+waveringly; that one courage in all the world—a woman’s courage—which
+finds in the effort of its achievement no obstacle too high and no
+abyss too wide though death waits with outreaching arms on the other
+side. And, surely, where there had been all this, there must also have
+been some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of physical
+gain, or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan’s lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above
+his cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede’s discovery had
+proclaimed her to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of
+reasoning on their part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and
+the injustice of their suspicions. He tried to force the conviction
+upon himself, and reentering the cabin he went to bed, still telling
+himself that a great lie had built itself up out of nothing, and that
+the God of all things was good to him because Mary Standish was alive,
+and not dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the
+preceding day did not make him overreach the time he had set for
+himself, and he was up at six o’clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her
+old habits, and a tub filled with cold water was waiting for him. He
+bathed, shaved himself, put on fresh clothes, and promptly at seven was
+at breakfast. The table at which he ordinarily sat alone was in a
+little room with double windows, through which, as he enjoyed his
+meals, he could see most of the habitations of the range. Unlike the
+average Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber brought
+down from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of
+flowers lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a
+little knoll that looked down into one of the watered hollows of the
+tundra, was Sokwenna’s cabin. Because Sokwenna was the “old man” of the
+community and therefore the wisest—and because with him lived his
+foster-daughters, Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan’s tribal
+colony—Sokwenna’s cabin was next to Alan’s in size. And Alan, looking
+at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than
+half-way between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent
+miracle of rising in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan
+knew the men-folk of the village had departed hours ago for the distant
+herds. Always, when the reindeer drifted into the higher and cooler
+feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was this apparent abandonment,
+and after last night’s celebration the women and children were not yet
+awake to the activities of the long day, where the rising and setting
+of the sun meant so little.
+
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna’s cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the
+sun on the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes,
+he knew it was Mary Standish.
+
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For
+half an hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in
+preparation for the coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they
+arrived, the minute hand of his watch was at the hour of eight.
+
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by
+the smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they
+spread out the papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion,
+set down a record of the winter’s happenings. Tautuk’s voice, slow and
+very deliberate in its unfailing effort to master English without a
+slip, had in it a subdued note of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk
+Toolik, who was quick and staccato in his manner of speech, using
+sentences seldom of greater length than three or four words, and who
+picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with pride as he
+lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound that
+always sent a chill up Alan’s back.
+
+“A ver’ fine and prosper’ year,” said Tautuk in response to Alan’s
+first question as to general conditions. “We bean ver’ fortunate.”
+
+“One hell-good year,” backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a
+gun. “Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year—she peach!”
+
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the
+affairs of the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through
+achievement, and the pioneer’s pride in marking a new frontier with the
+creative forces of success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the
+passing of time. A hundred questions he had to ask, and the tongues of
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded with the things they desired to
+tell him. Their voices filled the room with a paean of triumph. His
+herds had increased by a thousand head during the fawning months of
+April and May, and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild,
+woodland caribou had produced a hundred calves of the super-animal
+whose flesh was bound to fill the markets of the States within a few
+years. Never had the moss been thicker under the winter snow; there had
+been no destructive fires; soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records
+had been beaten, and dairying in the edge of the Arctic was no longer
+an experiment, but an established fact, for Tautuk now had seven deer
+giving a pint and a half of milk each twice a day, nearly as rich as
+the best of cream from cattle, and more than twenty that were
+delivering from a cupful to a pint at a milking. And to this Amuk
+Toolik added the amazing record of their running-deer, Kauk, the
+three-year-old, had drawn a sledge five miles over unbeaten snow in
+thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds; Kauk and Olo, in team, had
+drawn the same sledge ten miles in twenty-six minutes and forty
+seconds, and one day he had driven the two ninety-eight miles in a
+mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka, the first of their
+inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and heavier beasts, he had
+drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three consecutive days at the
+rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks, Tanana, and the ranges of
+the Seward Peninsula agents of the swiftly spreading industry had
+offered as high as a hundred and ten dollars a head for breeding stock
+with the blood of the woodland caribou, and of these native and larger
+caribou of the tundras and forests seven young bulls and nine female
+calves had been captured and added to their own propagative forces.
+
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the
+way of ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the
+vast expanse of unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness
+of a hundred million people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory
+and reward of the conqueror through such achievement as this; a land
+betrayed rising at last out of the slime of political greed and
+ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening, that was destined in
+his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was Alaska rising
+up slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep, mountain-sealed
+forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth coming
+into possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in
+that long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its
+ultimate ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with
+the song of success.
+
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he
+looked at his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished
+with his papers and books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk’s voice
+coming from the dark mouth of the underground icebox dug into the
+frozen subsoil of the tundra, and pausing at the glimmer of his old
+housekeeper’s candle, he turned aside, descended the few steps, and
+entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight feet under the
+surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for some
+hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when
+alone, but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself
+that the tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness
+and luxuriance, never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below
+which point remained the icy cold placed there so long ago that “even
+the spirits did not know.” He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring
+time and faith in terms of “spirits,” which she had never quite given
+up for the missionaries, and was about to make his presence known when
+a voice interrupted him, so close at his side that the speaker,
+concealed in the shadow of the wall, could have reached out a hand and
+touched him.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Holt!”
+
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in
+the gloom.
+
+“Good morning,” he replied. “I was on my way to your place when
+Wegaruk’s voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems like a
+friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak,
+Mammy?” he called.
+
+Wegaruk’s strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the
+light from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell
+clearly upon Mary Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was
+as if a spotlight had been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit
+of darkness, and something about her, which was not her prettiness or
+the beauty that was in her eyes and hair, sent a sudden and
+unaccountable thrill through Alan. It remained with him when they drew
+back out of gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving Wegaruk
+to snuff her tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did
+not leave him when they walked over the tundra together toward
+Sokwenna’s cabin. It was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which
+it was impossible for him to subdue or explain; something which he knew
+he should understand but could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge
+of this mystery was in the girl’s face, glowing in a gentle
+embarrassment, as she told him she had been expecting him, and that
+Keok and Nawadlook had given up the cabin to them, so that he might
+question her uninterrupted. But with this soft flush of her uneasiness,
+revealing itself in her eyes and cheeks, he saw neither fear nor
+hesitation.
+
+In the “big room” of Sokwenna’s cabin, which was patterned after his
+own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him to
+speak.
+
+“You love flowers,” he said lamely. “I want to thank you for the
+flowers you placed in my cabin. And the other things.”
+
+“Flowers are a habit with me,” she replied, “and I have never seen such
+flowers as these. Flowers—and birds. I never dreamed that there were so
+many up here.”
+
+“Nor the world,” he added. “It is ignorant of Alaska.”
+
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something
+about her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely
+thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from
+his eyes. The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew
+a little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there
+was no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no
+sign that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In
+this moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that
+she was like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin,
+and who had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him
+to achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining
+hair, her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its
+little heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now
+lay in the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and
+the pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together
+with an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and
+in sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:
+
+“Mary Standish, in God’s name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
+come up here!”
+
+“I have come,” she said, looking at him steadily, “because I know that
+a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her.”
+
+“But you didn’t know that—not until—the cottonwoods!” he protested.
+
+“Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick’s cabin.”
+
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at
+her like a man who had been struck, while intelligence—a dawning
+reason—an understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning,
+sent the still greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an
+exclamation of amazement.
+
+“You were at Ellen McCormick’s! She gave you—_that!_”
+
+She nodded. “Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don’t
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I
+am going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you
+returned from searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn’t know.
+But _she_ did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a
+woman, would promise not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a
+great deal of my faith, and my courage was about gone, and I was afraid
+of you.”
+
+“Afraid of me?”
+
+“Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick
+when she asked you—that question; and when you answered as you did, I
+was like stone. I was amazed and didn’t believe, for I was certain that
+after what had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a
+peculiar sense of honor were making the search for me. Not until two
+days later, when your letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we read
+them—”
+
+“You opened both?”
+
+“Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found—and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn’t exactly fair, but you
+couldn’t expect two women to resist a temptation like that. And—_I
+wanted to know_.”
+
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the
+confession. Her gaze met Alan’s with beautiful steadiness.
+
+“And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give
+me a fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my
+courage—and in the end you will drive me away—”
+
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering
+eyes, tears which she did not brush away, but through which, in a
+moment, she smiled at him as no woman had ever smiled at him before.
+And with the tears there seemed to possess her a pride which lifted her
+above all confusion, a living spirit of will and courage and womanhood
+that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and fear that had gathered
+in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+
+“You have come—because you know I love you, and you—”
+
+“Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you
+that inspired me, Alan Holt.”
+
+“There must have been more than that,” he persisted. “Some other
+reason.”
+
+“Two,” she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the dissolution
+of tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+
+“And those—”
+
+“One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that.”
+
+“It has to do with John Graham?”
+
+She bowed her head. “Yes, with John Graham.”
+
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment
+it seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the
+import of the thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed
+red instead of paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes
+burned with a lustrous fire.
+
+“John Graham,” she repeated. “The man you hate and want to kill.”
+
+Slowly he turned toward the door. “I am leaving immediately after
+dinner to inspect the herds up in the foothills,” he said. “And
+you—_are welcome here_.”
+
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at
+the door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+
+“Thank you, Alan Holt,” she cried softly, “_Oh, I thank you!_!”
+
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last
+something had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a
+moment they stood in silence.
+
+“I’m sorry—sorry I said to you what I did that night on the _Nome_,”
+she said. “I accused you of brutality, of unfairness, of—of even worse
+than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big and clean and
+splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, _and you say
+I am welcome!_ And I don’t want you to go. You have made me _want_ to
+tell you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will
+think as kindly of me as you can when you have heard.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the
+world. There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came
+like a sob to the girl’s lips as she turned to the window and looked
+out into the blaze of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard
+Tautuk’s voice, calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and
+he heard clearly Keok’s merry laughter as she answered him. A
+gray-cheeked thrush flew up to the roof of Sokwenna’s cabin and began
+to sing. It was as if these things had come as a message to both of
+them, relieving a tension, and significant of the beauty and glory and
+undying hope of life. Mary Standish turned from the window with shining
+eyes.
+
+“Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof,” she said.
+
+“It is—possibly—because you are here,” he replied.
+
+She regarded him seriously. “I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure,
+if I were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me.
+Hopelessness cannot be so deep that bird-song will not reach it.”
+
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She
+closed the door which he had left partly open, and made a little
+gesture for him to resume the chair which he had left a few moments
+before. She seated herself first and smiled at him wistfully, half
+regretfully, as she said:
+
+“I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should
+have told you aboard the _Nome_. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid,
+but ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am
+not sorry it happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up
+here, and all this—your world, your people, and you—have meant a great
+deal to me. You will understand when I have made my confession.”
+
+“No, I don’t want that,” he protested almost roughly. “I don’t want you
+to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you wish to tell me as a
+friend, that’s different. I don’t want a confession, which would imply
+that I have no faith in you.”
+
+“And you have faith in me?”
+
+“Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the
+same if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship.”
+
+“Oh, _you mean that_!”
+
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed
+to see only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of
+the tundra daises behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to
+say tugging at his heart, he wondered why she was so white.
+
+“You mean that,” her lips repeated slowly, “after all that has
+happened—even after—that part of a letter—which Stampede brought to you
+last night—”
+
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret
+between himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she
+saw it written in his face.
+
+“No, it wasn’t Stampede,” she said. “He didn’t tell me. It—just
+happened. And after this letter—you still believe in me?”
+
+“I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am—most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham’s signature was a lie.”
+
+“It wasn’t that—quite. But it didn’t refer to you, or to me. It was
+part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while I was
+on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of
+them as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the
+whole of it. The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper
+which you did not return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the
+conventional thing for a woman to do—to use paper for padding in a
+soft-toed slipper.”
+
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the
+tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer
+happiness. But Mary Standish’s voice, continuing in its quiet and
+matter-of-fact way, held him speechless, though she could not fail to
+see the effect upon him of this simple explanation of the presence of
+Graham’s letter.
+
+“I was in Nawadlook’s room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of paper
+from the floor,” she was saying. “I was looking at the slipper a few
+minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin on
+the ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it,
+and the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and
+went out. I hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the
+few words when I heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had
+laid it, hid myself in Nawadlook’s room, and saw Stampede when he
+carried it to you. I don’t know why I allowed it to be done. I had no
+reason. Maybe it was just—intuition, and maybe it was because—just in
+that hour—I so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and
+I thought that what Stampede had found would make you do it. And I
+deserve it! I deserve nothing better at your hands.”
+
+“But it isn’t true,” he protested. “The letter was to Rossland.”
+
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. “Better that it were
+true, and all that _is_ true were false,” she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. “I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative
+would I accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to
+understand?”
+
+“I am afraid—I can not.” Even as he persisted in denial, the pain which
+had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. “I understand—only—that I am glad you
+are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an hour ago.”
+
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of
+rich color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining
+lashes that lay against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her
+breath, and her hands grew steady in her lap.
+
+“Would you mind—if I asked you first—to tell me _your_ story of John
+Graham?” she spoke softly. “I know it, a little, but I think it would
+make everything easier if I could hear it from you—now.”
+
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light
+playing in her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she
+had not changed her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She
+raised her eyes, and the question her lips had formed was glowing in
+them as clearly as if she had voiced it again in words. A desire rose
+in him to speak to her as he had never spoken to another human being,
+and to reveal for her—and for her alone—the thing that had harbored
+itself in his soul for many years. Looking up at him, waiting, partial
+understanding softening her sweet face, a dusky glow in her eyes, she
+was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then laughed in a strange
+repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward her.
+
+“I think I know how my father must have loved my mother,” he said. “But
+I can’t make you feel it. I can’t hope for that. She died when I was so
+young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me. But for my
+father she _never_ died, and as I grew older she became more and more
+alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if she
+were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned.
+And never could my father remain away from the place where she was
+buried very long at a time. He called it _home_, that little cup at the
+foot of the mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a
+paradise of birds and flowers keeping her company, and all the great,
+wild world she loved about her. There was the cabin, too; the little
+cabin where I was born, with its back to the big mountain, and filled
+with the handiwork of my mother as she had left it when she died. And
+my father too used to laugh and sing there—he had a clear voice that
+would roll half-way up the mountain; and as I grew older the miracle at
+times stirred me with a strange fear, so real to my father did my dead
+mother seem when he was home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish!
+Oh, it may seem weird and ghostly now, but it was _true_—so true that I
+have lain awake nights thinking of it and wishing that it had never
+been so!”
+
+“Then you have wished a great sin,” said the girl in a voice that
+seemed scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. “I hope someone
+will feel toward me—some day—like that.”
+
+“But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about,” he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins.
+“Interests were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were
+reaching out, encroaching steadily a little nearer to our cup at the
+foot of the mountain. But my father did not dream of what might happen.
+It came in the spring of the year he took me on my first trip to the
+States, when I was eighteen. We were gone five months, and they were
+five months of hell for him. Day and night he grieved for my mother and
+the little home under the mountain. And when at last we came back—”
+
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the
+tundra or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+
+“When we came back,” he repeated in a cold, hard voice, “a construction
+camp of a hundred men had invaded my father’s little paradise. The
+cabin was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and this
+channel ran where my mother’s grave had been. They had treated it with
+that same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand
+Indian graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud.
+And from the moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun
+rose in the heavens for him. His heart died, yet he went on living—for
+a time.”
+
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her
+slim shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was
+as if he beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+
+“And the man who committed that crime—was John Graham,” she said, in
+the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer would
+be.
+
+“Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work
+rather than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power;
+they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a
+grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my
+father and I went to see him; yes, _laughed_, in that noiseless, oily,
+inside way of his, as you might think of a snake laughing.
+
+“We found him among the men. My God, you don’t know how I hated
+him!—Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool
+he was to think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I
+wanted to kill him, but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet,
+steady hand, and said: ‘It is my duty, Alan. _My duty_.’
+
+“And then—it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham, but
+God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and
+with his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not
+unlocked them with my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of
+helpless pulp, and from the ground, with the last of the breath that
+was in him, he cursed my father, and he cursed me. He said that all the
+days of his life he would follow us, until we paid a thousand times for
+what we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have
+dragged a rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his
+clothes from him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he
+scourged him with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was
+unconscious and like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we
+went into the mountains.”
+
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him,
+and now her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face
+were aflame, as if she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen
+between them.
+
+“And after that, Alan; after that—”
+
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it,
+scarcely understood.
+
+“John Graham kept his promise,” he answered grimly. “The influence and
+money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was
+interested were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most
+heavily interested was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he
+partly owned in Dawson was bankrupted. One after another things
+happened, and after each happening my father would receive a polite
+note of regret from Graham, written as if the word actually came from a
+friend. But my father cared little for money losses now. His heart was
+drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and the grave
+that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at
+Nome, dead.”
+
+“_Dead_!”
+
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary
+Standish, for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+
+“Yes—murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He didn’t do it
+personally, but it was _his money_ that accomplished the end. Of course
+nothing ever came of it. I won’t tell you how his influence and power
+have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of reindeer I had,
+and how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about me when
+I was down in the States last winter in an effort to make _your_ people
+see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him
+under our mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that
+won’t save him when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I
+loosened my father’s. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and
+his money have become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as
+he destroyed the life of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power
+ends, he will make of this great land nothing more than a shell out of
+which he and his kind have taken all the meat. And the hour of
+deadliest danger is now upon us.”
+
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her
+where she sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it
+frightened him. And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and
+never had he seen such living pools of torture and of horror. He was
+amazed at the quietness of her voice when she began to speak, and
+startled by the almost deadly coldness of it.
+
+“I think you can understand—now—why I leaped into the sea, why I wanted
+the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you the
+truth,” she said. “_I am John Graham’s wife._”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Alan’s first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a mésalliance of the sort Mary
+Standish had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with
+face and eyes that from the beginning had made him feel all that was
+good and sweet in life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John
+Graham, the pitiless iron-man, without conscience and without soul,
+coarsened by power, fiendish in his iniquities, and old enough to be
+her father!
+
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled
+himself together without letting her see the physical part of the
+effort it was taking. And he tried to find something to say that would
+help clear her eyes of the agony that was in them.
+
+“That—is a most unreasonable thing—to be true,” he said.
+
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the
+words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have
+said, or acted, under the circumstances.
+
+She nodded. “It is. But the world doesn’t look at it in that way. Such
+things just happen.”
+
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies
+were heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer
+life in Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical
+worth, dryly but carefully written—and she had been reading it. It
+struck him as a symbol of the fight she was making, of her courage, and
+of her desire to triumph in the face of tremendous odds that must have
+beset her. He still could not associate her completely with John
+Graham. Yet his face was cold and white.
+
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a
+newspaper clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it to
+him.
+
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young and
+beautiful girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the girl’s
+shoulder, was a picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were strangers to
+him. He read their names, and then the headlines. “A
+Hundred-Million-Dollar Love” was the caption, and after the word love
+was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty and the other thing, two great
+fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked at Mary Standish. It was
+impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+
+“I tore that from a paper in Cordova,” she said. “They have nothing to
+do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don’t you see something in her
+eyes? Can’t you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
+things. But it seemed to me—when I saw her face—that in her eyes were
+agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
+hide them from the world. It’s just another proof, one of thousands,
+that such unreasonable things do happen.”
+
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
+which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
+He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
+little hands that lay in Mary Standish’s lap. The warmth had gone out
+of it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it
+between his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing
+nothing in particular. It was only the ticking of Keok’s clock that
+broke the silence for a time. Then he released the hand, and it dropped
+in the girl’s lap again. She had been looking steadily at the streak of
+gray in his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a light which he did
+not see, and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost imperceptible
+inclination of her head toward him.
+
+“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he said. “I realize now how you must have
+felt back there in the cottonwoods.”
+
+“No, you don’t realize—_you don’t!_” she protested.
+
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her
+again. It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as
+if he had unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was
+amazed at the swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+
+“You don’t understand, and I am determined that you _shall_,” she went
+on. “I would die before I let you go away thinking what is now in your
+mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be hated for the truth
+than because of the horrible thing which you must believe if I remain
+silent.” She forced a wan smile to her lips. “You know, Belinda
+Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don’t fit in now, do
+they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when
+Alaska was young—”
+
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+
+“I have committed a great folly,” she said, hesitating an instant in
+his silence. “I see very clearly now the course I should have taken.
+You will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard
+what I am going to say. Your face is like—a rock.”
+
+“It is because your tragedy is mine,” he said.
+
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was
+a vivid, feverish glow. “I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich,”
+she said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. “I don’t
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish
+and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter,
+who was grandfather’s brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle
+Peter. He was a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a
+wheel-chair, and he was nearly seventy-five when he died. As a baby
+that wheel-chair, and my rides in it with him about the great house in
+which we lived, were my delights. He was my father and mother,
+everything that was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as a
+child, that if God was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God.
+It was Uncle Peter who told me, year after year, the old stories and
+legends of the Standishes. And he was always happy—always happy and
+glad and seeing nothing but sunshine though he hadn’t stood on his feet
+for nearly sixty years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen,
+five days before my birthday came. I think he must have been to me what
+your father was to you.”
+
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his
+face now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+
+“I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish,” she went on.
+“He didn’t love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I don’t think I
+loved him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole world must have
+stood in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the world
+_was_ afraid of him—bankers, presidents, even the strongest men in
+great financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the
+Grahams, and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the
+cleverest lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of
+the two families. My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died,
+so it was John Graham who was the actual working force behind the
+combined fortunes of the two families. Sometimes, as I now recall it,
+Uncle Peter was like a little child. I remember how he tried to make me
+understand just how big my grandfather’s interests were by telling me
+that if two dollars were taken from every man, woman, and child in the
+United States, it would just about add up to what he and the Grahams
+possessed, and my Grandfather Standish’s interests were three-quarters
+of the whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my Uncle
+Peter’s face at times when I asked him how all this money was used, and
+where it was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and
+I never understood. I didn’t know _why_ people feared my grandfather
+and John Graham. I didn’t know of the stupendous power my grandfather’s
+money had rolled up for them. I didn’t know”—her voice sank to a
+shuddering whisper—“I didn’t know how they were using it in Alaska, for
+instance. I didn’t know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and
+death. I don’t think even Uncle Peter knew _that_.”
+
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a
+slow fire.
+
+“Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the
+biggest factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to
+suspect that John Graham was _anticipating_ a little girl of thirteen,
+and I didn’t guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so
+grandly white of beard and hair, so like a god of power when he stood
+among men, was even then planning that I should be given to him, so
+that a monumental combination of wealth might increase itself still
+more in that juggernaut of financial achievement for which he lived.
+And to bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not fail, they
+set Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of
+face, and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had
+confidence in him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a
+brain which matched in cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham
+himself. And he did his work well, Alan.”
+
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without
+embarrassment. With her nervous fingers tying and untying the two
+corners of a little handkerchief in her lap, she went on, after a
+moment of silence in which the ticking of Keok’s clock seemed tense and
+loud.
+
+“When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to
+Sharpleigh as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently
+he educated me to the thought that it was right and just, and my
+greatest duty in life, to carry out the stipulation of my grandfather’s
+will and marry John Graham. Otherwise, he told me—if that union was not
+brought about before I was twenty-two—not a dollar of the great fortune
+would go to the house of Standish; and because he was clever enough to
+know that money alone would not urge me, he showed me a letter which he
+said my Uncle Peter had written, and which I was to read on my
+seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter urged me to live
+up to the Standish name and join in that union of the two great
+fortunes which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I didn’t
+dream the letter was a forgery. And in the end they won—and I
+promised.”
+
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her
+fingers. “Do you despise me?” she asked.
+
+“No,” he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. “I love you.”
+
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+
+“I promised,” she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse that
+had made her ask him the question. “But it was to be business, a cold,
+unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him.
+In the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I
+would remain his wife—but never more than that. They agreed, and I in
+my ignorance believed.
+
+“I didn’t see the trap. I didn’t see the wicked triumph in John
+Graham’s heart. No power could have made me believe then that he wanted
+to possess only _me_; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly
+lured into his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since
+Uncle Peter died I had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in
+a make-believe world of my own, and I read, read, read; and the thought
+grew stronger and stronger in me that I had lived another life
+somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years when the world was
+clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein money and
+power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of
+manhood and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these
+things, and yet because others had molded me, and because of my
+misguided Standish sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to
+John Graham.
+
+“In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more
+of the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I
+investigated a little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason
+for it, which has come to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost
+knew, at the last, that he was a monster, but the world had been told I
+was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with his fatherly hypocrisy was behind
+me, and John Graham treated me so courteously and so coolly that I did
+not suspect the terrible things in his heart and mind—and I went on
+with the bargain. _I married him._”
+
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal
+of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless
+expression of Alan’s face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from
+her like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her
+back crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she
+continued, while he stood up and faced her.
+
+“You needn’t go on,” he interrupted in a voice so low and terribly hard
+that she felt the menacing thrill of it. “You needn’t. I will settle
+with John Graham, if God gives me the chance.”
+
+“You would have me stop _now_—before I have told you of the only shred
+of triumph to which I may lay claim!” she protested. “Oh, you may be
+sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of it all, but I
+swear before my God that I didn’t realize it then, until it was too
+late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem—that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a
+deadly hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was
+a duty; that I should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the
+hands of those I trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or
+suspect that I was sacrificing _myself_; at no time, blind though you
+may call me, did I see a hint of that sickening danger into which I was
+voluntarily going. No, not even an hour before the wedding did I
+suspect that, for it had all been so coldly planned, like a great deal
+in finance—so carefully adjudged by us all as a business affair, that I
+felt no fear except that sickness of soul which comes of giving up
+one’s life. And no hint of it came until the last of the few words were
+spoken which made us man and wife, and then I saw in John Graham’s eyes
+something which I had never seen there before. And Sharpleigh—”
+
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+
+“I went to my room. I didn’t lock my door, because never had it been
+necessary to do that. I didn’t cry. No, I didn’t cry. But something
+strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It seemed
+to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I
+saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind
+him, and locked it. My room. He had come into _my room!_ The
+unexpectedness of it—the horror—the insult roused me from my stupor. I
+sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm’s reach of me, a
+look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to
+suspect—or fear. His arms were reaching out—
+
+“‘You are my wife,’ he said.
+
+“Oh, I knew, then. ‘_You are my wife_,’ he repeated. I wanted to
+scream, but I couldn’t; and then—then—his arms reached me; I felt them
+crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the poison of his
+lips was at my face—and I believed that I was lost, and that no power
+could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my room—the man
+who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me voice, who
+put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh—yes, laugh, and
+almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned
+him, and he freed me—while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that
+evening, and that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I
+said these things, smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a
+great, gloating, triumphant beast, believing that the obedience of
+wifehood was about to give him what he had expected to find through
+dishonor—and I was left alone.
+
+“I thought of only one thing then—escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived
+with Uncle Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never
+been—and it was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I
+wanted never to face it again, never to look into the eyes of those I
+had known. And even as these thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was
+filling a traveling bag in a fever of madness, and Uncle Peter was at
+my side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had no minutes to lose, for
+the man who had left me was clever and might guess the truth that lay
+hid behind my smiles and cajolery.
+
+“I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh’s low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of
+laughter, and with it I heard John Graham’s voice. I was thinking only
+of the sea—to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I
+drew money. I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any
+ship, and it seemed to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came
+to a great ship that was leaving for Alaska—and you know—what happened
+then—Alan Holt.”
+
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was
+there, and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her
+eyes, but a soft glory of pride and exultation.
+
+“I am clean of John Graham,” she cried. “_Clean!_”
+
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort
+of way, and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head
+that the tears might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining
+and clear as stars.
+
+“Do you despise me now?”
+
+“I love you,” he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+
+“I am glad,” she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+
+“And Rossland was on the _Nome_, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham,” he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+
+She nodded. “Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped
+into the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead.”
+
+“And Rossland was hurt.”
+
+“Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends.”
+
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood
+looking toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests
+of the mountains behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood
+beside him.
+
+“I understand,” she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch
+upon his arm. “You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only
+one. That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom
+in the old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I
+must return with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry.
+I dread it. I—would rather die.”
+
+“And I—” he began, then caught himself and pointed to the distant hills
+and mountains. “The herds are there,” he said. “I am going to them. I
+may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to be here when I
+return?”
+
+“Yes, if that is your desire.”
+
+“It is.”
+
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+
+“And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way.”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+“It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that—alone—”
+
+“You won’t be alone,” he said quietly, still looking at the far-away
+hills. “If you go, I am going with you.”
+
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and
+then, with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at
+the half-opened door of Nawadlook’s room, and the glory in her eyes was
+the glory of his dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over
+the tundras in those days of grief and half-madness when he had thought
+she was dead.
+
+“I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick’s cabin the day you came,” she was
+saying. “And I thank God for giving me the madness and courage to come
+to _you_. I am not afraid of anything in the world now—because—_I love
+you, Alan_!”
+
+And as Nawadlook’s door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that
+twisted the world about him until for a little it held neither vision
+nor space nor sound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden
+tundra haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream,
+Alan Holt set off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and
+Keok and Nawadlook at the corral bars, with Stampede little regretting
+that he was left behind to guard the range. For a mighty resolution had
+taken root in the prospector’s heart, and he felt himself thrilled and
+a bit trembling at the nearness of the greatest drama that had ever
+entered his life. Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw
+that Keok and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+
+The ridge beyond the coulée out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna’s cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan
+set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven
+pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force
+which was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but
+almost an inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he
+took, with his head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was
+an effort behind which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will.
+He wanted to go back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the
+weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost
+fallen a victim to his selfishness and passion in the moment when she
+stood at Nawadlook’s door, telling him that she loved him. An iron hand
+had drawn him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand that kept
+his face to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated
+the words that had set his world on fire.
+
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing
+with him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully
+to understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental
+calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so
+unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the
+mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His
+happiness was almost an insanity. The dream wherein he had wandered
+with a spirit of the dead had come true; it was the old idyl in the
+flesh again, his father, his mother—and back in the cabin beyond the
+ridge such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid to return. He
+laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed exultation as
+he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words came
+to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would
+fight for her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and
+he walked so swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind
+with the deer, so that in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay
+between them.
+
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over
+him in its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what
+he had done—justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her
+as Mary Graham. But she was Graham’s wife. And if he had gone to her in
+that moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook’s
+door, if he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid
+the world at his feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham
+himself. Thought of the narrowness of his escape and of the first mad
+desire to call her back from Nawadlook’s room, to hold her in his arms
+again as he had held her in the cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into
+his face. Something greater than his own fighting instinct had turned
+him to the open door of the cabin. It was Mary Standish—her courage,
+the-glory of faith and love shining in her eyes, her measurement of him
+as a man. She had not been afraid to say what was in her heart, because
+she knew what he would do.
+
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge
+of a slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows
+of sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were
+sweating. Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the
+sun had sunk to its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott
+foothills. Here they rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when
+a golden twilight filled the land, and then resumed the journey toward
+the mountains.
+
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the
+herds steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and
+valleys. Here they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in
+slowly moving streams wherever the doors of the hills and mountains
+opened into new grazing fields, until Alan’s ten thousand reindeer were
+in three divisions, two of the greatest traveling westward, and one, of
+a thousand head, working north and east. The first and second days Alan
+remained with the nearest and southward herd. The third day he went on
+with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in the mountains and
+joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of feeding
+animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was
+becoming stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A
+multitude of emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary
+Standish must leave the range when he returned. He had a grim sense of
+honor, and a particularly devout one when it had to do with women, and
+though he conceded nothing of right and justice in the relationship
+which existed between the woman he loved and John Graham, he knew that
+she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible thing for
+her to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the
+States. The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent
+way, and when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his
+will held down, and yet never quite throttled completely—that something
+which urged him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own
+hands what a glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John
+Graham, if it ever came to that, in the madly desirable way he visioned
+for himself in those occasional moments when the fires of temptation
+blazed hottest.
+
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+
+“If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?”
+
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman’s eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his
+stolid mind a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a
+reassuring hand upon his arm.
+
+“I don’t mean she’s going to, Tautuk,” he laughed. “She loves you. I
+know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so hopeless as a
+lover that she is punishing you while she has the right—before she
+marries you. But if she _should_ marry someone else, what would you
+do?”
+
+“My brother?” asked Tautuk.
+
+“No.”
+
+“A relative?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“A friend?”
+
+“No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone
+Keok hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him.”
+
+“I would kill him,” said Tautuk quietly.
+
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should
+Mary Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything
+to escape from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and
+friends. She had scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled
+her life in the hazard, and in the end had come to him! Why should he
+not keep her? John Graham and the world believed she was dead. And he
+was master here. If—some day—Graham should happen to cross his path, he
+would settle the matter in Tautuk’s way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and
+the world lay about him in a soft glow, and the valley below was filled
+with misty billows of twilight out of which came to him faintly the
+curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and the grunting contentment
+of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had known it would come
+in the end.
+
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd,
+and on the sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like
+Sokwenna’s foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of
+white in him, and when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley
+where the deer were grazing, he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee
+Doodle on a mouth-organ. It was Tatpan who told him that an hour or two
+before an exhausted stranger had come into camp, looking for him, and
+that the man was asleep now, apparently more dead than alive, but had
+given instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours, and not a
+minute later. Together they had a look at him.
+
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a
+peculiarly boyish appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife,
+profoundly asleep. Tatpan looked at his big, silver watch and in a low
+voice described how the stranger had stumbled into camp, so tired he
+could scarcely put one foot ahead of the other; and that he had dropped
+down where he now lay when he learned Alan was with one of the other
+herds.
+
+[Illustration: The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.]
+
+“He must have come a long distance,” said Tatpan, “and he has traveled
+fast.”
+
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place
+him. He wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of
+his hand on the grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in
+sleep the mysterious stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about
+his revolver in a way that spoke of caution and experience.
+
+“If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him,” said Alan.
+
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water
+that ran down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing
+the stranger. By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the
+little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared,
+and the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes
+twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave
+his gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan.
+Only one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster
+like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and
+all at once Tatpan’s eyes began to bulge.
+
+“Stampede!” he cried.
+
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+
+“It’s me,” he conceded. “I had to do it. It was give one or t’other
+up—my whiskers _or her_. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an’ the
+whiskers won. I cut cards, an’ the whiskers won. I played Klondike
+ag’in’ ’em, an’ the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an’ shaved
+’em. Do I look so bad, Alan?”
+
+“You look twenty years younger,” declared Alan, stifling his desire to
+laugh when he saw the other’s seriousness.
+
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Then why the devil did
+they laugh!” he demanded. “Mary Standish didn’t laugh. She cried. Just
+stood an’ cried, an’ then sat down an’ cried, she thought I was that
+blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an’ had to go to bed.
+That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says
+it wasn’t because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in
+me was so sudden she couldn’t help it. Nawadlook says I’ve got a
+character-ful chin—”
+
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede’s face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened.
+Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan
+felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held.
+This, at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down
+the old trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose
+fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in
+Alaskan history which would never be forgotten. Where his first impulse
+had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of
+other days, who, when in Stampede’s presence, knew they were in the
+presence of a master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan
+knew why. The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+
+“Some day, if we’re lucky, there always comes a woman to make the world
+worth living in, Stampede,” he said.
+
+“There does,” replied Stampede.
+
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+
+“And I take it you love Mary Standish,” he added, “and that you’d fight
+for her if you had to.”
+
+“I would,” said Alan.
+
+“Then it’s time you were traveling,” advised Stampede significantly.
+“I’ve been twelve hours on the trail without a rest. She told me to
+move fast, and I’ve moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said it was almost
+a matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted to
+stay, but she wouldn’t let me. It’s _you_ she wants. Rossland is at the
+range.”
+
+“_Rossland_!”
+
+“Yes, Rossland. And it’s my guess John Graham isn’t far away. I smell
+happenings, Alan. We’d better hurry.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range,
+but to ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and
+specific direction was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and
+within the first half-dozen miles he had abandoned the adventure to
+continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan had no saddle-deer in his herd,
+and the swiftest messenger would require many hours in which to reach
+Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an hour after his
+arrival at Tatpan’s camp. Stampede, declaring himself a new man after
+his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen to
+Alan’s advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter’s
+eyes as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race
+through the foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the
+grimness that had settled in the face behind him. His own mind was
+undergoing an upheaval of conjecture and wild questioning. That
+Rossland had discovered Mary Standish was not dead was the least
+astonishing factor in the new development. The information might easily
+have reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife Ellen. The
+astonishing thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up the
+trail of her flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more
+amazing fact that he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly
+at his range. His heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be
+directly under Graham’s orders.
+
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to
+reveal all that had happened on the day of his departure for the
+mountains. He proceeded to do this without equivocation or hesitancy,
+for there now pressed upon him a grim anticipation of impending events
+ahead of them.
+
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other’s disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face
+unchanged. Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish’s
+confession of love at Nawadlook’s door did the fighting lines soften
+about his comrade’s eyes and mouth.
+
+Stampede’s lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. “I knew that a
+long time ago,” he said. “I guessed it that first night of storm in the
+coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana. She
+didn’t tell me, but I wasn’t blind. It was the note that puzzled and
+frightened me—the note she stuffed in her slipper. And Rossland told
+me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as he
+intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately.”
+
+“And you left her alone after _that_?”
+
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan’s
+suddenly quickened pace.
+
+“She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides—”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Sokwenna won’t sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he’s
+watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick off a
+duck the other day at two hundred yards.”
+
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could
+not name clutching at his heart, “Why did you say Graham might not be
+far away?”
+
+“In my bones,” replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again. “In my
+bones!”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+“Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes,
+too. Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he
+owns it. I take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something
+big to reckon with. He asked me how many men we had. I told him,
+stretching it a little. He grinned. He couldn’t keep back that grin. It
+was as if a devil in him slipped out from hiding for an instant.”
+
+Suddenly he caught Alan’s arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men
+stared at each other.
+
+“Alan, we’re short-sighted. I’m damned if I don’t think we ought to
+call the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!”
+
+“You think it’s that bad?”
+
+“Might be. If Graham’s behind Rossland and has men with him—”
+
+“We’re two and a half hours from Tatpan,” said Alan, in a cold,
+unemotional voice. “He has only half a dozen men with him, and it will
+take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik. There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two
+with the upper. I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All
+are armed. It may be foolish, but I’m following your hunch.”
+
+They gripped hands.
+
+“It’s more than a hunch, Alan,” breathed Stampede softly. “And for
+God’s sake keep off the music as long as you can!”
+
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run
+toward the foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter
+of an hour they were lost to each other in the undulating distances of
+the tundra.
+
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence
+from the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan’s
+camp had not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of
+the country gave him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he
+could make the distance in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled
+to add a rest of at least three or four hours during the night. It was
+now eight o’clock. By nine or ten the next morning he would be facing
+Rossland, and at about that same hour Tatpan’s swift messengers would
+be closing in about Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. He knew the speed with
+which his herdsmen would sweep out of the mountains and over the
+tundras. Two years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his Eskimo people had
+traveled fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a hundred and
+nineteen miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He
+couldn’t do that. But his people could—and _would_. He could see them
+sweeping in from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word went
+among them; he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then,
+like wolves scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting
+the tundra in their race for home—and war, if it was war that lay ahead
+of them.
+
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out
+of the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of
+pemmican when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coulées when
+he came to them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a
+telltale cramp began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the
+rest which he knew he must take. It was one o’clock. Counting his
+journey to Tatpan’s camp, he had been traveling almost steadily for
+seventeen hours.
+
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where
+a little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize
+how tired he had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all
+he wanted; he dared not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at
+last, and he slept. When he awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting
+him. He sat up with a jerk, then leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch
+told the story. He had slept soundly for six hours, instead of resting
+three or four with his eyes open.
+
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret
+what had happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate
+a breakfast of pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost
+time. The interval between fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he
+almost ran. That quarter of an hour brought him to the crest of the
+ridge from which he could look upon the buildings of the range. Nothing
+had happened that he could see. He gave a great gasp of relief, and in
+his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told him more than
+anything else the tension he had been under.
+
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna’s
+cabin and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock,
+and he called out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he
+stepped in. Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.
+Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them,
+staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish. She came
+forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw
+Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.
+
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the
+tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle
+she was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at
+his coming. It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart,
+even when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it. He held her
+hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them
+widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden
+quick breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the hope that
+had deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not
+excited. He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her
+eyes and knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt
+the force of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at
+her. She gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken
+breath; a little cry that came of wonder—understanding—and unspeakable
+faith in this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of
+the tragedy that had come to destroy her.
+
+“Rossland is in your cabin,” she whispered. “And John Graham is back
+there—somewhere—coming this way. Rossland says that if I don’t go to
+him of my own free will—”
+
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+
+“I understand the rest,” he said. They stood silent for a moment. The
+gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a
+little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that
+he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.
+
+“You didn’t make a mistake the day I went away?” he asked. “You—love
+me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from
+her. Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they
+thought—Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun—for the bird
+was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very
+still.
+
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little
+window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across
+his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and
+something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another
+day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and
+the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the
+heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the farther
+north.
+
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his
+fingers drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His
+eyes fixed themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath
+he mumbled the old chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in
+Sokwenna’s brain, and after that his eyes closed, and again the vision
+grew out of darkness like a picture for him, a vision of twisting
+trails and of fighting men gathering with their faces set for war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+At the desk in Alan’s living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed
+when he saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his
+sleeves rolled up, and it was evident he was making no effort to
+conceal his freedom with Alan’s books and papers.
+
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had
+told Alan to attend to his own business on board the _Nome_. His
+attitude was that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even
+before he spoke. Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind
+that smile he was admiring the man’s nerve. His hand met Rossland’s
+casually, but there was no uncertainty in the warmth of the other’s
+grip.
+
+“How d’ do, Paris, old boy?” he greeted good-humoredly. “Saw you going
+in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I’ve been waiting for you. She’s a
+little frightened. And we can’t blame her. Menelaus is mightily upset.
+But mind me, Holt, I’m not blaming you. I’m too good a sport. Clever, I
+call it—damned clever. She’s enough to turn any man’s head. I only wish
+I were in your boots right now. I’d have turned traitor myself aboard
+the _Nome_ if she had shown an inclination.”
+
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was
+inspiration again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was
+racing. But Rossland saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the
+cool smile on Alan’s lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was
+meeting the situation. It pleased Graham’s agent. He reseated himself
+in the desk-chair and motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+
+“I thought you were badly hurt,” said Alan. “Nasty knife wound you
+got.”
+
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. “There you have it again, Holt—the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit
+girls down in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn’t she?
+Tricked her into my cabin all right, but she wasn’t like some other
+Indian girls I’ve known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or
+whoever it was got me through the open port. It wasn’t bad. I was out
+of the hospital within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I
+wouldn’t have seen Mrs. Graham one morning—through the window. What a
+little our fortunes hang to at times, eh? If it hadn’t been for the
+girl and the knife and the hospital, I wouldn’t be here now, and Graham
+wouldn’t be bleeding his heart out with impatience—and you, Holt,
+wouldn’t be facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into
+your life.”
+
+“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Alan, hiding his face in the
+smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which had
+its effect upon Rossland. “Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?”
+
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland’s eyes, and his voice became
+cool and hard. “Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don’t
+you think so?”
+
+“Decidedly,” said Alan.
+
+“You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham’s wife?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you probably know—now—why she jumped into the sea, and why she ran
+away from Graham.”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don’t know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn’t care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It’s the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the
+day she was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the
+thought of possessing her. You know how he got her to marry him, and
+you know what happened afterward. But it makes no difference to him
+whether she hates him or not. He _wants_ her. And this”—he swept his
+arms out, “is the most beautiful place in the world in which to have
+her returned to him. I’ve been figuring from your books. Your property
+isn’t worth over a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today.
+I’m here to offer you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is
+willing to forfeit all action he might have personally against you for
+stealing his wife, and in place of that will pay you five hundred
+thousand dollars for the privilege of having his honeymoon here, and
+making of this place a country estate where his wife may reside
+indefinitely, subject to her husband’s visits when he is so inclined.
+There will be a stipulation, of course, requiring that the personal
+details of the deal be kept strictly confidential, and that you leave
+the country. Do I make myself clear?”
+
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as
+he watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out
+proposition upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to
+the point without an effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient
+dramatic sense to appreciate what the offer of half a million dollars
+meant to an individual who was struggling for existence at the edge of
+a raw frontier. Alan stood with his back toward him, facing a window.
+His voice was oddly strained when he answered. But that was quite
+natural, too, Rossland thought.
+
+“I am wondering if I understand you,” he said. “Do you mean that if I
+sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?”
+
+“That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has
+his own.”
+
+Alan tried to laugh. “I think I see the point—now. He isn’t paying five
+hundred thousand for Miss Standish—I mean Mrs. Graham. He’s paying it
+for the _isolation_.”
+
+“Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him—to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to _get_
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one
+we’re using now. You hit the word when you said ‘isolation.’ What a
+damn fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of
+it—half a million dollars!”
+
+“It sounds unreal,” mused Alan, keeping his face to the window. “Why
+should he offer so much?”
+
+“You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a
+normal price wouldn’t guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like
+that, you’re a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your
+health depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn’t it?”
+
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep
+smoke in front of his eyes. “Of course, I don’t suppose he’d allow Mrs.
+Graham to escape back to the States—where she might do a little
+upsetting on her own account?”
+
+“He isn’t throwing the money away,” replied Rossland significantly.
+
+“She would remain here indefinitely?”
+
+“Indefinitely.”
+
+“Probably never would return.”
+
+“Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The
+little secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a
+beautiful summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely
+flowers. Birds. And the girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since
+she was fourteen.”
+
+“And who hates him.”
+
+“True.”
+
+“Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife.”
+
+“But it’s up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That’s not our
+business. If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get
+your range back pretty cheap.”
+
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+
+“Here’s partial payment—two hundred and fifty thousand. I have the
+papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give
+possession, I’ll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining
+payment.”
+
+Alan took the check. “I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland.”
+
+“Yes, only a fool.”
+
+“_And I am that fool_.”
+
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his
+words did not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared
+away from before Alan’s face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he
+stepped on it with his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The
+fury he had held back with almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+
+“If I could have Graham where you are now—_in that chair_—I’d give ten
+years of my life, Rossland. I would kill him. And you—_you_—”
+
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance
+of the beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+
+“What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn’t necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish—_not_ Mary
+Graham—is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to _me_. I love her. She is mine—do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn’t buy one hair from
+her head. I’m going to take her back to the States. She is going to get
+a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has
+nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham for
+me.”
+
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+
+“Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!”
+
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland
+sent the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+
+“Go—before I kill you!”
+
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and
+the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten
+power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed
+quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan
+watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied
+by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did
+Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His
+breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did
+not return for his coat and hat.
+
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the
+table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at
+work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he
+hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him.
+He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god
+of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely.
+Graham would now get his message, and there could be no
+misunderstanding of purpose between them.
+
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at
+the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+
+“You sent him away,” she cried softly.
+
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a
+beautiful glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland’s hat and coat
+on a chair, the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his
+flight; and then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw
+broke down the last of that grim resolution which he had measured for
+himself, so that in a moment he was at her side, and had her in his
+arms. She made no effort to free herself as she had done in the
+cottonwoods, but turned her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid her
+face against his shoulder—while he, fighting vainly to find utterance
+for the thousand words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then
+buried his face in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it
+that he loved her, and was going to fight for her, and that no power on
+earth could take her away from him now. And these things he repeated
+until she raised her flushed face from his breast, and let him kiss her
+lips once more, and then freed herself gently from his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish’s face and in Alan’s quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier
+which convention had raised against them, and now they felt the
+inevitable thrill of joy and triumph, and not the humiliating
+embarrassment of dishonor. They made no effort to draw a curtain upon
+their happiness, or to hide the swift heart-beat of it from each other.
+It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they stood apart, and
+something pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little freedom of
+space between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker and
+deeper grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her
+eyes when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she
+gave him her own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile,
+and she bowed her head a little, so that he was looking at her smooth
+hair, soft and sweet where he had caressed it a few moments before.
+
+“I thank God!” he said.
+
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech
+seemed trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking
+God for that moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had
+come to him. This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as
+he had known it, the beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands
+trembled. For something to do he set up the overturned table, and Mary
+Standish watched him with a quiet, satisfied wonder. She loved him, and
+she had come into his arms. She had given him her lips to kiss. And he
+laughed softly as he came to her side again, and looked over the tundra
+where Rossland had gone.
+
+“How long before you can prepare for the journey?” he asked.
+
+“You mean—”
+
+“That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland
+lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail.”
+
+Her hand pressed his arm. “We are going—_back?_ Is that it, Alan?”
+
+“Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?”
+
+“With you there—no.”
+
+“And you will return with me—when it is over?”
+
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek
+touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+
+“Yes, I will come back with you.”
+
+“And you will be ready?”
+
+“I am ready now.”
+
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist
+rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions—the
+breath of life, of warmth, of growing things—all between him and the
+hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without
+another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek
+against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she
+had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had
+ceased to fight—she had given to him the precious right to fight for
+her.
+
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of
+the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the
+grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the
+significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even
+more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of
+hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction
+which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same
+horror—of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her—Rossland had
+divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done
+right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have
+exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham’s
+flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and
+the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him,
+out there in the hollows of the tundra—
+
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had
+seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that
+brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told
+her a great deal. Yet she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what
+had been in his mind.
+
+“I am ready,” she reminded him.
+
+“We must wait for Stampede,” he said, reason returning to him. “He
+should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland
+is off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like
+Stampede between us and—”
+
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to
+her. She stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable
+desire to take her in his arms again.
+
+“He is between here and Tanana,” she said with a little gesture of her
+head.
+
+“Rossland told you that?”
+
+“Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away.”
+
+“Then you were not afraid that I—I might let them have you?”
+
+“I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that
+second letter at Ellen McCormick’s, Alan!”
+
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone
+before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were
+approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still
+grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window
+under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a
+death’s-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of
+the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the
+vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song
+of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note
+in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat
+like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and
+lifeless stare of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out
+of that space which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and
+then entered his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his
+post and came hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a
+baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed
+like little points of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan
+shiver as he watched him through the window.
+
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in
+that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to
+understand—and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries’
+teachings—that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet
+were many, and the blood was near, and that both smell and footfall
+were coming from the old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping
+with the water that had once run red. Alan was one of the few who, by
+reason of much effort, had learned the story of the kloof from old
+Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile
+tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the
+women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled
+south with what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof,
+and there, on a day that was golden and filled with the beauty of
+bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their enemies and killed them to a
+man. All were dead now, all but Sokwenna.
+
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was
+no longer the cheerful and gentle “old man” of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook,
+who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained
+an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood
+before Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in
+his breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his
+thin hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the
+uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to
+an appointed task—the watching of the southward plain from the crest of
+a tall ridge two miles back on the Tanana trail. He was to return when
+the sun reached its horizon.
+
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which
+stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon
+as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once,
+without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced
+himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months,
+possibly a year this time. There was much to do, a mass of detail to
+attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to leave behind him. He
+must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write down certain
+laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation
+progressed, and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he
+fell into a habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and
+the impossibility of danger. He tried to make himself feel
+uncomfortably foolish at the thought of having ordered the herdsmen in.
+In all probability Graham would not appear at all, he told himself, or
+at least not for many days—or weeks; and if he did come, it would be to
+war in a legal way, and not with murder.
+
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the
+afternoon lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly
+to take the trail beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his
+side. Twice he saw her between noon and five o’clock, and by that time
+his writing was done. He looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his
+favorite rifle and automatic were working smoothly, and he called
+himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest with an extravagant
+number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this ammunition and
+two of his extra guns to Sokwenna’s cabin, with the thought that it was
+this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted for defense
+in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it, and
+for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on
+their way to Nome.
+
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of
+the horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food
+which Wegaruk had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of
+the ravine, watching the twilight gathering where the coulée ran
+narrower and deeper between the distant breasts of the tundra.
+
+“I am going to leave you for a little while,” he said. “But Sokwenna
+has returned, and you will not be alone.”
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“As far as the cottonwoods, I think.”
+
+“Then I am going with you.”
+
+“I expect to walk very fast.”
+
+“Not faster than I, Alan.”
+
+“But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances.”
+
+“I will help you.” Her hand crept into his. “I am going with you,
+Alan,” she repeated.
+
+“Yes, I—think you are,” he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his
+head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand
+in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled
+together since the day he had come from Nome.
+
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and
+sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made
+him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and
+Sokwenna’s advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost
+Kloof and the country beyond.
+
+“I have been thinking a great deal today,” she was saying, “because you
+have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of _you_. And—my
+thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.”
+
+“And I have been—in paradise,” he replied.
+
+“You do not think that I am wicked?”
+
+“I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.”
+
+“Nor that I have been unwomanly?”
+
+“You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.”
+
+“Yet I have followed you—have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan.”
+
+“For which I thank God,” He breathed devoutly.
+
+“And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your
+arms, and have kissed me—”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And I am walking now with my hand in yours—”
+
+“And will continue to do so, if I can hold it.”
+
+“And I am another man’s wife,” she shuddered.
+
+“You are mine,” he declared doggedly. “You know it, and the Almighty
+God knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham’s wife.
+You are legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and
+body you are free.”
+
+“No, I am not free.”
+
+“But you are!”
+
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: “Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am
+not. It is because—heart and soul—I belong to you.”
+
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary
+Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and
+repeated softly, “Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!”
+
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still
+hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky,
+and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them,
+while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life.
+One mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were
+looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.
+
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now—the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick—but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall
+of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+
+“It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to _you_” he
+said. “And I think that if you hadn’t come back to me I would have gone
+mad.”
+
+“I have the letter. It is here”—and she placed a hand upon her breast.
+“Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?”
+
+“That you meant more to me than life.”
+
+“And that—particularly—you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a tress of my
+hair for you if they found me.”
+
+He nodded. “When I sat across the table from you aboard the _Nome_, I
+worshiped it and didn’t know it. And since then—since I’ve had you
+here—every time. I’ve looked at you—” He stopped, choking the words
+back in his throat.
+
+“Say it, Alan.”
+
+“I’ve wanted to see it down,” he finished desperately. “Silly notion,
+isn’t it?”
+
+“Why is it?” she asked, her eyes widening a little. “If you love it,
+why is it a silly notion to want to see it down?”
+
+“Why, I though possibly you might think it so,” he added lamely.
+
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned
+suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back,
+and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair
+until its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in
+a silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a
+cry of gladness.
+
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in
+her hair. “Do you think it is nice, Alan?”
+
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed
+them to his lips and face.
+
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It
+was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand
+which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When
+he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the
+deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had
+stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.
+
+“What is it?” he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see
+what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over
+the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night—and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between
+it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach
+of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so
+swift as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion’s
+face now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night,
+its suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought,
+and he laughed softly.
+
+But her hand clutched his arm. “I saw them,” she cried, her voice
+breaking. “I saw them—out there against the sun—before the cloud
+came—and some of them were running, like animals—”
+
+“Shadows!” he exclaimed. “The long shadows of foxes running against the
+sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away—”
+
+“No, no, they were not that,” she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. “They were not shadows. _They were
+men_!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
+have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering
+of the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a
+boot striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made
+that sound; none but Stampede Smith’s or his own.
+
+“Were they many?” he asked.
+
+“I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running—”
+
+“Behind us?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And they saw us?”
+
+“I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk.”
+
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he
+could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his
+automatic holster.
+
+“You think _they have come_?” she whispered, and a cold dread was in
+her voice.
+
+“Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?”
+
+“No, no, I am not afraid.”
+
+“Yet you are trembling.”
+
+“It is this strange gloom, Alan.”
+
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen
+times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where
+thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight
+thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it
+is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It
+seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a
+mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting
+out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It
+was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird
+chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes
+strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.
+
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing
+circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a
+moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion
+had seen. Graham’s men were near, had seen them, and were getting
+between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if
+there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted,
+he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty
+of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the
+range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the
+overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and
+fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little
+short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or
+humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that
+he would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a
+tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain
+extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband
+“rescuing” his wife, while he—Alan Holt—was the woman’s abductor and
+paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight
+ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt
+of what that “rescue” would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and
+deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered
+itself in readiness for whatever might happen.
+
+If Graham’s men had seen them, and were getting between them and
+retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead—and in this direction Alan
+walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He
+could not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were
+twined about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose
+hair. For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow,
+listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and
+held her there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was
+panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her
+parted lips and kissed them.
+
+“You are not afraid?” he asked again.
+
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+“No!”
+
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. “Even
+if they saw us, and are Graham’s men, we have given them the slip,” he
+comforted her. “Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am
+sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly.”
+
+“We must travel faster,” she insisted. “I want to run.”
+
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At
+intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and
+listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to
+the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own,
+but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her
+throat for an instant.
+
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath
+of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks,
+and about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth
+rousing to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud
+seemed to be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out
+where its solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the
+girl’s face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra
+were taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan
+recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge
+of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel,
+and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands.
+While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested
+with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running
+between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear,
+which in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained
+his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the
+concealment of the willows.
+
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another
+voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he
+found himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately
+to loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the
+girl struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it
+seemed, his brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to
+reach his gun, and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in
+the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he
+heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he
+was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body
+crumbled, and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last
+strength that was in him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that
+followed, but the fingers loosened at his throat, the face disappeared,
+and the man who was killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two
+Alan did not move as he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then
+he felt for his pistol. The holster was empty.
+
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near
+him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had
+choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was
+up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he
+called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where
+she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her,
+almost in the water of the little spring from which she had been
+drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now;
+he wanted to kill—to destroy what was already under his hands that he
+might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his
+hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force
+of a club the bearded man’s head sagged backward, and Alan’s fingers
+dug into his throat. It was a bull’s neck. He tried to break it. Ten
+seconds—twenty—half a minute at the most—and flesh and bone would have
+given way—but before the bearded man’s gasping cry was gone from his
+lips the second figure leaped upon Alan.
+
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was
+half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out
+and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did
+he realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A
+sickening horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an
+involuntary moan broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out
+his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl.
+She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long
+hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the
+spring, and her hands were groping—groping—until they found what they
+were seeking.
+
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands
+had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself
+to his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised
+herself over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her
+then; he heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away
+from him, limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a
+moment caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at
+his throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows,
+then a heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up.
+By chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He
+clicked the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the
+fight with a gun.
+
+“Come,” he said.
+
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and
+put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud
+from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from
+the pool and the willows.
+
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the
+strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of
+storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered
+from straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his
+own and set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last
+voice had come. He knew what was happening. Graham’s men were cleverer
+than he had supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range,
+and some of them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the
+triumphant shout of the bearded man’s companion had come. They were
+wondering why the call was not repeated, and were hallooing.
+
+Every nerve in Alan’s body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him
+like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows
+they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his
+life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by
+two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust
+and mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and
+civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the
+unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof
+remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century
+ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their
+hands—
+
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from
+his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up
+suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out
+as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an
+arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning
+flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to
+the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A
+moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the
+detonations of Alan’s pistol continued to roll over the tundra.
+
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of
+the stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary
+Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the
+purplish gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely
+white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil,
+and where it clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw
+her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in
+it—to his amazement—was a pistol. He recognized the weapon—one of a
+brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented
+to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation
+swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along
+she had prepared to fight—to fight with _him_ against their enemies! He
+wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her
+how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead,
+and they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier
+between them and the range.
+
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made
+through the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the
+axes and shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a
+moment, knowing that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against
+him, and then was almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two
+hundred yards had taken the strength from her body. Her pale face
+dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and kissed
+her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his
+breast. Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan
+caught her up in his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew
+their pursuers would not immediately find if they could bet beyond
+their vision. He was joyously amazed at her lightness. She was like a
+child in his arms, a glorious little goddess hidden and smothered in
+her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried toward the cabins,
+conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck, feeling
+the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by
+her helplessness.
+
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly
+approaching rain touched his face. He could see farther now—half-way
+back over the narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish
+slipped from his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his
+face. His breath was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly
+they could make out the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them
+were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of
+houses. The silence of the place was death-like.
+
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow
+cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and
+loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He
+talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and
+spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot
+here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly
+uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the
+nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an
+answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.
+
+“What did he say?” asked the girl.
+
+“That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us.”
+
+“And what else?” she persisted.
+
+“Old Sokwenna is superstitious—and nervous. He said some things that
+you wouldn’t understand. You would probably think him mad if he told
+you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were
+here with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway,
+he has been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled
+every woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains.
+Keok and Nawadlook wouldn’t go. I’m glad of that, for if they were
+pursued and overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland—”
+
+“Death would be better,” finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung
+more tightly to his arm.
+
+“Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna’s place until Stampede
+and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won’t dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours
+now; we can shoot, but they won’t risk the use of their rifles.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets—”
+
+They had reached Sokwenna’s door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices
+came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at
+concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly
+and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They
+could hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where
+they were entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying
+foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan’s heart stood still. There
+was something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of
+their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window
+fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna’s rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied
+his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was
+in the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the
+floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him
+what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready
+to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes
+of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining
+cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle
+chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so
+they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face
+and unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at
+Alan.
+
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham’s
+men would fire upon the cabin—when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna’s fusillade, and a
+hail of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their
+way through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single
+movement Alan was at Mary’s side and had crumpled her down on the floor
+beside Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of
+sudden, consuming fire.
+
+“I thought they wouldn’t shoot at women,” he said, and his voice was
+terrifying in its strange hardness. “I was mistaken. And I am
+sure—now—that I understand.”
+
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer
+guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he
+was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both
+he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary
+Standish in Sokwenna’s cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble,
+believing that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he
+fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing
+less than murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and
+plot, was the victim marked for death.
+
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a
+significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which
+to care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of
+Sokwenna’s cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in
+turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the
+ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open
+with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen.
+
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle
+in her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the
+attic, and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for
+him. Alan pointed to the open trap.
+
+“Quick, get into that!” he cried. “It is the only safe place. You can
+load there and hand out the guns.”
+
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was
+clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok
+climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above.
+
+“Go into the cellar!” commanded Alan. “Good God, if you don’t—”
+
+A smile lit up Mary’s face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet
+and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the
+rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from
+his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her
+shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said,
+“I am going to help you fight.”
+
+[Illustration: Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.]
+
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing
+an apron heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window,
+Sokwenna’s ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray
+mist, and his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham
+and his men. What followed struck a smile from Mary’s lips, and a
+moaning sob rose from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise
+up before the open window to face the winged death that was again
+beating a tattoo against the log walls of the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his
+power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and
+that he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and
+death, there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift
+moments following Sokwenna’s rifle-shots from the attic window.
+
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old
+warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan
+thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening
+mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard
+them singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of
+chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log
+walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a
+ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle
+about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was
+riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the
+direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at
+which to shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these
+he fired as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull
+the trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary
+Standish who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was
+waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely,
+never for an instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of
+fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It
+was for _him_. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a
+breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the
+opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing,
+writhing serpent of death that struck something behind them in its
+venomous wrath. With a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+
+“My God, they will kill you if you stand there!” she moaned. “Give me
+up to them, Alan. If you love me—give me up!”
+
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and
+then another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were
+finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs
+of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl’s slim
+body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the
+trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced
+Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun
+and the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
+its command.
+
+“If you don’t stay there, I’ll open the door and go outside to fight!
+Do you understand? _Stay there!_”
+
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
+another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
+following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna’s gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
+hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
+suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly
+and said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with
+the gun which she had loaded for him.
+
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok’s lips when Alan was at the top
+of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
+of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
+seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
+Mary Standish.
+
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
+power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
+light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
+radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
+through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
+rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
+blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
+second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
+They were no longer white men, but savages.
+
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
+watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
+rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was
+sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the
+illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until
+they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the
+bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was
+Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the
+earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two,
+three, four—and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought
+flashed upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for
+him, head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands.
+She was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or
+tears in her eyes.
+
+“Keep down!” he warned. “Keep down below the floor!”
+
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still
+existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now—from the
+shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light
+of his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled
+the night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the
+floor, so that the lower log of the building protected him. No living
+thing could have stood up against what was happening in these moments.
+Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs,
+crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles
+sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary
+Standish coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself
+down quickly, and she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his
+heart froze with horror as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the
+floor as she stood there in that frightful moment, white and glorious
+in the face of the gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was
+at her side, and with her in his arms leaped into the pit.
+
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or
+two life seemed to leave her body.
+
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In
+the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a
+faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his
+arm.
+
+“We can get away—there!” she cried in a low voice. “I have opened the
+little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine.”
+
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not
+dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and
+Nawadlook’s words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle
+fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift
+words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his
+men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a
+considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could
+steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept
+them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails
+into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in
+the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
+Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and
+that Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did
+her lips move in the effort.
+
+“Go—for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine,” he insisted,
+holding her away from him. “Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
+like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no
+hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They
+will be like—like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves—broken—destroyed—”
+
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
+she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+
+“And _you!_” whispered Mary.
+
+“I must remain here. It is the only way.”
+
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
+went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
+She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said
+no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom
+was her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no
+whisper, no farewell caress came with it.
+
+“Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains,” were his last words.
+
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
+them.
+
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
+that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
+way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
+for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His
+cabin was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at
+the windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a
+movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so
+swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became
+sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch
+of fire whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
+sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
+hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it
+stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from
+Sokwenna’s cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and
+watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In
+spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress
+the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical
+resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously
+through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could
+not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That
+he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant
+possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer
+if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a
+righteous end. Only Rossland’s nerve, and what he might have to say,
+held back the vengeance within reach of Alan’s hand.
+
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was
+within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed
+upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no
+other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly
+illumined the windows of Sokwenna’s place. Was it conceivable that
+Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a
+parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He
+shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and
+his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+
+Rossland’s voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+“Alan Holt! Are you there?”
+
+“Yes, I am here,” shouted Alan, “and I have a line on your heart,
+Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?”
+
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing
+had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: “We are giving you a
+last chance, Holt. For God’s sake, don’t be a fool! The offer I made
+you today is still good. If you don’t accept it—the law must take its
+course.”
+
+“_The law!_” Alan’s voice was a savage cry.
+
+“Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with
+felonious intent. But we don’t want to press the law unless we are
+forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men
+and wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive.
+But we are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made
+you today. What do you say?”
+
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous
+assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And
+when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments,
+believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.
+
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to
+old Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was
+creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange
+voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago,
+calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of
+vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of
+women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time
+he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the
+glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind
+him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill
+and with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him
+and the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning
+cabin. And then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger,
+and Sokwenna’s last shot sped on its mission.
+
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment
+Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped,
+and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound,
+and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
+
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from
+life into death shocked every nerve in Alan’s body. Horror for a brief
+space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and
+motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible
+silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry
+broke that silence, though it was made up of many men’s voices. Deadly
+and thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had
+been killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had
+something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no
+mercy—nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands,
+and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in
+another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+
+“Come below!” he commanded. “We must be ready to leave through the
+cellar-pit.”
+
+His hand touched Sokwenna’s face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior’s heart. There was no tremor
+or beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+
+The guns of Graham’s men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets
+tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the
+shelter of the pit.
+
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting
+for him there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+In the astonishment with which Mary’s unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her
+pale face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the
+cabin. That she had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back
+to him, filled him with instant dread, for the precious minutes he had
+fought for were lost, and the priceless time gained during the parley
+with Rossland counted for nothing.
+
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his
+hand and pull him down beside her.
+
+“Of course you didn’t expect me to go,” she said, in a voice that no
+longer trembled or betrayed excitement. “You didn’t want me to be a
+coward. My place is with you.”
+
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him
+as they were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up
+chokingly in his throat.
+
+“Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there—shot under a flag of
+truce,” he said. “We can’t have many minutes left to us.”
+
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the
+cellar-pit opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it—alone—and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side it
+would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+
+“Where are Keok and Nawadlook?” he asked.
+
+“On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your
+plan that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to
+give myself up unless they did as I commanded them. And—Alan—the ravine
+is filled with the rain-mist, and dark—” She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+
+“It is our one chance,” he said.
+
+“And aren’t you glad—a little glad—that I didn’t run away without you?”
+
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they
+smiled at him in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that
+was almost playfully chiding; and the glory of her love as she had
+proved it to him there drew from him what he knew to be the truth.
+
+“Yes—I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour—”
+
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep
+forth into the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the
+wet particles of it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets
+cut like knives over his head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on
+each side of Sokwenna’s place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine,
+and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog
+that hid the coulée.
+
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely.
+This was not what Alan had hoped for. Graham’s men, enraged and made
+desperate by Rossland’s death, would rush the cabin immediately.
+Scarcely had the thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly
+approaching shouts, the trampling of feet, and then the battering of
+some heavy object at the barricaded door of Sokwenna’s cabin. In
+another minute or two their escape would be discovered and a horde of
+men would pour down into the ravine.
+
+Mary tugged at his hand. “Let us hurry,” she pleaded.
+
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with
+her hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine,
+apparently in the face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden
+fear when their course came almost within the circle of light made by
+the burning cabin. Like shadows they sped into the deeper shelter of
+the corral buildings, and not until they paused there did she
+understand the significance of the hazardous chance they had taken.
+Already Graham’s men were pouring into the ravine.
+
+“They won’t suspect we’ve doubled on them until it is too late,” said
+Alan exultantly. “We’ll make for the kloof. Stampede and the herdsmen
+should arrive within a few hours, and when that happens—”
+
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled
+figure lay huddled against one of the corral gates.
+
+“He is hurt,” whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+
+“I hope so,” replied Alan pitilessly. “It will be unfortunate for us if
+he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way.”
+
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing
+point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She
+heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper
+shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she
+noticed that the mist was no longer in her face. The sky was clearing.
+She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail
+over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of
+them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point
+when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second
+and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout.
+There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came
+distinctly to them.
+
+“The wounded man,” said Alan, in a voice of dismay. “He is calling the
+others. I should have killed him!”
+
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All
+her courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and
+quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They
+passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the
+pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen. Trained to
+the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan’s ears caught faint
+sounds which his companion did not hear. The wounded man had succeeded
+in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain
+behind them.
+
+“Can you run a little farther?” he asked.
+
+“Where?”
+
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a
+cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran
+a little behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved
+them this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way
+to clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they
+reached the kloof he would have to fight in the open. With Stampede at
+his side he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles
+with their enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open
+tundra from which they might have defied assault. But the nearness of
+the girl frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He was
+only an incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price
+of death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her
+remained the unspeakable horror of Graham’s lust and passion. But if
+they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the
+cliff, they could laugh at Graham’s pack of beasts while they waited
+for the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the
+hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution
+came faintly rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent
+a golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay
+between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer
+held shadow or illusionment.
+
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with
+surprising speed, heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her
+endurance amazed him. And he knew that without questioning him she had
+guessed the truth of what lay behind them. Then, all at once, she
+stopped, swayed like a reed, and would have fallen if his arms had not
+caught her.
+
+“Splendid!” he cried.
+
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was
+a swiftly beating little dynamo.
+
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a
+mile of the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary’s
+splendid courage had won it for them.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried
+her through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of
+progress, counted now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight
+were flecking the plains. In another quarter of an hour moving objects
+would be distinctly visible a mile away.
+
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could
+feel their breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of
+the incongruity of the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It
+seemed inconceivable that this day, glorious in its freshness, and
+welcomed by the glad voice of all living things, should be a day of
+tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for him. He wanted to shout
+out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it seemed absurd
+that he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient bulk
+of his rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure
+which they bore.
+
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then
+on he climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge
+and scanned the tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he
+concluded their enemies believed they were hidden somewhere on the
+tundra not far from the range-houses.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow
+ravine, and half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof.
+For a space they rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long
+hair and plaited it in two braids. In these moments Alan encouraged
+her, but he did not lie. He told her the half-mile of tundra was their
+greatest hazard, and described the risks they would run. Carefully he
+explained what she was to do under certain circumstances. There was
+scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but they might be so
+far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to the kloof.
+If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be necessary
+to find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from
+behind succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue
+in the direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he
+followed more slowly, holding Graham’s men back with his rifle until
+she reached the edge of the gorge. After that he would come to her as
+swiftly as he could run.
+
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra.
+About them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile
+back toward the range were moving figures; farther west were others,
+and eastward, almost at the edge of the ravine, were two men who would
+have discovered them in another moment if they had not descended into
+the hollow. Alan could see them kneeling to drink at the little coulée
+which ran through it.
+
+“Don’t hurry,” he said, with a sudden swift thought. “Keep parallel
+with me and a distance away. They may not discover you are a woman and
+possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I stop.
+Follow my movements.”
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were
+soiled with muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her
+thus Alan laughed and cried out softly:
+
+“You beautiful little vagabond!”
+
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and
+after that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so
+cleverly that her action was better than his own—and so they had made
+their way over a third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly
+and cried, “Now, _run!_”
+
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the
+ravine and were running toward them.
+
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock
+which he had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+
+Close behind her, he said: “Don’t hesitate a second. Keep on going.
+When they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn’t
+stop.”
+
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them.
+Then he drew close to Mary’s side.
+
+“See that level place ahead? We’ll cross it in another minute or two.
+When they come to it I’m going to stop, and catch them where they can’t
+find shelter. But you must keep on going. I’ll overtake you by the time
+you reach the edge of the kloof.”
+
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level
+space she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready
+to choke her when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their
+enemies. But in her mind burned the low words of his command, his
+warning, and she did not look back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle
+of rock, which was now very near. She had almost reached it when the
+first shot came from behind her.
+
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and
+made pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if
+stunned, and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham’s men
+saw his ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed
+of their pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that
+they might use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they
+brought themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in
+that flash one of the men went down under Alan’s first shot. Before he
+could fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and
+swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary
+stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he
+joined her. A bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He
+did not return the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+
+“He won’t dare to stand up until the others join him,” he encouraged
+her. “We’re beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few
+minutes longer—”
+
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It
+seemed to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock
+between the gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when
+Alan caught her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge
+to a table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he
+dropped down beside her, and held her close as they crept back under
+the shelving face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with
+a yawning chasm at their side. The trail widened as they descended, and
+at the last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter of a
+million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they
+picked their way, while the trickle and drip of water and the
+flesh-like clamminess of the air sent a strange shiver of awe through
+Mary Standish. There was no life here—only an age-old whisper that
+seemed a part of death; and when voices came from above, where Graham’s
+men were gathering, they were ghostly and far away.
+
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked
+their way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages
+between the Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides
+an uncontrollable impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though
+she sensed the protection of their presence. They were like colossi,
+carved by hands long dead, and now guarded by spirits whose voices
+guttered low and secretly in the mysterious drip and trickle of unseen
+water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm death and vengeance
+had glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a rock
+crashed behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a
+cry broke from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never
+known before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from
+which she had escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable,
+for which she would never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan,
+and when at last the narrow fissure widened over their heads, and light
+came down and softened their way, he saw that her face was deathly
+white.
+
+“We are almost there,” he comforted. “And—some day—you will love this
+gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it together all the way
+to the mountains.”
+
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that
+was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this
+climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was
+a great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with
+a floor as level as a table and covered with soft white sand. Mary
+would never forget her first glimpse of this place; it was unreal,
+strange, as if a band of outlaw fairies had brought the white sand for
+a carpet, and had made this their hiding-place, where wind and rain and
+snow could never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to make her
+thought more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only
+fairies’ feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain.
+So they were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight
+through that fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof
+itself that they must have hidden themselves. Something in the humor
+and gentle thought of it all made her smile at Alan. But his face had
+turned suddenly grim, and she looked up the kloof, where they had
+traveled through danger and come to safety. And then she saw that which
+froze all thought of fairies out of her heart.
+
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many
+of them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer
+light, and at their head was a man upon whom Mary’s eyes fixed
+themselves in horror. White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed
+the truth.
+
+“That man in front?” he asked.
+
+She nodded. “Yes.”
+
+“Is John Graham.”
+
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+
+“Yes, John Graham.”
+
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+
+“I think,” he said, “that from here I can easily kill him!”
+
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone
+out of them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a prayer
+to him.
+
+“I am thinking of tomorrow—the next day—the years and years to come,
+_with you_,” she whispered. “Alan, you can’t kill John Graham—not until
+God shows us it is the only thing left for us to do. You can’t—”
+
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl
+of a bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart
+stopped beating, and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body
+as she saw the swift and terrible change in the stricken face of the
+man she loved. He tried to smile at her, even as a red blot came where
+the streak of gray in his hair touched his forehead. And then he
+crumpled down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against the rocks.
+
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill
+her brain with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below
+hesitated and their hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible
+cry of a woman rang between the rock walls of the chasm. And following
+the cry a voice came down to them.
+
+“John Graham, I’m going to kill you—_kill you_—”
+
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task
+of vengeance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her
+soul, and she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed.
+But she did not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham.
+The troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted in gathering
+before her eyes, something she tried to brush away, but which
+obstinately refused to go. She did not know she was sobbing as she
+looked over the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she had
+lost sight of John Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock
+and began climbing it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated
+she stood above the rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked
+alike, jumping and dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came
+nearer, and suddenly it occurred to her that _all_ of them were John
+Grahams, and that she must kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding
+fairies might have guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in
+those moments when she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men
+did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down
+among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she continued to fire
+until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun was empty.
+The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her
+vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so
+near she could see their faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in
+its desire to kill John Graham.
+
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His
+face was hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its
+holster, and sprang back to her rock. There was no time to wait or
+choose now, for his murderers were almost upon her. With all her
+strength she tried to fire accurately, but Alan’s big gun leaped and
+twisted in her hand as she poured its fire wildly down among the rocks
+until it was empty. Her own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in
+the race to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired her last
+shot she waited through another instant of horror, until she was
+striking at faces that came within the reach of her arm. And then, like
+a monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side.
+She had a moment’s vision of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing
+with a passion that was almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon
+her. Then his arms came about her. She could feel herself crushing
+inside them, and fought against their cruel pressure, then broke limply
+and hung a resistless weight against him. She was not unconscious, but
+her strength was gone, and if the arms had closed a little more they
+would have killed her.
+
+And she could hear—clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came from
+up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that the
+strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+
+Graham’s arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies’ hiding-place with
+its white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+
+“Martens, it couldn’t happen in a better place,” he said to a man who
+stood near him. “Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider.
+If you don’t clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this
+ambuscade will do the business in a hurry.”
+
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others
+hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no
+cries, no shouts—nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+
+Graham’s arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged
+inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of
+day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.
+
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its
+first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to
+climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy,
+very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not
+a sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could
+find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.
+
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the
+tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more
+reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was
+the old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had
+thought was long dead—the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the
+eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede
+Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days
+he had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor
+conscience to bar the way, and his dream—a last great fight—was here to
+fill the final unwritten page of a life’s drama that was almost closed.
+And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white sand
+unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides and
+rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a woman—and
+Alan Holt!
+
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men’s faces turned
+that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the
+scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He
+was almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge.
+Two of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling
+interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a woman’s voice filled with
+madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five
+men stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the cries came
+Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her.
+The girl’s hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and
+Graham’s eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her.
+He caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully
+weak hands beat futilely in his face.
+
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof
+before.
+
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet
+of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and
+scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge
+when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of
+the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or
+swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down
+as if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one
+who fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched
+on his face.
+
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl
+crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body,
+her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a
+gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other
+could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation
+gripped Stampede. He saw Graham’s pistol rise slowly and deliberately.
+He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham’s face was the cold
+and unexcited triumph of a devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was
+four inches—perhaps five—away from the girl’s. There was only that—and
+the extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the
+automatic seeking his heart. And then, in that last second, straight
+into the girl’s staring eyes blazed Stampede’s gun, and the four inches
+of leering face behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede,
+and not the girl, who closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and
+saw Mary Standish sobbing over Alan’s body, and Graham lying face down
+in the sand, he reverently raised the gun from which he had fired the
+last shot, and pressed its hot barrel to his thin lips.
+
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her
+face in her hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die,
+for in this hour of triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for
+her. Alan was gone. Only death could have come with that terrible red
+blot on his forehead, just under the gray streak in his hair. And
+without him there was no longer a reason for her to live.
+
+She reached out her arms. “Give him to me,” she whispered. “Give him to
+me.”
+
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede’s face. But she heard his voice.
+
+“It wasn’t a bullet that hit him,” Stampede was saying. “The bullet hit
+a rock, an’ it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between
+the eyes. He isn’t dead, _and he ain’t going to die!_”
+
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies’ hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was
+riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake
+a girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and
+at last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl
+plunged into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and
+he leaped after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds
+like the clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long
+sleep, from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a
+face very near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of
+tears.
+
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, “Alan!”
+
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed
+against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his
+mouth and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew
+the end of the race had come, and he had won.
+
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth
+he sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see
+him, and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his
+old housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away
+from him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the
+strange change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to
+ask the question, for more than any others of his people did he love
+these two missing comrades of the tundras.
+
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened—but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told
+him of that.
+
+“Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away,” he said.
+“We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the
+corrals. Now that Graham is dead, they’re frightened stiff—afraid we’re
+going to hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland to
+fight for them, they know they’re lost.”
+
+“And our men—my people?” asked Alan faintly.
+
+“Fought like devils.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But—”
+
+“They didn’t rest an hour in coming from the mountains.”
+
+“You know what I mean, Stampede.”
+
+“Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna,” and he counted
+over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among
+them.
+
+“And Tautuk?”
+
+“He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone
+else attempts to do anything for him.”
+
+“Then—I am glad Tautuk was hit,” smiled Alan. And he asked, “Where is
+Amuk Toolik?”
+
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+
+“You’ll have to ask _her_, Alan.”
+
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that
+puzzled him.
+
+“You must wait,” she said.
+
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and
+with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until
+she told him the secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and
+she nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was
+content to accept the punishment. So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and
+what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+
+“I don’t need a doctor,” he said, “but it was mighty thoughtful of you
+to send Amuk Toolik for one.” Then he caught himself suddenly. “What a
+senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who need a doctor more
+than I do.”
+
+Mary nodded. “But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now.”
+And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of
+her ear.
+
+“Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel,” he said. “Then
+we will start for the States, as we planned.”
+
+“You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up
+the new house,” she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice
+that he was stunned. “I have already given orders for the cutting of
+timber in the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin
+construction very soon. I am sorry you find your business in the States
+so important, Alan. It will be a little lonesome with you away.”
+
+He gasped. “Mary!”
+
+She did not turn. “_Mary!_”
+
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she
+faced him.
+
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips
+pressed to his.
+
+“It wasn’t a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to
+marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait—”
+
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that
+brought a little sob of joy from her heart.
+
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a
+little reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a
+happiness which he believed had never come to any other man in the
+world. It was not her desire to return to the States at all. She never
+wanted to return. She wanted nothing down there, nothing that the
+Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he could find some way
+of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was afraid it
+might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing
+that would make her happy, and that was _his_ world. She wanted it just
+as it was—the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains—with
+the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She
+now understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not
+an American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska
+she would go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end.
+His heart throbbed until it seemed it would break, and all the time she
+was whispering her hopes and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair,
+until it lay spread over his breast, and against his lips, and for the
+first time in years a hot flood of tears filled his eyes.
+
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised
+Mary’s head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where
+she stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled
+confusion and glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and
+her eyes were shining like stars as she looked at Alan.
+
+“It is Amuk Toolik,” she said. “He has returned.”
+
+“And—is he alone?” Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he
+waited for her answer.
+
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked
+back his hair. “I must go and do up my hair, Alan,” she said then. “It
+would never do for them to find me like this.”
+
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on
+the roof of Sokwenna’s cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was singing
+again.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Alaskan, by James Oliver Curwood</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Alaskan</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: James Oliver Curwood</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Walt Louderback</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11867]<br />
+[Most recently updated: May 31, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Alaskan</h1>
+
+<h3>A Novel of the North</h3>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD</h2>
+
+<h4>With Illustrations by Walt Louderback</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="letter">
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska,
+the new empire rising in the North, it is for me
+an honor and a privilege to dedicate this work.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>Owosso, Michigan<br />
+August 1, 1923</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="331"></a>
+<img src="images/331.jpg" width="399" height="600" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#331">It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#332">The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#333">The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#334">Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>THE ALASKAN</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not lost the
+spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead in him, and the
+fire which is built up of clean adventure and the association of strong men and
+a mighty country had not died out of his veins. He could still see the
+picturesque, feel the thrill of the unusual, and&mdash;at times&mdash;warm
+memories crowded upon him so closely that yesterday seemed today, and Alaska
+was young again, thrilling the world with her wild call to those who had
+courage to come and fight for her treasures, and live&mdash;or die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and the
+yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan mountains,
+something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is Alaska.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment did she
+answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the almost vivid
+light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled with a dusky fire, and
+her lips were parted a little, and her slim body was tense as she looked at the
+wonder of the moon silhouetting the cragged castles of the peaks, up where the
+soft, gray clouds lay like shimmering draperies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. &ldquo;Yes, Alaska,&rdquo; she
+said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in
+her voice. &ldquo;Your Alaska, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the low
+moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now she asked:
+&ldquo;What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon like that,
+and the stars so clear above!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are in
+the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it were day you
+could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the Inside Passage. I have
+always called it the water-wonderland of the world, and yet, if you will
+observe, I must be mistaken&mdash;for we are almost alone on this side of the
+ship. Is it not proof? If I were right, the men and women in
+there&mdash;dancing, playing cards, chattering&mdash;would be crowding this
+rail. Can you imagine humans like that? But they can&rsquo;t see what I see,
+for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things. Ah, do you catch that in
+the air, Miss Standish&mdash;the perfume of flowers, of forests, of green
+things ashore? It is faint, but I catch it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so do I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she stood
+with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy; she
+could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the rhythmic
+thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted windows, and as the
+old captain looked at her, there was something in her face which he could not
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute&mdash;defying the necessity of making reservation where half a thousand
+others had been turned away&mdash;and chance had brought her under his eyes. In
+desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered a strange terror
+under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he had fathered her with
+his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom of years. And more than once
+he had observed that questing, defiant poise of her head with which she was
+regarding the cabin windows now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives in Nome.
+She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was impossible not to
+believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in
+coming aboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience, he
+gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some way she
+was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and sixty years, he
+did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very pretty in a
+quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly attractive about her,
+appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was
+girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray
+in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and
+luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At
+times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty
+he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in
+him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others might
+not see&mdash;and hold his tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are not quite alone,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;There are
+others,&rdquo; and she made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the
+rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And the other is
+Alan Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the moon.
+Gently her hand touched the old captain&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she
+whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the shore,
+and there are glaciers all the way up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that other sound, like low wind&mdash;on a night so still and calm!
+What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets rushing
+down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the mountains, you hear that
+song.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this man, Alan Holt,&rdquo; she reminded him. &ldquo;He is a part of
+these things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in Eighty-four,
+I think. Let me see, that would make him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thirty-eight,&rdquo; she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he chuckled. &ldquo;You are very good at figures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone&mdash;like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of ghosts
+as we talked there in the dusk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse ate
+up men&rsquo;s lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish,&rdquo; said Captain Rifle. &ldquo;You will meet many
+like him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their
+faces&mdash;always the memory of those days that are gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. &ldquo;And Alan Holt? You know
+him well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All
+northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the Endicott
+Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must be very brave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And honorable men&mdash;men you can trust and believe in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is odd,&rdquo; she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like
+a bird-note in her throat. &ldquo;I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a long
+time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going home. Alan
+Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you are&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An American,&rdquo; she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her
+voice. &ldquo;A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going
+north&mdash;to learn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only that, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer. His
+kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was filled with
+honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must press the question,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As the captain of this
+ship, and as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me&mdash;in confidence, if you will have it so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. &ldquo;There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet&mdash;you came aboard very strangely,&rdquo; he urged.
+&ldquo;You will recall that it was most unusual&mdash;without reservation,
+without baggage&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You forget the hand-bag,&rdquo; she reminded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I did, Captain Rifle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship&rsquo;s regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from something!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I was running away&mdash;from something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed the
+thrill of the fight she was making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will not tell me why&mdash;or from what you were
+escaping?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can not&mdash;tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But&mdash;it
+is possible&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I shall never reach Nome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung to him,
+and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged the hand to her
+breast. &ldquo;I know just how good you have been to me,&rdquo; she cried.
+&ldquo;I should like to tell you why I came aboard&mdash;like that. But I can
+not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!&rdquo; With one free hand she
+pointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery of
+centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those things,
+Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or feel what you
+have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know it. And after all
+that, can&rsquo;t you&mdash;won&rsquo;t you&mdash;forget the strange manner in
+which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to put out of
+your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look back&mdash;and think.
+Please Captain Rifle&mdash;please!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his hand to
+her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant, leaving him
+speechless, his resolution gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love you because you have been so good to me,&rdquo; she whispered,
+and as suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone at
+the rail.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid light
+of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching her, nor did
+he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which she made as she
+paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle. To him she was only
+one of the five hundred human atoms that went to make up the tremendously
+interesting life of one of the first ships of the season going north. Fate,
+through the suave agency of the purser, had brought him into a bit closer
+proximity to her than the others; that was all. For two days her seat in the
+dining-salon had been at the same table, not quite opposite him. As she had
+missed both breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements
+of neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of
+speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or
+communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of his
+love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst. Some people,
+he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the balance, were burdened with
+the necessity of holding their tongues. For him silence was not a burden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very quiet, and he
+liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape the beauty of her
+eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that darkened them. But these
+were details which did not thrill him, but merely pleased him. And her hair
+pleased him possibly even more than her gray eyes, though he was not
+sufficiently concerned to discuss the matter with himself. But if he had
+pointed out any one thing, it would have been her hair&mdash;not so much the
+color of it as the care she evidently gave it, and the manner in which she
+dressed it. He noted that it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it
+under the dinner lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth,
+silky coils in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense
+relief after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his
+six months&rsquo; visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking,
+because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of him&mdash;with
+his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather Indian-like litheness,
+and the single patch of gray that streaked his thick, blond hair. His interest
+had not reached anywhere near that point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested him,
+except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and greater thing
+gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the throbbing pulse of the
+engines of the new steamship <i>Nome</i> under his feet at Seattle. He was
+going <i>home</i>. And home meant Alaska. It meant the mountains, the vast
+tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which civilization had not yet come with
+its clang and clamor. It meant friends, the stars he knew, his herds,
+everything he loved. Such was his reaction after six months of exile, six
+months of loneliness and desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll not make the trip again&mdash;not for a whole
+winter&mdash;unless I&rsquo;m sent at the point of a gun,&rdquo; he said to
+Captain Rifle, a few moments after Mary Standish had left the deck. &ldquo;An
+Eskimo winter is long enough, but one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New
+York is longer&mdash;for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has
+forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to listen
+to him. We may get action.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May!&rdquo; Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. &ldquo;Alaska has been
+waiting ten years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you&rsquo;ll get
+anything. When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have
+and what we need north of Fifty-eight&mdash;why, what&rsquo;s the use? Alaska
+might as well shut up shop!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she isn&rsquo;t going to do that,&rdquo; said Alan Holt, his face
+grimly set in the moonlight. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve tried hard to get us, and
+they&rsquo;ve made us shut up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six
+thousand whites in the Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have
+driven out nine thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left
+are hard-boiled. We&rsquo;re not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are
+Alaskans, and we are not afraid to fight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That we&rsquo;ll have a square deal within another five years, or know
+the reason why. And another five years after that, we&rsquo;ll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty years
+we&rsquo;ll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons, eh? But
+rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who are turning
+their grazing lands into farms and irrigation systems.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of Alan Holt&rsquo;s hands was clenched at the rail. &ldquo;Until I went
+down this winter, I didn&rsquo;t realize just how bad it was,&rdquo; he said, a
+note hard as iron in his voice. &ldquo;Lomen is a diplomat, but I&rsquo;m not.
+I want to fight when I see such things&mdash;fight with a gun. Because we
+happened to find gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as
+quickly as possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the skin will
+be worthless. That&rsquo;s modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned and
+stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with the
+moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ask me a question, madam,&rdquo; said Alan Holt, bowing courteously.
+&ldquo;No, I am not an American. I am an Alaskan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl&rsquo;s lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+&ldquo;Please pardon me for listening,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t
+help it. I am an American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything
+else in the world&mdash;more than my religion, even. <i>America,</i> Mr. Holt.
+And America doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mean a great many of America&rsquo;s
+people. I love to think that I first came ashore in the <i>Mayflower</i>. That
+is why my name is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska
+<i>is</i> America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl&rsquo;s face was no longer placidly quiet.
+Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her voice, and he knew
+that in the light of day he would have seen fire in her cheeks. He smiled, and
+in that smile he could not quite keep back the cynicism of his thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And yet I love it.&rdquo; She pointed
+to the mountains. &ldquo;I wish I might have been born among them. You are
+fortunate. You should love America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alaska, you mean!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, America.&rdquo; There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was
+not speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The irony on Alan&rsquo;s lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+&ldquo;If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came over
+in the <i>Mayflower</i>, I stand reproved,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You should be
+an authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are correct,&rdquo; she replied with a proud, little tilt of her
+glossy head, &ldquo;though I think that only lately have I come to an
+understanding of its significance&mdash;and its responsibility. I ask your
+pardon again for interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just
+happened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a swift smile
+and passed down the promenade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A remarkable young woman,&rdquo; Alan remarked. &ldquo;I imagine that
+the spirit of Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost suppose
+he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite though rather
+indirect result.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation of
+humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one could not
+miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a sting which he did not
+altogether intend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the captain a
+question which was in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;rather,&rdquo; acknowledged Captain Rifle. &ldquo;Hereafter
+she will ply directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we&rsquo;re doing
+the Inside Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven&rsquo;t seen fit to
+explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to do
+with it. We&rsquo;re landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by way
+of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays, Holt. I can
+remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So can I,&rdquo; nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which
+lay the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before.
+&ldquo;I remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men don&rsquo;t forget such women as Jane Hope,&rdquo; said the captain
+softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You knew her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years
+ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn&rsquo;t it? And when I look at Mary
+Standish and hear her voice&mdash;&rdquo; He hesitated, as if betraying a
+secret, and then he added: &ldquo;&mdash;I can&rsquo;t help thinking of the
+girl Donald Hardwick fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse.
+It&rsquo;s too bad she had to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t dead,&rdquo; said Alan. The hardness was gone from his
+voice. &ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t dead,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the
+pity of it. She is as much a living thing to him today as she was twenty years
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment the captain said, &ldquo;She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Not at all. I think she is a most admirable
+young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I&rsquo;m going to promenade a
+bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his way, while
+the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship <i>Nome</i> was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing with the
+very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a human
+intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger list held a
+significance that was almost epic, and its names represented more than mere men
+and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he loved, its heart&rsquo;s
+blood, its very element&mdash;&ldquo;giving in.&rdquo; He knew that with the
+throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy, and hope were on their way
+north&mdash;and with these things also arrogance and greed. On board were a
+hundred conflicting elements&mdash;some that had fought for Alaska, others that
+would make her, and others that would destroy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and women
+whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew the tourists
+almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north had not yet seized upon
+them. They were voluble and rather excitedly enthusiastic in the face of beauty
+and awesomeness. The sour-doughs were tucked away here and there in shadowy
+nooks, watching in silence, or they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking
+their cigars or pipes, and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these
+two, the newcomers and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for
+Alan, the flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life north
+of Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked out those who
+belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over the edge
+of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he recognized them as
+the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to work on the government
+railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of them was talking, filled with
+the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t know what they
+ought to know about Alaska. In school they teach us that it&rsquo;s an eternal
+icebox full of gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that&rsquo;s
+where reindeer come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing.
+Why&rdquo;&mdash;he drew in a deep breath&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s nine times as
+large as the state of Washington, twelve times as big as the state of New York,
+and we bought it from Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it
+down on the face of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St.
+Augustine, Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That&rsquo;s how big
+it is, and the geographical center of our country isn&rsquo;t Omaha or Sioux
+City, but exactly San Francisco, California.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good for you, sonny,&rdquo; came a quiet voice from beyond the group.
+&ldquo;Your geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your
+people that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia, and
+wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our people to
+rise against the Washington government. We&rsquo;ve asked Washington for a few
+guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh at us. Do you see a
+moral?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He caught a
+glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did not know him. And
+as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the moonlight, the same deep, quiet
+voice came back very clearly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to hang
+a few such men as John Graham, sonny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot. Only one
+man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred, and that man was
+John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the identity of the stranger whose
+words had temporarily stunned the young engineers, when he saw a slim figure
+standing between him and the light of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary
+Standish. He knew by her attitude that she had heard the words of the young
+engineer and the old graybeard, but she was looking at <i>him</i>. And he could
+not remember that he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman&rsquo;s face
+before. It was not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from
+thought and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it annoyed
+Alan Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too susceptible reaction
+in matters which did not concern her. So he said, speaking to the silent young
+men a few steps away:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had scarcely gone
+out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind him, and the
+girl&rsquo;s hand touched his arm lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Holt, please&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was not
+altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again, only her
+finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so that for a moment he
+could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth hair. Then she was meeting
+his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in the gray depths of her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am alone on the ship,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have no friends here.
+I want to see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean ... escort you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him, and he
+wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not smile. Her eyes
+were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same time very lovely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The way you put it, I don&rsquo;t see how I can refuse,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;As for the questions&mdash;probably Captain Rifle can answer them better
+than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to trouble him,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;He has
+much to think about. And you are alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won&rsquo;t try. But I&rsquo;m going into a new country, and I have a
+passionate desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get
+there. I want to know about many things. For instance&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment astonished
+him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her slim figure seemed
+possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she waited for an answer. They had
+turned a little, so that in the light of the moon the almost flowerlike
+whiteness of her face was clear to him. With her smooth, shining hair, the
+pallor of her face under its lustrous darkness, and the clearness of her eyes
+she held Alan speechless for a moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon
+and understand the something about her which made him interested in spite of
+himself. Then he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you ever see a dog fight?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly.
+&ldquo;Once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was my dog&mdash;a little dog. His throat was torn&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. &ldquo;Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He&rsquo;s the dog&mdash;a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth from a new
+land and enslave it to his own desires and political ambitions. That is what
+John Graham is doing from his money-throne down there in the States. It&rsquo;s
+the financial support he represents, curse him! Money&mdash;and a man without
+conscience. A man who would starve thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A
+man who, in every sense of the word, is a murderer&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone whiter,
+and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the look in her eyes
+brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, I&rsquo;ve hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he
+said, bowing a little. &ldquo;In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I
+suppose I must apologize for swearing and calling another man a murderer. Well,
+I do. And now&mdash;if you care to stroll about the ship&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and Mary
+Standish as they walked forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A corking pretty girl,&rdquo; said one of them, drawing a deep breath.
+&ldquo;I never saw such hair and eyes&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m at the same table with them,&rdquo; interrupted another.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m second on her left, and she hasn&rsquo;t spoken three words to
+me. And that fellow she is with is like an icicle out of Labrador.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mary Standish was saying: &ldquo;Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those young
+engineers. I wish I were a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you were,&rdquo; agreed Alan amiably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon Mary Standish&rsquo;s pretty mouth lost its softness for an instant.
+But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and the sweet air.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman&rsquo;s man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or die for
+them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his sentiment was
+entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born and bred of the
+mountains and the open and had nothing in common with the insincere brand which
+develops in the softer and more luxurious laps of civilization. Years of
+aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of the north, reading the lines,
+understood what they meant. But only now and then could a woman possibly
+understand. Yet if in any given moment a supreme physical crisis had come,
+women would have turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as
+Alan Holt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover. The
+mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle meant as much
+as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he could enjoy greatly
+without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his face. And not always was his
+smile a reflection of humorous thought. There were times when it betrayed
+another kind of thought more forcefully than speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present situation
+amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment Miss Standish had
+made in selecting him, when compared with the intoxicating thrill she could
+easily have aroused by choosing one of the young engineers as a companion in
+her evening adventure. He chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered
+note of amusement, gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he
+had observed once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said
+nothing. As if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a decidedly
+pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl&rsquo;s hand did not merely touch
+his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was necessarily so close to
+him that when he looked down, the glossy coils of her hair were within a few
+inches of his face. His nearness to her, together with the soft pressure of her
+hand on his arm, was a jolt to his stoicism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not half bad,&rdquo; he expressed himself frankly. &ldquo;I
+really believe I am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss
+Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant.
+&ldquo;You thought&mdash;possibly&mdash;I might be dangerous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little. I don&rsquo;t understand women. Collectively I think they are
+God&rsquo;s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don&rsquo;t care much
+about them. But you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded approvingly. &ldquo;That is very nice of you. But you needn&rsquo;t
+say I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly&mdash;except in the way they dress their hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You like mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge cloud of
+smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard the
+<i>Nome</i>. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor built
+at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands while they
+smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let&rsquo;s go in,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;I know; of no better place. Are
+you afraid of smoke?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. If I were a man, I would smoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which would be a crime,&rdquo; he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they entered.
+The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue with smoke. A
+score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as many were gathered in
+groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up and down the carpeted floor.
+Here and there were men who sat alone. A few were asleep, which made Alan look
+at his watch. Then he observed Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles
+of neatly rolled blankets that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She
+touched it with her toe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do they mean?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are overloaded,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Alaskan steam-ships have
+no steerage passengers as we generally know them. It isn&rsquo;t poverty that
+rides steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on
+the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there will
+unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in, and
+directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men were seated
+at this table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl&mdash;I forget his name,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t look it,
+but he is a real sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the
+floor. The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men, and
+that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with whiskers
+nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of George Carmack,
+who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The thud of Carmack&rsquo;s
+spade, as it hit first pay, was the &lsquo;sound heard round the world,&rsquo;
+Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was the second-best man
+at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who
+were with Carmack when the strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic,
+he was in love with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came
+into the north.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why was she courageous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because she came alone into a man&rsquo;s land, without a soul to fight
+for her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did. As
+long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who posed as
+a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. <i>Finis</i>, I think.
+Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big
+whiskers&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a table
+and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except his boldness
+as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and was deliberately
+insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in its directness. Then a
+sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her cheeks
+were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could not but
+observe how beautiful anger made her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will pardon me a moment,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;I shall
+demand an explanation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she entreated. &ldquo;It is kind of you, and
+you are just the sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But
+it would be absurd to notice it. Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her voice, and
+Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went from her face,
+leaving it strangely white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am at your service,&rdquo; he replied with a rather cold inclination
+of his head. &ldquo;But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of John Graham&rsquo;s men,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A fellow named
+Rossland, going up to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand.
+They&rsquo;ll choke the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this
+filthy stuff we call money can do, isn&rsquo;t it? Two winters ago I saw whole
+Indian villages starving, and women and little children dying by the score
+because of this John Graham&rsquo;s money. Over-fishing did it, you understand.
+If you could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones,
+crying for a rag to eat&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand clutched at his arm. &ldquo;How could John Graham&mdash;do
+that?&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed unpleasantly. &ldquo;When you have been a year in Alaska you
+won&rsquo;t ask that question, Miss Standish. <i>How</i>? Why, simply by
+glutting his canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the
+natives have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he
+handles represents the fish trust&mdash;and many other things. Please
+don&rsquo;t misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without
+it we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the face of
+the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska does today. Ten
+thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men who have money to invest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a despoiler,
+one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource into dollars as
+fast as he can, even though those operations make both land and water barren.
+You must remember until recently the government of Alaska as manipulated by
+Washington politicians was little better than that against which the American
+colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard thing for one to say about the country he
+loves, isn&rsquo;t it? And John Graham stands for the worst&mdash;he and the
+money which guarantees his power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics, that
+capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be interested.
+Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate bureaus at
+Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is it a wonder the
+patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like John Graham, dishonest and
+corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to work in?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska&rsquo;s interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of the
+Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska is a mighty
+empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go ahead in spite of all
+our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear. Some day&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he caught himself. &ldquo;There&mdash;I&rsquo;m talking politics, and
+I should entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things,&rdquo; he
+apologized. &ldquo;Shall we go to the lower decks?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or the open air,&rdquo; she suggested. &ldquo;I am afraid this smoke is
+upsetting me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to the
+thickness of the air. Rossland&rsquo;s inexplicable rudeness had disturbed her
+more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?&rdquo; he
+asked, when they were outside. &ldquo;The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are&mdash;well&mdash;unusually good-looking, the Captain says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he has already made me acquainted with them,&rdquo; she laughed
+softly. &ldquo;Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them.
+I had breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You noticed my absence?&rdquo; she asked demurely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought, I
+think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if you were
+ill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it would be
+only charity and good-will to change seats with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Probably not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have they ever suffered?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking me to my
+cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. &ldquo;What is your
+room?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-seven, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This deck?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her hand,
+did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and lighted a
+fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once, as he slowly made
+a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his cabin and looked over
+papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These were memoranda giving an
+account of his appearance with Carl Lomen before the Ways and Means Committee
+at Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary Standish was
+asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by the recurring
+insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a clever girl, he
+admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and she had told him nothing,
+while he had been quite garrulous. He was a little ashamed when he recalled how
+he had unburdened his mind to a girl who could not possibly be interested in
+the political affairs of John Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his
+fault. She had fairly catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under
+the circumstances, he thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole. Only the
+soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the last of the
+Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears. The ship, at last, was asleep.
+The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting the mountains, and
+beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark. Out of this darkness, rising
+like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof
+Island. And he wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely
+wider than the length of the ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course
+instead of going around by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land was more
+distant now, but the <i>Nome</i> was still pushing ahead under slow bell, and
+he could smell the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of the scent of
+forests that came from both east and west.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps. They seemed
+to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a man&rsquo;s
+voice&mdash;and in answer to it a woman&rsquo;s. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of voices. In
+silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him in the moonlight.
+One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was Rossland, who had stared at her
+so boldly in the smoking-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary Standish or
+Graham&rsquo;s agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud and humbug,
+and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew more about Rossland
+than she had allowed him to believe. She had not lied to him. She had said
+nothing at all&mdash;except to restrain him from demanding an apology.
+Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but beyond that fact her affairs had
+nothing to do with his own business in life. Possibly she and Rossland had
+quarreled, and now they were making up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of
+him to think over the matter at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great desire to
+sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with the soothing
+movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical thrum of it. And it
+was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going home. How infernally long
+those seven months had been, down in the States! And how he had missed everyone
+he had ever known&mdash;even his enemies!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of miles
+away&mdash;the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the Endicott
+Mountains, and &ldquo;Alan&rsquo;s Range&rdquo; at the beginning of them.
+Spring was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like corn
+from a hopper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people&mdash;the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as he did.
+He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief herdsmen, would care for
+things as well as himself. But much could happen in seven months. Nawadlook,
+the little beauty of his distant kingdom, was not looking well when he left. He
+was worried about her. The pneumonia of the previous winters had left its mark.
+And Keok, her rival in prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how
+Tautuk&rsquo;s sometimes hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a
+little heart-breaker and had long reveled in Tautuk&rsquo;s sufferings. An
+archangel of iniquity, Alan thought, as he grinned&mdash;but worth any
+man&rsquo;s risk of life, if he had but a drop of brown blood in him! As for
+his herds, they had undoubtedly fared well. Ten thousand head was something to
+be proud of&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door and had
+paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each time they had
+passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a sound under him. He
+heard movement then, a swift, running movement&mdash;and he switched on his
+light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was there. The long corridor
+was empty. And then&mdash;a distance away&mdash;he heard the soft opening and
+closing of another door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He picked
+it up and reentered his room. It was a woman&rsquo;s handkerchief. And he had
+seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that evening in the
+smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should now find it at his
+door.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan experienced
+a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment&mdash;also a certain
+resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in spite of himself was
+not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a certain point, had been fairly
+entertaining. It was true he might have passed a pleasanter hour recalling old
+times with Stampede Smith, or discussing Kadiak bears with the English earl, or
+striking up an acquaintance with the unknown graybeard who had voiced an
+opinion about John Graham. But he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he
+holding Mary Standish accountable for them. It was, last of all, the
+handkerchief that momentarily upset him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking affair, to
+be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous diminutiveness. As the
+question came to him, he was wondering how even as dainty a nose as that
+possessed by Mary Standish could be much comforted by it. But it was pretty.
+And, like Mary Standish, there was something exquisitely quiet and perfect
+about it, like the simplicity of her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It
+was a thought that came to him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying
+bit of fabric on the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the
+dropping of it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At least he
+told himself so. And he also assured himself, with an involuntary shrug of his
+shoulders, that any woman or girl had the right to pass his door if she so
+desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only
+slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when
+they had to do with woman&mdash;and such an absurdly inconsequential thing as a
+handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and Nawadlook
+and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given the priceless
+heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real, with her swift smile
+and mischievous face, and Nawadlook&rsquo;s big, soft eyes were brighter than
+when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as usual over the heartlessness of
+Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that gave out the peculiar sound of bells, and
+to this Amuk Toolik was dancing the Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in
+exaggerated admiration. Even in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was
+happening, and that out of the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was enjoying
+Tautuk&rsquo;s jealousy. Tautuk was so stupid he would never understand. That
+was the funny part of it. And he beat his drum savagely, scowling so that he
+almost shut his eyes, while Keok laughed outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship&rsquo;s
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his watch.
+Tautuk&rsquo;s drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it was four
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a chill air
+which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few minutes after
+awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and he got up quietly and
+dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar he had laid aside at midnight.
+Not until he had finished dressing did he notice the handkerchief on the table.
+If its presence had suggested a significance a few hours before, he no longer
+disturbed himself by thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the
+girl&rsquo;s part, that was all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the
+crumpled bit of cambric in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted. Through the
+ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty chairs, and lights burning
+dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and the drifting warmth of the Japan
+current had brought an early spring to the Alexander Archipelago, and May had
+stolen much of the flowering softness of June. But the dawns of these days were
+chilly and gray. Mists and fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke
+rolled down the sides of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the
+inner waters felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery of it
+was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure. He could feel
+the care with which the <i>Nome</i> was picking her way northward. Her engines
+were thrumming softly, and her movement was a slow and cautious glide, catlike
+and slightly trembling, as if every pound of steel in her were a living nerve
+widely alert. He knew Captain Rifle would not be asleep and that straining eyes
+were peering into the white gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them,
+hazardously near, must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the
+still more pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that
+deadly finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they must
+creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager for his
+work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except that they were
+Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide tundras, and the
+mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His blood sang to the surety of
+it now, and for that reason he was not sorry he had spent seven months of
+loneliness in the States. He had proved with his own eyes that the day was near
+when Alaska would come into her own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its
+romance, its thrill, but what was all the gold the mountains might possess
+compared with this greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the
+people he had met in the south had thought only of gold when they learned he
+was from Alaska. Always gold&mdash;that first, and then ice, snow, endless
+nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning everlastingly upon a
+blasted land in which men fought against odds and only the fittest survived. It
+was gold that had been Alaska&rsquo;s doom. When people thought of it, they
+visioned nothing beyond the old stampede days, the Chilkoot, White Horse,
+Dawson, and Circle City. Romance and glamor and the tragedies of dead men clung
+to their ribs. But they were beginning to believe now. Their eyes were opening.
+Even the Government was waking up, after proving there was something besides
+graft in railroad building north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen
+at Washington had listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen. And
+the beef barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him off and had offered a
+fortune for Lomen&rsquo;s forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward
+Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening. Absolute proof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist into
+the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore Roosevelt for
+putting what they called &ldquo;the conservation shackles&rdquo; on their
+country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt&rsquo;s far-sightedness had kept
+the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what money-power and
+greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today, but lay ready to serve
+with all her mighty resources the mother who had neglected her for a
+generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this opening up of a great land.
+It must be done resourcefully and with intelligence. Once the bars were down,
+Roosevelt&rsquo;s shadow-hand could not hold back such desecrating forces as
+John Graham and the syndicate he represented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in the
+sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed plunderers. And
+it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging work of these financial
+brigands in a dozen states during the past winter&mdash;states raped of their
+forests, their lakes and streams robbed and polluted, their resources hewn down
+to naked skeletons. He had been horrified and a little frightened when he
+looked over the desolation of Michigan, once the richest timber state in
+America. What if the Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing
+to happen in Alaska? Politics&mdash;and money&mdash;were already fighting for
+just that thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was <i>his</i>
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a physical
+thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if it took every
+year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to the world that the
+millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north were not the cast-off ends
+of the earth. They would populate them, and the so-called &ldquo;barrens&rdquo;
+would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of reindeer herds as the American plains
+had never thundered to the beat of cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure
+he would find at the end of this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money,
+simply as money, he hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped
+him; the passion to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into
+its own, and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a half of
+that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tolling of the ship&rsquo;s bell roused him from the subconscious struggle
+into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he had no sympathy
+with himself when he fell into one of these mental spasms, as he called them.
+Without knowing it, he was a little proud of a certain dispassionate tolerance
+which he possessed&mdash;a philosophical mastery of his emotions which at times
+was almost cold-blooded, and which made some people think he was a thing of
+stone instead of flesh and blood. His thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly
+disturbing sensation passed through him now, when he found that unconsciously
+his fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket.
+He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then,
+with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his
+pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have been had he
+possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at all, for that
+matter&mdash;even an uncle or two who might have been interested in him. He
+remembered his father vividly, his mother a little less so, because his mother
+had died when he was six and his father when he was twenty. It was his father
+who stood out above everything else, like the mountains he loved. The father
+would remain with him always, inspiring him, urging him, encouraging him to
+live like a gentleman, fight like a man, and die at last unafraid. In that
+fashion the older Alan Holt had lived and died. But his mother, her face and
+voice scarcely remembered in the passing of many years, was more a hallowed
+memory to him than a thing of flesh and blood. And there had been no sisters or
+brothers. Often he had regretted this lack of brotherhood. But a sister.... He
+grunted his disapprobation of the thought. A sister would have meant
+enchainment to civilization. Cities, probably. Even the States. And slavery to
+a life he detested. He appreciated the immensity of his freedom. A Mary
+Standish, even though she were his sister, would be a catastrophe. He could not
+conceive of her, or any other woman like her, living with Keok and Nawadlook
+and the rest of his people in the heart of the tundras. And the tundras would
+always be his home, because his heart was there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd figure
+crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light that came with
+the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not asleep. He paused,
+unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself, groaned, and stood up. He was
+a little man, and his fiercely bristling red whiskers, wet with dew, were
+luxuriant enough for a giant. His head of tawny hair, bristling like his
+whiskers, added to the piratical effect of him above the neck, but below that
+part of his anatomy there was little to strike fear into the hearts of
+humanity. Some people smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their
+man, laughed outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny
+on Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart was
+something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this little man who
+had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest gunman
+between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic reminder of the old days
+when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his gang&mdash;days when
+the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a stampede behind him, and when
+his name was mentioned in the same breath with those of George Carmack, and
+Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe
+Barret set their compasses by his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness
+as he stood in the gray of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew
+that Stampede Smith was broke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days. &ldquo;Why
+so much loneliness, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale&rsquo;s under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what a fool
+thing is money. Good mornin&rsquo;, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the lifting
+fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede&rsquo;s last
+asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside him, so that their
+shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan,&rdquo; said Stampede, &ldquo;it ain&rsquo;t often I have a big
+thought, but I&rsquo;ve been having one all night. Ain&rsquo;t forgot Bonanza,
+have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shook his head. &ldquo;As long as there is an Alaska, we won&rsquo;t
+forget Bonanza, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took a million out of it, next to Carmack&rsquo;s
+Discovery&mdash;an&rsquo; went busted afterward, didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that wasn&rsquo;t a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the
+Divide,&rdquo; Stampede continued ruminatively. &ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t forgot old
+Aleck McDonald, the Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the &lsquo;wash&rsquo; of
+Ninety-eight we took up seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked
+thirty of doin&rsquo; the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single
+clean-up, and that was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old
+Aleck went busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle.
+I had to grub-stake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted the first
+rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them and the unseen
+mountain tops.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five times after that I made strikes and went busted,&rdquo; he said a
+little proudly. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m busted again!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; sympathized Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an&rsquo;
+Frisco,&rdquo; chuckled Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully,
+&ldquo;an&rsquo; then bought me a ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them,
+don&rsquo;t you think? Couldn&rsquo;t have been more decent. I knew that fellow
+Kopf had a heart. That&rsquo;s why I trusted him with my money. It wasn&rsquo;t
+his fault he lost it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a
+fact.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You killed him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran&rsquo;s place. Mighty sorry. Didn&rsquo;t think then how decent it was
+of him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the moment. He
+did me a favor in cleanin&rsquo; me, Alan. He did, so help me! You don&rsquo;t
+realize how free an&rsquo; easy an&rsquo; beautiful everything is until
+you&rsquo;re busted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw the grim
+look in Alan&rsquo;s eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other&rsquo;s arm and shook it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, I mean it!&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I think
+money is a fool thing. It ain&rsquo;t <i>spendin&rsquo;</i> money that makes me
+happy. It&rsquo;s <i>findin&rsquo;</i> it&mdash;the gold in the
+mountains&mdash;that makes the blood run fast through my gizzard. After
+I&rsquo;ve found it, I can&rsquo;t find any use for it in particular. I want to
+go broke. If I didn&rsquo;t, I&rsquo;d get lazy and fat, an&rsquo; some
+newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I&rsquo;d die. They&rsquo;re doing a
+lot of that operatin&rsquo; down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and
+they wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen to a man
+when he&rsquo;s got money!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean all that, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On my life, I do. I&rsquo;m just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that&rsquo;s going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody&rsquo;ll grub-stake me in Nome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Alan suddenly. &ldquo;Not if I can help
+it. Stampede, I want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains.
+I&rsquo;ve got ten thousand reindeer up there. It&rsquo;s No Man&rsquo;s Land,
+and we can do as we please in it. I&rsquo;m not after gold. I want another sort
+of thing. But I&rsquo;ve fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow
+playmate of yours. It&rsquo;s a new country. You&rsquo;ve never seen it. God
+only knows what you may find. Will you come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede&rsquo;s eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will I <i>come?</i> Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me.
+Say it all over ag&rsquo;in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last of the
+fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges rose up
+against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was flashing in rose
+and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded. Speech was unnecessary.
+They both understood, and the thrill of the life they loved passed from one to
+the other in the grip of their hands.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There were
+only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other belonged to Mary
+Standish. There was something almost aggressively suggestive in their
+simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He nodded as he sat down, a flash
+of amusement in his eyes when he observed the look in the young
+engineer&rsquo;s face. It was both envious and accusing, and yet Alan was sure
+the young man was unconscious of betraying an emotion. The fact lent to the
+eating of his grapefruit an accompaniment of pleasing and amusing thought. He
+recalled the young man&rsquo;s name. It was Tucker. He was a clean-faced,
+athletic, likable-looking chap. And an idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan
+told himself. The young engineer was more than casually interested in Mary
+Standish; he was in love. It was not a discovery which Alan made. It was a
+decision, and as soon as possible he would remedy the unfortunate omission of a
+general introduction at their table by bringing the two together. Such an
+introduction would undoubtedly relieve him of a certain responsibility which
+had persisted in attaching itself to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get the empty
+chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be obliterated, and when
+other chairs became vacant as their owners left the table, this one straight
+across from him continued to thrust itself upon him. Until this morning it had
+been like other empty chairs. Now it was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he
+had no desire to be so constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve
+o&rsquo;clock tryst of Mary Standish with Graham&rsquo;s agent, Rossland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of seeing
+Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had made their exit
+through the door leading from the dining salon when the young engineer paused.
+Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his face. In a moment it was
+explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed Tucker without appearing to notice
+him, and gave Alan a cool little nod as she seated herself at the table. She
+was very pale. He could see nothing of the flush of color that had been in her
+cheeks last night. As she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool
+of sunlight played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her
+eyes. They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without embarrassment.
+Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It seemed inconceivable that
+such eyes could play a part in fraud and deception, yet he was in possession of
+quite conclusive proof of it. If they had lowered themselves an instant, if
+they had in any way betrayed a shadow of regret, he would have found an
+apology. Instead of that, his fingers touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. &ldquo;I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I am
+afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. &ldquo;This is the first morning I
+have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have slept well.
+Is this yours, Miss Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his fingers.
+In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was the quick
+response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was disappointed not to
+catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In front of my cabin door a little after midnight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some kind of
+result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on her lips a moment
+longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the clear depths of her eyes.
+Her level glance was as innocent as a child&rsquo;s and as he looked at her, he
+thought of a child&mdash;a most beautiful child&mdash;and so utterly did he
+feel the discomfiture of his mental analysis of her that he rose to his feet
+with a frigid bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank you, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can imagine my sense
+of obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the ship
+with me. And this is my favorite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard her give
+the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot, but the flush of
+it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable sensation of her eyes
+following him as he stalked through the door. He did not look back. Something
+was wrong with him, and he knew it. This chit of a girl with her smooth hair
+and clear eyes had thrown a grain of dust into the satisfactory mechanism of
+his normal self, and the grind of it was upsetting certain specific formulae
+which made up his life. He was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself
+names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning match. He
+looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a smile on his lips. In
+his eyes was a coolly appraising look as he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beg pardon.&rdquo; The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him
+over Rossland&rsquo;s shoulder. He might as well have said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+sorry, Boy, but you must keep out of my way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness, Keok had
+told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a humor to kill. They
+were like that now as they flashed their smile at Rossland. The sneering twist
+left Rossland&rsquo;s lips as he entered the dining-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham&rsquo;s
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the tables, and
+the scheme was that Rossland should be served t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted him
+with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table before Rossland
+appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he understood the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland&rsquo;s interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was successful, and
+he was about to extinguish the burning end when he hesitated and held it until
+the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish was coming through the door. Amazed
+by the suddenness of her appearance, he made no movement except to drop the
+match. Her eyes were flaming, and two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw
+him and gave the slightest inclination to her head as she passed. When she had
+gone, he could not resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland was
+seated in a chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly engaged in
+looking over the breakfast card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he was a
+little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in upon Rossland. At
+the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing reception which Miss
+Standish had evidently given to the dislikable individual who had jostled him
+in passing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the snowy
+peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach out his arms
+and touch them. The <i>Nome</i> appeared to be drifting in the heart of a
+paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the mainland; so close on the
+other hand that he could hear the shout of a man was Douglas Island, and ahead,
+reaching out like a silver-blue ribbon was Gastineau Channel. The mining towns
+of Treadwell and Douglas were in sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Bill Treadwell&rsquo;s place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Once
+the richest gold mines in Alaska. They&rsquo;re flooded now. I knew Bill when
+he was worrying about the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand
+pair an&rsquo; patched &rsquo;em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four
+hundred dollars somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named
+French Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An&rsquo; there was a time when there
+were nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It&rsquo;s worth
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow Stampede&rsquo;s voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and Alan
+wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment pressing upon
+him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual interest for Mary
+Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into an old acquaintance and
+permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased with the discovery, and yet he
+was compelled to acknowledge the truth of it. The grain of dust had become more
+than annoying. It did not wear away, as he had supposed it would, but was
+becoming an obsessive factor in his thoughts. And the half-desire it built up
+in him, while aggravatingly persistent, was less disturbing than before. The
+little drama in the dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of
+himself. He liked fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in her quiet
+prettiness, had shown her mettle in those few moments when he had seen her
+flashing eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland. He began to look for
+Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty, literally
+terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go down to the lower
+deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship gathered near the gangway with
+their luggage. Alan was about to pass them when he suddenly stopped. A short
+distance from him, where he could see every person who disembarked, stood
+Rossland. There was something grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled
+his watch-fob and eyed the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an
+unexpected thrill through Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He
+stepped to Rossland&rsquo;s side and touched his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Watching for Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo; There was no evasion in Rossland&rsquo;s words. They
+possessed the hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable
+authority behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if she goes ashore?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Miss Standish hasn&rsquo;t done that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then please attend to your own business. If you haven&rsquo;t enough to
+take up your time, I&rsquo;ll lend you some books. I have several in my
+cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not follow.
+There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to imprecate but his own
+folly. Rossland&rsquo;s words were not an insult. They were truth. He had
+deliberately intruded in an affair which was undoubtedly of a highly private
+nature. Possibly it was a domestic tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation
+swept over him, and he was glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He
+tried to whistle as he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he
+detested the man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted
+to be amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it was
+something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found old Donald
+Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the <i>Nome</i> had
+landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way out of Gastineau
+Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the smoking-room and remained there
+until luncheon hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with her back
+toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up behind her, so
+near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across at her and smiled as he
+seated himself. She returned the smile, but it seemed to him an apologetic
+little effort. She did not look well, and her presence at the table struck him
+as being a brave front to hide something from someone. Casually he looked over
+his left shoulder. Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the
+room. Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes shaded her
+eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her hair first. It had a
+peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been observant enough to know that
+she had rearranged it since breakfast, and the smooth coils twisted in
+mysterious intricacy at the crown of her head were like softly glowing velvet.
+The ridiculous thought came to him that he would like to see them tumbling down
+about her. They must be even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light fell upon
+her through the window. But when she looked across at him again, he caught for
+an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He began telling her something
+about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he had seen nothing which she might want
+to conceal. The light in her eyes changed, and it was almost a glow of
+gratitude he caught in them. He had broken a tension, relieved her of some
+unaccountable strain she was under. He noticed that her ordering of food was
+merely a pretense. She scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person
+at the table had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about her lack
+of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an angelic virtue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a splendid
+effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the breaking-point.
+When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own chair. At the same time he
+saw Rossland get up and advance rather hurriedly from the opposite side of the
+room. The girl passed through the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps
+behind, and Alan came last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was
+amusing in a way, yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim
+line about the corners of his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining salon to
+the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon Rossland. For only
+an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they flashed past him, and with a
+swift movement she came toward Alan. A flush had leaped into her cheeks, but
+there was no excitement in her voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and
+clearly heard by Rossland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Will you take me on deck, and tell me about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few hours before
+at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a meddler, words refused
+to form quickly on Alan&rsquo;s lips. Before he was ready with an answer Mary
+Standish had confidently taken his arm. He could see the red flush deepening in
+her upturned face. She was amazingly unexpected, bewilderingly pretty, and as
+cool as ice except for the softly glowing fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland
+staring with his cigarette half poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in
+the face of danger, and he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed
+softly. She gave his arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past
+Rossland, amazed but obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that sent a
+gentle thrill through him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: &ldquo;You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm, were like
+a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer see them, unless he
+had followed. The girl had played her part, and a second time he had accepted
+the role of a slow-witted fool. But the thought did not anger him. There was a
+remarkable element of humor about it for him, viewing himself in the matter,
+and Mary Standish heard him chuckling as they came out on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t
+funny,&rdquo; she reproved. &ldquo;It is tragic to be bored by a man like
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask, and he
+wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her know he had
+seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at her, and she met
+his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him, and her eyes, he thought,
+were the loveliest liars he had ever looked into. He felt the stir of an
+unusual sentiment&mdash;a sort of pride in her, and he made up his mind to say
+nothing about Rossland. He was still absurdly convinced that he had not the
+smallest interest in affairs which were not entirely his own. Mary Standish
+evidently believed he was blind, and he would make no effort to spoil her
+illusion. Such a course would undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the stair. A
+softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan
+fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon
+the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the
+narrow waterway to Skagway&rsquo;s door, while on both sides rose high
+mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like
+white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above
+the slow throb of the ship&rsquo;s engines the liquid music of innumerable
+cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their
+heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and
+twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle
+happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and
+the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a
+guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into
+the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and thrilling
+deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place. Alan turned to speak, but what
+he saw in the girl&rsquo;s face held him silent. Her lips were parted, and she
+was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that
+bewildered her and even startled her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a tense
+whisper: &ldquo;I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago. Maybe it
+was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I have lived under
+that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at him, and he
+was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go ashore here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know I
+would find it so soon. Please&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and saw the
+strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance he saw
+Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand was
+resting confidently in the crook of Alan&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?&rdquo; she asked with an icy little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered rather unexpectedly. &ldquo;And some day, if the
+right opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man&mdash;the man who
+murdered my father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a little gasp of horror. &ldquo;Your
+father&mdash;was&mdash;murdered&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indirectly&mdash;yes. It wasn&rsquo;t done with knife or gun, Miss
+Standish. Money was the weapon. Somebody&rsquo;s money. And John Graham was the
+man who struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>No</i>.&rdquo; Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew
+it away. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you to ask an explanation of him,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;If he should make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway,
+Mr. Holt. That will be pleasanter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western mountains,
+and the <i>Nome</i> was churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails to
+the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon fully impress itself
+upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to an impulse which he could
+not understand, and which in ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had
+taken Mary Standish ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking
+him questions and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or
+listened to him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he
+pictured the wind-racked ca&ntilde;on where Skagway grew from one tent to
+hundreds in a day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her
+the old days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and
+his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy&rsquo;s sunken
+grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about <i>himself</i>.
+And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had confided in
+her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and beautiful girl who
+had walked at his side had urged him on to the indiscretion of personal
+confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart beating with his own as he
+described his beloved land under the Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras,
+his herds, and his people. There, he had told her, a new world was in the
+making, and the glow in her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had
+urged him on until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship&rsquo;s
+gangway to see when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the
+air, and the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the building
+of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few years before. It
+was then, when he had pictured progress and civilization and the breaking down
+of nature&rsquo;s last barriers before science and invention, that he had seen
+a cloud of doubt in her gray eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the <i>Nome</i> looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight, doubt and
+perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would always love tents and old trails and nature&rsquo;s barriers. I
+envy Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am sorry to
+see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this man&mdash;John
+Graham!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words startled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I want you to tell me what he is doing&mdash;with his
+money&mdash;now.&rdquo; Her voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed,
+was clenched at the edge of the rail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case well
+within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children by robbing
+the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives have subsisted
+for centuries. I know. I have seen them die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that&mdash;is all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed grimly. &ldquo;Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in Alaska. His
+agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a gentleman outlaw
+compared with these men and their master. If men like John Graham are allowed
+to have their way, in ten years greed and graft will despoil what two hundred
+years of Rooseveltian conservation would not be able to replace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the ghost-peaks
+of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom of evening.
+&ldquo;I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a woman like
+her. She could fight, couldn&rsquo;t she? She could make a man&rsquo;s
+fight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and did make it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring which
+she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then this, too, for luck&mdash;the luck of Mary Standish,&rdquo; she
+laughed softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had done.
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t melodrama,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I mean it. And I
+believe in it. I want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this
+gateway to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
+at the bottom of the Yukon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a moment the
+warm thrill of it lay in his own. &ldquo;Thank you for the wonderful afternoon
+you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget it. It is dinner time. I must
+say good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In returning
+to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was irritating.
+Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan&rsquo;s look
+squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan&rsquo;s
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was a
+growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of poise
+which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be, but a cool brain
+was at work inside his head&mdash;a brain not easily disturbed by unimportant
+things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an agent of John Graham Alan looked
+upon him as an enemy, and as an acquaintance of Mary Standish he was as much of
+a mystery as the girl herself. And only now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning
+to sense the presence of a real authority behind Rossland&rsquo;s attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing about the
+relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it involved himself,
+and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to please him. He could see
+no sport in an adventure of the kind it suggested, and the possibility that he
+had been misjudged by both Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger
+into his cheeks. He cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to
+wipe him out of existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of way. He
+had made no effort to discover her history. He had not questioned her. At no
+time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon her personal affairs, and at no
+time had she offered information about herself, or an explanation of the
+singular espionage which Rossland had presumed to take upon himself. He
+grimaced as he reflected how dangerously near that hazard he had been&mdash;and
+he admired her for the splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had
+saved him the possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the dining
+salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any increasing
+intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his experience had been, he
+resented the idea of being commandeered at unexpected moments. Had Mary
+Standish read his thoughts, her bearing toward him during the dinner hour could
+not have been more satisfying. There was, in a way, something seductively
+provocative about it. She greeted him with the slightest inclination of her
+head and a cool little smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either
+from him or from his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate
+reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he found
+himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation he had set down
+for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing glimpses at her hair when
+her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed it tonight until it was like
+softest velvet, with rich glints in it, and the amazing thought came to him
+that it would be sweetly pleasant to touch with one&rsquo;s hand. The discovery
+was almost a shock. Keok and Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never
+thought of it in this way. And he had never thought of Keok&rsquo;s pretty
+mouth as he was thinking of the girl&rsquo;s opposite him. He shifted uneasily
+and was glad Mary Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental
+unbalance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as if she
+had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He tried to laugh as
+he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an hour later, feeding a
+captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he thought, that a captive bear
+should be going north. Stampede explained. The animal was a pet and belonged to
+the Thlinkit Indians. There were seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed
+that the two girls watched him closely and whispered together. They were very
+pretty, with large, dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not
+look at him at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they discussed
+the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan&rsquo;s plans for the
+future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his cabin to get maps and
+photographs. Stampede&rsquo;s eyes glistened as his mind seized upon the
+possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast land. An unknown country. And
+Alan was its first pioneer. The old thrill ran in Stampede&rsquo;s blood, and
+its infectiousness caught Alan, so that he forgot Mary Standish, and all else
+but the miles that lay between them and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward
+Peninsula. It was midnight when Alan went to his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his body, and
+he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through his open port
+from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the comradeship which he
+had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and half-savage desires always
+smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and
+his soul was filled with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too
+late. Another generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years
+more and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention
+and what the human race called progress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in that
+history which would go down through the eons of time, written in the red blood
+of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown. After him, there would be
+no more frontiers. No more mysteries of unknown lands to solve. No more
+pioneering hazards to make. The earth would be tamed. And suddenly he thought
+of Mary Standish and of what she had said to him in the dusk of evening.
+Strange that it had been <i>her</i> thought, too&mdash;that she would always
+love tents and old trails and nature&rsquo;s barriers, and hated to see cities
+and railroads and automobiles come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders.
+Probably she had guessed what was in his own mind, for she was clever, very
+clever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was a
+quarter after twelve o&rsquo;clock, an unusual hour for someone to be tapping
+at his door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was repeated&mdash;a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again, quick
+and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And then he
+saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without waiting for him to
+speak or give her permission to enter. And it was Mary Standish herself who
+closed the door, while he stared at her in stupid wonderment&mdash;and stood
+there with her back against it, straight and slim and deathly pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I come in?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God, you&rsquo;re in!&rdquo; gasped Alan. &ldquo;<i>You&rsquo;re
+in</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to his room,
+entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of invitation from
+him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first explosion of astonishment he
+stood mute, while the girl looked at him steadily and her breath came a little
+quickly. But she was not excited. Even in his amazement he could see that. What
+he had thought was fright had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her
+so white, and never had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as
+while she stood there in these astounding moments with her back against the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even her lips
+were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear and unafraid now,
+and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness of purpose that staggered
+him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal resentment, began to possess him as
+he waited for her to speak. This, at last, was the cost of his courtesies to
+her, The advantage she was taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and
+his mind flashed to the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her quiet
+face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips tremble, and
+then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes tears were gathering.
+Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her face in her hands, but
+looked at him bravely while the tear-drops glistened like diamonds on her
+cheeks. He felt his heart give way. She read his thoughts, had guessed his
+suspicion, and he was wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you will have a seat, Miss Standish?&rdquo; he asked lamely,
+inclining his head toward the cabin chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Please let me stand.&rdquo; She drew in a deep breath. &ldquo;It is
+late, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this,&rdquo; he assured
+her. &ldquo;Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb in her
+white throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have come to
+your cabin at midnight&mdash;even aboard ship? And it is that with me&mdash;a
+matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that decision. I
+could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why me?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle,
+or some other? Is it because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes, as if for
+an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but it was gone as
+quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without emotion, she answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to you as
+I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances, if I were a man.
+If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind about you is taking an
+advantage&mdash;then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But I am not sorry. I trust
+you. I know you will believe me good until I am proved bad. I have come to ask
+you to help me. Would you make it possible for another human being to avert a
+great tragedy if you found it in your power to do so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing such a
+situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he would have called
+any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door and show his visitor out.
+But such a thought did not occur to him now. He was thinking of the
+handkerchief he had found the preceding midnight. Twice she had come to his
+cabin at a late hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible,&rdquo; he
+said, answering her question. &ldquo;Tragedy is a nasty thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the tilt of
+her dainty chin a bit higher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, I can&rsquo;t pay you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are the
+sort of man who would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you
+to do. But I must have help. If I don&rsquo;t have it, and
+quickly&rdquo;&mdash;she shuddered slightly and tried to
+smile&mdash;&ldquo;something very unpleasant will happen, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she
+finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I may have
+your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you, whether you help me
+or not. Will you give me that pledge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not see the
+sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or the quicker
+throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint flush was gathering in
+her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to leave the ship,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night&mdash;before we reach
+Cordova.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that&mdash;your problem?&rdquo; he demanded, astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am dead.
+I can not reach Cordova alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were insane. Her
+quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching steadiness. His brain all at
+once was crowded with questioning, but no word of it came to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can help me,&rdquo; he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm
+voice, softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door.
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t a plan. But I know you can arrange one&mdash;if you
+will. It must appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard,
+anything, just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can
+not tell you why. I can not. Oh, I <i>can not</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant, leaving
+it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He could see
+courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I am
+mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven&rsquo;t gone to
+Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only answer I can make is
+that I have come to you because you are the only man in the world&mdash;in this
+hour&mdash;that I have faith in. Some day you will understand, if you help me.
+If you do not care to help me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if I don&rsquo;t? What will happen then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be forced to the inevitable,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It is
+rather unusual, isn&rsquo;t it, to be asking for one&rsquo;s life? But that is
+what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid&mdash;I don&rsquo;t quite understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it clear, Mr. Holt? I don&rsquo;t like to appear
+spectacular, and I don&rsquo;t want you to think of me as theatrical&mdash;even
+now. I hate that sort of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it
+is impossible for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to
+disappear, help me to live&mdash;and at the same time give all others the
+impression that I am dead&mdash;then I must do the other thing. I must really
+die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the shoulders
+and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of a child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat of
+suicide?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you want to call it that&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you expect me to believe you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had hoped you would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed her and
+half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the smallest effort to work
+upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved utterly. But he was not blind to
+the fact that she was making a brave fight, even though a lie was behind it,
+and with a consciousness of pride that bewildered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going on within
+him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She had stated the
+facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her long lashes glistened a
+little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair glowed softly, so softly that he
+would never forget it, as she stood there with her back against the door, nor
+the strange desire that came to him&mdash;even then&mdash;to touch it with his
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. &ldquo;It is
+Rossland,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re afraid of Rossland?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it were
+not for the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>other</i>! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had
+no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What other?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can not tell you. I don&rsquo;t want you to hate me. And you would
+hate me if I told you the truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you confess you are lying,&rdquo; he suggested brutally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not anger her or
+shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little handkerchief to her eyes,
+and he turned toward the open port, puffing at his cigar, knowing she was
+fighting to keep the tears back. And she succeeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you have
+given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is a kindness
+which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How could I bring about what you ask?&rdquo; he interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but
+I see now how foolish I have been. It is impossible.&rdquo; Her hand reached
+slowly for the knob of the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you are foolish,&rdquo; he agreed, and his voice was softer.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to
+your cabin and get a night&rsquo;s sleep. Don&rsquo;t let Rossland worry you.
+If you want me to settle with that man&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and looked at
+him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half a minute
+he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at ease. Mary
+Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left him like a soldier.
+But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught for an instant something
+which she had not betrayed in his cabin&mdash;a stab of what he thought was
+pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud regret, possibly a shadow of
+humiliation at last&mdash;or it may have been a pity for him. He was not sure.
+But it was not despair. Not once had she whimpered in look or word, even when
+the tears were in her eyes, and the thought was beginning to impress itself
+upon him that it was he&mdash;and not Mary Standish&mdash;who had shown a
+yellow streak this night. A half shame fell upon him as he smoked. For it was
+clear he had not come up to her judgment of him, or else he was not so big a
+fool as she had hoped he might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a
+loss to decide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in the
+analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and bred of the
+open country, it was as natural for him to recognize courage as it was for him
+to breathe. And the girl&rsquo;s courage was unusual, now that he had time to
+think about it. It was this thought of her coolness and her calm refusal to
+impose her case upon him with greater warmth that comforted him after a little.
+A young and beautiful woman who was actually facing death would have urged her
+necessity with more enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated
+it intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the moment, to
+give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea of a girl like
+Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously impossible. Her quiet and
+wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite care which she gave to herself
+emphasized the absurdity of such a supposition. She had come to him bravely.
+There was no doubt of that. She had merely exaggerated the importance of her
+visit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this
+conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain
+unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and
+unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his
+thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color to his visionings he
+exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled pipe, which he filled and
+lighted. Then he began walking back and forth in his cabin, like a big animal
+in a small cage, until at last he stood with his head half out of the open
+port, looking at the clear stars and setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift
+with the soft sea wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him again, with
+sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little harsh with Miss
+Standish tonight, he would make up for it by apologizing tomorrow. She would
+probably have recovered her balance by that time, and they would laugh over her
+excitement and their little adventure. That is, he would. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+at all curious in the matter,&rdquo; some persistent voice kept telling him,
+&ldquo;and I haven&rsquo;t any interest in knowing what irrational whim drove
+her to my cabin.&rdquo; But he smoked viciously and smiled grimly as the voice
+kept at him. He would have liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But
+Rossland persisted in bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish&rsquo;s words,
+&ldquo;If I should make an explanation, you would hate me,&rdquo; or something
+to that effect. He couldn&rsquo;t remember exactly. And he didn&rsquo;t want to
+remember exactly, for it was none of his business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and half on
+the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began thinking of the
+Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he figured out how long it would
+be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of the Endicott Mountains rose up in
+first welcome to his home-coming. Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would
+join him at Unalaska. They would go on to Nome together. After that he would
+spend a week or so in the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big
+portage to the Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still
+farther&mdash;beyond the last trails of civilized men&mdash;to his herds and
+his people. And Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of
+homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams.
+But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede
+Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok, laughing,
+changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan
+thought drowsily&mdash;she was always tormenting someone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his cabin,
+when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open sea. Eastward
+the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white peaks of the St. Elias
+Range flung themselves high up against the sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy
+banners. The <i>Nome</i> was pounding ahead at full speed, and Alan&rsquo;s
+blood responded suddenly to the impelling thrill of her engines, beating like
+twin hearts with the mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business.
+It meant miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were losing time
+by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with Cordova he thought of
+Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of her. The
+thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now that the time of
+that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded moments of embarrassment
+even when he was not directly accountable for them. But Mary Standish saved him
+any qualms of conscience which he might have had because of his lack of
+chivalry the preceding night. She was at the table. And she was not at all
+disturbed when he seated himself opposite her. There was color in her cheeks, a
+fragile touch of that warm glow in the heart of the wild rose of the tundras.
+And it seemed to him there was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than
+he had ever seen before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had evidently
+broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was the first time Alan
+had seen her interested in this way. He had no intention of listening, but
+something perverse and compelling overcame his will. He discovered the lady was
+going up to teach in a native school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that
+for many years she had taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda
+Mulrooney. He gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss
+Robson, the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she possessed of
+Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an address. The girl
+hesitated, then said she was not certain of her destination, but would write
+Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will surely keep your promise?&rdquo; urged Miss Robson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will keep my promise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that he
+thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few hours&rsquo;
+sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her mental attitude,
+and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility which had persisted in
+attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured himself, could possibly see a
+note of tragedy in her appearance now. Nor was she different at luncheon or at
+dinner. During the day he saw nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of
+the fact that she was purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not
+displease him. It allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a
+normal sort of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked
+his black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of the
+ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his first
+meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked his two-mile
+promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a peculiar impression of
+aloneness. Something was missing. He did not acknowledge to himself what it was
+until, as if to convict him, he saw Mary Standish come out of the door leading
+from her cabin passageway, and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a
+moment he hesitated, then quietly he came up beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+Cordova is only a few hours ahead of us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the shrouding
+darkness of the sea. &ldquo;Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt,&rdquo; she repeated
+after him, &ldquo;and Cordova is only a few hours ahead.&rdquo; Then, in the
+same soft, unemotional voice, she added: &ldquo;I want to thank you for last
+night. You brought me to a great decision.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear I did not help you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he caught a
+shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought there were two ways,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you made me
+see there was only <i>one</i>.&rdquo; She emphasized that word. It seemed to
+come with a little tremble in her voice. &ldquo;I was foolish. But please let
+us forget. I want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will win, Miss Standish,&rdquo; he said in a sure voice. &ldquo;In
+whatever you undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of
+is the adventure of coming to Alaska&mdash;seeking your fortune&mdash;finding
+your life here&mdash;it will be glorious. I can assure you of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under the
+mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith which I have.
+I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when America was very young. At
+times the feeling is so strong that I must have faith in it. Possibly I am
+foolish. But when the mountain swung back, like a great door, and we saw
+Skagway, I knew that sometime&mdash;somewhere&mdash;I had seen a thing like
+that before. And I have had strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of
+madness in me. But it is that faith which gives me courage to go on with my
+experiment. That&mdash;and <i>you</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;and your suspicions and your brutality,&rdquo; she went on,
+her voice trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before
+him. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me
+the opportunity, and it may do you good&mdash;after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like your
+mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as clean and
+unafraid and believing all things good until you found them bad&mdash;and I
+lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when I came to your
+cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+<i>afraid</i>&mdash;fearful of something happening which you didn&rsquo;t want
+to happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was a
+liar, and told me so. It wasn&rsquo;t fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn&rsquo;t
+<i>fair</i>. There were things which I couldn&rsquo;t explain to you, but I
+told you Rossland knew. I didn&rsquo;t keep everything back. And I believed you
+were big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with
+my&mdash;friendship, even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much
+faith in myself&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t think I would be mistaken for something
+unclean and lying!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Listen to me&mdash;Miss
+Standish&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile, and
+she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he called her
+name, but her footsteps were almost running up the passageway. He dropped back,
+his blood cold, his hands clenched in the darkness, and his face as white as
+the girl&rsquo;s had been. Her words had held him stunned and mute. He saw
+himself stripped naked, as she believed him to be, and the thing gripped him
+with a sort of horror. And she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to
+be good judgment and common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed
+fool&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door. When he
+knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried again, listening
+for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he was readjusting himself.
+He was half glad, in the end, that the door did not open. He believed Miss
+Standish was inside, and she would undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming
+without an apology in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its
+disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes, her
+smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had faced him
+remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away from the vision of her
+as she had stood against the door with tears like diamonds on her cheeks.
+Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it. Something had escaped him which he
+could not understand. And she was holding him accountable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts to
+become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string music in
+the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the dancing with
+such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw Rossland whirling round
+the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his arms. The girl was looking up
+into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay unashamed against his shoulder, while
+Rossland&rsquo;s face rested against her fluffy hair when they mingled closely
+with the other dancers. Alan turned away, an unpleasant thought of
+Rossland&rsquo;s association with Mary Standish in his mind. He strolled down
+into the steerage. The Thlinkit people had shut themselves in with a curtain of
+blankets, and from the stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed
+slowly for him after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to
+interest himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was himself. The
+thrill he had always experienced with this particular writer was missing. There
+was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even the tobacco in his pipe seemed to
+lack something, and he changed it for a cigar&mdash;and chose another book. The
+result was the same. His mind refused to function, and there was no comfort in
+his cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously lied to
+himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a fight between
+himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his door. Mary
+Standish&mdash;the slim beauty of her&mdash;her courage&mdash;a score of things
+that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on his
+smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions that were
+struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad and entirely a fool,
+he told himself. But the assurance did him no good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made another effort
+to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o&rsquo;clock music and dancing
+ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that he found himself becoming
+more interested in the first book he had started to read. His old satisfaction
+slowly returned to him. He relighted his cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he
+heard the ship&rsquo;s bells, eleven o&rsquo;clock, and after that the
+half-hour and midnight. The printed pages were growing dim, and drowsily he
+marked his book, placed it on the table, and yawned. They must be nearing
+Cordova. He could feel the slackened speed of the <i>Nome</i> and the softer
+throb of her engines. Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing
+inshore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman&rsquo;s scream. A piercing cry of
+terror, of agony&mdash;and of something else that froze the blood in his veins
+as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending in a moaning
+wail and a man&rsquo;s husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his window. He heard
+another shout and then a voice of command. He could not distinguish the words,
+but the ship herself seemed to respond. There came the sudden smoothness of
+dead engines, followed by the pounding shock of reverse and the clanging alarm
+of a bell calling boats&rsquo; crews to quarters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was overboard.
+And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of his body, for the
+pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an instant before him, and in her
+quiet voice she was telling him again that <i>this was the other way.</i> His
+face went white as he caught up his smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran
+down the dimly lighted corridor.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship when Alan
+reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept slowly ahead against
+the force struggling to hold her back. He heard running feet, voices, and the
+rattle of davit blocks, and came up as the starboard boat aft began swinging
+over the smooth sea. Captain Rifle was ahead of him, half-dressed, and the
+second officer was giving swift commands. A dozen passengers had come from the
+smoking-room. There was only one woman. She stood a little back, partly
+supported in a man&rsquo;s arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at
+the man, and he knew from his appearance that she was the woman who had
+screamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of oars, but
+the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to him distinctly in
+the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was the terrible sobbing of the
+woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed to sway under his feet. He was
+conscious of a crowd gathering about the empty davits, but he had eyes only for
+these two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it a man&mdash;or a woman?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced from
+his lips. And the other man, with the woman&rsquo;s head crumpled against his
+shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A woman,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;This is my wife. We were sitting here
+when she climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw her
+going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her eyes,
+but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband&rsquo;s arm. She
+struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to comfort her. And
+then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was haggard, and a glance told
+Alan that he knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This lady thinks it was Miss Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a moment in
+his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind him, and before
+him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed swiftly, with no sign of
+it in the immobility of his pale face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then&mdash;then&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a choking
+breath:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering.&rdquo;
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and a
+strange calmness began to possess him. &ldquo;You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?&rdquo; he found himself saying. &ldquo;Is it possible you
+might be mistaken?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;She was so quiet and pretty that I
+have noticed her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I&rsquo;m almost sure she smiled at
+me and was going to speak. And then&mdash;then&mdash;she was gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know until my wife screamed,&rdquo; added the man.
+&ldquo;I was seated facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see
+nothing behind but the wash of the ship. I think she went down
+instantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely sensed the
+presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had left him, and he
+walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary Standish would be if the
+woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had leaped into the sea. He knocked
+at the door only once. Then he opened it. There was no cry of fear or protest
+from within, and he knew the room was empty before he turned on the electric
+light. He had known it from the beginning, from the moment he heard the
+woman&rsquo;s scream. Mary Standish was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the pillow.
+A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted. Her few
+possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he saw her shoes
+and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked up one of the shoes
+and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little shoe. His fingers closed
+about it until it crushed like paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly to
+confront Captain Rifle. The little man&rsquo;s face was like gray wax. For a
+moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe crumpled in
+Alan&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The boats got away quickly,&rdquo; he said in a husky voice. &ldquo;We
+stopped inside the third-mile. If she can swim&mdash;there is a chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t swim,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t jump
+in for that. She is gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of his own
+voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched hands and in
+his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy of one kind and
+another. It was not strange to him. But a look of wonderment shot into his eyes
+at Alan&rsquo;s words. It took only a few seconds to tell what had happened the
+preceding night, without going into details. The captain&rsquo;s hand was on
+Alan&rsquo;s arm when he finished, and the flesh under his fingers was rigid
+and hard as steel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk with Rossland after the boats return,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held the
+crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It took him only
+a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain. Half an hour later the
+first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a second came in. And then a
+third. Alan stood back, alone, while the passengers crowded the rail. He knew
+what to expect. And the murmur of it came to him&mdash;failure! It was like a
+sob rising softly out of the throats of many people. He drew away. He did not
+want to meet their eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be
+saying. And as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an
+agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first
+law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the desire to
+reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to rise up out of it
+and forgive him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask through
+which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly coldness.
+Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she would have been
+right. His heart was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two people were at Rossland&rsquo;s door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship&rsquo;s doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t rouse him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I did not see him
+among the passengers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor did I,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think the circumstances permit,&rdquo; he explained. In a moment he
+looked up, puzzled. &ldquo;The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in
+the lock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his knuckles
+were red. There was still no response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Odd,&rdquo; he muttered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very odd,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash sent it
+in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp, and the men
+stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly, upturned, as if
+staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement and spoke no word.
+Marston entered and turned on the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle close
+the door behind them, and from Marston&rsquo;s lips came a startled whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His arms were
+stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the white sheet under
+him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges and to the floor. His
+eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly.
+He bent over Rossland, and in that moment, when his back was toward them,
+Captain Rifle&rsquo;s eyes met Alan&rsquo;s. The same thought&mdash;and in
+another instant disbelief&mdash;flashed from one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. &ldquo;A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not dead.
+Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and dressing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The door was locked on the inside,&rdquo; said Alan, as soon as the
+doctor was gone. &ldquo;And the window is closed. It looks like&mdash;suicide.
+It is possible&mdash;there was an understanding between them&mdash;and Rossland
+chose this way instead of the sea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into the
+corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. &ldquo;There is no
+knife,&rdquo; he said stonily. And in a moment he added: &ldquo;There are red
+stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Murder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window. Or it is
+possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a long-armed man might have
+reached him. It was a man, Alan. We&rsquo;ve got to believe that. It was a
+<i>man</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, a man,&rdquo; Alan nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle made a
+gesture toward the door. &ldquo;Better go,&rdquo; he advised. &ldquo;This is a
+ship&rsquo;s matter, and you won&rsquo;t want to be unnecessarily mixed up in
+it. Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan passed
+them, and he heard the door of Rossland&rsquo;s room close behind him. The ship
+was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He went to Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings and put them in
+the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard. Without any effort at
+concealment he carried the bag to his room and packed his own dunnage. After
+that he hunted up Stampede Smith and explained to him that an unexpected change
+in his plans compelled them to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his
+appointment with the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He nodded
+toward a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll reach Cordova inside of an hour,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Doctor Marston says Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold
+the <i>Nome</i> in port until he is able to talk. He was struck through the
+window. I will make oath to that. Have you anything&mdash;in mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only one thing,&rdquo; replied Alan, &ldquo;a determination to go ashore
+as soon as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it.
+As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or
+dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon him. It was merely
+coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me our location
+when she leaped into the sea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let Captain Rifle
+see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east of Eyak
+River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a chance. And I hope
+you will find her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bad blow for the ship&mdash;her first trip,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not thinking of the <i>Nome</i>. I&rsquo;m thinking of
+Mary Standish. My God, it is terrible! If it had been anyone
+else&mdash;<i>anyone</i>&mdash;&rdquo; His words seemed to choke him, and he
+made a despairing gesture with his hands. &ldquo;It is hard to
+believe&mdash;almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill herself.
+Tell me again what happened in your cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain details of
+the girl&rsquo;s visit. But a number of things which she had trusted to his
+confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon Rossland&rsquo;s influence
+or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort, and when he had finished, he
+gripped his hand, understanding in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not responsible&mdash;not so much as you believe,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find
+her if you can, and let me know. You will do that&mdash;you will let me
+know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I shall let you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his assailant
+is still on board.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Undoubtedly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: &ldquo;There is
+nothing in Miss Standish&rsquo;s room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your hand.
+But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into the
+sea&mdash;before she went.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Such a thought is possible,&rdquo; agreed Alan evasively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face looked
+haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all,
+Alan. God knows I&rsquo;d give this old life of mine to bring her back if I
+could. To me she was much like&mdash;someone&mdash;a long time dead.
+That&rsquo;s why I broke ship&rsquo;s regulations when she came aboard so
+strangely at Seattle, without reservation. I&rsquo;m sorry now. I should have
+sent her ashore. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to
+ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you
+do&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall send you word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle&rsquo;s fingers still held to Alan&rsquo;s
+as they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky. The
+stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the darkened sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thunder-storm,&rdquo; said the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note in his
+voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And then he said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he went
+through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the whispered
+moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A vast distance away
+he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin. Stampede
+Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin bag. Alan explained
+the unexpected change in his plans. Business in Cordova would make him miss a
+boat and would delay him at least a month in reaching the tundras. It was
+necessary for Stampede to go on to the range alone. He could make a quick trip
+by way of the Government railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to
+Allakakat, and thence still farther north into the Endicott country. It would
+be easy for a man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him
+certain written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to go
+ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until morning. And
+Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of his
+action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for physical
+action and that he must have it immediately or break. The desire was a touch of
+madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding back by sheer force of will.
+He tried to shut out the vision of a pale face floating in the sea; he fought
+to keep a grip on the dispassionate calmness which was a part of him. But the
+ship itself was battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour&mdash;since he
+had heard the scream of the woman&mdash;he had come to hate it. He wanted the
+feel of solid earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that
+narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And not until
+Alan&rsquo;s feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a great hole in
+the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After he had left the wharf,
+he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply of the mountain smell and
+getting his bearings. It was more than darkness about him. An occasional light
+burning dimly here and there gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink
+threatening to inundate him. The storm had not broken, but it was close, and
+the air was filled with a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and
+yet very near, as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take
+the earth unaware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years ago he
+had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen, half a mile up
+the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be there, where he had squatted for
+twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay until the sea itself was ready to
+claim him. So he felt his way instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke
+over his head. The forces of the night were unleashing. He could hear a
+gathering tumult in the mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and
+there came a sudden glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him.
+He saw a white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea
+he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between
+two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced to
+deadly combat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder that
+gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled away, echo
+upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of signal-guns, each more
+distant than the other. A cold breath of air struck Alan in the face, and
+something inside him rose up to meet the thrill of storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and the fire
+of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash of the elements
+about his father&rsquo;s cabin and the roaring voices of the ranges filling the
+darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into the world. Love of it was
+in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this
+&ldquo;talk of the mountains&rdquo; as others yearn for the coming of spring.
+He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the
+light that always burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen&rsquo;s cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky wall.
+A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face, and a flash
+of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he could hear the
+patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his bags and began hammering
+with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he flung open the unlocked door and
+entered, tossing his dunnage to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that
+Ericksen would not have forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had
+passed since he and Alan&rsquo;s father had tramped the mountains together.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="332"></a>
+<img src="images/332.jpg" width="600" height="386" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the frame of
+an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent shoulders, his massive
+head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard streaming over his naked chest.
+He stared for a moment, and Alan flung off his hat, and as the storm broke,
+beating upon the cabin in a mighty shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow
+of recognition came from Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing the
+sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan&rsquo;s face made him pause
+to hear other words than his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea, bracing his
+arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening beard over his
+shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that drenched him as he stood
+there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan, a great, gray ghost of a man in
+the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn the long,
+black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out to sea.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its downpour, and
+the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was blotted out, and fifty
+feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch Alan could see only a gray wall.
+Water ran in streams from his rubber slicker, and Olaf&rsquo;s great beard was
+dripping like a wet rag. He was like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the
+face of impenetrable gloom he opened speed until the <i>Norden</i> was shooting
+with the swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Olaf&rsquo;s cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary
+Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered reefs and
+rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet might have found a
+hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty years Ericksen had never
+known of the finding of a body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief
+that the girl was at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no
+less in Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the <i>Norden</i> as
+the slim craft leaped through the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him there was
+nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the least he could do,
+and the only honest thing he could do, he kept telling himself. And there was a
+chance that he would find her. All through his life had run that element of
+chance; usually it was against odds he had won, and there rode with him in the
+gray dawn a conviction he was going to win now&mdash;that he would find Mary
+Standish somewhere in the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the
+first of the islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he
+found her&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in moments it
+overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting to keep out of his
+mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his mental pictures of her. A strip
+of white beach persisted in his mind, and waiting for him on this beach was the
+slim body of the girl, her pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long
+hair streaming over the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled
+to keep away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he
+would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking
+down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had
+sent Mary Standish to her death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in which
+he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to <i>him</i> in her
+hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the <i>Nome</i>. She
+had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her confidence, and at
+the last had placed her life in his hands. And when he had failed her, she had
+not gone to another. She had kept her word, proving to him she was not a liar
+and a fraud, and he knew at last the courage of womanhood and the truth of her
+words, &ldquo;You will understand&mdash;tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn lightened
+swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the tense lines of
+his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf did not press his folly
+upon him, but kept the <i>Norden</i> pointed seaward, adding still greater
+speed as the huge shadow of the headland loomed up in the direction of
+Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day the rain subsided; it fell in a
+drizzle for a time and then stopped. Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the
+water from his eyes and hair. White mists began to rise, and through them shot
+faint rose-gleams of light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his
+beard. The sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above,
+as the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had washed the
+air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the sea; and Olaf stood
+up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his body as he drank the
+sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the mountains taking form, and one
+after another they rose up like living things, their crests catching the fire
+of the sun. Dark inundations of forest took up the shimmering gleam, green
+slopes rolled out from behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly&mdash;in a
+final triumph of the sun&mdash;the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its
+glory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning at his
+companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But in Alan&rsquo;s
+there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of sunlight breaking
+over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was missing. The soul of it
+was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips
+tightened even as he met the other&rsquo;s smile, for he no longer made an
+effort to blind himself to the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan&rsquo;s
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay naked
+in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it inspired by the
+captain of the <i>Nome</i>, as Alan had given him reason to believe. There was
+more than grimness in the other&rsquo;s face, and a strange sort of sickness
+lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the straining eagerness with which
+those eyes scanned the softly undulating surface of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he said, &ldquo;If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+<i>out there</i>,&rdquo; and he pointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan stood up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she wouldn&rsquo;t be there now,&rdquo; Olaf added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down&mdash;at the bottom. He turned
+his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains was the white
+sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of an hour later a spiral
+of smoke detached itself from the rocks and timber that came down close to the
+sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s McCormick&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf&rsquo;s binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman&rsquo;s cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who knew
+every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes shut could find
+Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who came down to greet them
+when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of the
+cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly. Sandy himself
+was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man. They shook hands. Then
+Alan told of the tragedy aboard the <i>Nome</i> and what his mission was. He
+made a great effort to speak calmly, and believed that he succeeded. Certainly
+there was no break of emotion in his cold, even voice, and at the same time no
+possibility of evading its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of
+livelihood were frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer
+of pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty dollars a
+day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if he found the
+girl&rsquo;s body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he had
+said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not have
+impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in the Nome
+banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he would as
+willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have guaranteed him the
+possession of what he sought. In Olaf&rsquo;s face McCormick caught a look
+which explained the situation a little. Alan Holt was not mad. He was as any
+other man might be who had lost the most precious thing in the world. And
+unconsciously, as he pledged his services in acceptance of the offer, he
+glanced in the direction of the little woman standing in the doorway of the
+cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled gravely at
+Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when she heard what had
+happened aboard the <i>Nome</i>. Alan left the three together and returned to
+the beach, while between the loading and the lighting of his pipe the Swede
+told what he had guessed&mdash;that this girl whose body would never be washed
+ashore was the beginning and the end of the world to Alan Holt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch. He
+was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch canniness
+made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left details of the
+drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the finding of the
+body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many women were seeking before
+nightfall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And remember,&rdquo; Sandy told each of them, &ldquo;the chances are
+she&rsquo;ll wash ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she
+comes ashore at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast. He was
+alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It was a different
+Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the western sea, with the golden
+slopes of the mountains reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had
+passed through a great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land
+had crept slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was
+despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an
+obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed
+their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a
+consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each
+mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to
+him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change
+the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would
+not give up its dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy&rsquo;s wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had softened
+him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others had been. He
+knew. The woman&rsquo;s eyes told him, the almost mothering eagerness in them
+when he came through the door. She had coffee and food ready for him, and he
+forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked
+his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming
+tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause of it,
+so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen McCormick about the
+splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and how fortunate she was to have
+her home in this little corner of paradise. He caught a flash of something
+unspoken in her eyes. It was a lonely place for a woman, alone, without
+children, and he spoke about children to Sandy, smiling. They should have
+children&mdash;a lot of them. Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of
+laughter. But the woman&rsquo;s face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes
+betrayed her, something wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re building a new cabin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+there&rsquo;s two rooms in it specially for kids.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that was
+already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A moment later
+Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something which lay on a little
+table near the door through which Alan had to pass to enter his sleeping-room.
+Olaf&rsquo;s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see. Only he knew there should be
+children here, where there was surely love. It did not occur to him as being
+strange that he, Alan Holt, should think of such a matter at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of certain
+hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents tossed the
+flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with Olaf at the wheel of
+the <i>Norden</i>. It was sunset when they returned, and in the calm of a
+wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the mountains smiling down at
+them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak what was in his mind. He spoke
+first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep
+down under the surface which he had never had explained to him, and of how he
+had lost a cask once upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon
+its way to Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows
+and the treachery of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if Mary
+Standish never did come ashore. It would be days&mdash;probably weeks&mdash;if
+it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan to
+recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea. That was
+what he called it&mdash;&ldquo;a peaceful resting-place&rdquo;&mdash;and in his
+earnestness to soothe another&rsquo;s grief he blundered still more deeply into
+the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and bone could
+and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond the power of
+speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was in his
+face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in suspense. But the
+Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to Olaf Ericksen. Alan did
+not see the look that passed between them. He went to the cabin, and Ellen
+McCormick put a hand on his arm when he entered. It was an unusual thing for
+her to do. And there was a glow in her eyes which had not been there last
+night, and a flush in her cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she
+spoke to him. It was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you didn&rsquo;t find her?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo; His voice was tired and a little old. &ldquo;Do you think I
+shall ever find her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not as you have expected,&rdquo; she answered quietly. &ldquo;She will
+never come like that.&rdquo; She seemed to be making an effort.
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you would give a great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child looking at
+him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course. Everything I possess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;you&mdash;loved her&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the probing
+did not sting him; it was not a woman&rsquo;s curiosity that inspired them, and
+the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not realized before
+how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for himself, but for
+someone else&mdash;aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to be
+making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief acquaintance.
+But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s face and eyes was a
+tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which had been his
+sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of this he took the bag
+in which were Mary Standish&rsquo;s belongings, and gave it to Sandy&rsquo;s
+wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to speak in a businesslike
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after I
+am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you don&rsquo;t
+find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day.&rdquo; It seemed hard for
+him to give his simple instructions. He went on: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I
+shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova, and it
+will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you do find her,
+you will look after her yourself, won&rsquo;t you, Mrs. McCormick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do what he
+asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little thing, and half an
+hour later, after he had explained everything to Sandy, he wished her happiness
+when he took her hand in saying good-by. Her hand was trembling. He wondered at
+it and said something to Sandy about the priceless value of a happiness such as
+his, as they went down to the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars, when
+the <i>Norden&rsquo;s</i> shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan
+looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that lay above
+him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full. But now it seemed
+so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away, that a great loneliness
+seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look back at the dimly white
+shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that lay beneath the mountains.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+That night, in Olaf&rsquo;s cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his life,
+and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and that Mary
+Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what happened in the
+years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part of himself wither up and
+die because of a blow that had darkened his mental visions of things. His plans
+lay ahead of him, his old ambitions and his dreams of achievement. They seemed
+pulseless and dead now, but he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily
+burned out. And he realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he
+first wrote a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter&mdash;carefully sealed&mdash;which was not to be opened unless they
+found Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy&rsquo;s cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the final
+arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the <i>Norden</i>, for Captain
+Rifle&rsquo;s ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of Captain Rifle
+urged him to write another letter in which he told briefly the disappointing
+details of his search.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely forgotten
+Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank, Olaf secured
+information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the hospital and had not
+one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan&rsquo;s intention to see him. He
+wanted to hear nothing he might have to say about Mary Standish. To associate
+them in any way, as he thought of her now, was little short of sacrilege. He
+was conscious of the change in himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting
+of the original Alan Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the
+deliberate and businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that
+he might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes.
+In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break down with
+cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had unconsciously built up.
+But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry the thing away with him, he
+wanted it to live, and so it went with him, uncontaminated by any truths or
+lies which Rossland might have told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening camped on
+the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland. Olaf knew the
+island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was primitive and alive
+with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of their vesper song and
+bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax, and for the first time in
+seven months his muscles responded to the swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his
+years in the way of the north, whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song
+through his beard as he lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open
+was getting its hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of
+home once more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the
+sputtering of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him. He
+loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he mothered the
+half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A thousand times the
+two must have camped like this in the days when Alaska was new and there were
+no maps to tell them what lay beyond the next range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor, and
+after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old days as if
+they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always the pot of gold at
+the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for thirty years. He was sixty just
+a week ago this evening, he said, and he was beginning to doubt if he would
+remain on the beach at Cordova much longer. Siberia was dragging him&mdash;that
+forbidden world of adventure and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay
+only a few miles across the strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm
+he forgot Alan&rsquo;s tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory
+measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been
+dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was
+going if he lived another year or two&mdash;going to find his fortune or his
+end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes. Twice he had tried
+it since his old comrade had died, and twice he had been driven out. The next
+time he would know how to go about it, and he invited Alan to go with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night ride across
+the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred plains of Tibet. It
+stirred old desires in Alan&rsquo;s blood, for he knew that of all frontiers
+the Siberian would be the last and the greatest, and that not only men, but
+nations, would play their part in the breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of
+firelight in Olaf&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if we don&rsquo;t go in first from <i>this side</i>, Alan, the
+yellow fellows will come out some day from <i>that,&rdquo;</i> rumbled the old
+sour-dough, striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. &ldquo;And when they
+do, they won&rsquo;t come over to us in ones an&rsquo; twos an&rsquo; threes,
+but in millions. That&rsquo;s what the yellow fellows will do when they once
+get started, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s up to a few Alaska Jacks an&rsquo; Tough-Nut
+Bills to get their feet planted first on the other side. Will you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan shook his head. &ldquo;Some day&mdash;but not now.&rdquo; The old flash
+was in his eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again&mdash;the fight
+to do his bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re right about the danger,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t come from Japan to California. It will pour like a
+flood through Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn&rsquo;t the danger
+of the yellow man alone, Olaf. You&rsquo;ve got to combine that with
+Bolshevism, the menace of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the
+little neck of water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American continent
+to bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a century, but it&rsquo;s
+coming sure as God makes light&mdash;if we let Alaska go down and out. And my
+way of preventing it is different from yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+not proud of the States,&rdquo; he went on, as if speaking to something which
+he saw in the flames. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be, after the ruin their
+unintelligent propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But
+they&rsquo;re our salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have
+factions in Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It&rsquo;s
+going to be largely a matter of education. We can&rsquo;t take Alaska down to
+the States&mdash;we&rsquo;ve got to bring them up to us. We must make a large
+part of a hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the Gulf of
+Anadyr. It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s own country we have north of Fifty-eight, Olaf.
+And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a million
+people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in Alaska and at
+Washington won&rsquo;t let them come. With coal enough under our feet to last a
+thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We&rsquo;ve got billions in
+copper and oil, but can&rsquo;t touch them. We should have some of the
+world&rsquo;s greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not, because everything
+up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn&rsquo;t conservation. If they
+had applied a little of it to the salmon industry&mdash;but they didn&rsquo;t.
+And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of the plains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and common
+sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring about an honest
+and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will take place right
+here&mdash;in Alaska&mdash;and not in Siberia. And if we don&rsquo;t
+win&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf&rsquo;s bearded
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr,&rdquo; he finished. &ldquo;And if it ever does come, the people
+of the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska could
+have meant to the nation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after that, for
+an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the fire which Olaf
+kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her quiet, beautiful eyes
+gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His
+mind pictured her in the flame-glow as she had listened to him that day in
+Skagway, when he had told her of this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him
+to think she would have made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It
+was a thought which brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always
+these visions which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had
+faced him in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling, and her
+eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last moment of her
+plea for life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him in his
+restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was looking at the
+stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the grief in his soul they
+were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle force were at work in him
+subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of tragedy. Mary Standish was with him
+again, between the mountains at Skagway; she was at his side in the heart of
+the tundras, the sun in her shining hair and eyes, and all about them the
+wonder of wild roses and purple iris and white seas of sedge-cotton and
+yellow-eyed daisies, and birds singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the
+birds. And he heard the girl&rsquo;s voice, answering them in her happiness and
+turning that happiness from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke,
+it was with a little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was building
+a fire, and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the mountains.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p>
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new import
+of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach and Kenai
+ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan out of the pit into
+which he had fallen. He understood, now, how it was that through many long
+years his father had worshiped the memory of a woman who had died, it seemed to
+him, an infinity ago. Unnumbered times he had seen the miracle of her presence
+in his father&rsquo;s eyes, and once, when they had stood overlooking a
+sun-filled valley back in the mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek, with the
+great rock in the sun? We rested there&mdash;before you were born!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan recalled
+the strange happiness in his father&rsquo;s face as he had looked down upon
+something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that began to
+build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan&rsquo;s heart. It would
+never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be alone. He knew at last it
+was an undying part of him, as it had been a part of his father, clinging to
+him in sweet pain, encouraging him, pressing gently upon him the beginning of a
+great faith that somewhere beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days
+that followed, it grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a
+secret about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf could see
+farther than others, because he had known Alan&rsquo;s father as a brother. It
+had always been that way with the elder Holt&mdash;straight, clean,
+deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt. Olaf had seen
+him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with awesome courage from the
+beautiful form that had turned to clay under his eyes, and fight forth again
+into a world burned to ashes. Something of that look which he had seen in the
+eyes of the father he saw in Alan&rsquo;s, in these days when they nosed their
+way up the Alaskan coast together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of
+Mary Standish, just as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt&rsquo;s name sacred
+in his own heart. Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of
+memories, observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his tongue,
+and he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He talked of Siberia&mdash;always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were soft with
+the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and filled with stars.
+Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty castles whose battlements
+reached up into the cloud-draperies of the sky. They kept close to the mainland
+and among the islands, camping early each evening. Birds were coming northward
+by the thousand, and each night Olaf&rsquo;s camp-fire sent up the delicious
+aroma of flesh-pots and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time
+came for Olaf to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede&rsquo;s
+eyes, and as a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably
+come when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+<i>Norden</i> until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country. And he
+was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer which carried
+mail and the necessities of life to the string of settlements reaching a
+thousand miles out into the Pacific left Resurrection Bay, and he was given
+passage. Thereafter the countless islands of the North Pacific drifted behind,
+while always northward were the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the
+ramparted ranges beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional
+volcanoes, and at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the clouds.
+First touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at Uyak and
+Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island of Unga, and
+thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch Harbor and Unalaska.
+Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was berthed on a freighter, and on the
+twelfth day of June set foot in Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its peculiar,
+black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two solitary brick chimneys,
+brought a lump of joy into his throat as he watched its growing outlines from
+the small boat that brought him ashore. He could see one of the only two brick
+chimneys in northern Alaska gleaming in the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away,
+were the ragged peaks of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to
+them in half an hour, and over all the world between seemed to hover a misty
+gloom. But it was where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and
+unforgetable memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its frame
+buildings, its crooked streets, and what to others might have been ugliness,
+was a warm and thrilling thing. For here were his <i>people</i>. Here were the
+men and women who were guarding the northern door of the world, an epic place,
+filled with strong hearts, courage, and a love of country as inextinguishable
+as one&rsquo;s love of life. From this drab little place, shut out from all the
+world for half the year, young men and women went down to southern
+universities, to big cities, to the glamor and lure of &ldquo;outside.&rdquo;
+But they always came back. Nome called them. Its loneliness in winter. Its gray
+gloom in springtime. Its glory in summer and autumn. It was the breeding-place
+of a new race of men, and they loved it as Alan loved it. To him the black
+wireless tower meant more than the Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten
+church spires more than the architectural colossi of New York and Washington.
+Beside one of the churches he had played as a boy. He had seen the steeples
+painted. He had helped make the crooked streets. And his mother had laughed and
+lived and died here, and his father&rsquo;s footprints had been in the white
+sands of the beach when tents dotted the shore like gulls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He was
+unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the grip which
+men&rsquo;s hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs down in the
+States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement. Small boys ran up
+to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo, grinning and shaking his
+hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt had come back from the States.
+Before the day was over, it was on its way to Shelton and Candle and Keewalik
+and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the
+news of his arrival Alan walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke&rsquo;s
+restaurant for a cup of coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen&rsquo;s
+offices in the Tin Bank Building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days before, and
+his brothers were &ldquo;in&rdquo; from the big ranges over on the Choris
+Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a tremendously
+successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty thousand head, when the
+final figures were in. A hundred other herds were prospering, and the Eskimo
+and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump with good feeding and prosperity. A third
+of a million reindeer were on the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were
+exultant. Pretty good, when compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less
+than five thousand! In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for the
+future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome. After
+waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best men fighting
+for Alaska&rsquo;s salvation at Washington, word was traveling from mouth to
+mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to range, that the
+Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of miles away was not lifting
+a hand to relieve them. Federal office-holders refused to surrender their
+deadly power, and their strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should
+cost ten dollars a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty
+dollars; cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
+when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters of
+marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and in the
+turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man just outside the reach of
+all the milk and honey in a wonderful land. Pauperizing, degrading, actually
+killing, the political misrule that had already driven 25 per cent of
+Alaska&rsquo;s population from their homes was to continue indefinitely. A
+President of the United States had promised to visit the mighty land of the
+north and see with his own eyes. But would he come? There had been other
+promises, many of them, and promises had always been futile. But it was a hope
+that crept through Alaska, and upon this hope men whose courage never died
+began to build. Freedom was on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph
+ultimately, as it always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned in the
+locks which had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their
+country, and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they
+might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when it came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged, and not
+smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of gigantic
+financial interests like that controlled by John Graham&mdash;interests
+fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever had, the Biological
+Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous legislation to put Alaska
+in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly
+than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished.
+Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith.
+The blackest days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence
+was creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska&rsquo;s serfdom
+was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth, for
+what remained of Alaska&rsquo;s men after years of hopelessness and distress
+were fighting men. And the women who had remained with them were the mothers
+and wives of a new nation in the making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have given
+his life if a few million people in the States could have known these women.
+Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of half a
+continent&mdash;possessing the power of the ballot&mdash;would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of existence;
+Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women were of the kind who
+greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter, with something greater than
+hope in their hearts. They, too, were builders. Fear of God and love of land
+lay deep in their souls, and side by side with their men-folk they went on in
+this epic struggle for the building of a nation at the top of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape his
+lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part of him, and a
+secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even made evasions when
+questioned about his business and experiences at Cordova and up the coast.
+Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he was away from other men and women.
+He remembered it had been that way with his father, who was always happiest
+when in the deep mountains or the unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with
+an inner gladness when his business was finished and the day came for him to
+leave Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula. For one
+hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge, four-foot railway
+on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan, at times, as though Mary
+Standish were with him, riding in this strange way through a great wilderness.
+He could <i>see</i> her. That was the strange thing which began to possess him.
+There were moments when her eyes were shining softly upon him, her lips
+smiling, her presence so real he might have spoken to her if Lomen had not been
+at his side. He did not fight against these visionings. It pleased him to think
+of her going with him into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque
+&ldquo;pup-mobile,&rdquo; losing herself in the mountains and in his tundras,
+with all the wonder and glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a
+time, like the unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder and
+glory in these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind, and the
+miracle of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night, as Mary Standish
+had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of June there were twenty
+hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight between the hours of eleven and
+one. Sleep was no longer a matter of the rising and setting of the sun, but was
+regulated by the hands of the watch. A world frozen to the core for seven
+months was bursting open like a great flower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety people at
+Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to Keewalik, on Kotzebue
+Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried them to Choris Peninsula,
+where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and his huge herd of fifteen thousand
+reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide his impatience. Something
+was urging him, whipping him on to greater haste. For the first time in months
+he heard the crackling thunder of reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like
+a wild call from his own herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end
+came and his business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It was
+night, as his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta of the
+Kobuk River with him in a lighterage company&rsquo;s boat. But there was no
+darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the Redstone, two
+hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river winds. They had supper
+together on the shore. After that Paul Davidovich turned back with the slow
+sweep of the current, waving his hand until he was out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until the sound of the Russian&rsquo;s motor-boat was lost in distance did
+Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him. At last,
+after months that had seemed like so many years, he was <i>alone</i>. North and
+eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew so well, a hundred and
+fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost unmapped, unpeopled, right up
+to the doors of his range in the slopes of the Endicott Mountains. A little cry
+from his own lips gave him a start. It was as if he had called out aloud to
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and to Keok and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his
+way home and would soon be there. Never had this hidden land which he had found
+for himself seemed so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something
+about it that was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to that other
+thing which had become a part of him now. It was holding out its arms to him,
+understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel strongly and swiftly the
+space between. And he was ready to answer its call.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at his watch. It was five o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or sleep. The
+musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin timber of the
+river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It was the tundra he
+wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his face to the stars. He was
+eager to get away from timber and to feel the immeasurable space of the big
+country, the open country, about him. What fool had given to it the name of
+<i>Barren Lands</i>? What idiots people were to lie about it in that way on the
+maps! He strapped his pack over his shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren
+Lands!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight hours of
+sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their glory&mdash;the Barren
+Lands of the map-makers, <i>his</i> paradise. On a knoll he stood in the golden
+sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and stood with bared head, a
+whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary Standish could have lived to see
+<i>this</i>! He stretched out his arms, as if pointing for her eyes to follow,
+and her name was in his heart and whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable
+the tundras reached ahead of him&mdash;rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and
+golden and a glory of flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever
+known. Under his feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple
+violets, their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay
+a white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees in
+between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze, was the
+cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few days they would be
+opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody of
+bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly aglow in the
+sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird instinct, the
+going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and months when there was no
+real night. He picked up his pack and went on. From a pool hidden in the lush
+grasses of a distant hollow came to him the twilight honking of nesting geese
+and the quacking content of wild ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes
+of a lone &ldquo;organ-duck&rdquo; and the plaintive cries of plover, and
+farther out, where the shadows seemed deepening against the rim of the horizon,
+rose the harsh, rolling notes of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And
+then, from a clump of willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush
+whose throat was tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song of a
+robin. <i>Night!</i> Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in his
+face. <i>Bedtime!</i> He looked at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nine o&rsquo;clock. Nine o&rsquo;clock, and the flowers still answering
+to the glow of the sun! And the people down there&mdash;in the
+States&mdash;called it a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the
+earth, a place of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even though men
+called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and knowledge. It was
+humorous. And it was tragic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in this
+velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup. A little
+creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass and spread out his
+blankets. A great stillness drew in about him, broken only by the old squaws
+and the loons. At eleven o&rsquo;clock he could still see clearly the sleeping
+water-fowl on the surface of the pool. But the stars were appearing. It grew
+duskier, and the rose-tint of the sun faded into purple gloom as pale night
+drew near&mdash;four hours of rest that was neither darkness nor day. With a
+pillow of sedge and grass under his head he slept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the pool,
+with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among the grasses
+and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that he traveled steadily
+into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and almost without rest. It
+seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that country where all the bird-life
+of the world was born, for wherever there was water, in the pools and little
+streams and the hollows between the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was
+a babel of sound. Out of the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the
+irresistible pulse of motherhood filling him with its strength and its courage,
+and whispering to him its everlasting message that because of the glory and
+need and faith of life had God created this land of twenty-hour day and
+four-hour twilight. In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for
+gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place of
+darkness which its light could not quite enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless spaces, in
+the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision, she seemed to be
+walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At times it was like a
+torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when he visioned what might have
+been, and recalled too vividly that it was he who had stilled with death that
+living glory which dwelt with him in spirit now, a crying sob of which he was
+not ashamed came from his lips. For when he thought too deeply, he knew that
+Mary Standish would have lived if he had said other things to her that night
+aboard the ship. She had died, not for him, but <i>because</i> of
+him&mdash;because, in his failure to live up to what she believed she had found
+in him, he had broken down what must have been her last hope and her final
+faith. If he had been less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a
+greater wisdom, she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the
+rose-tinted dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear
+stars&mdash;happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things. At least so
+he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her even
+had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to fight for.
+He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains that might have
+bound her, or other inclinations that might have led her. He claimed her, now
+that she was dead, and knew that living he would have possessed her. Nothing
+could have kept him from that. But she was gone. And for that he was
+accountable, and the fifth night he lay sleepless under the stars, and like a
+boy he cried for her with his face upon his arm, and when morning came, and he
+went on, never had the world seemed so vast and empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he traveled
+slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within him. He could not
+laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra call to Amuk Toolik and
+his people, who would be riotous in their happiness at his return. They loved
+him. He knew that. Their love had been a part of his life, and the knowledge
+that his response to this love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled
+him with dread. A strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his
+head, so that when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had come to
+these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great tundras, and he had
+built himself a little camp among them. He loved the place. It had seemed to
+him that now and then he must visit the forlorn trees to give them cheer and
+comradeship. His father&rsquo;s name was carved in the bole of the greatest of
+them all, and under it the date and day when the elder Holt had discovered them
+in a land where no man had gone before. And under his father&rsquo;s name was
+his mother&rsquo;s, and under that, his own. He had made of the place a sort of
+shrine, a green and sweet-flowered tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song
+and peace in summer and the weird aloneness of it in winter had played their
+parts in the making of his soul. Through many months he had anticipated this
+hour of his home-coming, when in the distance he would see the beckoning
+welcome of the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills and frosted peaks of
+the Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was looking at the trees and the
+mountains, and something was lacking in the thrill of them. He came up from the
+west, between two willow ridges through which ran the little creek from the
+warm springs, and he was within a quarter of a mile of them when something
+stopped him in his tracks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment he knew
+it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him. This day was the
+Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was shooting firecrackers!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok&rsquo;s mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness Nawadlook
+never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his home-coming with a
+celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably imported a supply of
+&ldquo;bing-bangs&rdquo; from Allakakat or Tanana. The oppressive weight inside
+him lifted, and the smile remained on his lips. And then as if commanded by a
+voice, his eyes turned to the dead cottonwood stub which had sentineled the
+little oasis of trees for many years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely
+in the breeze that came with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of him, who
+wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old happiness, and he
+drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that grew almost up to the
+cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would walk suddenly in among them,
+unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing that would amaze and delight
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He heard the
+popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one of the
+&ldquo;giants&rdquo; that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
+ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then up
+again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see Keok a
+hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and as he looked,
+she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from her. The others were
+probably circled about her, out of his sight, watching her performance. He
+continued cautiously, making his way so that he could come up behind a thick
+growth of bush unseen, within a dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as
+that to her, and Keok was still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something about
+Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and seemed to
+stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not Nawadlook! He
+stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The slender figure of the girl
+on the log turned a little, and he saw the glint of golden sunshine in her
+hair. He called out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keok!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;<i>Mary Standish</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt&rsquo;s face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that had
+risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on the old
+cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his home-coming.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+After that one calling of her name Alan&rsquo;s voice was dead, and he made no
+movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary
+upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve
+in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange
+relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his
+arms hung limp. She was there, <i>alive!</i> He could see the whiteness leave
+her face and a flush of color come into it, and he heard a little cry as she
+jumped down from the log and came toward him. It had all happened in a few
+seconds, but it seemed a long time to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating up to
+him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step away from
+him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must have been
+something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made an effort to
+recover himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You almost frightened me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We have been expecting
+you and watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn&rsquo;t see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same voice,
+unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him yesterday and
+with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again today. It was
+impossible for him to realize in these moments the immeasurable distance that
+lay between their viewpoints. He was simply Alan Holt&mdash;she was the dead
+risen to life. Many times in his grief he had visualized what he would do if
+some miracle could bring her back to him like this; he had thought of taking
+her in his arms and never letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to
+pass, and she was within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to
+speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&mdash;Mary Standish!&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I
+thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another individual
+within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack of physical
+expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout with joy, yet the
+directing soul of action in him was stricken. She touched his arm hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think you would care,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I thought
+you wouldn&rsquo;t mind&mdash;if I came up here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain, and the
+touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard himself cry out, a
+strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his breast. He held her close,
+crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers buried in her hair, her slender
+body almost broken in his arms. She was alive&mdash;she had come back to
+him&mdash;and he forgot everything in these blind moments but that great truth
+which was sweeping over him in a glorious inundation. Then, suddenly, he found
+that she was fighting him, struggling to free herself and putting her hands
+against his face in her efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing
+but her eyes, and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of
+finding&mdash;but horror. It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms
+relaxed. She staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her
+breath, her face very white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at him, as if
+he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not taken the
+strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing the red of his
+kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his hands mutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think&mdash;I came here for <i>that?</i>&rdquo; she panted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Forgive me. I am sorry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of shock
+and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him, which
+recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back against his cabin
+door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together. Even subconsciously that
+was impossible, for all life in him was centered in the one stupendous thought
+that she was not dead, but living, and he did not wonder why. There was no
+question in his mind as to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea.
+He felt a weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give
+himself up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his flesh. She
+saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his face, and his quicker
+breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was too completely possessed by
+the one great thing to discover the astonishment growing in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are alive,&rdquo; he said, giving voice again to the one thought
+pounding in his brain. &ldquo;<i>Alive!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number of
+times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your letter? At Nome?&rdquo; He repeated the words, shaking his head.
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And all this time&mdash;you have been thinking&mdash;I was dead?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form of
+speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wrote you there,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wrote the letter before I
+jumped into the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle&rsquo;s ship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t get it?&rdquo; There was wonderment in her voice, and
+then, if he had observed it, understanding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you didn&rsquo;t mean that just now? You didn&rsquo;t intend to do
+it? It was because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great
+relief to find me alive. That was it, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stupidly he nodded again. &ldquo;Yes, it was a great relief.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn&rsquo;t help me,&rdquo;
+she went on. &ldquo;So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the
+letter I wrote. To all the world but you I am dead&mdash;to Rossland, Captain
+Rifle, everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit
+Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and picked
+me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the boats were
+making their search.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side of
+which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few moments ago
+he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had done this thing, and
+that she was looking at him now as if it had never happened, filled him with a
+smothering sense of humiliation. She made it impossible for him to speak about
+it, even to apologize more fully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I am here,&rdquo; she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way.
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my
+mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the <i>Nome</i>. And
+so&mdash;I am your guest, Mr. Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she smoothed
+back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she belonged here, and had
+always belonged here, and was giving him permission to enter her domain. Shock
+was beginning to pass away from him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth
+once more. His spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him
+during the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of things, her
+almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his hands, but there was a
+different light in his eyes, and she placed her own in them confidently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was like a bolt of lightning,&rdquo; he said, his voice free at last
+and trembling. &ldquo;Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of
+you, and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find you
+alive. And <i>here!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But reason
+had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake up and
+find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the other
+things&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of tears
+at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a lingering of her
+finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in her throat revealed itself
+clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step,&rdquo;
+he said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come.
+&ldquo;Then I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when I found you here, and you didn&rsquo;t fade away like a ghost,
+I thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been wrong, I
+guess, or I wouldn&rsquo;t have done <i>that</i>. You see, it puzzled me that a
+ghost should be setting off firecrackers&mdash;and I suppose that was the first
+impulse I had of making sure you were real.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a clear, wild
+voice with a sweet trill in it. &ldquo;<i>Maa-rie!</i>&rdquo; it called.
+&ldquo;<i>Maa-rie!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Supper,&rdquo; nodded the girl. &ldquo;You are just in time. And then we
+are going home in the twilight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his place as
+home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft coils of her
+hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and soul filled only with
+the beauty of her slim figure&mdash;a glory of life where for a long time he
+had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came into an open, soft with grass and
+strewn with flowers, and in this open a man was kneeling beside a fire no
+larger than his two hands, and at his side, watching him, stood a girl with two
+braids of black hair rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first
+and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little
+screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She
+dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight
+for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner of
+her coming, was only a moment behind. And then he was shaking hands with
+Stampede, and Keok had slipped down among the flowers and was crying. That was
+like Keok. She always cried when he went away, and cried when he returned; and
+then, in another moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed
+she no longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in
+doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of way. No
+one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and nerves were
+fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming back one by one to a
+vital point from which they had been swept by an unexpected sea, gripping
+rather incoherently at unimportant realities as they assembled themselves. In
+the edge of the tundra beyond the cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer
+grazing at the ends of ropes which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads.
+He drew off his pack as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen
+sticks. Nawadlook was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began
+to fill a pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today
+then tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had experienced
+shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back and dragged the old
+Alan Holt into existence again. It was like bringing an intelligence out of
+darkness into light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was difficult for him&mdash;afterward&mdash;to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper things
+between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful Mary Standish who
+had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon of the <i>Nome</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of the
+cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the tundra in the
+direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had been gathering begin
+to sweep upon him. It had been Keok&rsquo;s suggestion that she and Mary and
+Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how quickly Mary Standish had
+caught at the idea. She had smiled at him as she left, and a little farther out
+had waved her hand at him, as Keok and Nawadlook both had done, but not another
+word had passed between them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of
+sunset Alan stood watching them, and would have stared without speech until
+they were out of sight, if Stampede&rsquo;s fingers had not gripped his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, go to it, Alan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready. Give me
+hell!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that Stampede
+brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and awakening
+inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man&rsquo;s invitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been a damn fool,&rdquo; he confessed. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m
+waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things began to
+rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he had been one. His
+mind went back to the <i>Nome</i>. It seemed only a few hours ago&mdash;only
+yesterday&mdash;that the girl had so artfully deceived them all, and he had
+gone through hell because of that deception. The trickery had been simple, and
+exceedingly clever because of its simplicity; it must have taken a tremendous
+amount of courage, now that he clearly understood that at no time had she
+wanted to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;why she did a thing like that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan&rsquo;s mind.
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree.&rdquo;
+And he added, &ldquo;The little witch even threatened to shoot me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. &ldquo;Begin, Alan. I&rsquo;m
+waiting. Go the limit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin&rsquo; her in the bush. You can&rsquo;t take it out of <i>her</i>
+hide, can you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent. Mary
+Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a quarter of a mile
+away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They trotted up a low ridge and
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business,&rdquo; persisted Stampede, &ldquo;but
+you didn&rsquo;t seem to expect her&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack.
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect her. I thought she was dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A low whistle escaped Stampede&rsquo;s lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his shoulders.
+Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the girl who had jumped
+overboard from the <i>Nome</i>, and if she had kept her secret, it was not his
+business just now to explain, even though he guessed that Stampede&rsquo;s
+quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A light was beginning to dispel the
+little man&rsquo;s bewilderment as they started toward the Range. He had seen
+Mary Standish frequently aboard the <i>Nome</i>; a number of times he had
+observed her in Alan&rsquo;s company, and he knew of the hours they had spent
+together in Skagway. Therefore, if Alan had believed her dead when they went
+ashore at Cordova, a few hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been
+she who jumped into the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his
+failure to discover this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It beats the devil!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does,&rdquo; agreed Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the happiness
+that possessed him, and questions which he had found no interest in asking when
+aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling force. Why was it so tragically
+important to Mary Standish that the world should believe her dead? What was it
+that had driven her to appeal to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What
+was her mysterious association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska&rsquo;s
+deadliest enemy, John Graham&mdash;the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance
+if opportunity ever came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with its
+insistence, rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible for him to
+make. Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained silent in the
+lengthening twilight, while Alan&rsquo;s mind struggled to bring coherence and
+reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt. Why had she come to <i>his</i>
+cabin aboard the <i>Nome</i>? Why had she played him with such conspicuous
+intent against Rossland, and why&mdash;in the end&mdash;had she preceded him to
+his home in the tundras? It was this question which persisted, never for an
+instant swept aside by the others. She had not come because of love for him. In
+a brutal sort of way he had proved that, for when he had taken her in his arms,
+he had seen distress and fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and
+more mysterious force had driven her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon him. He
+was like a man who had found life after a period of something that was worse
+than death, and with his happiness he felt himself twisted upon an upheaval of
+conflicting sensations and half convictions out of which, in spite of his
+effort to hold it back, suspicion began to creep like a shadow. But it was not
+the sort of suspicion to cool the thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he
+was quite ready to concede that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her
+flight from Seattle had been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had
+happened aboard ship was further proof, and her presence at his range a final
+one. Forces had driven her which it had been impossible for her to combat, and
+in desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had chosen him out of all
+the world to help her; she believed in him; she had faith that with him no harm
+could come, and his muscles tightened with sudden desire to fight for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras and the
+soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He strained his eyes to
+catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when they came up out of hollows
+to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of evening were drawing closer, and he
+looked in vain. Bird-song grew softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and
+pools; the fire of the sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling
+of vivid rose and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet
+day, and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish. What
+had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with the thrilling
+fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her would be explained
+tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in him. Now that she had so
+utterly placed herself under his protection, she would tell him what she had
+not dared to disclose aboard the <i>Nome</i>. So he thought only of the silvery
+distance of twilight that separated them, and spoke at last to Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather glad you brought her,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t bring her,&rdquo; protested Stampede. &ldquo;She
+<i>came</i>.&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders with a grunt. &ldquo;And
+furthermore I didn&rsquo;t manage it. She did that herself. She didn&rsquo;t
+come with me. I came with <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he glared
+fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed him. Alan saw it
+and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His keen vision and sense of
+humor were returning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and drew in a
+deep breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn&rsquo;t get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn&rsquo;t rain. You couldn&rsquo;t call it
+that, Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three other
+oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming, coach floating,
+driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I got in for Chitina. There
+was one other climbed in after me, and I wondered what sort of fool he was. I
+said something about being starved or I&rsquo;d have hung to the train. The
+other didn&rsquo;t answer. Then I began to swear. I did, Alan. I cursed
+terrible. Swore at the Government for building such a road, swore at the rain,
+an&rsquo; I swore at myself for not bringin&rsquo; along grub. I said my belly
+was as empty as a shot-off cartridge, and I said it good an&rsquo; loud. I was
+mad. Then a big flash of lightning lit up the coach. Alan, it was <i>her</i>
+sittin&rsquo; there with a box in her lap, facing me, drippin&rsquo; wet, her
+eyes shining&mdash;and she was smiling at me! Yessir, <i>smiling</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan stared at him in amazement. &ldquo;The fourth
+night&mdash;after&mdash;&rdquo; He caught himself. &ldquo;Go on,
+Stampede!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin&rsquo; to
+sneak out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin&rsquo; come again.
+But it caught me. An&rsquo; there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her
+saying she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An&rsquo; she called me Stampede,
+like she&rsquo;d known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an&rsquo;
+rocking and the thunder an&rsquo; lightning an&rsquo; rain piling up against
+each other like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me.
+She did that, Alan&mdash;<i>fed</i> me. When the lightning fired up, I could
+see her eyes shining and her lips smilin&rsquo; as if all that hell about us
+made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she
+was that I was goin&rsquo; her way. <i>Her</i> way, mind you, Alan, not
+<i>mine.</i> And that&rsquo;s just the way she&rsquo;s kept me goin&rsquo; up
+to the minute you hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted his pipe again. &ldquo;Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the happiest
+moment of her life, because <i>she</i> was on her way up to your range, and
+I&rsquo;d be such jolly good company for her. &lsquo;Jolly
+good&rsquo;&mdash;them were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew
+she was coming up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a
+grand surprise. Said it was possible she&rsquo;d buy your range, and she wanted
+to look it over before you arrived. An&rsquo; it seems queer I can&rsquo;t
+remember anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and
+Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin&rsquo; a million
+questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to,
+Alan&mdash;but everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and
+Fairbanks, and she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I&rsquo;d have eat
+soap out of her hand if she&rsquo;d offered it to me. Then, sort of sly and
+soft-like, she began asking questions about John Graham&mdash;and I woke
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham!&rdquo; Alan repeated the name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin&rsquo; aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please&mdash;with her hand on my arm&mdash;she
+said she wasn&rsquo;t quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain&rsquo;t a lie what
+I&rsquo;m going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a
+wonderful idea she had for surprisin&rsquo; <i>you</i>. Said she knew you would
+return to the Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some fireworks.
+Said you was such a good American you&rsquo;d be disappointed if you
+didn&rsquo;t have &rsquo;em. So she took me in a store an&rsquo; bought it out.
+Asked the man what he&rsquo;d take for everything in his joint that had powder
+in it. Five hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk
+something out of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar bills in
+it an inch think. Then she asked <i>me</i> to get them firecrackers
+&rsquo;n&rsquo; wheels &rsquo;n&rsquo; skyrockets &rsquo;n&rsquo; balloons
+&rsquo;n&rsquo; other stuff down to the boat, and she asked me just as if I was
+a sweet little boy who&rsquo;d be tickled to death to do it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne in
+secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his words upon his
+companion. Incredulity shot into Alan&rsquo;s eyes, and the humorous lines
+about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that Stampede was not drawing upon
+his imagination. Yet what he had told him seemed impossible. Mary Standish had
+come aboard the <i>Nome</i> a fugitive. All her possessions she had brought
+with her in a small hand-bag, and these things she had left in her cabin when
+she leaped into the sea. How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of
+money at Fairbanks as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian
+had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she
+played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died? And was
+this money&mdash;possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle&mdash;the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It was like
+thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was cut under his
+father&rsquo;s in the old cottonwood tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem
+interested, Alan. But I&rsquo;m going on, or I&rsquo;ll bust. I&rsquo;ve got to
+tell you what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I
+won&rsquo;t say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; urged Alan. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m interested.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I got &rsquo;em on the boat,&rdquo; continued Stampede viciously.
+&ldquo;And she with me every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not
+letting me out of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one
+hole to go in an&rsquo; come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a
+little shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin&rsquo;
+something, an&rsquo; I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin&rsquo; to do with it, she said, &lsquo;Stampede,
+that&rsquo;s for you,&rsquo; an&rsquo; when I went to thank her, she said:
+&lsquo;No, I don&rsquo;t mean it that way. I mean that if you try to run away
+from me again I&rsquo;m going to fill you full of holes.&rsquo; She said that!
+Threatened me. Then she bought me a new outfit from toe to summit&mdash;boots,
+pants, shirt, hat <i>and</i> a necktie! And I didn&rsquo;t say a word, not a
+word. She just led me in an&rsquo; bought what she wanted and made me put
+&rsquo;em on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on his pipe.
+&ldquo;I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana,&rdquo; he half
+groaned. &ldquo;Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote the
+luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+goin&rsquo; to have a rest, Stampede,&rsquo; she says to me, smiling so cool
+and sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. &lsquo;All you&rsquo;ve got to do
+is show us the way and carry the bums.&rsquo; &lsquo;Carry the what?&rsquo; I
+asks. &lsquo;The bums,&rsquo; she says, an&rsquo; then she explains that a bum
+is a thing filled with powder which makes a terrible racket when it goes off.
+So I took the bums, and the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and
+dropped out. He had the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we
+whacked up his load among us. I couldn&rsquo;t stand up straight when we
+camped. We had crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range. And
+<i>would</i> she let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she
+wouldn&rsquo;t! And all the time while they was puffing an&rsquo; panting them
+Indians was worshipin&rsquo; her with their eyes. The last day, when we camped
+with the Range almost in sight, she drew &rsquo;em all up in a circle about her
+and gave &rsquo;em each a handful of money above their pay. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s
+because I love you,&rsquo; she says, and then she begins asking them funny
+questions. Did they have wives and children? Were they ever hungry? Did they
+ever know about any of their people starving to death? And just <i>why</i> did
+they starve? And, Alan, so help me thunder if them Indians didn&rsquo;t talk!
+Never heard Indians tell so much. And in the end she asked them the funniest
+question of all, asked them if they&rsquo;d heard of a man named John Graham.
+One of them had, and afterward I saw her talking a long time with him alone,
+and when she come back to me, her eyes were sort of burning up, and she
+didn&rsquo;t say good night when she went into her tent. That&rsquo;s all,
+Alan, except&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Except what, Stampede?&rdquo; said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw a flash
+of humor in the little man&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Except that she&rsquo;s done with everyone on the Range just what she
+did with me between Chitina and here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Alan, if she wants
+to say the word, why, <i>you</i> ain&rsquo;t boss any more, that&rsquo;s all.
+She&rsquo;s been there ten days, and you won&rsquo;t know the place. It&rsquo;s
+all done up in flags, waiting for you. She an&rsquo; Nawadlook and Keok are
+running everything but the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her,
+and the men&mdash;&rdquo; He chuckled again. &ldquo;Why, the men even go to the
+Sunday school she&rsquo;s started! I went. Nawadlook sings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, &ldquo;Alan,
+you&rsquo;ve been a big fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a&mdash;a flower, Alan. She&rsquo;s worth more than all the
+gold in the world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it&rsquo;s
+too late now. I&rsquo;m warnin&rsquo; you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because she likes me,&rdquo; declared Stampede a bit fiercely.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m after her myself, Alan. You can&rsquo;t butt in now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo; gasped Alan. &ldquo;You mean that Mary
+Standish&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not talking about Mary Standish,&rdquo; said Stampede.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Nawadlook. If it wasn&rsquo;t for my whiskers&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale gloom
+ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long distance away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of them cussed bums,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why
+they hurried on ahead of us, Alan. <i>She</i> says this Fourth of July
+celebration is going to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named Ghost
+Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running down from the
+foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and in the depths lay
+abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn smooth by reindeer and
+caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet below the twilight of the plains,
+Alan dropped on his knees beside a little spring that he groped for among the
+stones, and as he drank he could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of
+water up and down the kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls
+and eternally dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede&rsquo;s face in
+the glow of another match, and the little man&rsquo;s eyes were staring into
+the black chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, you&rsquo;ve been up this gorge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill
+our fawns,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is
+supposed to be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will
+enter it. The bones of dead men lie up there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never prospected it?&rdquo; persisted Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan heard the other&rsquo;s grunt of disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re reindeer-crazy,&rdquo; he grumbled. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+gold in this canyon. Twice I&rsquo;ve found it where there were dead
+men&rsquo;s bones. They bring me good luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But these were Eskimos. They didn&rsquo;t come for gold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I&rsquo;m
+telling you there wasn&rsquo;t any of it left out of her when she was
+born!&rdquo; He was silent for a moment, and then added: &ldquo;When we came to
+that dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin&rsquo; there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn&rsquo;t screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until it
+hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and soppy with
+the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to pieces, and I guess I
+would if she hadn&rsquo;t put a hand on my gun. An&rsquo; with a funny little
+smile she says: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t do it, Stampede. It makes me think of
+someone I know&mdash;and I wouldn&rsquo;t want you to shoot him.&rsquo; Darned
+funny thing to say, wasn&rsquo;t it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now,
+who the devil could look like a rotten skull?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They climbed up
+out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the tundra was gone on
+this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a low hill, and mountainward
+hills piled one upon another until they were lost in misty distance. From the
+crest of the ridge they looked out into a vast sweep of tundra which ran in
+among the out-guarding billows and hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form
+of a wide, semicircular bay. Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range,
+and scarcely had they reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its
+holster. Twice he blazed in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Orders,&rdquo; he said a little sheepishly. &ldquo;Orders, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from beyond
+the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra. It was joined
+by another, and still another, until there was such a sound that Alan knew
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and all the others were splitting
+their throats in welcome, and with it very soon came a series of explosions
+that set the earth athrill under their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bums!&rdquo; growled Stampede. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s got Chink lanterns
+hanging up all about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found
+there was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until it
+seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then burst into
+innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed away with his
+forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied the magazine of his gun,
+the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning the chorus of sound that came
+from the range. A second rocket answered them. Two columns of flame leaped up
+from the earth as huge fires gained headway, and Alan could hear the shrill
+chorus of children&rsquo;s voices mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All
+the people of his range were there. They had come in from the timber-naked
+plateaux and high ranges where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying
+shacks of the tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration
+of effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it all! He
+knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that fact from choking
+up his heart a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying&mdash;that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for the big
+fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms were booming their
+hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his steps. Over a little knoll,
+and he was looking at the buildings of the range, wildly excited figures
+running about, women and children flinging moss on the fires, the tom-tom
+beaters squatted in a half-circle facing the direction from which he would
+come, and fifty Chinese lanterns swinging in the soft night-breeze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of them.
+Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children. Nawadlook and
+Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for him in any fight or
+stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede his rifle and hastened on,
+determined to keep his eyes from questing for Mary Standish in these first
+minutes of his return. He sounded the tundra call, and men, women, and little
+children came running to meet him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the
+beaters leaped to their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of
+voice, laughter, children&rsquo;s squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands
+with both his own&mdash;hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men&rsquo;s shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty around
+him counting the children. First, last, and always these were <i>his
+people</i>. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power and
+possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great family, and he
+shook hands twice and three times with the same men and women, and lifted the
+same children from the arms of delighted mothers, and cried out greetings and
+familiarities with an abandon which a few minutes ago knowledge of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s presence would have tempered. Then, suddenly, he saw her under
+the Chinese lanterns in front of his cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled
+double and looked like a witch, stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+head disappeared, and there came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the
+crowd had gathered about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in
+their semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his cabin
+came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the one thing
+intended for his understanding alone. It was playing &ldquo;When Johnny Comes
+Marching Home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was alone. She
+was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear, the quiet pallor of
+her face, and the strain and repression which had seemed to be a part of her
+were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it was not with voice or action that
+she revealed herself. It was in her eyes, the flush of her cheeks and lips, the
+poise of her slim body as she waited for him. A thought flashed upon him that
+for a space she had forgotten herself and the shadow which had driven her to
+leap into the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is splendid!&rdquo; she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t guess how badly they wanted you back.
+It must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I thank you for your part,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Stampede has
+told me. It was quite a bit of trouble, wasn&rsquo;t it, with nothing more than
+the hope of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?&rdquo; He nodded at the
+half-dozen flags over his cabin. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re rather pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was no trouble. And I hope you don&rsquo;t mind. It has been great
+fun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It seemed to
+him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to speak what was
+in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do mind,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I mind so much that I
+wouldn&rsquo;t trade what has happened for all the gold in these mountains.
+I&rsquo;m sorry because of what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I
+wouldn&rsquo;t trade that, either. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re alive. I&rsquo;m
+glad you&rsquo;re here. But something is missing. You know what it is. You must
+tell me about yourself. It is the only fair thing for you to do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She touched his arm with her hand. &ldquo;Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please&mdash;let us wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then&mdash;tomorrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine&mdash;just you&mdash;and your
+people&mdash;and their happiness.&rdquo; He bent his head to catch her words,
+almost drowned by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers.
+She nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin. &ldquo;I am with Keok and
+Nawadlook. They have given me a home.&rdquo; And then swiftly she added,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you love your people more than I do, Alan
+Holt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on his arm
+she drew away from him. His face did not show his disappointment, nor did he
+make a movement to keep her with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your people are expecting things of you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A
+little later, if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the
+tom-toms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him and
+smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart beating faster.
+She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not afraid of tomorrow.
+Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not frighten her, and a
+happiness which he had persistently held away from himself triumphed in a
+sudden, submerging flood. It was as if something in her eyes and voice had
+promised him that the dreams he had dreamed through weeks of torture and living
+death were coming true, and that possibly in her ride over the tundra that
+night she had come a little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant
+to him. Surely he would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to
+him tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and he
+could not let her go away from him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to discover
+himself doing things which he had never done before. His nature was an aloof
+one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less detached. At his
+people&rsquo;s dances it was his habit to stand on the side-line, smiling and
+nodding encouragement, but never taking a part. His habit of reserve fell from
+him now, and he seemed possessed of a new sense of freedom and a new desire to
+give physical expression to something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was
+kicking his feet and howling with the men, while the women dancers went through
+the muscular movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan.
+They had always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place
+between Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half breathless, did
+he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok was frankly amazed.
+Mary Standish&rsquo;s eyes were shining, and she clapped her hands when she saw
+that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and waved his hand, but he felt
+too foolish to go to her. And then the balloon went up, a big, six-foot
+balloon, and with all its fire made only a pale glow in the sky, and after
+another hour of hand-shaking, shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about
+health and domestic matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never had
+seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he had left
+it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in the middle of
+the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack filled with polished
+weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor&mdash;and then, one at a time, he
+began to observe things that were different. In place of dark shades there were
+soft curtains at his windows, and new covers on his table and the home-made
+couch in the corner. On his desk were two pictures in copper-colored frames,
+one of George Washington and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them
+crisscrossed against the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny
+American flags. They recalled Alan&rsquo;s mind to the evening aboard the
+<i>Nome</i> when Mary Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an
+Alaskan and not an American. Only she would have thought of those two pictures
+and the little flags. There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them
+there. She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the
+hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had
+purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He went into his bedroom
+and found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair of
+red morocco slippers that he had never seen before. He took them up in his
+hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size of his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok&rsquo;s phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was gone.
+Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing stillness drew
+him to the window from which he could see the cabin where lived Keok and
+Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and shriveled Sokwenna. It was
+there Mary Standish had said she was staying. For a long time Alan watched it
+while the final sounds of the night drifted away into utter silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer to his
+invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly his eyes
+traveled about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They seemed to be. I&rsquo;m happy to be home again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guessed as much,&rdquo; replied Alan. &ldquo;Of course Keok and
+Nawadlook helped her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an&rsquo; thoughtful, hasn&rsquo;t
+she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And somewhat unusual,&rdquo; added Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she is pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Most decidedly so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede&rsquo;s eyes. He twisted nervously in his
+chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s on your mind, Stampede?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hell, mostly,&rdquo; shot back Stampede with sudden desperation.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come loaded down with a dirty job, and I&rsquo;ve kept it
+back this long because I didn&rsquo;t want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a
+man ought to keep to himself what he knows about a woman, but I&rsquo;m
+thinking this is a little different. I hate to do it. I&rsquo;d rather take the
+chance of a snake-bite. But you&rsquo;d shoot me if you knew I was keeping it
+to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keeping what to yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The truth, Alan. It&rsquo;s up to me to tell you what I know about this
+young woman who calls herself Mary Standish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede&rsquo;s face, and the stolid effort he
+was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into words,
+did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion&rsquo;s promised disclosure.
+Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation and relief. What he
+had passed through recently had burned out of him a certain demand upon human
+ethics which had been almost callous in its insistence, and while he believed
+that something very real and very stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary
+Standish north, he was now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with
+any force of circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to know the
+truth, yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell it to him,
+and the fact that Stampede had in some way discovered this truth, and was about
+to make disclosure of it, was a tremendous lightening of the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;What do you know about Mary
+Standish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way
+I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to oughta be shot, and if it was anything
+else&mdash;<i>anything</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;d keep it to myself. But you&rsquo;ve
+got to know. And you can&rsquo;t understand just how rotten it is, either; you
+haven&rsquo;t ridden in a coach with her during a storm that was blowing the
+Pacific outa bed, an&rsquo; you haven&rsquo;t hit the trail with her all the
+way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you&rsquo;d done that, Alan,
+you&rsquo;d feel like killing a man who said anything against her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not inquiring into your personal affairs,&rdquo; reminded
+Alan. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your own business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the trouble,&rdquo; protested Stampede. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+not my business. It&rsquo;s yours. If I&rsquo;d guessed the truth before we hit
+the Range, everything would have been different. I&rsquo;d have rid myself of
+her some way. But I didn&rsquo;t find out what she was until this evening, when
+I returned Keok&rsquo;s music machine to their cabin. I&rsquo;ve been trying to
+make up my mind what to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from
+the States, a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody&rsquo;s bunco pigeon chased by the
+police&mdash;almost anything&mdash;we could forgive her. Even if she&rsquo;d
+shot up somebody&mdash;&rdquo; He made a gesture of despair. &ldquo;But she
+didn&rsquo;t. She&rsquo;s worse than that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s one of John Graham&rsquo;s tools sent up here to sneak and
+spy on you,&rdquo; he finished desperately. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry&mdash;but
+I&rsquo;ve got the proof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm opened, and
+when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them. &ldquo;Found it on the
+floor when I took the phonograph back,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It was
+twisted up hard. Don&rsquo;t know why I unrolled it. Just chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper, watching
+closely the slight tensing of the other&rsquo;s face. After a moment Alan
+dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There was no
+longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been accepted as a guest.
+Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the sudden and almost
+imperceptible shrug of Alan&rsquo;s shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. &ldquo;Rather a missing
+link, isn&rsquo;t it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I&rsquo;m
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost&mdash;you didn&rsquo;t tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Almost,&rdquo; admitted Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I wouldn&rsquo;t have blamed you. She&rsquo;s that kind&mdash;the
+kind that makes you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I&rsquo;m
+going to believe that paper is a lie&mdash;until tomorrow. Will you take a
+message to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I&rsquo;m having breakfast
+at seven. Tell them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at
+eight. Later I&rsquo;m going up into the foothills to look over the
+herds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan&rsquo;s part, and it was just the
+way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed of the
+weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course they could do
+nothing with a woman; it wasn&rsquo;t a shooting business&mdash;yet. But there
+was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their
+unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like that was in Alan&rsquo;s
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened the door. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at
+eight. Good night, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan watched Stampede&rsquo;s figure until it had disappeared before he closed
+the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the anxiety
+which the prospector&rsquo;s unexpected revealment had aroused in him. The
+other&rsquo;s footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the paper in his
+hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of ordinary business size
+and had been carelessly torn from the larger part of the page, so that nothing
+more than the signature and half a dozen lines of writing in a man&rsquo;s
+heavy script remained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have possessed,
+read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>&mdash;If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing
+facts and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands within a
+year</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore for its
+maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself like a fibrous
+plant through all his plans for the future, had made of it an unforgetable
+writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand words written by his enemy,
+and the man who had been his father&rsquo;s enemy, all that he had kept away
+from Stampede&rsquo;s sharp eyes blazed in a sudden fury in his face. He
+dropped the paper as if it had been a thing unclean, and his hands clenched
+until his knuckles snapped in the stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the
+window through which a few moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made in the
+one hour of his father&rsquo;s triumph&mdash;that hour in which the elder Holt
+might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not revolted in the last
+of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had witnessed. And Mary Standish
+was the instrument he had chosen to work his ends!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend the
+absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or still the
+tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense to deny the fact
+that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary Standish; inadvertently
+she had kept it, had finally attempted to destroy it, and Stampede, by chance,
+had discovered a small but convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought
+he pieced together things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from
+the beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose, her
+boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor to work
+herself into his confidence&mdash;and with John Graham&rsquo;s signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and irrefutable
+evidence. The &ldquo;industry&rdquo; which Graham had referred to could mean
+only his own and Carl Lomen&rsquo;s, the reindeer industry which they had built
+up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his beef-baron friends
+were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this game of destruction clever
+Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>But why had she leaped into the sea?</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan&rsquo;s brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against his
+arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad convictions that
+possessed him. If Mary Standish&rsquo;s mission was to pave the way for his
+ruin, and if she was John Graham&rsquo;s agent sent for that purpose, what
+reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting to give the world the
+impression that she had ended her life at sea? Surely such an act could in no
+way have been related with any plot which she might have had against him! In
+building up this structure of her defense he made no effort to sever her
+relationship with John Graham; that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her
+actions, and many of the things she had said were links inevitably associating
+her with his enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John Graham, was
+working <i>against</i> him? Could some conflict between them have been the
+reason for her flight aboard the <i>Nome</i>, and was it because she discovered
+Rossland there&mdash;John Graham&rsquo;s most trusted servant&mdash;that she
+formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what he knew
+to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated John Graham now,
+had at one time&mdash;and not very long ago&mdash;been an instrument of his
+trust; the letter he had written to her was positive proof of that. What it was
+that had caused a possible split between them and had inspired her flight from
+Seattle, and, later, her effort to bury a past under the fraud of a
+make-believe death, he might never learn, and just now he had no very great
+desire to look entirely into the whole truth of the matter. It was enough to
+know that of the past, and of the things that happened, she had been afraid,
+and it was in the desperation of this fear, with Graham&rsquo;s cleverest agent
+at her heels, that she had appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win
+him to her assistance, had taken the matter so dramatically into her own hands.
+And within that same hour a nearly successful attempt had been made upon
+Rossland&rsquo;s life. Of course the facts had shown that she could not have
+been directly responsible for his injury, but it was a haunting thing to
+remember as happening almost simultaneously with her disappearance into the
+sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the night.
+Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper lanterns, and
+he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary Standish had placed
+over his cabin. There was something comforting in the sound, a solace to the
+dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a reminder of their day in Skagway when
+she had walked at his side with her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes
+and face filled with the inspiration of the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously admirable
+about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine loveliness. She
+had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by courage&mdash;a courage
+which he would have been compelled to respect even in a man like John Graham,
+and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed to him as a virtue to be laid up
+apart and aside from any of the motives which might be directing it. From the
+beginning it had been a bewildering part of her&mdash;a clean, swift,
+unhesitating courage that had leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment
+would have hung waveringly; that one courage in all the world&mdash;a
+woman&rsquo;s courage&mdash;which finds in the effort of its achievement no
+obstacle too high and no abyss too wide though death waits with outreaching
+arms on the other side. And, surely, where there had been all this, there must
+also have been some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of
+physical gain, or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan&rsquo;s lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above his
+cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede&rsquo;s discovery had proclaimed her
+to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of reasoning on their
+part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and the injustice of their
+suspicions. He tried to force the conviction upon himself, and reentering the
+cabin he went to bed, still telling himself that a great lie had built itself
+up out of nothing, and that the God of all things was good to him because Mary
+Standish was alive, and not dead.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the preceding day
+did not make him overreach the time he had set for himself, and he was up at
+six o&rsquo;clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her old habits, and a tub filled
+with cold water was waiting for him. He bathed, shaved himself, put on fresh
+clothes, and promptly at seven was at breakfast. The table at which he
+ordinarily sat alone was in a little room with double windows, through which,
+as he enjoyed his meals, he could see most of the habitations of the range.
+Unlike the average Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber
+brought down from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of flowers
+lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a little knoll that
+looked down into one of the watered hollows of the tundra, was Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+cabin. Because Sokwenna was the &ldquo;old man&rdquo; of the community and
+therefore the wisest&mdash;and because with him lived his foster-daughters,
+Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan&rsquo;s tribal
+colony&mdash;Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin was next to Alan&rsquo;s in size. And Alan,
+looking at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than half-way
+between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent miracle of rising
+in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan knew the men-folk of the
+village had departed hours ago for the distant herds. Always, when the reindeer
+drifted into the higher and cooler feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was
+this apparent abandonment, and after last night&rsquo;s celebration the women
+and children were not yet awake to the activities of the long day, where the
+rising and setting of the sun meant so little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the sun on
+the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes, he knew it was
+Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For half an
+hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in preparation for the
+coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they arrived, the minute hand of his
+watch was at the hour of eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by the
+smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they spread out the
+papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion, set down a record of the
+winter&rsquo;s happenings. Tautuk&rsquo;s voice, slow and very deliberate in
+its unfailing effort to master English without a slip, had in it a subdued note
+of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk Toolik, who was quick and staccato in
+his manner of speech, using sentences seldom of greater length than three or
+four words, and who picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with
+pride as he lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound
+that always sent a chill up Alan&rsquo;s back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A ver&rsquo; fine and prosper&rsquo; year,&rdquo; said Tautuk in
+response to Alan&rsquo;s first question as to general conditions. &ldquo;We
+bean ver&rsquo; fortunate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One hell-good year,&rdquo; backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a
+gun. &ldquo;Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year&mdash;she peach!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the affairs of
+the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through achievement, and
+the pioneer&rsquo;s pride in marking a new frontier with the creative forces of
+success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the passing of time. A hundred
+questions he had to ask, and the tongues of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded
+with the things they desired to tell him. Their voices filled the room with a
+paean of triumph. His herds had increased by a thousand head during the fawning
+months of April and May, and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild,
+woodland caribou had produced a hundred calves of the super-animal whose flesh
+was bound to fill the markets of the States within a few years. Never had the
+moss been thicker under the winter snow; there had been no destructive fires;
+soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records had been beaten, and dairying in
+the edge of the Arctic was no longer an experiment, but an established fact,
+for Tautuk now had seven deer giving a pint and a half of milk each twice a
+day, nearly as rich as the best of cream from cattle, and more than twenty that
+were delivering from a cupful to a pint at a milking. And to this Amuk Toolik
+added the amazing record of their running-deer, Kauk, the three-year-old, had
+drawn a sledge five miles over unbeaten snow in thirteen minutes and
+forty-seven seconds; Kauk and Olo, in team, had drawn the same sledge ten miles
+in twenty-six minutes and forty seconds, and one day he had driven the two
+ninety-eight miles in a mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka, the
+first of their inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and heavier beasts,
+he had drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three consecutive days at the
+rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks, Tanana, and the ranges of the Seward
+Peninsula agents of the swiftly spreading industry had offered as high as a
+hundred and ten dollars a head for breeding stock with the blood of the
+woodland caribou, and of these native and larger caribou of the tundras and
+forests seven young bulls and nine female calves had been captured and added to
+their own propagative forces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the way of
+ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the vast expanse of
+unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness of a hundred million
+people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory and reward of the conqueror
+through such achievement as this; a land betrayed rising at last out of the
+slime of political greed and ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening,
+that was destined in his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was
+Alaska rising up slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep,
+mountain-sealed forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth
+coming into possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in
+that long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its ultimate
+ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with the song
+of success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he looked at
+his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished with his papers and
+books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk&rsquo;s voice coming from the dark
+mouth of the underground icebox dug into the frozen subsoil of the tundra, and
+pausing at the glimmer of his old housekeeper&rsquo;s candle, he turned aside,
+descended the few steps, and entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight
+feet under the surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for
+some hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when alone,
+but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself that the
+tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness and luxuriance,
+never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below which point remained the icy
+cold placed there so long ago that &ldquo;even the spirits did not know.&rdquo;
+He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring time and faith in terms of
+&ldquo;spirits,&rdquo; which she had never quite given up for the missionaries,
+and was about to make his presence known when a voice interrupted him, so close
+at his side that the speaker, concealed in the shadow of the wall, could have
+reached out a hand and touched him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Holt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in the
+gloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I was on my way to your place
+when Wegaruk&rsquo;s voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems
+like a friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak,
+Mammy?&rdquo; he called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wegaruk&rsquo;s strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the light
+from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell clearly upon Mary
+Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was as if a spotlight had
+been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit of darkness, and something
+about her, which was not her prettiness or the beauty that was in her eyes and
+hair, sent a sudden and unaccountable thrill through Alan. It remained with him
+when they drew back out of gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving
+Wegaruk to snuff her tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did
+not leave him when they walked over the tundra together toward Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+cabin. It was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which it was impossible
+for him to subdue or explain; something which he knew he should understand but
+could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge of this mystery was in the
+girl&rsquo;s face, glowing in a gentle embarrassment, as she told him she had
+been expecting him, and that Keok and Nawadlook had given up the cabin to them,
+so that he might question her uninterrupted. But with this soft flush of her
+uneasiness, revealing itself in her eyes and cheeks, he saw neither fear nor
+hesitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the &ldquo;big room&rdquo; of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin, which was patterned
+after his own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You love flowers,&rdquo; he said lamely. &ldquo;I want to thank you for
+the flowers you placed in my cabin. And the other things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Flowers are a habit with me,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and I have never
+seen such flowers as these. Flowers&mdash;and birds. I never dreamed that there
+were so many up here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor the world,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;It is ignorant of Alaska.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something about
+her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely thrilling emotion
+that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from his eyes. The color was
+fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a little tense, yet in her
+attitude of suspense and of waiting there was no longer a suspicion of
+embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign that a moment was at hand when her
+confidence was on the ebb. In this moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It
+seemed to him that she was like a child again, the child who had come to him in
+his cabin, and who had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating
+him to achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
+her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
+heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in the
+greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the pitilessness of
+what had been in his mind to say and do, together with an inundating sense of
+his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in sudden desperation he reached out
+his hands toward her and cried:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Standish, in God&rsquo;s name tell me the truth. Tell me why you
+have come up here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; she said, looking at him steadily, &ldquo;because I
+know that a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you didn&rsquo;t know that&mdash;not until&mdash;the
+cottonwoods!&rdquo; he protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s cabin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at her like
+a man who had been struck, while intelligence&mdash;a dawning reason&mdash;an
+understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning, sent the still
+greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an exclamation of amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were at Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s! She gave
+you&mdash;<i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don&rsquo;t
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I am
+going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you returned from
+searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn&rsquo;t know. But <i>she</i>
+did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a woman, would promise
+not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a great deal of my faith, and
+my courage was about gone, and I was afraid of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Afraid of me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick when
+she asked you&mdash;that question; and when you answered as you did, I was like
+stone. I was amazed and didn&rsquo;t believe, for I was certain that after what
+had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a peculiar sense of
+honor were making the search for me. Not until two days later, when your
+letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we read them&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You opened both?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found&mdash;and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn&rsquo;t exactly fair, but you
+couldn&rsquo;t expect two women to resist a temptation like that.
+And&mdash;<i>I wanted to know</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the confession.
+Her gaze met Alan&rsquo;s with beautiful steadiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give me a
+fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my courage&mdash;and in
+the end you will drive me away&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering eyes, tears
+which she did not brush away, but through which, in a moment, she smiled at him
+as no woman had ever smiled at him before. And with the tears there seemed to
+possess her a pride which lifted her above all confusion, a living spirit of
+will and courage and womanhood that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and
+fear that had gathered in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have come&mdash;because you know I love you, and you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you that
+inspired me, Alan Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must have been more than that,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;Some
+other reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two,&rdquo; she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the
+dissolution of tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And those&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has to do with John Graham?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head. &ldquo;Yes, with John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment it
+seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the import of the
+thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed red instead of
+paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes burned with a lustrous fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;The man you hate and want to
+kill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly he turned toward the door. &ldquo;I am leaving immediately after dinner
+to inspect the herds up in the foothills,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And
+you&mdash;<i>are welcome here</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at the
+door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, Alan Holt,&rdquo; she cried softly, &ldquo;<i>Oh, I thank
+you!</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last something
+had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a moment they stood in
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry&mdash;sorry I said to you what I did that night on the
+<i>Nome</i>,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I accused you of brutality, of unfairness,
+of&mdash;of even worse than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big
+and clean and splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, <i>and you say I am
+welcome!</i> And I don&rsquo;t want you to go. You have made me <i>want</i> to
+tell you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will think as
+kindly of me as you can when you have heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the world.
+There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came like a sob to
+the girl&rsquo;s lips as she turned to the window and looked out into the blaze
+of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard Tautuk&rsquo;s voice,
+calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and he heard clearly
+Keok&rsquo;s merry laughter as she answered him. A gray-cheeked thrush flew up
+to the roof of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin and began to sing. It was as if these
+things had come as a message to both of them, relieving a tension, and
+significant of the beauty and glory and undying hope of life. Mary Standish
+turned from the window with shining eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is&mdash;possibly&mdash;because you are here,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She regarded him seriously. &ldquo;I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure, if I
+were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me. Hopelessness cannot be
+so deep that bird-song will not reach it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She closed the
+door which he had left partly open, and made a little gesture for him to resume
+the chair which he had left a few moments before. She seated herself first and
+smiled at him wistfully, half regretfully, as she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should have
+told you aboard the <i>Nome</i>. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid, but
+ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am not sorry it
+happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up here, and all
+this&mdash;your world, your people, and you&mdash;have meant a great deal to
+me. You will understand when I have made my confession.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t want that,&rdquo; he protested almost roughly.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you
+wish to tell me as a friend, that&rsquo;s different. I don&rsquo;t want a
+confession, which would imply that I have no faith in you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have faith in me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the same
+if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, <i>you mean that</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed to see
+only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of the tundra daises
+behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to say tugging at his heart,
+he wondered why she was so white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean that,&rdquo; her lips repeated slowly, &ldquo;after all that
+has happened&mdash;even after&mdash;that part of a letter&mdash;which Stampede
+brought to you last night&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret between
+himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she saw it written
+in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it wasn&rsquo;t Stampede,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t
+tell me. It&mdash;just happened. And after this letter&mdash;you still believe
+in me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am&mdash;most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham&rsquo;s signature was a lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t that&mdash;quite. But it didn&rsquo;t refer to you, or
+to me. It was part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while
+I was on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of them
+as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the whole of it.
+The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper which you did not
+return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the conventional thing for a woman
+to do&mdash;to use paper for padding in a soft-toed slipper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the tom-toms last
+night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer happiness. But Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s voice, continuing in its quiet and matter-of-fact way, held
+him speechless, though she could not fail to see the effect upon him of this
+simple explanation of the presence of Graham&rsquo;s letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in Nawadlook&rsquo;s room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of
+paper from the floor,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;I was looking at the
+slipper a few minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin
+on the ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it, and
+the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and went out. I
+hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the few words when I
+heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had laid it, hid myself in
+Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, and saw Stampede when he carried it to you. I
+don&rsquo;t know why I allowed it to be done. I had no reason. Maybe it was
+just&mdash;intuition, and maybe it was because&mdash;just in that hour&mdash;I
+so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and I thought that what
+Stampede had found would make you do it. And I deserve it! I deserve nothing
+better at your hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t true,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;The letter was to
+Rossland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. &ldquo;Better that it were true,
+and all that <i>is</i> true were false,&rdquo; she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. &ldquo;I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative would I
+accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;I can not.&rdquo; Even as he persisted in denial, the
+pain which had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. &ldquo;I understand&mdash;only&mdash;that I
+am glad you are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an hour
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of rich
+color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining lashes that lay
+against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her breath, and her hands
+grew steady in her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you mind&mdash;if I asked you first&mdash;to tell me <i>your</i>
+story of John Graham?&rdquo; she spoke softly. &ldquo;I know it, a little, but
+I think it would make everything easier if I could hear it from
+you&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light playing in
+her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she had not changed
+her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She raised her eyes, and the
+question her lips had formed was glowing in them as clearly as if she had
+voiced it again in words. A desire rose in him to speak to her as he had never
+spoken to another human being, and to reveal for her&mdash;and for her
+alone&mdash;the thing that had harbored itself in his soul for many years.
+Looking up at him, waiting, partial understanding softening her sweet face, a
+dusky glow in her eyes, she was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then
+laughed in a strange repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I know how my father must have loved my mother,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t make you feel it. I can&rsquo;t hope for that. She
+died when I was so young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me.
+But for my father she <i>never</i> died, and as I grew older she became more
+and more alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if
+she were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned. And
+never could my father remain away from the place where she was buried very long
+at a time. He called it <i>home</i>, that little cup at the foot of the
+mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a paradise of birds and
+flowers keeping her company, and all the great, wild world she loved about her.
+There was the cabin, too; the little cabin where I was born, with its back to
+the big mountain, and filled with the handiwork of my mother as she had left it
+when she died. And my father too used to laugh and sing there&mdash;he had a
+clear voice that would roll half-way up the mountain; and as I grew older the
+miracle at times stirred me with a strange fear, so real to my father did my
+dead mother seem when he was home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish! Oh,
+it may seem weird and ghostly now, but it was <i>true</i>&mdash;so true that I
+have lain awake nights thinking of it and wishing that it had never been
+so!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you have wished a great sin,&rdquo; said the girl in a voice that
+seemed scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. &ldquo;I hope someone will
+feel toward me&mdash;some day&mdash;like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about,&rdquo; he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins. &ldquo;Interests
+were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were reaching out, encroaching
+steadily a little nearer to our cup at the foot of the mountain. But my father
+did not dream of what might happen. It came in the spring of the year he took
+me on my first trip to the States, when I was eighteen. We were gone five
+months, and they were five months of hell for him. Day and night he grieved for
+my mother and the little home under the mountain. And when at last we came
+back&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the tundra
+or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When we came back,&rdquo; he repeated in a cold, hard voice, &ldquo;a
+construction camp of a hundred men had invaded my father&rsquo;s little
+paradise. The cabin was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and
+this channel ran where my mother&rsquo;s grave had been. They had treated it
+with that same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand Indian
+graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud. And from the
+moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun rose in the heavens
+for him. His heart died, yet he went on living&mdash;for a time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her slim
+shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was as if he
+beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the man who committed that crime&mdash;was John Graham,&rdquo; she
+said, in the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer would
+be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work rather
+than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power; they say he
+laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a grave should be
+considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my father and I went to
+see him; yes, <i>laughed</i>, in that noiseless, oily, inside way of his, as
+you might think of a snake laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We found him among the men. My God, you don&rsquo;t know how I hated
+him!&mdash;Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool he was to
+think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I wanted to kill him,
+but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet, steady hand, and said:
+&lsquo;It is my duty, Alan. <i>My duty</i>.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then&mdash;it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham,
+but God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and with
+his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not unlocked them with
+my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of helpless pulp, and from the
+ground, with the last of the breath that was in him, he cursed my father, and
+he cursed me. He said that all the days of his life he would follow us, until
+we paid a thousand times for what we had done. And then my father dragged him
+as he would have dragged a rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he
+tore his clothes from him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he
+scourged him with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was
+unconscious and like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we went into
+the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him, and now
+her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face were aflame, as if
+she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after that, Alan; after that&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it, scarcely
+understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham kept his promise,&rdquo; he answered grimly. &ldquo;The
+influence and money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was interested
+were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most heavily interested
+was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he partly owned in Dawson was
+bankrupted. One after another things happened, and after each happening my
+father would receive a polite note of regret from Graham, written as if the
+word actually came from a friend. But my father cared little for money losses
+now. His heart was drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and
+the grave that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at Nome,
+dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Dead</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary Standish,
+for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He
+didn&rsquo;t do it personally, but it was <i>his money</i> that accomplished
+the end. Of course nothing ever came of it. I won&rsquo;t tell you how his
+influence and power have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of
+reindeer I had, and how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about
+me when I was down in the States last winter in an effort to make <i>your</i>
+people see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him under our
+mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that won&rsquo;t save him
+when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I loosened my
+father&rsquo;s. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and his money have
+become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as he destroyed the life
+of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power ends, he will make of this
+great land nothing more than a shell out of which he and his kind have taken
+all the meat. And the hour of deadliest danger is now upon us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her where she
+sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it frightened him.
+And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and never had he seen such
+living pools of torture and of horror. He was amazed at the quietness of her
+voice when she began to speak, and startled by the almost deadly coldness of
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you can understand&mdash;now&mdash;why I leaped into the sea,
+why I wanted the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you
+the truth,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;<i>I am John Graham&rsquo;s wife.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alan&rsquo;s first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a m&eacute;salliance of the sort Mary Standish
+had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes that
+from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in life, and
+behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, the pitiless iron-man,
+without conscience and without soul, coarsened by power, fiendish in his
+iniquities, and old enough to be her father!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled himself
+together without letting her see the physical part of the effort it was taking.
+And he tried to find something to say that would help clear her eyes of the
+agony that was in them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&mdash;is a most unreasonable thing&mdash;to be true,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the words
+were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said, or acted,
+under the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;It is. But the world doesn&rsquo;t look at it in that way.
+Such things just happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies were
+heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer life in
+Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical worth, dryly but
+carefully written&mdash;and she had been reading it. It struck him as a symbol
+of the fight she was making, of her courage, and of her desire to triumph in
+the face of tremendous odds that must have beset her. He still could not
+associate her completely with John Graham. Yet his face was cold and white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a newspaper
+clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young and beautiful
+girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the girl&rsquo;s shoulder, was a
+picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were strangers to him. He read their
+names, and then the headlines. &ldquo;A Hundred-Million-Dollar Love&rdquo; was
+the caption, and after the word love was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty
+and the other thing, two great fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked
+at Mary Standish. It was impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tore that from a paper in Cordova,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They have
+nothing to do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don&rsquo;t you see
+something in her eyes? Can&rsquo;t you see it, even in the picture? She has on
+her wedding things. But it seemed to me&mdash;when I saw her face&mdash;that in
+her eyes were agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely
+trying to hide them from the world. It&rsquo;s just another proof, one of
+thousands, that such unreasonable things do happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism which
+came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable. He sat down,
+and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp, little hands that lay in
+Mary Standish&rsquo;s lap. The warmth had gone out of it. It was cold and
+lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between his brown, muscular hands,
+staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in particular. It was only the ticking of
+Keok&rsquo;s clock that broke the silence for a time. Then he released the
+hand, and it dropped in the girl&rsquo;s lap again. She had been looking
+steadily at the streak of gray in his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a
+light which he did not see, and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost
+imperceptible inclination of her head toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I didn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I realize
+now how you must have felt back there in the cottonwoods.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, you don&rsquo;t realize&mdash;<i>you don&rsquo;t!</i>&rdquo; she
+protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her again.
+It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as if he had
+unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was amazed at the
+swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand, and I am determined that you
+<i>shall</i>,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I would die before I let you go away
+thinking what is now in your mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be
+hated for the truth than because of the horrible thing which you must believe
+if I remain silent.&rdquo; She forced a wan smile to her lips. &ldquo;You know,
+Belinda Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don&rsquo;t fit in
+now, do they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when Alaska
+was young&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have committed a great folly,&rdquo; she said, hesitating an instant
+in his silence. &ldquo;I see very clearly now the course I should have taken.
+You will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard what I am
+going to say. Your face is like&mdash;a rock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is because your tragedy is mine,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a vivid,
+feverish glow. &ldquo;I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich,&rdquo; she
+said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish and my
+Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter, who was
+grandfather&rsquo;s brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle Peter. He was
+a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a wheel-chair, and he was nearly
+seventy-five when he died. As a baby that wheel-chair, and my rides in it with
+him about the great house in which we lived, were my delights. He was my father
+and mother, everything that was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as
+a child, that if God was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God. It was
+Uncle Peter who told me, year after year, the old stories and legends of the
+Standishes. And he was always happy&mdash;always happy and glad and seeing
+nothing but sunshine though he hadn&rsquo;t stood on his feet for nearly sixty
+years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen, five days before my
+birthday came. I think he must have been to me what your father was to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his face
+now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish,&rdquo; she went
+on. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I
+don&rsquo;t think I loved him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole
+world must have stood in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the
+world <i>was</i> afraid of him&mdash;bankers, presidents, even the strongest
+men in great financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the
+Grahams, and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the cleverest
+lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of the two families.
+My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died, so it was John Graham who
+was the actual working force behind the combined fortunes of the two families.
+Sometimes, as I now recall it, Uncle Peter was like a little child. I remember
+how he tried to make me understand just how big my grandfather&rsquo;s
+interests were by telling me that if two dollars were taken from every man,
+woman, and child in the United States, it would just about add up to what he
+and the Grahams possessed, and my Grandfather Standish&rsquo;s interests were
+three-quarters of the whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my
+Uncle Peter&rsquo;s face at times when I asked him how all this money was used,
+and where it was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and I
+never understood. I didn&rsquo;t know <i>why</i> people feared my grandfather
+and John Graham. I didn&rsquo;t know of the stupendous power my
+grandfather&rsquo;s money had rolled up for them. I didn&rsquo;t
+know&rdquo;&mdash;her voice sank to a shuddering whisper&mdash;&ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t know how they were using it in Alaska, for instance. I
+didn&rsquo;t know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and death. I
+don&rsquo;t think even Uncle Peter knew <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a slow
+fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the biggest
+factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to suspect that John
+Graham was <i>anticipating</i> a little girl of thirteen, and I didn&rsquo;t
+guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so grandly white of beard and
+hair, so like a god of power when he stood among men, was even then planning
+that I should be given to him, so that a monumental combination of wealth might
+increase itself still more in that juggernaut of financial achievement for
+which he lived. And to bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not
+fail, they set Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of
+face, and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had confidence in
+him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a brain which matched in
+cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham himself. And he did his work
+well, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without embarrassment. With
+her nervous fingers tying and untying the two corners of a little handkerchief
+in her lap, she went on, after a moment of silence in which the ticking of
+Keok&rsquo;s clock seemed tense and loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to Sharpleigh
+as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently he educated me to
+the thought that it was right and just, and my greatest duty in life, to carry
+out the stipulation of my grandfather&rsquo;s will and marry John Graham.
+Otherwise, he told me&mdash;if that union was not brought about before I was
+twenty-two&mdash;not a dollar of the great fortune would go to the house of
+Standish; and because he was clever enough to know that money alone would not
+urge me, he showed me a letter which he said my Uncle Peter had written, and
+which I was to read on my seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter
+urged me to live up to the Standish name and join in that union of the two
+great fortunes which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I
+didn&rsquo;t dream the letter was a forgery. And in the end they won&mdash;and
+I promised.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her fingers.
+&ldquo;Do you despise me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. &ldquo;I love
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I promised,&rdquo; she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse
+that had made her ask him the question. &ldquo;But it was to be business, a
+cold, unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him. In
+the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I would
+remain his wife&mdash;but never more than that. They agreed, and I in my
+ignorance believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see the trap. I didn&rsquo;t see the wicked triumph in
+John Graham&rsquo;s heart. No power could have made me believe then that he
+wanted to possess only <i>me</i>; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly lured into
+his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since Uncle Peter died I
+had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in a make-believe world of my
+own, and I read, read, read; and the thought grew stronger and stronger in me
+that I had lived another life somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years
+when the world was clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein
+money and power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of
+manhood and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these things,
+and yet because others had molded me, and because of my misguided Standish
+sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more of
+the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I investigated a
+little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason for it, which has come
+to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost knew, at the last, that he was a
+monster, but the world had been told I was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with
+his fatherly hypocrisy was behind me, and John Graham treated me so courteously
+and so coolly that I did not suspect the terrible things in his heart and
+mind&mdash;and I went on with the bargain. <i>I married him.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal of what
+she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless expression of
+Alan&rsquo;s face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her like a flash
+of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back crushed against the
+tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she continued, while he stood up and
+faced her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t go on,&rdquo; he interrupted in a voice so low and
+terribly hard that she felt the menacing thrill of it. &ldquo;You
+needn&rsquo;t. I will settle with John Graham, if God gives me the
+chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have me stop <i>now</i>&mdash;before I have told you of the
+only shred of triumph to which I may lay claim!&rdquo; she protested.
+&ldquo;Oh, you may be sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of
+it all, but I swear before my God that I didn&rsquo;t realize it then, until it
+was too late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem&mdash;that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a deadly
+hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was a duty; that I
+should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the hands of those I
+trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or suspect that I was
+sacrificing <i>myself</i>; at no time, blind though you may call me, did I see
+a hint of that sickening danger into which I was voluntarily going. No, not
+even an hour before the wedding did I suspect that, for it had all been so
+coldly planned, like a great deal in finance&mdash;so carefully adjudged by us
+all as a business affair, that I felt no fear except that sickness of soul
+which comes of giving up one&rsquo;s life. And no hint of it came until the
+last of the few words were spoken which made us man and wife, and then I saw in
+John Graham&rsquo;s eyes something which I had never seen there before. And
+Sharpleigh&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went to my room. I didn&rsquo;t lock my door, because never had it
+been necessary to do that. I didn&rsquo;t cry. No, I didn&rsquo;t cry. But
+something strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It
+seemed to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I saw the
+door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind him, and locked
+it. My room. He had come into <i>my room!</i> The unexpectedness of
+it&mdash;the horror&mdash;the insult roused me from my stupor. I sprang up to
+face him, and there he stood, within arm&rsquo;s reach of me, a look in his
+face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to suspect&mdash;or
+fear. His arms were reaching out&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;You are my wife,&rsquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I knew, then. &lsquo;<i>You are my wife</i>,&rsquo; he repeated. I
+wanted to scream, but I couldn&rsquo;t; and then&mdash;then&mdash;his arms
+reached me; I felt them crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the
+poison of his lips was at my face&mdash;and I believed that I was lost, and
+that no power could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my
+room&mdash;the man who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me
+voice, who put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh&mdash;yes, laugh,
+and almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned him,
+and he freed me&mdash;while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that evening, and
+that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I said these things,
+smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a great, gloating, triumphant
+beast, believing that the obedience of wifehood was about to give him what he
+had expected to find through dishonor&mdash;and I was left alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought of only one thing then&mdash;escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived with Uncle
+Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never been&mdash;and it
+was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I wanted never to face
+it again, never to look into the eyes of those I had known. And even as these
+thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was filling a traveling bag in a fever of
+madness, and Uncle Peter was at my side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had
+no minutes to lose, for the man who had left me was clever and might guess the
+truth that lay hid behind my smiles and cajolery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh&rsquo;s low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of laughter,
+and with it I heard John Graham&rsquo;s voice. I was thinking only of the
+sea&mdash;to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I drew money.
+I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any ship, and it seemed
+to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came to a great ship that was
+leaving for Alaska&mdash;and you know&mdash;what happened then&mdash;Alan
+Holt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was there,
+and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her eyes, but a soft
+glory of pride and exultation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am clean of John Graham,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;<i>Clean!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort of way,
+and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head that the tears
+might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining and clear as stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you despise me now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad,&rdquo; she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland was on the <i>Nome</i>, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham,&rdquo; he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped into
+the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Rossland was hurt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood looking
+toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests of the mountains
+behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch
+upon his arm. &ldquo;You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only
+one. That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom in the
+old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I must return
+with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry. I dread it.
+I&mdash;would rather die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&mdash;&rdquo; he began, then caught himself and pointed to the
+distant hills and mountains. &ldquo;The herds are there,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;I am going to them. I may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to
+be here when I return?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, if that is your desire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that&mdash;alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be alone,&rdquo; he said quietly, still looking at the
+far-away hills. &ldquo;If you go, I am going with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and then,
+with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at the half-opened
+door of Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, and the glory in her eyes was the glory of his
+dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over the tundras in those days
+of grief and half-madness when he had thought she was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s cabin the day you
+came,&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;And I thank God for giving me the madness
+and courage to come to <i>you</i>. I am not afraid of anything in the world
+now&mdash;because&mdash;<i>I love you, Alan</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as Nawadlook&rsquo;s door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that twisted
+the world about him until for a little it held neither vision nor space nor
+sound.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<p>
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden tundra
+haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream, Alan Holt set
+off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and Keok and Nawadlook at the
+corral bars, with Stampede little regretting that he was left behind to guard
+the range. For a mighty resolution had taken root in the prospector&rsquo;s
+heart, and he felt himself thrilled and a bit trembling at the nearness of the
+greatest drama that had ever entered his life. Alan, looking back after the
+first few minutes, saw that Keok and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ridge beyond the coul&eacute;e out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan set the
+pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven pack-deer behind him,
+bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force which was
+sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an
+inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his head
+and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind which he was
+putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go back. The urge was
+upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish
+was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim to his selfishness and passion in the
+moment when she stood at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door, telling him that she loved
+him. An iron hand had drawn him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand
+that kept his face to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated
+the words that had set his world on fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing with
+him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully to
+understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental calmness
+for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so unexpected that
+the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the mountains had bred in
+him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His happiness was almost an insanity.
+The dream wherein he had wandered with a spirit of the dead had come true; it
+was the old idyl in the flesh again, his father, his mother&mdash;and back in
+the cabin beyond the ridge such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid
+to return. He laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed
+exultation as he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words
+came to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would fight for
+her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and he walked so
+swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind with the deer, so that
+in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over him in
+its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what he had
+done&mdash;justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her as Mary
+Graham. But she was Graham&rsquo;s wife. And if he had gone to her in that
+moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door, if
+he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid the world at his
+feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham himself. Thought of the
+narrowness of his escape and of the first mad desire to call her back from
+Nawadlook&rsquo;s room, to hold her in his arms again as he had held her in the
+cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into his face. Something greater than his own
+fighting instinct had turned him to the open door of the cabin. It was Mary
+Standish&mdash;her courage, the-glory of faith and love shining in her eyes,
+her measurement of him as a man. She had not been afraid to say what was in her
+heart, because she knew what he would do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge of a
+slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows of
+sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were sweating.
+Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the sun had sunk to
+its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott foothills. Here they
+rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when a golden twilight filled the
+land, and then resumed the journey toward the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the herds
+steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and valleys. Here
+they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in slowly moving streams
+wherever the doors of the hills and mountains opened into new grazing fields,
+until Alan&rsquo;s ten thousand reindeer were in three divisions, two of the
+greatest traveling westward, and one, of a thousand head, working north and
+east. The first and second days Alan remained with the nearest and southward
+herd. The third day he went on with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in
+the mountains and joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of
+feeding animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was becoming
+stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A multitude of
+emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary Standish must leave the
+range when he returned. He had a grim sense of honor, and a particularly devout
+one when it had to do with women, and though he conceded nothing of right and
+justice in the relationship which existed between the woman he loved and John
+Graham, he knew that she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible
+thing for her to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the
+States. The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent way, and
+when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his will held
+down, and yet never quite throttled completely&mdash;that something which urged
+him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own hands what a
+glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John Graham, if it ever came to
+that, in the madly desirable way he visioned for himself in those occasional
+moments when the fires of temptation blazed hottest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman&rsquo;s eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his stolid mind
+a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a reassuring hand
+upon his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean she&rsquo;s going to, Tautuk,&rdquo; he laughed.
+&ldquo;She loves you. I know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so
+hopeless as a lover that she is punishing you while she has the
+right&mdash;before she marries you. But if she <i>should</i> marry someone
+else, what would you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother?&rdquo; asked Tautuk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A relative?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone Keok
+hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would kill him,&rdquo; said Tautuk quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should Mary
+Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything to escape
+from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and friends. She had
+scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled her life in the hazard, and
+in the end had come to him! Why should he not keep her? John Graham and the
+world believed she was dead. And he was master here. If&mdash;some
+day&mdash;Graham should happen to cross his path, he would settle the matter in
+Tautuk&rsquo;s way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and the world lay about him in a
+soft glow, and the valley below was filled with misty billows of twilight out
+of which came to him faintly the curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and
+the grunting contentment of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had
+known it would come in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd, and on the
+sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of white in him, and
+when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley where the deer were grazing,
+he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee Doodle on a mouth-organ. It was Tatpan
+who told him that an hour or two before an exhausted stranger had come into
+camp, looking for him, and that the man was asleep now, apparently more dead
+than alive, but had given instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours,
+and not a minute later. Together they had a look at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a peculiarly boyish
+appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife, profoundly asleep. Tatpan
+looked at his big, silver watch and in a low voice described how the stranger
+had stumbled into camp, so tired he could scarcely put one foot ahead of the
+other; and that he had dropped down where he now lay when he learned Alan was
+with one of the other herds.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="333"></a>
+<img src="images/333.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must have come a long distance,&rdquo; said Tatpan, &ldquo;and he has
+traveled fast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place him. He
+wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of his hand on the
+grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in sleep the mysterious
+stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about his revolver in a way that
+spoke of caution and experience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him,&rdquo; said
+Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water that ran
+down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing the stranger. By
+the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the little man with the
+carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and the little man grinned.
+His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes twinkled, and in what seemed to be
+a moment of embarrassment he gave his gun a sudden snap that drew an
+exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only one man in the world had he ever seen
+throw a gun into its holster like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his
+own countenance, and all at once Tatpan&rsquo;s eyes began to bulge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stampede!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; he conceded. &ldquo;I had to do it. It was give
+one or t&rsquo;other up&mdash;my whiskers <i>or her</i>. They went hard, too. I
+flipped dice, an&rsquo; the whiskers won. I cut cards, an&rsquo; the whiskers
+won. I played Klondike ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; &rsquo;em, an&rsquo; the whiskers
+busted the bank. Then I got mad an&rsquo; shaved &rsquo;em. Do I look so bad,
+Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look twenty years younger,&rdquo; declared Alan, stifling his desire
+to laugh when he saw the other&rsquo;s seriousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. &ldquo;Then why the devil did they
+laugh!&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Mary Standish didn&rsquo;t laugh. She cried.
+Just stood an&rsquo; cried, an&rsquo; then sat down an&rsquo; cried, she
+thought I was that blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an&rsquo;
+had to go to bed. That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss
+Standish says it wasn&rsquo;t because I was funny that she laughed, but that
+the change in me was so sudden she couldn&rsquo;t help it. Nawadlook says
+I&rsquo;ve got a character-ful chin&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede&rsquo;s face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened. Nature no
+longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill
+and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This, at last, was the man
+whose name had gone before him up and down the old trails; the man whose cool
+and calculating courage, whose fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun
+had written pages in Alaskan history which would never be forgotten. Where his
+first impulse had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of
+men of other days, who, when in Stampede&rsquo;s presence, knew they were in
+the presence of a master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan
+knew why. The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some day, if we&rsquo;re lucky, there always comes a woman to make the
+world worth living in, Stampede,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There does,&rdquo; replied Stampede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I take it you love Mary Standish,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and that
+you&rsquo;d fight for her if you had to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s time you were traveling,&rdquo; advised Stampede
+significantly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been twelve hours on the trail without a rest.
+She told me to move fast, and I&rsquo;ve moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said
+it was almost a matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted
+to stay, but she wouldn&rsquo;t let me. It&rsquo;s <i>you</i> she wants.
+Rossland is at the range.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Rossland</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rossland. And it&rsquo;s my guess John Graham isn&rsquo;t far away.
+I smell happenings, Alan. We&rsquo;d better hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range, but to
+ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and specific direction
+was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and within the first half-dozen
+miles he had abandoned the adventure to continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan
+had no saddle-deer in his herd, and the swiftest messenger would require many
+hours in which to reach Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an
+hour after his arrival at Tatpan&rsquo;s camp. Stampede, declaring himself a
+new man after his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen
+to Alan&rsquo;s advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter&rsquo;s eyes
+as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race through the
+foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the grimness that had
+settled in the face behind him. His own mind was undergoing an upheaval of
+conjecture and wild questioning. That Rossland had discovered Mary Standish was
+not dead was the least astonishing factor in the new development. The
+information might easily have reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife
+Ellen. The astonishing thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up
+the trail of her flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more amazing
+fact that he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly at his range.
+His heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be directly under
+Graham&rsquo;s orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to reveal all
+that had happened on the day of his departure for the mountains. He proceeded
+to do this without equivocation or hesitancy, for there now pressed upon him a
+grim anticipation of impending events ahead of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other&rsquo;s disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face unchanged.
+Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish&rsquo;s confession of
+love at Nawadlook&rsquo;s door did the fighting lines soften about his
+comrade&rsquo;s eyes and mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede&rsquo;s lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. &ldquo;I knew
+that a long time ago,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guessed it that first night of
+storm in the coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana.
+She didn&rsquo;t tell me, but I wasn&rsquo;t blind. It was the note that
+puzzled and frightened me&mdash;the note she stuffed in her slipper. And
+Rossland told me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as
+he intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you left her alone after <i>that</i>?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan&rsquo;s
+suddenly quickened pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sokwenna won&rsquo;t sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And
+he&rsquo;s watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick
+off a duck the other day at two hundred yards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could not
+name clutching at his heart, &ldquo;Why did you say Graham might not be far
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In my bones,&rdquo; replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again.
+&ldquo;In my bones!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes, too.
+Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he owns it. I
+take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something big to reckon with.
+He asked me how many men we had. I told him, stretching it a little. He
+grinned. He couldn&rsquo;t keep back that grin. It was as if a devil in him
+slipped out from hiding for an instant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he caught Alan&rsquo;s arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men stared at
+each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alan, we&rsquo;re short-sighted. I&rsquo;m damned if I don&rsquo;t think
+we ought to call the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think it&rsquo;s that bad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might be. If Graham&rsquo;s behind Rossland and has men with
+him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re two and a half hours from Tatpan,&rdquo; said Alan, in a
+cold, unemotional voice. &ldquo;He has only half a dozen men with him, and it
+will take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk Toolik.
+There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two with the upper.
+I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All are armed. It may be
+foolish, but I&rsquo;m following your hunch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They gripped hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more than a hunch, Alan,&rdquo; breathed Stampede softly.
+&ldquo;And for God&rsquo;s sake keep off the music as long as you can!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run toward the
+foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter of an hour they
+were lost to each other in the undulating distances of the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence from
+the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan&rsquo;s camp had
+not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of the country gave
+him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he could make the distance
+in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled to add a rest of at least three
+or four hours during the night. It was now eight o&rsquo;clock. By nine or ten
+the next morning he would be facing Rossland, and at about that same hour
+Tatpan&rsquo;s swift messengers would be closing in about Tautuk and Amuk
+Toolik. He knew the speed with which his herdsmen would sweep out of the
+mountains and over the tundras. Two years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his
+Eskimo people had traveled fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a
+hundred and nineteen miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He
+couldn&rsquo;t do that. But his people could&mdash;and <i>would</i>. He could
+see them sweeping in from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word
+went among them; he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then,
+like wolves scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting the
+tundra in their race for home&mdash;and war, if it was war that lay ahead of
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out of the
+horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of pemmican when he
+grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coul&eacute;es when he came to them,
+where the water was cold and clear. Not until a telltale cramp began to bite
+warningly in his leg did he stop for the rest which he knew he must take. It
+was one o&rsquo;clock. Counting his journey to Tatpan&rsquo;s camp, he had been
+traveling almost steadily for seventeen hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where a
+little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize how tired he
+had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all he wanted; he dared
+not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at last, and he slept. When he
+awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting him. He sat up with a jerk, then
+leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch told the story. He had slept soundly for
+six hours, instead of resting three or four with his eyes open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret what had
+happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate a breakfast of
+pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost time. The interval between
+fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he almost ran. That quarter of an hour
+brought him to the crest of the ridge from which he could look upon the
+buildings of the range. Nothing had happened that he could see. He gave a great
+gasp of relief, and in his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told
+him more than anything else the tension he had been under.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin
+and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock, and he called
+out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he stepped in. Nawadlook
+stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands. Keok faced him, holding grimly
+to a long knife, and between them, staring white-faced at him as he entered,
+was Mary Standish. She came forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from
+Nawadlook, and saw Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the tremble in
+her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle she was making to
+keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at his coming. It was that
+look that sent a flood of joy into his heart, even when he saw the torture and
+hopelessness behind it. He held her hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in
+such a way that he saw them widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she
+drew in a sudden quick breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the
+hope that had deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not
+excited. He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her eyes and
+knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt the force of it
+behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at her. She gave a little
+sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken breath; a little cry that came
+of wonder&mdash;understanding&mdash;and unspeakable faith in this man who was
+smiling at her so confidently in the face of the tragedy that had come to
+destroy her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland is in your cabin,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;And John Graham
+is back there&mdash;somewhere&mdash;coming this way. Rossland says that if I
+don&rsquo;t go to him of my own free will&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand the rest,&rdquo; he said. They stood silent for a moment.
+The gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a little, so
+that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that he could feel the
+sweet warmth of her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t make a mistake the day I went away?&rdquo; he asked.
+&ldquo;You&mdash;love me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from her. Even
+Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they thought&mdash;Keok
+with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun&mdash;for the bird was singing, and
+Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little window in
+the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across his knees, old
+Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and something in the manner of
+his going brought back a vision of another day long ago when Ghost Kloof had
+rung with the cries of battle, and the hands now gnarled and twisted with age
+had played their part in the heroic stand of his people against the oppressors
+from the farther north.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his fingers
+drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His eyes fixed
+themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath he mumbled the old
+chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in Sokwenna&rsquo;s brain, and after
+that his eyes closed, and again the vision grew out of darkness like a picture
+for him, a vision of twisting trails and of fighting men gathering with their
+faces set for war.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+At the desk in Alan&rsquo;s living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed when he
+saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his sleeves rolled up,
+and it was evident he was making no effort to conceal his freedom with
+Alan&rsquo;s books and papers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had told
+Alan to attend to his own business on board the <i>Nome</i>. His attitude was
+that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even before he spoke.
+Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind that smile he was admiring
+the man&rsquo;s nerve. His hand met Rossland&rsquo;s casually, but there was no
+uncertainty in the warmth of the other&rsquo;s grip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How d&rsquo; do, Paris, old boy?&rdquo; he greeted good-humoredly.
+&ldquo;Saw you going in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I&rsquo;ve been waiting
+for you. She&rsquo;s a little frightened. And we can&rsquo;t blame her.
+Menelaus is mightily upset. But mind me, Holt, I&rsquo;m not blaming you.
+I&rsquo;m too good a sport. Clever, I call it&mdash;damned clever. She&rsquo;s
+enough to turn any man&rsquo;s head. I only wish I were in your boots right
+now. I&rsquo;d have turned traitor myself aboard the <i>Nome</i> if she had
+shown an inclination.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was inspiration
+again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was racing. But Rossland
+saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the cool smile on Alan&rsquo;s
+lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was meeting the situation. It
+pleased Graham&rsquo;s agent. He reseated himself in the desk-chair and
+motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you were badly hurt,&rdquo; said Alan. &ldquo;Nasty knife
+wound you got.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;There you have it again, Holt&mdash;the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit girls down
+in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn&rsquo;t she? Tricked her
+into my cabin all right, but she wasn&rsquo;t like some other Indian girls
+I&rsquo;ve known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or whoever it was
+got me through the open port. It wasn&rsquo;t bad. I was out of the hospital
+within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I wouldn&rsquo;t have seen
+Mrs. Graham one morning&mdash;through the window. What a little our fortunes
+hang to at times, eh? If it hadn&rsquo;t been for the girl and the knife and
+the hospital, I wouldn&rsquo;t be here now, and Graham wouldn&rsquo;t be
+bleeding his heart out with impatience&mdash;and you, Holt, wouldn&rsquo;t be
+facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into your life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Alan, hiding his
+face in the smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which
+had its effect upon Rossland. &ldquo;Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland&rsquo;s eyes, and his voice became cool
+and hard. &ldquo;Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don&rsquo;t you
+think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Decidedly,&rdquo; said Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham&rsquo;s wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you probably know&mdash;now&mdash;why she jumped into the sea, and
+why she ran away from Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don&rsquo;t know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn&rsquo;t care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It&rsquo;s the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the day she
+was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the thought of possessing
+her. You know how he got her to marry him, and you know what happened
+afterward. But it makes no difference to him whether she hates him or not. He
+<i>wants</i> her. And this&rdquo;&mdash;he swept his arms out, &ldquo;is the
+most beautiful place in the world in which to have her returned to him.
+I&rsquo;ve been figuring from your books. Your property isn&rsquo;t worth over
+a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today. I&rsquo;m here to offer
+you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is willing to forfeit all
+action he might have personally against you for stealing his wife, and in place
+of that will pay you five hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of having
+his honeymoon here, and making of this place a country estate where his wife
+may reside indefinitely, subject to her husband&rsquo;s visits when he is so
+inclined. There will be a stipulation, of course, requiring that the personal
+details of the deal be kept strictly confidential, and that you leave the
+country. Do I make myself clear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as he
+watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out proposition
+upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to the point without an
+effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient dramatic sense to appreciate
+what the offer of half a million dollars meant to an individual who was
+struggling for existence at the edge of a raw frontier. Alan stood with his
+back toward him, facing a window. His voice was oddly strained when he
+answered. But that was quite natural, too, Rossland thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am wondering if I understand you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you mean
+that if I sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has his
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan tried to laugh. &ldquo;I think I see the point&mdash;now. He isn&rsquo;t
+paying five hundred thousand for Miss Standish&mdash;I mean Mrs. Graham.
+He&rsquo;s paying it for the <i>isolation</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him&mdash;to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to <i>get</i>
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one we&rsquo;re
+using now. You hit the word when you said &lsquo;isolation.&rsquo; What a damn
+fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of it&mdash;half a
+million dollars!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It sounds unreal,&rdquo; mused Alan, keeping his face to the window.
+&ldquo;Why should he offer so much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a normal
+price wouldn&rsquo;t guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like that,
+you&rsquo;re a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your health
+depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep smoke in
+front of his eyes. &ldquo;Of course, I don&rsquo;t suppose he&rsquo;d allow
+Mrs. Graham to escape back to the States&mdash;where she might do a little
+upsetting on her own account?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t throwing the money away,&rdquo; replied Rossland
+significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would remain here indefinitely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indefinitely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Probably never would return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The little
+secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a beautiful
+summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely flowers. Birds. And the
+girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since she was fourteen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And who hates him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That&rsquo;s not
+our business. If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get your
+range back pretty cheap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s partial payment&mdash;two hundred and fifty thousand. I
+have the papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give
+possession, I&rsquo;ll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining
+payment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan took the check. &ldquo;I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, only a fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>And I am that fool</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his words did
+not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared away from before
+Alan&rsquo;s face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he stepped on it with
+his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The fury he had held back with
+almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could have Graham where you are now&mdash;<i>in that
+chair</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;d give ten years of my life, Rossland. I would kill
+him. And you&mdash;<i>you</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance of the
+beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn&rsquo;t necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish&mdash;<i>not</i> Mary
+Graham&mdash;is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to <i>me</i>. I love her. She is mine&mdash;do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn&rsquo;t buy one hair from her
+head. I&rsquo;m going to take her back to the States. She is going to get a
+square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has nothing to
+conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent the
+table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go&mdash;before I kill you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and the man
+before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten power and courage
+in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed quickly to the door and
+escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan watched from his door until he saw
+him departing southward, accompanied by two men who bore packs on their
+shoulders. Not until then did Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop
+and look back. His breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan.
+But he did not return for his coat and hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the table.
+Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at work. He hated
+Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he hated John Graham, and
+that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him. He felt the strain he had been
+under. But he was glad. Some little god of common sense had overruled his
+passion, and he had acted wisely. Graham would now get his message, and there
+could be no misunderstanding of purpose between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at the door
+turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You sent him away,&rdquo; she cried softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful glow.
+She saw the overturned table, Rossland&rsquo;s hat and coat on a chair, the
+evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and then she
+turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the last of that grim
+resolution which he had measured for himself, so that in a moment he was at her
+side, and had her in his arms. She made no effort to free herself as she had
+done in the cottonwoods, but turned her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid
+her face against his shoulder&mdash;while he, fighting vainly to find utterance
+for the thousand words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then buried
+his face in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it that he loved
+her, and was going to fight for her, and that no power on earth could take her
+away from him now. And these things he repeated until she raised her flushed
+face from his breast, and let him kiss her lips once more, and then freed
+herself gently from his arms.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish&rsquo;s face and in Alan&rsquo;s quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier which
+convention had raised against them, and now they felt the inevitable thrill of
+joy and triumph, and not the humiliating embarrassment of dishonor. They made
+no effort to draw a curtain upon their happiness, or to hide the swift
+heart-beat of it from each other. It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they
+stood apart, and something pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little
+freedom of space between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker
+and deeper grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her eyes
+when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she gave him her
+own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile, and she bowed her head
+a little, so that he was looking at her smooth hair, soft and sweet where he
+had caressed it a few moments before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank God!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech seemed
+trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking God for that
+moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had come to him. This, it
+seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as he had known it, the
+beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands trembled. For something to
+do he set up the overturned table, and Mary Standish watched him with a quiet,
+satisfied wonder. She loved him, and she had come into his arms. She had given
+him her lips to kiss. And he laughed softly as he came to her side again, and
+looked over the tundra where Rossland had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long before you can prepare for the journey?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland lied,
+Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand pressed his arm. &ldquo;We are going&mdash;<i>back?</i> Is that it,
+Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With you there&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will return with me&mdash;when it is over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek touch his
+shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will come back with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will be ready?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ready now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist rising
+out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions&mdash;the breath of
+life, of warmth, of growing things&mdash;all between him and the hidden
+cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without another minute
+of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek against his shoulder, and
+the weight of her hand on his arm. That she had come to him utterly was in the
+low surrender of her voice. She had ceased to fight&mdash;she had given to him
+the precious right to fight for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of the
+obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the grimmer
+realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the significance of
+what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even more terrible now that he
+was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of hatred crept into his face again as he
+looked steadily in the direction which the other man had taken, and he wondered
+how much of that same horror&mdash;of the unbelievable menace stealing upon
+her&mdash;Rossland had divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his
+side. Had he done right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he
+would have exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of
+Graham&rsquo;s flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of
+womanhood and the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him, out
+there in the hollows of the tundra&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had seen what
+was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that brought him to
+himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told her a great deal. Yet
+she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what had been in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ready,&rdquo; she reminded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must wait for Stampede,&rdquo; he said, reason returning to him.
+&ldquo;He should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland
+is off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like Stampede
+between us and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to her. She
+stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her
+in his arms again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is between here and Tanana,&rdquo; she said with a little gesture of
+her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rossland told you that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you were not afraid that I&mdash;I might let them have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that second
+letter at Ellen McCormick&rsquo;s, Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone before
+he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were approaching
+hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still grimly clutching the
+long knife; and beyond them, at the little window under the roof, he saw the
+ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a death&rsquo;s-head on guard. His blood ran
+a little faster. The emptiness of the tundras, the illimitable spaces without
+sign of human life, the vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its
+sunshine, its song of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck
+a new note in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat
+like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare
+of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space which
+seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered his cabin,
+waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came hobbling over the
+open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet
+with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points of flame, and a quickness of
+movement that made Alan shiver as he watched him through the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that jumble
+of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand&mdash;and which
+Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries&rsquo; teachings&mdash;that he
+could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood was
+near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the old kloof where
+yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that had once run red. Alan
+was one of the few who, by reason of much effort, had learned the story of the
+kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a
+hostile tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the
+women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with
+what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day
+that was golden and filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had
+ambushed their enemies and killed them to a man. All were dead now, all but
+Sokwenna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was no
+longer the cheerful and gentle &ldquo;old man&rdquo; of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook, who
+loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish
+boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before Alan an
+embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his breath, a spirit of
+evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin hands gripping like
+bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the uncomfortable feeling that had
+gripped him for a moment, and set him to an appointed task&mdash;the watching
+of the southward plain from the crest of a tall ridge two miles back on the
+Tanana trail. He was to return when the sun reached its horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which stirred
+him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon as Sokwenna had
+started on his mission. The desire to leave at once, without the delay of an
+hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced himself to see the folly of such
+haste. He would be away many months, possibly a year this time. There was much
+to do, a mass of detail to attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to
+leave behind him. He must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write
+down certain laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation
+progressed, and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he fell into a
+habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and the impossibility of
+danger. He tried to make himself feel uncomfortably foolish at the thought of
+having ordered the herdsmen in. In all probability Graham would not appear at
+all, he told himself, or at least not for many days&mdash;or weeks; and if he
+did come, it would be to war in a legal way, and not with murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the afternoon
+lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly to take the trail
+beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his side. Twice he saw her
+between noon and five o&rsquo;clock, and by that time his writing was done. He
+looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his favorite rifle and automatic were
+working smoothly, and he called himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest
+with an extravagant number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this
+ammunition and two of his extra guns to Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin, with the
+thought that it was this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted
+for defense in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it,
+and for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on their
+way to Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of the
+horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food which Wegaruk
+had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of the ravine, watching
+the twilight gathering where the coul&eacute;e ran narrower and deeper between
+the distant breasts of the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to leave you for a little while,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But
+Sokwenna has returned, and you will not be alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As far as the cottonwoods, I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I am going with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I expect to walk very fast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not faster than I, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will help you.&rdquo; Her hand crept into his. &ldquo;I am going with
+you, Alan,&rdquo; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I&mdash;think you are,&rdquo; he laughed joyously, and suddenly he
+bent his head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand
+in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together since
+the day he had come from Nome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and sweet in
+her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made him forget the
+cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and Sokwenna&rsquo;s advice
+to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost Kloof and the country
+beyond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking a great deal today,&rdquo; she was saying,
+&ldquo;because you have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of
+<i>you</i>. And&mdash;my thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I have been&mdash;in paradise,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do not think that I am wicked?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor that I have been unwomanly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet I have followed you&mdash;have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For which I thank God,&rdquo; He breathed devoutly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your arms,
+and have kissed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am walking now with my hand in yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And will continue to do so, if I can hold it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am another man&rsquo;s wife,&rdquo; she shuddered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are mine,&rdquo; he declared doggedly. &ldquo;You know it, and the
+Almighty God knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham&rsquo;s
+wife. You are legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and
+body you are free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am not free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: &ldquo;Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am not. It
+is because&mdash;heart and soul&mdash;I belong to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary Standish
+looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and repeated softly,
+&ldquo;Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still hand in
+hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky, and the birds,
+and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them, while Alan scanned the
+shortening horizons for a sign of human life. One mile, and then another, and
+after that a third, and they were looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay
+the kloof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now&mdash;the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick&mdash;but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall of gloom
+that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to
+<i>you</i>&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I think that if you hadn&rsquo;t come
+back to me I would have gone mad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have the letter. It is here&rdquo;&mdash;and she placed a hand upon
+her breast. &ldquo;Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you meant more to me than life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that&mdash;particularly&mdash;you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a
+tress of my hair for you if they found me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. &ldquo;When I sat across the table from you aboard the <i>Nome</i>,
+I worshiped it and didn&rsquo;t know it. And since then&mdash;since I&rsquo;ve
+had you here&mdash;every time. I&rsquo;ve looked at you&mdash;&rdquo; He
+stopped, choking the words back in his throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say it, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve wanted to see it down,&rdquo; he finished desperately.
+&ldquo;Silly notion, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is it?&rdquo; she asked, her eyes widening a little. &ldquo;If you
+love it, why is it a silly notion to want to see it down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I though possibly you might think it so,&rdquo; he added lamely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned suddenly
+from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back, and with deft,
+swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until its radiant masses
+tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a silken glory that awed him with
+its beauty and drew from his lips a cry of gladness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in her
+hair. &ldquo;Do you think it is nice, Alan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed them to
+his lips and face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It was like
+a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand which she had
+placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When he raised his head to
+look at her, she was staring past him into the deepening twilight of the
+tundra, and it seemed as if something had stricken her so that for a space she
+was powerless to speak or move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to
+see what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over the
+earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night&mdash;and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between it and
+the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach of summer storm
+on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift as now. Where there
+had been golden light, he saw his companion&rsquo;s face now pale in a sea of
+dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its suddenness and unexpectedness,
+that had startled her, he thought, and he laughed softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her hand clutched his arm. &ldquo;I saw them,&rdquo; she cried, her voice
+breaking. &ldquo;I saw them&mdash;out there against the sun&mdash;before the
+cloud came&mdash;and some of them were running, like animals&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shadows!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;The long shadows of foxes running
+against the sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, they were not that,&rdquo; she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. &ldquo;They were not shadows. <i>They were
+men</i>!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to have
+stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of the
+twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot striking
+against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that sound; none but
+Stampede Smith&rsquo;s or his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were they many?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were
+running&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they saw us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the
+dusk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he could
+hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his automatic holster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think <i>they have come</i>?&rdquo; she whispered, and a cold dread
+was in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, I am not afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you are trembling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is this strange gloom, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen times had
+he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and
+the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of
+near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest
+play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a
+miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall
+was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been.
+It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird chaos,
+neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes strained futilely to
+penetrate its mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing circle of
+vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a moment to accept the
+significance of the running figures his companion had seen. Graham&rsquo;s men
+were near, had seen them, and were getting between them and the range. Possibly
+it was a scouting party, and if there were no more than five or six, the number
+which Mary had counted, he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be
+a dozen or fifty of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing
+upon the range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the overwhelming
+influence behind him, both political and financial, and fired by a passion for
+Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little short of madness, Graham would
+hesitate at no convention of law or humanity to achieve his end. Probably he
+was playing the game so that he would be shielded by the technicalities of the
+law, if it came to a tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a
+certain extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband
+&ldquo;rescuing&rdquo; his wife, while he&mdash;Alan Holt&mdash;was the
+woman&rsquo;s abductor and paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight ahead.
+The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of what that
+&ldquo;rescue&rdquo; would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and deadly
+definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered itself in
+readiness for whatever might happen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Graham&rsquo;s men had seen them, and were getting between them and retreat,
+the neck of the trap lay ahead&mdash;and in this direction Alan walked so
+swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could not hear her
+footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined about his own, and he
+could feel the silken caress of her loose hair. For half a mile he kept on,
+watching for a moving shadow, listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew
+Mary into his arms and held her there, so that her head lay against his breast.
+She was panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her
+parted lips and kissed them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not afraid?&rdquo; he asked again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. &ldquo;Even if
+they saw us, and are Graham&rsquo;s men, we have given them the slip,&rdquo; he
+comforted her. &ldquo;Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am sorry
+I hurried you so. We will go more slowly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must travel faster,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;I want to run.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At intervals
+they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and listening. Twice Alan
+thought he heard sounds which did not belong to the night. The second time the
+little fingers tightened about his own, but his companion said no word, only
+her breath seemed to catch in her throat for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath of storm
+seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and about them were
+gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing to the sudden change.
+It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to be distributing itself over
+the whole heaven, thinning out where its solid opaqueness had lain against the
+sun. Alan could see the girl&rsquo;s face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows
+and ridges of the tundra were taking more distinct shape when they came into a
+dip, and Alan recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge of the
+willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel, and showed her
+how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands. While she inclined her
+head to drink, he held back her hair and rested with his lips pressed to it. He
+heard the trickle of water running between her fingers, her little laugh of
+half-pleasure, half-fear, which in another instant broke into a startled scream
+as he half gained his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from
+the concealment of the willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another voice,
+crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found himself on
+his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to loosen a pair of
+gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl struggling, but she did
+not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his brain was reeling. He was
+conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun, and could see the face over him,
+grim and horrible in the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from
+him. Then he heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as
+he was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled,
+and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in
+him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers
+loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was killing him
+sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as he drew great
+breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his pistol. The holster was
+empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and
+life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was
+advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a
+lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he
+struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a
+second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little spring from
+which she had been drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to
+kill now; he wanted to kill&mdash;to destroy what was already under his hands
+that he might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his
+hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a
+club the bearded man&rsquo;s head sagged backward, and Alan&rsquo;s fingers dug
+into his throat. It was a bull&rsquo;s neck. He tried to break it. Ten
+seconds&mdash;twenty&mdash;half a minute at the most&mdash;and flesh and bone
+would have given way&mdash;but before the bearded man&rsquo;s gasping cry was
+gone from his lips the second figure leaped upon Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was half
+gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out and
+grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he realize
+how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening horror filled
+his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan broke from his lips.
+Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have
+kept it from the girl. She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could
+not see. Her long hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water
+of the spring, and her hands were groping&mdash;groping&mdash;until they found
+what they were seeking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands had
+rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to his knees,
+reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself over Alan and his
+assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he heard the one swift,
+terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him, limply and without sound. He
+staggered to his feet and for a moment caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his throat
+again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a heavier one,
+and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By chance his hand had come
+in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked the safety down; he was ready to
+shoot, ready to continue the fight with a gun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and put her
+hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud from the spring.
+Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from the pool and the
+willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the strange
+twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of storm, borne from
+the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from straight ahead. Alan
+held the muddied little hand closer in his own and set out for the
+range-houses, from which direction the last voice had come. He knew what was
+happening. Graham&rsquo;s men were cleverer than he had supposed; they had
+encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of them were closing in on the
+willow pool, from which the triumphant shout of the bearded man&rsquo;s
+companion had come. They were wondering why the call was not repeated, and were
+hallooing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every nerve in Alan&rsquo;s body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him like a
+breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows they would have
+killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his life. Wolves and not men
+were about them on the plain; wolves headed by two monsters of the human pack,
+Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and mad passion were hidden in the
+darkness; law and order and civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham
+won, only the unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark
+kloof remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century
+ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their
+hands&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from his
+lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up suddenly in
+their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out as voices commanded
+them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an arm, but his own was
+quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning flashes from his pistol, and
+the man who had raised his arm crumpled to the earth, while the other dissolved
+swiftly into the storm-gloom. A moment later his wild shouts were assembling
+the pack, while the detonations of Alan&rsquo;s pistol continued to roll over
+the tundra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the
+stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary Standish.
+But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish gloom she turned
+her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair
+covered her like a shining veil, and where it clustered in a disheveled mass
+upon her breast Alan saw her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging
+concealment, and in it&mdash;to his amazement&mdash;was a pistol. He recognized
+the weapon&mdash;one of a brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl
+Lomen, had presented to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange
+exultation swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all
+along she had prepared to fight&mdash;to fight with <i>him</i> against their
+enemies! He wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell
+her how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and
+they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier between
+them and the range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through the
+sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and shovels of
+his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing that safety lay
+ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was almost a dead weight
+in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken the strength from her body.
+Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and
+kissed her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his breast.
+Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in
+his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not
+immediately find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed
+at her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little goddess
+hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried
+toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck,
+feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by
+her helplessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching rain
+touched his face. He could see farther now&mdash;half-way back over the narrow
+trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from his arms and
+stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath was coming in little
+breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out the shadows of the corral
+buildings. Beyond them were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of
+the range of houses. The silence of the place was death-like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow cry
+followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and loud enough
+only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly.
+Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and spectral in his
+appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little
+points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked
+in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished,
+he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the
+range houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; asked the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what else?&rdquo; she persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Sokwenna is superstitious&mdash;and nervous. He said some things
+that you wouldn&rsquo;t understand. You would probably think him mad if he told
+you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here
+with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has been
+cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every woman and child
+in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and Nawadlook wouldn&rsquo;t
+go. I&rsquo;m glad of that, for if they were pursued and overtaken by men like
+Graham and Rossland&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Death would be better,&rdquo; finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung
+more tightly to his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna&rsquo;s place until Stampede and
+the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won&rsquo;t dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now; we can
+shoot, but they won&rsquo;t risk the use of their rifles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had reached Sokwenna&rsquo;s door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices came
+suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at concealment. The
+buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly and were answered from
+half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could hear running feet and sharp
+commands; some were cursing where they were entangled among the nigger-heads,
+and the sound of hurrying foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan&rsquo;s
+heart stood still. There was something terribly swift and businesslike in this
+gathering of their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A
+window fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna&rsquo;s rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied his gun.
+Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in the cabin,
+barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside
+them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The
+room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready to be used; heaps of cartridges were
+piled near them, and in the eyes of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady
+fires as they held shining cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust
+them into the rifle chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so they
+would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and unbound
+hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham&rsquo;s
+men would fire upon the cabin&mdash;when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna&rsquo;s fusillade, and a hail
+of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way through
+the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement Alan was at
+Mary&rsquo;s side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside Keok and
+Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden, consuming fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought they wouldn&rsquo;t shoot at women,&rdquo; he said, and his
+voice was terrifying in its strange hardness. &ldquo;I was mistaken. And I am
+sure&mdash;now&mdash;that I understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer guessing
+at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he was planning,
+what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both he and Rossland knew
+there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish in Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin;
+they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing that Alan Holt would find a
+safe place for her, while he fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever
+scheming, nothing less than murder, and he, by this combination of
+circumstances and plot, was the victim marked for death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a significance
+for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to care for those
+under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin.
+It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in turn possessed an air
+vent leading to the outside, overlooking the ravine. In the candle-glow Alan
+saw the door of this trap propped open with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever.
+Sokwenna had foreseen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in her
+hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic, and began to
+climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan pointed to the open
+trap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quick, get into that!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It is the only safe place.
+You can load there and hand out the guns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was clutching a
+rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok climbed steadily and
+disappeared in the darkness above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go into the cellar!&rdquo; commanded Alan. &ldquo;Good God, if you
+don&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile lit up Mary&rsquo;s face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet and
+gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the rifle in
+one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from his feet she
+still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her shining hair, and in a
+quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said, &ldquo;I am going to help you
+fight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="334"></a>
+<img src="images/334.jpg" width="600" height="377" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an apron
+heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and his rifle
+sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men. What followed
+struck a smile from Mary&rsquo;s lips, and a moaning sob rose from her breast
+as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open window to face the
+winged death that was again beating a tattoo against the log walls of the
+cabin.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his power John
+Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that he believed Holt
+would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death, there could no longer be a
+doubt after the first few swift moments following Sokwenna&rsquo;s rifle-shots
+from the attic window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old warrior
+until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan thrust his rifle
+as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening mist of night. He could
+hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them singing like angry bees as
+they passed with the swiftness of chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and
+their patter against the log walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles
+against the side of a ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and
+almost gentle about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death
+was riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the
+direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at which to
+shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these he fired as fast
+as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull the trigger. Then he
+crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary Standish who held out a freshly
+loaded weapon to him. Her face was waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes,
+staring at him so strangely, never for an instant leaving his face, were
+lustrous with the agony of fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid
+for herself. It was for <i>him</i>. His name was on her lips, a whisper
+unspoken, a breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the
+opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing, writhing
+serpent of death that struck something behind them in its venomous wrath. With
+a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God, they will kill you if you stand there!&rdquo; she moaned.
+&ldquo;Give me up to them, Alan. If you love me&mdash;give me up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then
+another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were finding their
+way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs of the cabin. His arms
+closed in a fierce embrace about the girl&rsquo;s slim body, and before she
+could realize what was happening, he leaped to the trap with her and almost
+flung her into its protection. Then he forced Nawadlook down beside her, and
+after them he thrust in the empty gun and the apron with its weight of
+cartridges. His face was demoniac in its command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t stay there, I&rsquo;ll open the door and go outside
+to fight! Do you understand? <i>Stay there!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw another
+white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and following the crash
+came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna&rsquo;s gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered hands was
+clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath suddenly came in a
+panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and said something reassuring
+to Keok, and faced the window again with the gun which she had loaded for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok&rsquo;s lips when Alan was at the top of
+the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness of the
+room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and seized her, and
+dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and Mary Standish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the power
+to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for light and vision
+he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow radiance silhouetted the
+windows, and a stream of it billowed out through an open door into the night.
+It was so bright he could see the rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense,
+slowly descending fog, a wet blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart
+jumped as with each second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to
+his cabin. They were no longer white men, but savages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He watched with
+the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was
+still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a
+shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He
+waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking&mdash;that
+the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was
+Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth
+as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others&mdash;one, two, three,
+four&mdash;and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed
+upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for him, head
+and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands. She was sobbing as
+she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or tears in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep down!&rdquo; he warned. &ldquo;Keep down below the floor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still existed in
+the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now&mdash;from the shelter of the
+other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light of his flaming home, the
+rifle fire continued to grow until it filled the night with a horrible din. He
+flung himself face-down upon the floor, so that the lower log of the building
+protected him. No living thing could have stood up against what was happening
+in these moments. Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked
+logs, crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles
+sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary Standish
+coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself down quickly, and
+she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his heart froze with horror as
+he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the floor as she stood there in that
+frightful moment, white and glorious in the face of the gun-fire. Before she
+could move another step, he was at her side, and with her in his arms leaped
+into the pit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or two life
+seemed to leave her body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In the
+deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a faint
+square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can get away&mdash;there!&rdquo; she cried in a low voice. &ldquo;I
+have opened the little door. We can crawl through it and into the
+ravine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not dreamed that
+Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and Nawadlook&rsquo;s words
+filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle fire was dying away again as
+he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift words. He would hold the cabin. As
+long as he was there Graham and his men would not dare to rush it. At least
+they would hesitate a considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the
+girls could steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to
+intercept them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the
+trails into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in
+the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless. Something
+in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that Mary Standish
+would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips move in the effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go&mdash;for <i>their</i> sakes, if not for your own and mine,&rdquo; he
+insisted, holding her away from him. &ldquo;Good God, think what it will mean
+if beasts like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no hope,
+no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They will be
+like&mdash;like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves&mdash;broken&mdash;destroyed&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she
+bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>you!</i>&rdquo; whispered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must remain here. It is the only way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok went
+through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last. She did not
+touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no word, and all he
+remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was her eyes. In that last
+look she had given him her soul, and no whisper, no farewell caress came with
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains,&rdquo; were his last words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing that he
+must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that way could he hold
+Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance for their lives. Cautiously
+he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin was a furnace red with flame;
+streams of fire were licking out at the windows and through the door, and as he
+sought vainly for a movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his
+ears, and so swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became
+sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire
+whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white sheet at
+the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little hesitatingly at first, as
+if doubtful of what might happen; and then it stopped, full in the light, an
+easy mark for a rifle aimed from Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. He saw who it was
+then, and drew in his rifle and watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement.
+The man was Rossland. In spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan
+could not repress the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of
+illogical resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled
+ignominiously through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that
+could not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That he owed
+this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant possess Alan. A
+murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer if such a creature
+existed on earth, and for such a man death was a righteous end. Only
+Rossland&rsquo;s nerve, and what he might have to say, held back the vengeance
+within reach of Alan&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was within a
+hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he
+heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond
+Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of
+Sokwenna&rsquo;s place. Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and
+the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would
+reveal their treachery? He shuddered and held himself below the opening of the
+window. Graham and his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rossland&rsquo;s voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+&ldquo;Alan Holt! Are you there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I am here,&rdquo; shouted Alan, &ldquo;and I have a line on your
+heart, Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing had at
+last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: &ldquo;We are giving you a last
+chance, Holt. For God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t be a fool! The offer I made you
+today is still good. If you don&rsquo;t accept it&mdash;the law must take its
+course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>The law!</i>&rdquo; Alan&rsquo;s voice was a savage cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with felonious
+intent. But we don&rsquo;t want to press the law unless we are forced to do so.
+You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men and wounded two others.
+That means the hangman, if we take you alive. But we are willing to forget that
+if you will accept the offer I made you today. What do you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous assurance with
+which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And when he made no answer
+Rossland continued to drive home his arguments, believing that at last Alan was
+at the point of surrender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old
+Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was creeping
+over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange voices, but voices
+which came up out of a past of many years ago, calling upon him, urging him,
+persisting in his ears with cries of vengeance and of triumph, the call of
+familiar names, a moaning of women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped
+him, and a last time he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled
+with the glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind
+him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill and
+with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him and the
+blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning cabin. And then,
+slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna&rsquo;s last
+shot sped on its mission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment Rossland
+stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped, and fell to the
+earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound, and lay a dark and
+huddled blot on the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from life into
+death shocked every nerve in Alan&rsquo;s body. Horror for a brief space
+stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and motionless blot,
+forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible silence followed the
+shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry broke that silence, though it was
+made up of many men&rsquo;s voices. Deadly and thrilling, it was a message that
+set Alan into action. Rossland had been killed under a flag of truce, and even
+the men under Graham had something like respect for that symbol. He could
+expect no mercy&mdash;nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their
+hands, and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in another
+moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come below!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;We must be ready to leave
+through the cellar-pit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand touched Sokwenna&rsquo;s face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior&rsquo;s heart. There was no tremor or
+beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guns of Graham&rsquo;s men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets tearing
+through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the shelter of the pit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting for him
+there.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the astonishment with which Mary&rsquo;s unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her pale
+face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the cabin. That she
+had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back to him, filled him with
+instant dread, for the precious minutes he had fought for were lost, and the
+priceless time gained during the parley with Rossland counted for nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his hand and
+pull him down beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t expect me to go,&rdquo; she said, in a voice
+that no longer trembled or betrayed excitement. &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t want me
+to be a coward. My place is with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him as they
+were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up chokingly in his
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there&mdash;shot under a flag of
+truce,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t have many minutes left to
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the cellar-pit
+opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it&mdash;alone&mdash;and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side
+it would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are Keok and Nawadlook?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your plan
+that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to give myself up
+unless they did as I commanded them. And&mdash;Alan&mdash;the ravine is filled
+with the rain-mist, and dark&mdash;&rdquo; She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is our one chance,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And aren&rsquo;t you glad&mdash;a little glad&mdash;that I didn&rsquo;t
+run away without you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they smiled at him
+in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that was almost playfully
+chiding; and the glory of her love as she had proved it to him there drew from
+him what he knew to be the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep forth into
+the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the wet particles of
+it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets cut like knives over his
+head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on each side of Sokwenna&rsquo;s
+place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine, and a few seconds later they
+stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog that hid the coul&eacute;e.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely. This was
+not what Alan had hoped for. Graham&rsquo;s men, enraged and made desperate by
+Rossland&rsquo;s death, would rush the cabin immediately. Scarcely had the
+thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly approaching shouts, the
+trampling of feet, and then the battering of some heavy object at the
+barricaded door of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin. In another minute or two their
+escape would be discovered and a horde of men would pour down into the ravine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary tugged at his hand. &ldquo;Let us hurry,&rdquo; she pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with her
+hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine, apparently in the
+face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden fear when their course
+came almost within the circle of light made by the burning cabin. Like shadows
+they sped into the deeper shelter of the corral buildings, and not until they
+paused there did she understand the significance of the hazardous chance they
+had taken. Already Graham&rsquo;s men were pouring into the ravine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t suspect we&rsquo;ve doubled on them until it is too
+late,&rdquo; said Alan exultantly. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make for the kloof.
+Stampede and the herdsmen should arrive within a few hours, and when that
+happens&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled figure lay
+huddled against one of the corral gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is hurt,&rdquo; whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; replied Alan pitilessly. &ldquo;It will be unfortunate
+for us if he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing point
+of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She heard the
+wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper shadows of the corrals
+toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she noticed that the mist was no longer
+in her face. The sky was clearing. She could see Alan more clearly, and when
+they came to the narrow trail over which they had fled once before that night
+it reached out ahead of them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they
+reached this point when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by
+a second and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout.
+There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly
+to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wounded man,&rdquo; said Alan, in a voice of dismay. &ldquo;He is
+calling the others. I should have killed him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All her
+courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and quickened her
+steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They passed along the crest
+of the ridge under which lay the willows and the pool, and at the end of this
+they paused to rest and listen. Trained to the varied night whisperings of the
+tundras Alan&rsquo;s ears caught faint sounds which his companion did not hear.
+The wounded man had succeeded in giving his message, and pursuers were
+scattering over the plain behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you run a little farther?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a cloud
+that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran a little
+behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved them this night,
+and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to clear twilight and
+the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached the kloof he would have to
+fight in the open. With Stampede at his side he would have welcomed such an
+opportunity of matching rifles with their enemies, for there were many vantage
+points in the open tundra from which they might have defied assault. But the
+nearness of the girl frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He
+was only an incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of
+death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her remained the
+unspeakable horror of Graham&rsquo;s lust and passion. But if they could reach
+the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the cliff, they could laugh at
+Graham&rsquo;s pack of beasts while they waited for the swift vengeance that
+would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the hollows
+were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution came faintly
+rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a golden glow over
+the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay between it and the tundras,
+and objects a hundred paces away no longer held shadow or illusionment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with surprising speed,
+heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her endurance amazed him. And he
+knew that without questioning him she had guessed the truth of what lay behind
+them. Then, all at once, she stopped, swayed like a reed, and would have fallen
+if his arms had not caught her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was a
+swiftly beating little dynamo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a mile of
+the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary&rsquo;s splendid
+courage had won it for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried her
+through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of progress, counted
+now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight were flecking the plains.
+In another quarter of an hour moving objects would be distinctly visible a mile
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could feel their
+breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of the incongruity of
+the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It seemed inconceivable that
+this day, glorious in its freshness, and welcomed by the glad voice of all
+living things, should be a day of tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for
+him. He wanted to shout out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it
+seemed absurd that he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient
+bulk of his rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure which
+they bore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then on he
+climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge and scanned the
+tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he concluded their enemies
+believed they were hidden somewhere on the tundra not far from the
+range-houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow ravine, and
+half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof. For a space they
+rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long hair and plaited it in two
+braids. In these moments Alan encouraged her, but he did not lie. He told her
+the half-mile of tundra was their greatest hazard, and described the risks they
+would run. Carefully he explained what she was to do under certain
+circumstances. There was scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but
+they might be so far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to
+the kloof. If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be
+necessary to find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from
+behind succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue in the
+direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he followed more slowly,
+holding Graham&rsquo;s men back with his rifle until she reached the edge of
+the gorge. After that he would come to her as swiftly as he could run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra. About
+them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile back toward the
+range were moving figures; farther west were others, and eastward, almost at
+the edge of the ravine, were two men who would have discovered them in another
+moment if they had not descended into the hollow. Alan could see them kneeling
+to drink at the little coul&eacute;e which ran through it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hurry,&rdquo; he said, with a sudden swift thought.
+&ldquo;Keep parallel with me and a distance away. They may not discover you are
+a woman and possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I
+stop. Follow my movements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
+bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were soiled with
+muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her thus Alan laughed
+and cried out softly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You beautiful little vagabond!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and after
+that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so cleverly that her
+action was better than his own&mdash;and so they had made their way over a
+third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly and cried, &ldquo;Now,
+<i>run!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the ravine
+and were running toward them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock which he
+had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Close behind her, he said: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hesitate a second. Keep on going.
+When they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn&rsquo;t
+stop.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them. Then he
+drew close to Mary&rsquo;s side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See that level place ahead? We&rsquo;ll cross it in another minute or
+two. When they come to it I&rsquo;m going to stop, and catch them where they
+can&rsquo;t find shelter. But you must keep on going. I&rsquo;ll overtake you
+by the time you reach the edge of the kloof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level space
+she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready to choke her
+when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their enemies. But in her
+mind burned the low words of his command, his warning, and she did not look
+back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle of rock, which was now very near. She
+had almost reached it when the first shot came from behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and made
+pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned, and then
+rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham&rsquo;s men saw his ruse when his
+leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their pursuit was their
+undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might use their rifles, or
+fling themselves upon the ground, they brought themselves into a brief but
+deadly interval of inaction, and in that flash one of the men went down under
+Alan&rsquo;s first shot. Before he could fire again the second had flattened
+himself upon the earth, and swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for
+the kloof. Mary stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping for breath,
+when he joined her. A bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He
+did not return the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t dare to stand up until the others join him,&rdquo; he
+encouraged her. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re beating them to it, little girl! If you can
+keep up a few minutes longer&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed to her
+there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the gloomy walls
+of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught her by her hands and
+lowered her over the face of a ledge to a table-like escarpment below. He
+laughed at her fear when he dropped down beside her, and held her close as they
+crept back under the shelving face of the cliff to a hidden path that led
+downward, with a yawning chasm at their side. The trail widened as they
+descended, and at the last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter
+of a million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they picked their
+way, while the trickle and drip of water and the flesh-like clamminess of the
+air sent a strange shiver of awe through Mary Standish. There was no life
+here&mdash;only an age-old whisper that seemed a part of death; and when voices
+came from above, where Graham&rsquo;s men were gathering, they were ghostly and
+far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked their
+way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages between the
+Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides an uncontrollable
+impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though she sensed the protection
+of their presence. They were like colossi, carved by hands long dead, and now
+guarded by spirits whose voices guttered low and secretly in the mysterious
+drip and trickle of unseen water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm
+death and vengeance had glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a
+rock crashed behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a cry
+broke from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never known
+before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from which she had
+escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable, for which she would
+never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan, and when at last the narrow
+fissure widened over their heads, and light came down and softened their way,
+he saw that her face was deathly white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are almost there,&rdquo; he comforted. &ldquo;And&mdash;some
+day&mdash;you will love this gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it
+together all the way to the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that was
+heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this climbed until
+they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a great depression in
+the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a floor as level as a table
+and covered with soft white sand. Mary would never forget her first glimpse of
+this place; it was unreal, strange, as if a band of outlaw fairies had brought
+the white sand for a carpet, and had made this their hiding-place, where wind
+and rain and snow could never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to
+make her thought more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only
+fairies&rsquo; feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain. So
+they were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight through that
+fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof itself that they must
+have hidden themselves. Something in the humor and gentle thought of it all
+made her smile at Alan. But his face had turned suddenly grim, and she looked
+up the kloof, where they had traveled through danger and come to safety. And
+then she saw that which froze all thought of fairies out of her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many of
+them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer light, and
+at their head was a man upon whom Mary&rsquo;s eyes fixed themselves in horror.
+White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That man in front?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, John Graham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that from here I can easily kill
+him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone out of
+them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a prayer to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am thinking of tomorrow&mdash;the next day&mdash;the years and years
+to come, <i>with you</i>,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Alan, you can&rsquo;t
+kill John Graham&mdash;not until God shows us it is the only thing left for us
+to do. You can&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl of a
+bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart stopped beating,
+and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body as she saw the swift and
+terrible change in the stricken face of the man she loved. He tried to smile at
+her, even as a red blot came where the streak of gray in his hair touched his
+forehead. And then he crumpled down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against
+the rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill her brain
+with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below hesitated and their
+hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible cry of a woman rang between
+the rock walls of the chasm. And following the cry a voice came down to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;John Graham, I&rsquo;m going to kill you&mdash;<i>kill
+you</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task of
+vengeance.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her soul, and
+she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed. But she did not fire
+blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham. The troublesome thing was a
+strange film that persisted in gathering before her eyes, something she tried
+to brush away, but which obstinately refused to go. She did not know she was
+sobbing as she looked over the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she
+had lost sight of John Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock and
+began climbing it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated she stood
+above the rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked alike, jumping and
+dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly it
+occurred to her that <i>all</i> of them were John Grahams, and that she must
+kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding fairies might have guessed how her
+reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when she began firing.
+Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one,
+and a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she
+continued to fire until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun
+was empty. The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her
+vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so near she
+could see their faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in its desire to
+kill John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His face was
+hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster, and sprang
+back to her rock. There was no time to wait or choose now, for his murderers
+were almost upon her. With all her strength she tried to fire accurately, but
+Alan&rsquo;s big gun leaped and twisted in her hand as she poured its fire
+wildly down among the rocks until it was empty. Her own smaller weapon she had
+lost somewhere in the race to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired
+her last shot she waited through another instant of horror, until she was
+striking at faces that came within the reach of her arm. And then, like a
+monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a
+moment&rsquo;s vision of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a
+passion that was almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his
+arms came about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
+against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless weight
+against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone, and if the
+arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she could hear&mdash;clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came from
+up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that the strange,
+wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies&rsquo; hiding-place
+with its white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martens, it couldn&rsquo;t happen in a better place,&rdquo; he said to a
+man who stood near him. &ldquo;Leave me five men. Take the others and help
+Schneider. If you don&rsquo;t clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles
+from this ambuscade will do the business in a hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others hurried
+away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no cries, no
+shouts&mdash;nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Graham&rsquo;s arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged inward,
+making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of day, he laid her
+upon the carpet of sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its first step
+in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to climb down from the
+edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy, very red in the face,
+breathing fast from hard running, but making not a sound as he came like a
+gopher where it seemed no living thing could find a hold. And the fairy was
+Stampede Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the tragedy
+below, and where death would have claimed him in a more reasonable moment he
+came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the old tingling of years ago,
+and in his blood the thrill which he had thought was long dead&mdash;the thrill
+of looking over leveled guns into the eyes of other men. Time had rolled back,
+and he was the old Stampede Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and
+murder, as in other days he had seen them, and between him and desire there was
+neither law nor conscience to bar the way, and his dream&mdash;a last great
+fight&mdash;was here to fill the final unwritten page of a life&rsquo;s drama
+that was almost closed. And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft,
+white sand unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides and
+rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a woman&mdash;and
+Alan Holt!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men&rsquo;s faces turned that
+way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the scraping of rock
+and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He was almost down when a
+larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge. Two of the men turned, but in
+that same instant came a more thrilling interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a
+woman&rsquo;s voice filled with madness and despair, came from the depth of the
+cavern, and the five men stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the
+cries came Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for
+her. The girl&rsquo;s hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand,
+and Graham&rsquo;s eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her.
+He caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully weak
+hands beat futilely in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet of sand,
+and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and scarcely had his feet
+touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge when death crashed from them
+swift as lightning flashes, and three of the five were tottering or falling
+before the other two could draw or swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a
+shot. The other went down as if his legs had been knocked from under him by a
+club, and the one who fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and
+pitched on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl crushed
+against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body, her head
+protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a gun, his dark
+face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other could not shoot without
+killing the girl. The horror of the situation gripped Stampede. He saw
+Graham&rsquo;s pistol rise slowly and deliberately. He watched it, fascinated.
+And the look in Graham&rsquo;s face was the cold and unexcited triumph of a
+devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was four inches&mdash;perhaps
+five&mdash;away from the girl&rsquo;s. There was only that&mdash;and the
+extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the automatic seeking
+his heart. And then, in that last second, straight into the girl&rsquo;s
+staring eyes blazed Stampede&rsquo;s gun, and the four inches of leering face
+behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede, and not the girl, who
+closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and saw Mary Standish sobbing
+over Alan&rsquo;s body, and Graham lying face down in the sand, he reverently
+raised the gun from which he had fired the last shot, and pressed its hot
+barrel to his thin lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her face in her
+hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die, for in this hour of
+triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for her. Alan was gone. Only death
+could have come with that terrible red blot on his forehead, just under the
+gray streak in his hair. And without him there was no longer a reason for her
+to live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reached out her arms. &ldquo;Give him to me,&rdquo; she whispered.
+&ldquo;Give him to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede&rsquo;s face. But she heard his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a bullet that hit him,&rdquo; Stampede was saying.
+&ldquo;The bullet hit a rock, an&rsquo; it was a chip from the rock that caught
+him square between the eyes. He isn&rsquo;t dead, <i>and he ain&rsquo;t going
+to die!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies&rsquo; hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was riding
+through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a girl with
+streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at last this cloud
+broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged into the immeasurable
+depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped after her. Then came strange
+lights, and darkness, and sounds like the clashing of cymbals, and voices; and
+after those things a long sleep, from which he opened his eyes to find himself
+in a bed, and a face very near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a
+sea of tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, &ldquo;Alan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed against his
+own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth and eyes, and
+sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end of the race had
+come, and he had won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he sat up
+in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him, and then Keok
+and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old housekeeper, and only
+for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik
+did not come, and he saw the strange change in Keok, and knew that they were
+dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the question, for more than any others of his
+people did he love these two missing comrades of the tundras.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened&mdash;but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told him of
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the
+corrals. Now that Graham is dead, they&rsquo;re frightened stiff&mdash;afraid
+we&rsquo;re going to hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland
+to fight for them, they know they&rsquo;re lost.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And our men&mdash;my people?&rdquo; asked Alan faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fought like devils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I know. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t rest an hour in coming from the mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean, Stampede.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna,&rdquo; and he
+counted over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Tautuk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone else
+attempts to do anything for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then&mdash;I am glad Tautuk was hit,&rdquo; smiled Alan. And he asked,
+&ldquo;Where is Amuk Toolik?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to ask <i>her</i>, Alan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that puzzled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must wait,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and with his
+hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she told him the
+secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she nestled her pink face
+against his neck, and whispered that she was content to accept the punishment.
+So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t need a doctor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it was mighty
+thoughtful of you to send Amuk Toolik for one.&rdquo; Then he caught himself
+suddenly. &ldquo;What a senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who
+need a doctor more than I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary nodded. &ldquo;But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now.&rdquo; And
+she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of her ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Then we will start for the States, as we planned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the
+new house,&rdquo; she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he
+was stunned. &ldquo;I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in
+the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very soon.
+I am sorry you find your business in the States so important, Alan. It will be
+a little lonesome with you away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gasped. &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not turn. &ldquo;<i>Mary!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she faced
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips pressed
+to his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need
+one to marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that brought a
+little sob of joy from her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little
+reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which he
+believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her desire to
+return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She wanted nothing
+down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he
+could find some way of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was
+afraid it might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing
+that would make her happy, and that was <i>his</i> world. She wanted it just as
+it was&mdash;the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains&mdash;with
+the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She now
+understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not an
+American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would
+go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed
+until it seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes
+and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his
+breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot flood of
+tears filled his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary&rsquo;s
+head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she stood a
+vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and glory of her
+hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were shining like stars
+as she looked at Alan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Amuk Toolik,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He has returned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And&mdash;is he alone?&rdquo; Alan asked, and his heart stood still
+while he waited for her answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back his
+hair. &ldquo;I must go and do up my hair, Alan,&rdquo; she said then. &ldquo;It
+would never do for them to find me like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on the
+roof of Sokwenna&rsquo;s cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was singing
+again.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN ***</div>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Alaskan, by James Oliver Curwood,
+Illustrated by Walt Louderback
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Alaskan
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2004  [eBook #11867]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 11867-h.htm or 11867-h.zip:
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/8/6/11867/11867-h/11867-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/8/6/11867/11867-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALASKAN
+
+A Novel of the North
+
+By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+With Illustrations by Walt Louderback
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska, the new empire rising
+in the North, it is for me an honor and a privilege to dedicate
+this work.
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+Owosso, Michigan August 1, 1923
+
+
+
+
+THE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her (Frontispiece).
+
+The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.
+
+The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.
+
+Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not
+lost the spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead
+in him, and the fire which is built up of clean adventure and the
+association of strong men and a mighty country had not died out of his
+veins. He could still see the picturesque, feel the thrill of the
+unusual, and--at times--warm memories crowded upon him so closely that
+yesterday seemed today, and Alaska was young again, thrilling the world
+with her wild call to those who had courage to come and fight for her
+treasures, and live--or die.
+
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and
+the yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan
+mountains, something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+
+"That is Alaska."
+
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment
+did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the
+almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled
+with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body
+was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the
+cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds lay like
+shimmering draperies.
+
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said,
+and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor
+in her voice. "Your Alaska, Captain Rifle."
+
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the
+low moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now
+she asked: "What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon
+like that, and the stars so clear above!"
+
+"It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are
+in the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it
+were day you could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the
+Inside Passage. I have always called it the water-wonderland of the
+world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken--for we are
+almost alone on this side of the ship. Is it not proof? If I were right,
+the men and women in there--dancing, playing cards, chattering--would be
+crowding this rail. Can you imagine humans like that? But they can't see
+what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things. Ah, do
+you catch that in the air, Miss Standish--the perfume of flowers, of
+forests, of green things ashore? It is faint, but I catch it."
+
+"And so do I."
+
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she
+stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy;
+she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the
+rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted
+windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in
+her face which he could not understand.
+
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute--defying the necessity of making reservation where half a
+thousand others had been turned away--and chance had brought her under
+his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered
+a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he
+had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom
+of years. And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant
+poise of her head with which she was regarding the cabin windows now.
+
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives
+in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was
+impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all
+official regulations in coming aboard.
+
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience,
+he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some
+way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and
+sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
+
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very
+pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly
+attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted
+clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her
+eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her
+exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of
+beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he
+doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he
+would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation
+in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which
+others might not see--and hold his tongue.
+
+"We are not quite alone," she was saying. "There are others," and she
+made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
+
+"Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway," he said. "And the other is Alan
+Holt."
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the
+moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain's arm. "Listen," she
+whispered.
+
+"Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the
+shore, and there are glaciers all the way up."
+
+"And that other sound, like low wind--on a night so still and calm! What
+is it?"
+
+"You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets
+rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the
+mountains, you hear that song."
+
+"And this man, Alan Holt," she reminded him. "He is a part of these
+things?"
+
+"Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in
+Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him--"
+
+"Thirty-eight," she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+
+Then he chuckled. "You are very good at figures."
+
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+
+"This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone--like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of
+ghosts as we talked there in the dusk."
+
+"Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse
+ate up men's lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish," said Captain Rifle. "You will meet many like
+him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their faces--always
+the memory of those days that are gone."
+
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. "And Alan Holt? You
+know him well?"
+
+"Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All
+northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the
+Endicott Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier."
+
+"He must be very brave."
+
+"Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish."
+
+"And honorable men--men you can trust and believe in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is odd," she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a
+bird-note in her throat. "I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a
+long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going
+home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan."
+
+"And you are--"
+
+"An American," she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her voice.
+"A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going
+north--to learn."
+
+"Only that, Miss Standish?"
+
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer.
+His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was
+filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
+
+"I must press the question," he said. "As the captain of this ship, and
+as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me--in confidence, if you will have it so?"
+
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. "There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle."
+
+"And yet--you came aboard very strangely," he urged. "You will recall
+that it was most unusual--without reservation, without baggage--"
+
+"You forget the hand-bag," she reminded him.
+
+"Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish."
+
+"But I did, Captain Rifle."
+
+"True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent."
+
+"I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass."
+
+"Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship's regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from
+something!"
+
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+
+"Yes, I was running away--from something."
+
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed
+the thrill of the fight she was making.
+
+"And you will not tell me why--or from what you were escaping?"
+
+"I can not--tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But--it is
+possible--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I shall never reach Nome."
+
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung
+to him, and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged the
+hand to her breast. "I know just how good you have been to me," she
+cried. "I should like to tell you why I came aboard--like that. But I
+can not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!" With one free hand
+she pointed.
+
+"Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery
+of centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those
+things, Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or
+feel what you have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know
+it. And after all that, can't you--won't you--forget the strange manner
+in which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to
+put out of your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look
+back--and think. Please Captain Rifle--please!"
+
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his
+hand to her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant, leaving
+him speechless, his resolution gone.
+
+"I love you because you have been so good to me," she whispered, and as
+suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone
+at the rail.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid
+light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching
+her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which
+she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle.
+To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that went to
+make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first ships of
+the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the purser,
+had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the others; that
+was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had been at the same
+table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both breakfast hours,
+and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and
+of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them.
+This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or
+communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of
+his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst.
+Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the
+balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For
+him silence was not a burden.
+
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very
+quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape
+the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that
+darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill him, but
+merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even more than her
+gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to discuss the
+matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one thing, it would
+have been her hair--not so much the color of it as the care she
+evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He noted that
+it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the dinner
+lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth, silky coils
+in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense relief
+after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his
+six months' visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking,
+because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.
+
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of
+him--with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather
+Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his
+thick, blond hair. His interest had not reached anywhere near
+that point.
+
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested
+him, except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and
+greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the
+throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship _Nome_ under his
+feet at Seattle. He was going _home_. And home meant Alaska. It meant
+the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which
+civilization had not yet come with its clang and clamor. It meant
+friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he loved. Such was his
+reaction after six months of exile, six months of loneliness and
+desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+
+"I'll not make the trip again--not for a whole winter--unless I'm sent
+at the point of a gun," he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after
+Mary Standish had left the deck. "An Eskimo winter is long enough, but
+one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer--for me."
+
+"I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington."
+
+"Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has
+forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to
+listen to him. We may get action."
+
+"May!" Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. "Alaska has been waiting ten
+years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you'll get anything.
+When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and
+what we need north of Fifty-eight--why, what's the use? Alaska might as
+well shut up shop!"
+
+"But she isn't going to do that," said Alan Holt, his face grimly set in
+the moonlight. "They've tried hard to get us, and they've made us shut
+up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites in the
+Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven out nine
+thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left are
+hard-boiled. We're not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are Alaskans,
+and we are not afraid to fight."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"That we'll have a square deal within another five years, or know the
+reason why. And another five years after that, we'll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty
+years we'll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons,
+eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who
+are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation systems."
+
+One of Alan Holt's hands was clenched at the rail. "Until I went down
+this winter, I didn't realize just how bad it was," he said, a note hard
+as iron in his voice. "Lomen is a diplomat, but I'm not. I want to fight
+when I see such things--fight with a gun. Because we happened to find
+gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as quickly as
+possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the skin will be
+worthless. That's modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for you!"
+
+"And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?"
+
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned
+and stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with
+the moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+
+"You ask me a question, madam," said Alan Holt, bowing courteously. "No,
+I am not an American. I am an Alaskan."
+
+The girl's lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+"Please pardon me for listening," she said. "I couldn't help it. I am an
+American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything else in
+the world--more than my religion, even. _America,_ Mr. Holt. And America
+doesn't necessarily mean a great many of America's people. I love to
+think that I first came ashore in the _Mayflower_. That is why my name
+is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska _is_ America."
+
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl's face was no longer placidly
+quiet. Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her
+voice, and he knew that in the light of day he would have seen fire in
+her cheeks. He smiled, and in that smile he could not quite keep back
+the cynicism of his thought.
+
+"And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?"
+
+"Nothing," she said. "And yet I love it." She pointed to the mountains.
+"I wish I might have been born among them. You are fortunate. You should
+love America."
+
+"Alaska, you mean!"
+
+"No, America." There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was not
+speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+
+The irony on Alan's lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+"If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came over
+in the _Mayflower_, I stand reproved," he said. "You should be an
+authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship."
+
+"You are correct," she replied with a proud, little tilt of her glossy
+head, "though I think that only lately have I come to an understanding
+of its significance--and its responsibility. I ask your pardon again for
+interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just happened."
+
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a
+swift smile and passed down the promenade.
+
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of
+life.
+
+"A remarkable young woman," Alan remarked. "I imagine that the spirit of
+Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost
+suppose he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite
+though rather indirect result."
+
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation
+of humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one
+could not miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a
+sting which he did not altogether intend.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the
+captain a question which was in his mind.
+
+"The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?"
+
+"Yes--rather," acknowledged Captain Rifle. "Hereafter she will ply
+directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we're doing the Inside
+Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven't seen fit to
+explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to
+do with it. We're landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by
+way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays,
+Holt. I can remember--"
+
+"So can I," nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay
+the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. "I
+remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget."
+
+"Men don't forget such women as Jane Hope," said the captain softly.
+
+"You knew her?"
+
+"Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years
+ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn't it? And when I look at Mary
+Standish and hear her voice--" He hesitated, as if betraying a secret,
+and then he added: "--I can't help thinking of the girl Donald Hardwick
+fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It's too bad she
+had to die."
+
+"She isn't dead," said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. "She
+isn't dead," he repeated. "That's the pity of it. She is as much a
+living thing to him today as she was twenty years ago."
+
+After a moment the captain said, "She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan."
+
+"Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you."
+
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. "Not at all. I think she is a most
+admirable young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I'm going to
+promenade a bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs."
+
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his way,
+while the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship _Nome_ was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing
+with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a
+human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger
+list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names represented
+more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he
+loved, its heart's blood, its very element--"giving in." He knew that
+with the throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy, and hope
+were on their way north--and with these things also arrogance and greed.
+On board were a hundred conflicting elements--some that had fought for
+Alaska, others that would make her, and others that would destroy.
+
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and
+women whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew
+the tourists almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north had
+not yet seized upon them. They were voluble and rather excitedly
+enthusiastic in the face of beauty and awesomeness. The sour-doughs were
+tucked away here and there in shadowy nooks, watching in silence, or
+they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking their cigars or pipes,
+and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these two, the newcomers
+and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for Alan, the
+flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life north of
+Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked out those
+who belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over the
+edge of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he
+recognized them as the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to
+work on the government railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of
+them was talking, filled with the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+
+"I tell you," he said, "people don't know what they ought to know about
+Alaska. In school they teach us that it's an eternal icebox full of
+gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that's where reindeer
+come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing. Why"--he drew in a
+deep breath--"it's nine times as large as the state of Washington,
+twelve times as big as the state of New York, and we bought it from
+Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it down on the face
+of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St. Augustine,
+Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That's how big it is, and
+the geographical center of our country isn't Omaha or Sioux City, but
+exactly San Francisco, California."
+
+"Good for you, sonny," came a quiet voice from beyond the group. "Your
+geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your people
+that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia, and
+wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our
+people to rise against the Washington government. We've asked Washington
+for a few guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh at us. Do you
+see a moral?"
+
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He
+caught a glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did not
+know him. And as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the moonlight,
+the same deep, quiet voice came back very clearly:
+
+"And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to hang
+a few such men as John Graham, sonny."
+
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot.
+Only one man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred,
+and that man was John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the
+identity of the stranger whose words had temporarily stunned the young
+engineers, when he saw a slim figure standing between him and the light
+of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary Standish. He knew by her
+attitude that she had heard the words of the young engineer and the old
+graybeard, but she was looking at _him_. And he could not remember that
+he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman's face before. It was
+not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from thought
+and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it annoyed Alan
+Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too susceptible
+reaction in matters which did not concern her. So he said, speaking to
+the silent young men a few steps away:
+
+"He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful."
+
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had
+scarcely gone out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind
+him, and the girl's hand touched his arm lightly.
+
+"Mr. Holt, please--"
+
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was
+not altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again, only
+her finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so that for
+a moment he could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth hair.
+Then she was meeting his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in the gray
+depths of her own.
+
+"I am alone on the ship," she said. "I have no friends here. I want to
+see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?"
+
+"You mean ... escort you?"
+
+"Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable."
+
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him, and
+he wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not smile.
+Her eyes were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same time
+very lovely.
+
+"The way you put it, I don't see how I can refuse," he said. "As for the
+questions--probably Captain Rifle can answer them better than I."
+
+"I don't like to trouble him," she replied. "He has much to think about.
+And you are alone."
+
+"Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about."
+
+"You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won't try. But I'm going into a new country, and I have a passionate
+desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get there.
+I want to know about many things. For instance--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?"
+
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment
+astonished him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her slim
+figure seemed possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she waited for
+an answer. They had turned a little, so that in the light of the moon
+the almost flowerlike whiteness of her face was clear to him. With her
+smooth, shining hair, the pallor of her face under its lustrous
+darkness, and the clearness of her eyes she held Alan speechless for a
+moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon and understand the
+something about her which made him interested in spite of himself. Then
+he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+
+"Did you ever see a dog fight?" he asked.
+
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly. "Once."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"It was my dog--a little dog. His throat was torn--"
+
+He nodded. "Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He's the dog--a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth
+from a new land and enslave it to his own desires and political
+ambitions. That is what John Graham is doing from his money-throne down
+there in the States. It's the financial support he represents, curse
+him! Money--and a man without conscience. A man who would starve
+thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A man who, in every sense of
+the word, is a murderer--"
+
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone
+whiter, and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the
+look in her eyes brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+
+"There, I've hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish," he said, bowing
+a little. "In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I suppose I
+must apologize for swearing and calling another man a murderer. Well, I
+do. And now--if you care to stroll about the ship--"
+
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and
+Mary Standish as they walked forward.
+
+"A corking pretty girl," said one of them, drawing a deep breath. "I
+never saw such hair and eyes--"
+
+"I'm at the same table with them," interrupted another. "I'm second on
+her left, and she hasn't spoken three words to me. And that fellow she
+is with is like an icicle out of Labrador."
+
+And Mary Standish was saying: "Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those young
+engineers. I wish I were a man."
+
+"I wish you were," agreed Alan amiably.
+
+Whereupon Mary Standish's pretty mouth lost its softness for an instant.
+But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and the
+sweet air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman's man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or
+die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his
+sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born
+and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with
+the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious laps
+of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of
+the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But only now
+and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any given moment a
+supreme physical crisis had come, women would have turned instinctively
+in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
+
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
+The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle
+meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he
+could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his
+face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
+There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more
+forcefully than speech.
+
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present
+situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment
+Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the
+intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of the
+young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He chuckled.
+And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement, gave to her
+head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed once before,
+in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As if
+challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a
+decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl's hand did not
+merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was
+necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils
+of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her,
+together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to
+his stoicism.
+
+"It's not half bad," he expressed himself frankly. "I really believe I
+am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish."
+
+"Oh!" He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. "You
+thought--possibly--I might be dangerous?"
+
+"A little. I don't understand women. Collectively I think they are God's
+most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don't care much about them.
+But you--"
+
+She nodded approvingly. "That is very nice of you. But you needn't say I
+am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike."
+
+"Possibly--except in the way they dress their hair."
+
+"You like mine?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge
+cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard
+the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor
+built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands
+while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+
+"If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let's go in," he suggested. "I know; of no better place. Are you afraid
+of smoke?"
+
+"No. If I were a man, I would smoke."
+
+"Perhaps you do?"
+
+"I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair."
+
+"Which would be a crime," he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they
+entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue
+with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as
+many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up
+and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A
+few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed
+Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled blankets
+that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it with
+her toe.
+
+"What do they mean?" she asked.
+
+"We are overloaded," he explained. "Alaskan steam-ships have no steerage
+passengers as we generally know them. It isn't poverty that rides
+steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on
+the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there
+will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?"
+
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in,
+and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men
+were seated at this table.
+
+"The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl--I forget his name," he said. "He doesn't look it, but he is a real
+sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
+The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men,
+and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with
+whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of
+George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The
+thud of Carmack's spade, as it hit first pay, was the 'sound heard round
+the world,' Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was
+the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish
+Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the strike was
+made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love with Belinda
+Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came into the north."
+
+"Why was she courageous?"
+
+"Because she came alone into a man's land, without a soul to fight for
+her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did. As
+long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney."
+
+"She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt."
+
+"Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who
+posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. _Finis_,
+I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big
+whiskers--"
+
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a
+table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except
+his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and
+was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in
+its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his
+shoulders slightly and turned away.
+
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her
+cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could
+not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
+
+"If you will pardon me a moment," he said quietly, "I shall demand an
+explanation."
+
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+
+"Please don't," she entreated. "It is kind of you, and you are just the
+sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would be
+absurd to notice it. Don't you think so?"
+
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her
+voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went
+from her face, leaving it strangely white.
+
+"I am at your service," he replied with a rather cold inclination of his
+head. "But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged."
+
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the
+deck.
+
+"One of John Graham's men," he said. "A fellow named Rossland, going up
+to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They'll choke
+the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff we
+call money can do, isn't it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian villages
+starving, and women and little children dying by the score because of
+this John Graham's money. Over-fishing did it, you understand. If you
+could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones,
+crying for a rag to eat--"
+
+Her hand clutched at his arm. "How could John Graham--do that?" she
+whispered.
+
+He laughed unpleasantly. "When you have been a year in Alaska you won't
+ask that question, Miss Standish. _How_? Why, simply by glutting his
+canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the natives
+have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he handles
+represents the fish trust--and many other things. Please don't
+misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without it
+we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the
+face of the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska
+does today. Ten thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men who
+have money to invest.
+
+"But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a despoiler,
+one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource into dollars
+as fast as he can, even though those operations make both land and water
+barren. You must remember until recently the government of Alaska as
+manipulated by Washington politicians was little better than that
+against which the American colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard thing for
+one to say about the country he loves, isn't it? And John Graham stands
+for the worst--he and the money which guarantees his power.
+
+"As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics,
+that capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be
+interested. Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate
+bureaus at Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is
+it a wonder the patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like John
+Graham, dishonest and corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to
+work in?
+
+"But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska's interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of
+the Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska
+is a mighty empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go
+ahead in spite of all our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear.
+Some day--"
+
+Suddenly he caught himself. "There--I'm talking politics, and I should
+entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things," he
+apologized. "Shall we go to the lower decks?"
+
+"Or the open air," she suggested. "I am afraid this smoke is upsetting
+me."
+
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to the
+thickness of the air. Rossland's inexplicable rudeness had disturbed her
+more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+
+"There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?" he
+asked, when they were outside. "The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are--well--unusually good-looking, the Captain says."
+
+"And he has already made me acquainted with them," she laughed softly.
+"Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them. I had
+breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake."
+
+"The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before--"
+
+"You noticed my absence?" she asked demurely.
+
+"It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought, I
+think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if you
+were ill."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it
+would be only charity and good-will to change seats with him."
+
+"In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer."
+
+"Probably not."
+
+"Have they ever suffered?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+"When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?"
+
+"I haven't seen them."
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+
+"Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking
+me to my cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck."
+
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. "What is your room?"
+she asked.
+
+"Twenty-seven, Miss Standish."
+
+"This deck?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her
+hand, did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and
+lighted a fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once,
+as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his
+cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These
+were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen
+before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington.
+
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary
+Standish was asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by
+the recurring insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a
+clever girl, he admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and
+she had told him nothing, while he had been quite garrulous. He was a
+little ashamed when he recalled how he had unburdened his mind to a girl
+who could not possibly be interested in the political affairs of John
+Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his fault. She had fairly
+catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under the
+circumstances, he thought.
+
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole. Only
+the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the
+last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears. The ship, at
+last, was asleep. The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting
+the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark. Out
+of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out
+faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island. And he wondered, knowing the
+perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider than the length of the
+ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course instead of going around
+by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land was more distant now, but
+the _Nome_ was still pushing ahead under slow bell, and he could smell
+the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of the scent of forests that
+came from both east and west.
+
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps.
+They seemed to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a
+man's voice--and in answer to it a woman's. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of
+voices. In silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him
+in the moonlight. One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was
+Rossland, who had stared at her so boldly in the smoking-room.
+
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary
+Standish or Graham's agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud
+and humbug, and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew
+more about Rossland than she had allowed him to believe. She had not
+lied to him. She had said nothing at all--except to restrain him from
+demanding an apology. Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but
+beyond that fact her affairs had nothing to do with his own business in
+life. Possibly she and Rossland had quarreled, and now they were making
+up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of him to think over the matter
+at all.
+
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great
+desire to sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with
+the soothing movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical
+thrum of it. And it was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going
+home. How infernally long those seven months had been, down in the
+States! And how he had missed everyone he had ever known--even
+his enemies!
+
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of
+miles away--the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the
+Endicott Mountains, and "Alan's Range" at the beginning of them. Spring
+was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like
+corn from a hopper.
+
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people--the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as
+he did. He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief herdsmen,
+would care for things as well as himself. But much could happen in seven
+months. Nawadlook, the little beauty of his distant kingdom, was not
+looking well when he left. He was worried about her. The pneumonia of
+the previous winters had left its mark. And Keok, her rival in
+prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how Tautuk's sometimes
+hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a little heart-breaker
+and had long reveled in Tautuk's sufferings. An archangel of iniquity,
+Alan thought, as he grinned--but worth any man's risk of life, if he had
+but a drop of brown blood in him! As for his herds, they had undoubtedly
+fared well. Ten thousand head was something to be proud of--
+
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door
+and had paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each
+time they had passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a
+sound under him. He heard movement then, a swift, running movement--and
+he switched on his light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was
+there. The long corridor was empty. And then--a distance away--he heard
+the soft opening and closing of another door.
+
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He
+picked it up and reentered his room. It was a woman's handkerchief. And
+he had seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that
+evening in the smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should
+now find it at his door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan
+experienced a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment--also a
+certain resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in spite
+of himself was not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a certain
+point, had been fairly entertaining. It was true he might have passed a
+pleasanter hour recalling old times with Stampede Smith, or discussing
+Kadiak bears with the English earl, or striking up an acquaintance with
+the unknown graybeard who had voiced an opinion about John Graham. But
+he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he holding Mary Standish
+accountable for them. It was, last of all, the handkerchief that
+momentarily upset him.
+
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking
+affair, to be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous
+diminutiveness. As the question came to him, he was wondering how even
+as dainty a nose as that possessed by Mary Standish could be much
+comforted by it. But it was pretty. And, like Mary Standish, there was
+something exquisitely quiet and perfect about it, like the simplicity of
+her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It was a thought that came to
+him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying bit of fabric on
+the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the dropping of
+it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At least he told
+himself so. And he also assured himself, with an involuntary shrug of
+his shoulders, that any woman or girl had the right to pass his door if
+she so desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The
+argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in
+mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman--and such an
+absurdly inconsequential thing as a handkerchief.
+
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and
+Nawadlook and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given
+the priceless heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real,
+with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook's big, soft
+eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as
+usual over the heartlessness of Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that gave
+out the peculiar sound of bells, and to this Amuk Toolik was dancing the
+Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in exaggerated admiration. Even
+in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was happening, and that out of
+the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was enjoying Tautuk's jealousy.
+Tautuk was so stupid he would never understand. That was the funny part
+of it. And he beat his drum savagely, scowling so that he almost shut
+his eyes, while Keok laughed outright.
+
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship's
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his
+watch. Tautuk's drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it was
+four o'clock in the morning.
+
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a
+chill air which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few
+minutes after awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and
+he got up quietly and dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar he
+had laid aside at midnight. Not until he had finished dressing did he
+notice the handkerchief on the table. If its presence had suggested a
+significance a few hours before, he no longer disturbed himself by
+thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the girl's part, that was
+all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the crumpled bit of cambric
+in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted.
+Through the ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty chairs,
+and lights burning dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and the
+drifting warmth of the Japan current had brought an early spring to the
+Alexander Archipelago, and May had stolen much of the flowering softness
+of June. But the dawns of these days were chilly and gray. Mists and
+fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke rolled down the sides
+of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the inner waters
+felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery
+of it was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure. He
+could feel the care with which the _Nome_ was picking her way northward.
+Her engines were thrumming softly, and her movement was a slow and
+cautious glide, catlike and slightly trembling, as if every pound of
+steel in her were a living nerve widely alert. He knew Captain Rifle
+would not be asleep and that straining eyes were peering into the white
+gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them, hazardously near,
+must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the still more
+pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that deadly
+finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they must
+creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager
+for his work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except
+that they were Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide
+tundras, and the mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His
+blood sang to the surety of it now, and for that reason he was not sorry
+he had spent seven months of loneliness in the States. He had proved
+with his own eyes that the day was near when Alaska would come into her
+own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its romance, its thrill, but
+what was all the gold the mountains might possess compared with this
+greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the people he
+had met in the south had thought only of gold when they learned he was
+from Alaska. Always gold--that first, and then ice, snow, endless
+nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning everlastingly
+upon a blasted land in which men fought against odds and only the
+fittest survived. It was gold that had been Alaska's doom. When people
+thought of it, they visioned nothing beyond the old stampede days, the
+Chilkoot, White Horse, Dawson, and Circle City. Romance and glamor and
+the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs. But they were beginning
+to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even the Government was waking
+up, after proving there was something besides graft in railroad building
+north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen at Washington had
+listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen. And the beef
+barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him off and had offered a
+fortune for Lomen's forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward
+Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening. Absolute proof.
+
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist
+into the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore
+Roosevelt for putting what they called "the conservation shackles" on
+their country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt's far-sightedness had
+kept the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what
+money-power and greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today,
+but lay ready to serve with all her mighty resources the mother who had
+neglected her for a generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this
+opening up of a great land. It must be done resourcefully and with
+intelligence. Once the bars were down, Roosevelt's shadow-hand could not
+hold back such desecrating forces as John Graham and the syndicate he
+represented.
+
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in
+the sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed
+plunderers. And it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging work
+of these financial brigands in a dozen states during the past
+winter--states raped of their forests, their lakes and streams robbed
+and polluted, their resources hewn down to naked skeletons. He had been
+horrified and a little frightened when he looked over the desolation of
+Michigan, once the richest timber state in America. What if the
+Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing to happen in
+Alaska? Politics--and money--were already fighting for just that thing.
+
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was _his_
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a
+physical thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if
+it took every year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to
+the world that the millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north
+were not the cast-off ends of the earth. They would populate them, and
+the so-called "barrens" would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of
+reindeer herds as the American plains had never thundered to the beat of
+cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure he would find at the end of
+this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money, simply as money, he
+hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped him; the passion
+to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into its own,
+and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a half of
+that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was down.
+
+The tolling of the ship's bell roused him from the subconscious struggle
+into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he had no
+sympathy with himself when he fell into one of these mental spasms, as
+he called them. Without knowing it, he was a little proud of a certain
+dispassionate tolerance which he possessed--a philosophical mastery of
+his emotions which at times was almost cold-blooded, and which made some
+people think he was a thing of stone instead of flesh and blood. His
+thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly disturbing sensation passed
+through him now, when he found that unconsciously his fingers had twined
+themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket. He drew it out
+and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then, with a
+grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his
+pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of the ship.
+
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have been
+had he possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at all, for
+that matter--even an uncle or two who might have been interested in him.
+He remembered his father vividly, his mother a little less so, because
+his mother had died when he was six and his father when he was twenty.
+It was his father who stood out above everything else, like the
+mountains he loved. The father would remain with him always, inspiring
+him, urging him, encouraging him to live like a gentleman, fight like a
+man, and die at last unafraid. In that fashion the older Alan Holt had
+lived and died. But his mother, her face and voice scarcely remembered
+in the passing of many years, was more a hallowed memory to him than a
+thing of flesh and blood. And there had been no sisters or brothers.
+Often he had regretted this lack of brotherhood. But a sister.... He
+grunted his disapprobation of the thought. A sister would have meant
+enchainment to civilization. Cities, probably. Even the States. And
+slavery to a life he detested. He appreciated the immensity of his
+freedom. A Mary Standish, even though she were his sister, would be a
+catastrophe. He could not conceive of her, or any other woman like her,
+living with Keok and Nawadlook and the rest of his people in the heart
+of the tundras. And the tundras would always be his home, because his
+heart was there.
+
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd figure
+crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light that
+came with the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not
+asleep. He paused, unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself,
+groaned, and stood up. He was a little man, and his fiercely bristling
+red whiskers, wet with dew, were luxuriant enough for a giant. His head
+of tawny hair, bristling like his whiskers, added to the piratical
+effect of him above the neck, but below that part of his anatomy there
+was little to strike fear into the hearts of humanity. Some people
+smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their man, laughed
+outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny on
+Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart
+was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this
+little man who had written his name across so many pages of
+Alaskan history.
+
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest
+gunman between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic reminder
+of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his
+gang--days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a
+stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the same breath
+with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and
+a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their compasses by
+his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he stood in the gray
+of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew that Stampede Smith
+was broke again.
+
+"Good morning," he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days. "Why
+so much loneliness, Stampede?"
+
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale's under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. "I'm thinkin'," said he, "what a fool thing is money. Good
+mornin', Alan!"
+
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the
+lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede's
+last asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside him, so that
+their shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+
+"Alan," said Stampede, "it ain't often I have a big thought, but I've
+been having one all night. Ain't forgot Bonanza, have you?"
+
+Alan shook his head. "As long as there is an Alaska, we won't forget
+Bonanza, Stampede."
+
+"I took a million out of it, next to Carmack's Discovery--an' went
+busted afterward, didn't I?"
+
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+
+"But that wasn't a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the Divide,"
+Stampede continued ruminatively. "Ain't forgot old Aleck McDonald, the
+Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the 'wash' of Ninety-eight we took up
+seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked thirty of doin'
+the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single clean-up, and that
+was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old Aleck went
+busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle. I
+had to grub-stake."
+
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted the
+first rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them and
+the unseen mountain tops.
+
+"Five times after that I made strikes and went busted," he said a little
+proudly. "And I'm busted again!"
+
+"I know it," sympathized Alan.
+
+"They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an' Frisco," chuckled
+Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully, "an' then bought me a
+ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them, don't you think? Couldn't have been
+more decent. I knew that fellow Kopf had a heart. That's why I trusted
+him with my money. It wasn't his fault he lost it."
+
+"Of course not," agreed Alan.
+
+"And I'm sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a fact."
+
+"You killed him?"
+
+"Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran's place. Mighty sorry. Didn't think then how decent it was of
+him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the moment.
+He did me a favor in cleanin' me, Alan. He did, so help me! You don't
+realize how free an' easy an' beautiful everything is until
+you're busted."
+
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw
+the grim look in Alan's eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other's arm and shook it.
+
+"Alan, I mean it!" he declared. "That's why I think money is a fool
+thing. It ain't _spendin'_ money that makes me happy. It's _findin'_
+it--the gold in the mountains--that makes the blood run fast through my
+gizzard. After I've found it, I can't find any use for it in particular.
+I want to go broke. If I didn't, I'd get lazy and fat, an' some
+newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I'd die. They're doing a lot
+of that operatin' down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and they
+wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen to a
+man when he's got money!"
+
+"You mean all that, Stampede?"
+
+"On my life, I do. I'm just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that's going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody'll grub-stake me in Nome."
+
+"They won't," said Alan suddenly. "Not if I can help it. Stampede, I
+want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains. I've got
+ten thousand reindeer up there. It's No Man's Land, and we can do as we
+please in it. I'm not after gold. I want another sort of thing. But I've
+fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow playmate of yours.
+It's a new country. You've never seen it. God only knows what you may
+find. Will you come?"
+
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede's eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+
+"Will I _come?_ Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me. Say
+it all over ag'in."
+
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last of
+the fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges
+rose up against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was
+flashing in rose and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded.
+Speech was unnecessary. They both understood, and the thrill of the life
+they loved passed from one to the other in the grip of their hands.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There
+were only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other
+belonged to Mary Standish. There was something almost aggressively
+suggestive in their simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He
+nodded as he sat down, a flash of amusement in his eyes when he observed
+the look in the young engineer's face. It was both envious and accusing,
+and yet Alan was sure the young man was unconscious of betraying an
+emotion. The fact lent to the eating of his grapefruit an accompaniment
+of pleasing and amusing thought. He recalled the young man's name. It
+was Tucker. He was a clean-faced, athletic, likable-looking chap. And an
+idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan told himself. The young
+engineer was more than casually interested in Mary Standish; he was in
+love. It was not a discovery which Alan made. It was a decision, and as
+soon as possible he would remedy the unfortunate omission of a general
+introduction at their table by bringing the two together. Such an
+introduction would undoubtedly relieve him of a certain responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him.
+
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get
+the empty chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be
+obliterated, and when other chairs became vacant as their owners left
+the table, this one straight across from him continued to thrust itself
+upon him. Until this morning it had been like other empty chairs. Now it
+was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he had no desire to be so
+constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve o'clock tryst of Mary
+Standish with Graham's agent, Rossland.
+
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of
+seeing Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had
+made their exit through the door leading from the dining salon when the
+young engineer paused. Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his
+face. In a moment it was explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed
+Tucker without appearing to notice him, and gave Alan a cool little nod
+as she seated herself at the table. She was very pale. He could see
+nothing of the flush of color that had been in her cheeks last night. As
+she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool of sunlight
+played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her eyes.
+They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without embarrassment.
+Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It seemed
+inconceivable that such eyes could play a part in fraud and deception,
+yet he was in possession of quite conclusive proof of it. If they had
+lowered themselves an instant, if they had in any way betrayed a shadow
+of regret, he would have found an apology. Instead of that, his fingers
+touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+
+"Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?" he asked politely.
+
+"Not at all," she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. "I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I
+am afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?"
+
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. "This is the first morning
+I have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have
+slept well. Is this yours, Miss Standish?"
+
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his
+fingers. In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was
+the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was
+disappointed not to catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+"It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?"
+
+"In front of my cabin door a little after midnight."
+
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some
+kind of result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on
+her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the
+clear depths of her eyes. Her level glance was as innocent as a child's
+and as he looked at her, he thought of a child--a most beautiful
+child--and so utterly did he feel the discomfiture of his mental
+analysis of her that he rose to his feet with a frigid bow.
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Holt," she said. "You can imagine my sense of
+obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the
+ship with me. And this is my favorite."
+
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard
+her give the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot,
+but the flush of it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable
+sensation of her eyes following him as he stalked through the door. He
+did not look back. Something was wrong with him, and he knew it. This
+chit of a girl with her smooth hair and clear eyes had thrown a grain of
+dust into the satisfactory mechanism of his normal self, and the grind
+of it was upsetting certain specific formulae which made up his life. He
+was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself names.
+
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning
+match. He looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a
+smile on his lips. In his eyes was a coolly appraising look as
+he nodded.
+
+"Beg pardon." The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him over
+Rossland's shoulder. He might as well have said, "I'm sorry, Boy, but
+you must keep out of my way."
+
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness,
+Keok had told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a humor
+to kill. They were like that now as they flashed their smile at
+Rossland. The sneering twist left Rossland's lips as he entered the
+dining-room.
+
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham's
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the
+tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served t�te-�-t�te
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted
+him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table
+before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he
+understood the situation.
+
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland's interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was
+successful, and he was about to extinguish the burning end when he
+hesitated and held it until the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish
+was coming through the door. Amazed by the suddenness of her appearance,
+he made no movement except to drop the match. Her eyes were flaming, and
+two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw him and gave the slightest
+inclination to her head as she passed. When she had gone, he could not
+resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland was seated in a
+chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly engaged in
+looking over the breakfast card.
+
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he
+was a little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in upon
+Rossland. At the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing
+reception which Miss Standish had evidently given to the dislikable
+individual who had jostled him in passing.
+
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the
+snowy peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach
+out his arms and touch them. The _Nome_ appeared to be drifting in the
+heart of a paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the mainland;
+so close on the other hand that he could hear the shout of a man was
+Douglas Island, and ahead, reaching out like a silver-blue ribbon was
+Gastineau Channel. The mining towns of Treadwell and Douglas were
+in sight.
+
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+
+"That's Bill Treadwell's place," he said. "Once the richest gold mines
+in Alaska. They're flooded now. I knew Bill when he was worrying about
+the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand pair an' patched
+'em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four hundred dollars
+somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named French
+Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An' there was a time when there were
+nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It's worth it."
+
+Somehow Stampede's voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and Alan
+wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment pressing
+upon him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual interest for
+Mary Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into an old
+acquaintance and permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased with the
+discovery, and yet he was compelled to acknowledge the truth of it. The
+grain of dust had become more than annoying. It did not wear away, as he
+had supposed it would, but was becoming an obsessive factor in his
+thoughts. And the half-desire it built up in him, while aggravatingly
+persistent, was less disturbing than before. The little drama in the
+dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of himself. He liked
+fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in her quiet prettiness,
+had shown her mettle in those few moments when he had seen her flashing
+eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland. He began to look for
+Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty,
+literally terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go
+down to the lower deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship
+gathered near the gangway with their luggage. Alan was about to pass
+them when he suddenly stopped. A short distance from him, where he could
+see every person who disembarked, stood Rossland. There was something
+grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled his watch-fob and eyed
+the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an unexpected thrill through
+Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He stepped to
+Rossland's side and touched his arm.
+
+"Watching for Miss Standish?" he asked.
+
+"I am." There was no evasion in Rossland's words. They possessed the
+hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable authority
+behind him.
+
+"And if she goes ashore?"
+
+"I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so--"
+
+"No, Miss Standish hasn't done that."
+
+"Then please attend to your own business. If you haven't enough to take
+up your time, I'll lend you some books. I have several in my cabin."
+
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not
+follow. There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to
+imprecate but his own folly. Rossland's words were not an insult. They
+were truth. He had deliberately intruded in an affair which was
+undoubtedly of a highly private nature. Possibly it was a domestic
+tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation swept over him, and he was
+glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He tried to whistle as
+he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he detested the
+man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted to be
+amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it was
+something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found old
+Donald Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the
+_Nome_ had landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way
+out of Gastineau Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the
+smoking-room and remained there until luncheon hour.
+
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with
+her back toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up
+behind her, so near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across at
+her and smiled as he seated himself. She returned the smile, but it
+seemed to him an apologetic little effort. She did not look well, and
+her presence at the table struck him as being a brave front to hide
+something from someone. Casually he looked over his left shoulder.
+Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the room.
+Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes
+shaded her eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her
+hair first. It had a peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been
+observant enough to know that she had rearranged it since breakfast, and
+the smooth coils twisted in mysterious intricacy at the crown of her
+head were like softly glowing velvet. The ridiculous thought came to
+him that he would like to see them tumbling down about her. They must be
+even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light
+fell upon her through the window. But when she looked across at him
+again, he caught for an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He
+began telling her something about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he
+had seen nothing which she might want to conceal. The light in her eyes
+changed, and it was almost a glow of gratitude he caught in them. He had
+broken a tension, relieved her of some unaccountable strain she was
+under. He noticed that her ordering of food was merely a pretense. She
+scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person at the table
+had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about her
+lack of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an
+angelic virtue.
+
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a
+splendid effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the
+breaking-point. When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own
+chair. At the same time he saw Rossland get up and advance rather
+hurriedly from the opposite side of the room. The girl passed through
+the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps behind, and Alan came
+last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was amusing in a way,
+yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim line about the
+corners of his mouth.
+
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining
+salon to the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon
+Rossland. For only an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they
+flashed past him, and with a swift movement she came toward Alan. A
+flush had leaped into her cheeks, but there was no excitement in her
+voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and clearly heard
+by Rossland.
+
+"I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt," she said. "Will you
+take me on deck, and tell me about it?"
+
+Graham's agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few hours
+before at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a meddler,
+words refused to form quickly on Alan's lips. Before he was ready with
+an answer Mary Standish had confidently taken his arm. He could see the
+red flush deepening in her upturned face. She was amazingly unexpected,
+bewilderingly pretty, and as cool as ice except for the softly glowing
+fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland staring with his cigarette half
+poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in the face of danger, and
+he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed softly. She gave his
+arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past Rossland, amazed but
+obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that sent a gentle thrill
+through him.
+
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: "You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt."
+
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm,
+were like a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer see
+them, unless he had followed. The girl had played her part, and a second
+time he had accepted the role of a slow-witted fool. But the thought did
+not anger him. There was a remarkable element of humor about it for him,
+viewing himself in the matter, and Mary Standish heard him chuckling as
+they came out on deck.
+
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. "It isn't funny," she
+reproved. "It is tragic to be bored by a man like that."
+
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask,
+and he wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her
+know he had seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at
+her, and she met his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him, and
+her eyes, he thought, were the loveliest liars he had ever looked into.
+He felt the stir of an unusual sentiment--a sort of pride in her, and he
+made up his mind to say nothing about Rossland. He was still absurdly
+convinced that he had not the smallest interest in affairs which were
+not entirely his own. Mary Standish evidently believed he was blind,
+and he would make no effort to spoil her illusion. Such a course would
+undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the
+stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the
+ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she
+looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like
+a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both
+sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy
+crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting
+season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the
+liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to
+float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer
+thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a
+living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan
+wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to
+swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded
+door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into
+the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and
+thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place. Alan turned
+to speak, but what he saw in the girl's face held him silent. Her lips
+were parted, and she was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen
+before her eyes, something that bewildered her and even startled her.
+
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a
+tense whisper: "I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago.
+Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I have
+lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it--"
+
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at him,
+and he was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+
+"I must go ashore here," she said. "I didn't know I would find it so
+soon. Please--"
+
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and saw
+the strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance he
+saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand
+was resting confidently in the crook of Alan's arm. "Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?" she asked with an icy little laugh.
+
+"Yes," he answered rather unexpectedly. "And some day, if the right
+opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man--the man who
+murdered my father."
+
+She gave a little gasp of horror. "Your father--was--murdered--"
+
+"Indirectly--yes. It wasn't done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money
+was the weapon. Somebody's money. And John Graham was the man who
+struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland--"
+
+"_No_." Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away.
+"I don't want you to ask an explanation of him," she said. "If he should
+make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway, Mr. Holt. That will
+be pleasanter."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western
+mountains, and the _Nome_ was churning slowly back through the narrow
+water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon
+fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to
+an impulse which he could not understand, and which in ordinary moments
+he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish ashore. For two
+hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions and listening to
+him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to him before. He
+had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured the wind-racked
+ca�on where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a day, from
+hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old days of
+romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and his gang
+of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy's sunken grave as the
+first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about _himself_.
+And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had
+confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and
+beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to the
+indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart
+beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the Endicott
+Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people. There, he
+had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in her eyes
+and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on until he
+forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship's gangway to see when they
+returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and the
+miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the
+building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few
+years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and
+civilization and the breaking down of nature's last barriers before
+science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her
+gray eyes.
+
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the _Nome_ looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight,
+doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+
+"I would always love tents and old trails and nature's barriers. I envy
+Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am
+sorry to see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this
+man--John Graham!"
+
+Her words startled him.
+
+"And I want you to tell me what he is doing--with his money--now." Her
+voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed, was clenched at the
+edge of the rail.
+
+"He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case
+well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children
+by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives
+have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them die."
+
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+
+"And that--is all?"
+
+He laughed grimly. "Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in
+Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a
+gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men like
+John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and graft
+will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation would
+not be able to replace."
+
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
+ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
+of evening. "I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney," she said.
+"I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
+woman like her. She could fight, couldn't she? She could make a
+man's fight?"
+
+"Yes, and did make it."
+
+"And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck."
+
+"Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger."
+
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
+which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+
+"Then this, too, for luck--the luck of Mary Standish," she laughed
+softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
+done. "It isn't melodrama," she said. "I mean it. And I believe in it. I
+want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this gateway
+to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
+at the bottom of the Yukon."
+
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
+moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. "Thank you for the
+wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget
+it. It is dinner time. I must say good night."
+
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In
+returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was
+irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan's
+look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan's
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was
+a growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of
+poise which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be, but
+a cool brain was at work inside his head--a brain not easily disturbed
+by unimportant things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an agent of
+John Graham Alan looked upon him as an enemy, and as an acquaintance of
+Mary Standish he was as much of a mystery as the girl herself. And only
+now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning to sense the presence of a real
+authority behind Rossland's attitude.
+
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing
+about the relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it
+involved himself, and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to
+please him. He could see no sport in an adventure of the kind it
+suggested, and the possibility that he had been misjudged by both
+Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger into his cheeks. He
+cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to wipe him out of
+existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of
+way. He had made no effort to discover her history. He had not
+questioned her. At no time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon her
+personal affairs, and at no time had she offered information about
+herself, or an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had
+presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how
+dangerously near that hazard he had been--and he admired her for the
+splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the
+possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the
+dining salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any
+increasing intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his
+experience had been, he resented the idea of being commandeered at
+unexpected moments. Had Mary Standish read his thoughts, her bearing
+toward him during the dinner hour could not have been more satisfying.
+There was, in a way, something seductively provocative about it. She
+greeted him with the slightest inclination of her head and a cool little
+smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either from him or from
+his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate reserve.
+
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he
+found himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation he
+had set down for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing
+glimpses at her hair when her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed
+it tonight until it was like softest velvet, with rich glints in it, and
+the amazing thought came to him that it would be sweetly pleasant to
+touch with one's hand. The discovery was almost a shock. Keok and
+Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never thought of it in this
+way. And he had never thought of Keok's pretty mouth as he was thinking
+of the girl's opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary
+Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance.
+
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as
+if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He
+tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an
+hour later, feeding a captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he
+thought, that a captive bear should be going north. Stampede explained.
+The animal was a pet and belonged to the Thlinkit Indians. There were
+seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed that the two girls watched
+him closely and whispered together. They were very pretty, with large,
+dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not look at him
+at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned away.
+
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they
+discussed the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan's
+plans for the future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his cabin
+to get maps and photographs. Stampede's eyes glistened as his mind
+seized upon the possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast land.
+An unknown country. And Alan was its first pioneer. The old thrill ran
+in Stampede's blood, and its infectiousness caught Alan, so that he
+forgot Mary Standish, and all else but the miles that lay between them
+and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward Peninsula. It was midnight when
+Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his
+body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through
+his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the
+comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and
+half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the
+stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled with an unspoken
+thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another generation and there
+would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more and the world would
+lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention and what the human
+race called progress.
+
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in
+that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in
+the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown.
+After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of
+unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth
+would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what
+she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been
+_her_ thought, too--that she would always love tents and old trails and
+nature's barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and automobiles
+come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had guessed what
+was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.
+
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was
+a quarter after twelve o'clock, an unusual hour for someone to be
+tapping at his door.
+
+It was repeated--a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again,
+quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened
+the door.
+
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And
+then he saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without
+waiting for him to speak or give her permission to enter. And it was
+Mary Standish herself who closed the door, while he stared at her in
+stupid wonderment--and stood there with her back against it, straight
+and slim and deathly pale.
+
+"May I come in?" she asked.
+
+"My God, you're in!" gasped Alan. "_You're in_."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to
+his room, entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of
+invitation from him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first
+explosion of astonishment he stood mute, while the girl looked at him
+steadily and her breath came a little quickly. But she was not excited.
+Even in his amazement he could see that. What he had thought was fright
+had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her so white, and never
+had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as while she stood
+there in these astounding moments with her back against the door.
+
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even
+her lips were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear and
+unafraid now, and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness of
+purpose that staggered him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal
+resentment, began to possess him as he waited for her to speak. This, at
+last, was the cost of his courtesies to her, The advantage she was
+taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and his mind flashed to
+the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the door.
+
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her
+quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips
+tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes
+tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her
+face in her hands, but looked at him bravely while the tear-drops
+glistened like diamonds on her cheeks. He felt his heart give way. She
+read his thoughts, had guessed his suspicion, and he was wrong.
+
+"You--you will have a seat, Miss Standish?" he asked lamely, inclining
+his head toward the cabin chair.
+
+"No. Please let me stand." She drew in a deep breath. "It is late, Mr.
+Holt?"
+
+"Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this," he assured her.
+"Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish."
+
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb
+in her white throat.
+
+"Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have
+come to your cabin at midnight--even aboard ship? And it is that with
+me--a matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that
+decision. I could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight."
+
+"And why me?" he asked. "Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some
+other? Is it because--"
+
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes, as
+if for an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but it
+was gone as quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without
+emotion, she answered him.
+
+"I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to
+you as I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances, if
+I were a man. If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind
+about you is taking an advantage--then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But
+I am not sorry. I trust you. I know you will believe me good until I am
+proved bad. I have come to ask you to help me. Would you make it
+possible for another human being to avert a great tragedy if you found
+it in your power to do so?"
+
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing
+such a situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he
+would have called any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door
+and show his visitor out. But such a thought did not occur to him now.
+He was thinking of the handkerchief he had found the preceding midnight.
+Twice she had come to his cabin at a late hour.
+
+"It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible," he said,
+answering her question. "Tragedy is a nasty thing."
+
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the
+tilt of her dainty chin a bit higher.
+
+"Of course, I can't pay you," she said. "You are the sort of man who
+would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you to do.
+But I must have help. If I don't have it, and quickly"--she shuddered
+slightly and tried to smile--"something very unpleasant will happen, Mr.
+Holt," she finished.
+
+"If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle--"
+
+"No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I may
+have your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you, whether
+you help me or not. Will you give me that pledge?"
+
+"Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish."
+
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not
+see the sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or
+the quicker throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint flush
+was gathering in her cheeks.
+
+"I want to leave the ship," she said.
+
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+
+"And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night--before we reach
+Cordova."
+
+"Is that--your problem?" he demanded, astonished.
+
+"No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am
+dead. I can not reach Cordova alive."
+
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were
+insane. Her quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching
+steadiness. His brain all at once was crowded with questioning, but no
+word of it came to his lips.
+
+"You can help me," he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm voice,
+softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door. "I
+haven't a plan. But I know you can arrange one--if you will. It must
+appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard, anything,
+just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can not
+tell you why. I can not. Oh, I _can not_."
+
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant,
+leaving it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He
+could see courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+
+"I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I am
+mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven't gone
+to Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only answer I
+can make is that I have come to you because you are the only man in the
+world--in this hour--that I have faith in. Some day you will understand,
+if you help me. If you do not care to help me--"
+
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+
+"Yes, if I don't? What will happen then?"
+
+"I shall be forced to the inevitable," she said. "It is rather unusual,
+isn't it, to be asking for one's life? But that is what I mean."
+
+"I'm afraid--I don't quite understand."
+
+"Isn't it clear, Mr. Holt? I don't like to appear spectacular, and I
+don't want you to think of me as theatrical--even now. I hate that sort
+of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it is impossible
+for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to disappear, help
+me to live--and at the same time give all others the impression that I
+am dead--then I must do the other thing. I must really die."
+
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the
+shoulders and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of
+a child.
+
+"You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat
+of suicide?"
+
+"If you want to call it that--yes."
+
+"And you expect me to believe you?"
+
+"I had hoped you would."
+
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed
+her and half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the smallest
+effort to work upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved utterly.
+But he was not blind to the fact that she was making a brave fight, even
+though a lie was behind it, and with a consciousness of pride that
+bewildered him.
+
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going on
+within him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She had
+stated the facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her long
+lashes glistened a little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair glowed
+softly, so softly that he would never forget it, as she stood there with
+her back against the door, nor the strange desire that came to him--even
+then--to touch it with his hand.
+
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. "It is
+Rossland," he said. "You're afraid of Rossland?"
+
+"In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it were
+not for the other."
+
+The _other_! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had
+no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+
+"What other?" he demanded.
+
+"I can not tell you. I don't want you to hate me. And you would hate me
+if I told you the truth."
+
+"Then you confess you are lying," he suggested brutally.
+
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not anger
+her or shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little handkerchief
+to her eyes, and he turned toward the open port, puffing at his cigar,
+knowing she was fighting to keep the tears back. And she succeeded.
+
+"No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you
+have given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is
+a kindness which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I
+thought--"
+
+"How could I bring about what you ask?" he interrupted.
+
+"I don't know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but I see
+now how foolish I have been. It is impossible." Her hand reached slowly
+for the knob of the door.
+
+"Yes, you are foolish," he agreed, and his voice was softer. "Don't let
+such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to your cabin and get
+a night's sleep. Don't let Rossland worry you. If you want me to settle
+with that man--"
+
+"Good night, Mr. Holt."
+
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and
+looked at him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in
+her eyes.
+
+"Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half a
+minute he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at
+ease. Mary Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left him
+like a soldier. But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught for
+an instant something which she had not betrayed in his cabin--a stab of
+what he thought was pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud
+regret, possibly a shadow of humiliation at last--or it may have been a
+pity for him. He was not sure. But it was not despair. Not once had she
+whimpered in look or word, even when the tears were in her eyes, and the
+thought was beginning to impress itself upon him that it was he--and not
+Mary Standish--who had shown a yellow streak this night. A half shame
+fell upon him as he smoked. For it was clear he had not come up to her
+judgment of him, or else he was not so big a fool as she had hoped he
+might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a loss to decide.
+
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in
+the analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and bred
+of the open country, it was as natural for him to recognize courage as
+it was for him to breathe. And the girl's courage was unusual, now that
+he had time to think about it. It was this thought of her coolness and
+her calm refusal to impose her case upon him with greater warmth that
+comforted him after a little. A young and beautiful woman who was
+actually facing death would have urged her necessity with more
+enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated it
+intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the moment,
+to give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea of a
+girl like Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously impossible.
+Her quiet and wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite care which
+she gave to herself emphasized the absurdity of such a supposition. She
+had come to him bravely. There was no doubt of that. She had merely
+exaggerated the importance of her visit.
+
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this
+conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled
+certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under
+sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd
+stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color
+to his visionings he exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled
+pipe, which he filled and lighted. Then he began walking back and forth
+in his cabin, like a big animal in a small cage, until at last he stood
+with his head half out of the open port, looking at the clear stars and
+setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift with the soft sea wind.
+
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him
+again, with sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little
+harsh with Miss Standish tonight, he would make up for it by apologizing
+tomorrow. She would probably have recovered her balance by that time,
+and they would laugh over her excitement and their little adventure.
+That is, he would. "I'm not at all curious in the matter," some
+persistent voice kept telling him, "and I haven't any interest in
+knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin." But he smoked
+viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have
+liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in
+bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish's words, "If I should make an
+explanation, you would hate me," or something to that effect. He
+couldn't remember exactly. And he didn't want to remember exactly, for
+it was none of his business.
+
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and
+half on the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began
+thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he
+figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of
+the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming. Carl
+Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska. They
+would go on to Nome together. After that he would spend a week or so in
+the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big portage to the
+Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still farther--beyond
+the last trails of civilized men--to his herds and his people. And
+Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of homesickness it
+was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams. But
+somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede
+Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok,
+laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was
+like Keok, Alan thought drowsily--she was always tormenting someone.
+
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his
+cabin, when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open
+sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white
+peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the
+sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The _Nome_ was pounding
+ahead at full speed, and Alan's blood responded suddenly to the
+impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the
+mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant
+miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were losing
+time by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with Cordova he
+thought of Mary Standish.
+
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of her.
+The thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now that the
+time of that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded moments of
+embarrassment even when he was not directly accountable for them. But
+Mary Standish saved him any qualms of conscience which he might have had
+because of his lack of chivalry the preceding night. She was at the
+table. And she was not at all disturbed when he seated himself opposite
+her. There was color in her cheeks, a fragile touch of that warm glow in
+the heart of the wild rose of the tundras. And it seemed to him there
+was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than he had ever
+seen before.
+
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had
+evidently broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was
+the first time Alan had seen her interested in this way. He had no
+intention of listening, but something perverse and compelling overcame
+his will. He discovered the lady was going up to teach in a native
+school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that for many years she had
+taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda Mulrooney. He
+gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss Robson,
+the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she possessed of
+Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an address. The girl
+hesitated, then said she was not certain of her destination, but would
+write Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+
+"You will surely keep your promise?" urged Miss Robson.
+
+"Yes, I will keep my promise."
+
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that
+he thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few
+hours' sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her
+mental attitude, and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured
+himself, could possibly see a note of tragedy in her appearance now. Nor
+was she different at luncheon or at dinner. During the day he saw
+nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of the fact that she was
+purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not displease him. It
+allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a normal sort
+of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked his
+black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of
+the ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his
+first meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked
+his two-mile promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a
+peculiar impression of aloneness. Something was missing. He did not
+acknowledge to himself what it was until, as if to convict him, he saw
+Mary Standish come out of the door leading from her cabin passageway,
+and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a moment he hesitated,
+then quietly he came up beside her.
+
+"It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish," he said, "and Cordova is
+only a few hours ahead of us."
+
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the
+shrouding darkness of the sea. "Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt," she
+repeated after him, "and Cordova is only a few hours ahead." Then, in
+the same soft, unemotional voice, she added: "I want to thank you for
+last night. You brought me to a great decision."
+
+"I fear I did not help you."
+
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he
+caught a shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+
+"I thought there were two ways," she said, "but you made me see there
+was only _one_." She emphasized that word. It seemed to come with a
+little tremble in her voice. "I was foolish. But please let us forget. I
+want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage."
+
+"You will win, Miss Standish," he said in a sure voice. "In whatever you
+undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of is
+the adventure of coming to Alaska--seeking your fortune--finding your
+life here--it will be glorious. I can assure you of that."
+
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+
+"The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under
+the mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith
+which I have. I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when
+America was very young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must
+have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung
+back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that
+sometime--somewhere--I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had
+strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is
+that faith which gives me courage to go on with my experiment.
+That--and _you_!"
+
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+
+"You--and your suspicions and your brutality," she went on, her voice
+trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before him.
+"I wasn't going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me the
+opportunity, and it may do you good--after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like
+your mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as
+clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them
+bad--and I lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when
+I came to your cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+_afraid_--fearful of something happening which you didn't want to
+happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was
+a liar, and told me so. It wasn't fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn't _fair_.
+There were things which I couldn't explain to you, but I told you
+Rossland knew. I didn't keep everything back. And I believed you were
+big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my--friendship,
+even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much faith in myself--I
+didn't think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!"
+
+"Good God!" he cried. "Listen to me--Miss Standish--"
+
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile,
+and she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he
+called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the
+passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the
+darkness, and his face as white as the girl's had been. Her words had
+held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she
+believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror. And
+she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment and
+common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool--
+
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door.
+When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried
+again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he
+was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door
+did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would
+undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology
+in words.
+
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its
+disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes,
+her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had
+faced him remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away from
+the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears like
+diamonds on her cheeks. Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it.
+Something had escaped him which he could not understand. And she was
+holding him accountable.
+
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts
+to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string
+music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the
+dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw
+Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his
+arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay
+unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland's face rested against her
+fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan
+turned away, an unpleasant thought of Rossland's association with Mary
+Standish in his mind. He strolled down into the steerage. The Thlinkit
+people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the
+stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him
+after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest
+himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was
+himself. The thrill he had always experienced with this particular
+writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even
+the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for
+a cigar--and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind
+refused to function, and there was no comfort in his cigar.
+
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously
+lied to himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a
+fight between himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his
+door. Mary Standish--the slim beauty of her--her courage--a score of
+things that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on
+his smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions
+that were struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad and
+entirely a fool, he told himself. But the assurance did him no good.
+
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made another
+effort to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o'clock music and
+dancing ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that he found
+himself becoming more interested in the first book he had started to
+read. His old satisfaction slowly returned to him. He relighted his
+cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he heard the ship's bells, eleven
+o'clock, and after that the half-hour and midnight. The printed pages
+were growing dim, and drowsily he marked his book, placed it on the
+table, and yawned. They must be nearing Cordova. He could feel the
+slackened speed of the _Nome_ and the softer throb of her engines.
+Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing inshore.
+
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman's scream. A piercing cry of
+terror, of agony--and of something else that froze the blood in his
+veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending
+in a moaning wail and a man's husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his
+window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He could not
+distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to respond. There
+came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by the pounding
+shock of reverse and the clanging alarm of a bell calling boats' crews
+to quarters.
+
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was
+overboard. And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of his
+body, for the pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an instant
+before him, and in her quiet voice she was telling him again that _this
+was the other way._ His face went white as he caught up his
+smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran down the dimly
+lighted corridor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship
+when Alan reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept
+slowly ahead against the force struggling to hold her back. He heard
+running feet, voices, and the rattle of davit blocks, and came up as the
+starboard boat aft began swinging over the smooth sea. Captain Rifle was
+ahead of him, half-dressed, and the second officer was giving swift
+commands. A dozen passengers had come from the smoking-room. There was
+only one woman. She stood a little back, partly supported in a man's
+arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at the man, and he knew
+from his appearance that she was the woman who had screamed.
+
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of
+oars, but the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to
+him distinctly in the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was the
+terrible sobbing of the woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed to
+sway under his feet. He was conscious of a crowd gathering about the
+empty davits, but he had eyes only for these two.
+
+"Was it a man--or a woman?" he asked.
+
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced
+from his lips. And the other man, with the woman's head crumpled against
+his shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+
+"A woman," he replied. "This is my wife. We were sitting here when she
+climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw
+her going."
+
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her
+eyes, but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband's arm.
+She struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to comfort
+her. And then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was haggard,
+and a glance told Alan that he knew.
+
+"Who was it?" he demanded.
+
+"This lady thinks it was Miss Standish."
+
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a
+moment in his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind
+him, and before him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed
+swiftly, with no sign of it in the immobility of his pale face.
+
+"Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then--then--"
+
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a
+choking breath:
+
+"It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering."
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and
+a strange calmness began to possess him. "You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?" he found himself saying. "Is it possible you might be
+mistaken?"
+
+"No," said the woman. "She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed
+her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I'm almost sure she smiled at
+me and was going to speak. And then--then--she was gone!"
+
+"I didn't know until my wife screamed," added the man. "I was seated
+facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind
+but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly."
+
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely
+sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had
+left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary
+Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had
+leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened
+it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the
+room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it
+from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman's scream. Mary
+Standish was gone.
+
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the
+pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted.
+Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he
+saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked
+up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little
+shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.
+
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly
+to confront Captain Rifle. The little man's face was like gray wax. For
+a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe
+crumpled in Alan's hand.
+
+"The boats got away quickly," he said in a husky voice. "We stopped
+inside the third-mile. If she can swim--there is a chance."
+
+"She won't swim," replied Alan. "She didn't jump in for that. She is
+gone."
+
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of
+his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched
+hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy
+of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of
+wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan's words. It took only a few
+seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going
+into details. The captain's hand was on Alan's arm when he finished,
+and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.
+
+"We'll talk with Rossland after the boats return," he said.
+
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held
+the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It
+took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain.
+Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a
+second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the
+passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of
+it came to him--failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the
+throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their
+eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And as
+he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an agony
+which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first
+law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the
+desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to
+rise up out of it and forgive him.
+
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask
+through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly
+coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she
+would have been right. His heart was gone.
+
+Two people were at Rossland's door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship's doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+
+"I can't rouse him," he said. "And I did not see him among the
+passengers."
+
+"Nor did I," said Alan.
+
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+
+"I think the circumstances permit," he explained. In a moment he looked
+up, puzzled. "The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in
+the lock."
+
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his
+knuckles were red. There was still no response.
+
+"Odd," he muttered.
+
+"Very odd," agreed Alan.
+
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash
+sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp,
+and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly,
+upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement
+and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.
+
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle
+close the door behind them, and from Marston's lips came a
+startled whisper:
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His
+arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the
+white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges
+and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock
+Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in that
+moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle's eyes met Alan's.
+The same thought--and in another instant disbelief--flashed from one to
+the other.
+
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. "A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not
+dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and
+dressing."
+
+"The door was locked on the inside," said Alan, as soon as the doctor
+was gone. "And the window is closed. It looks like--suicide. It is
+possible--there was an understanding between them--and Rossland chose
+this way instead of the sea?"
+
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into
+the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. "There is no knife,"
+he said stonily. And in a moment he added: "There are red stains on the
+window. It was not attempted suicide. It was--"
+
+"Murder."
+
+"Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window.
+Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a
+long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We've got to
+believe that. It was a _man_."
+
+"Of course, a man," Alan nodded.
+
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle
+made a gesture toward the door. "Better go," he advised. "This is a
+ship's matter, and you won't want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it.
+Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you."
+
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan
+passed them, and he heard the door of Rossland's room close behind him.
+The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He
+went to Mary Standish's cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings
+and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard.
+Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and
+packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and
+explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them
+to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with
+the captain.
+
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He
+nodded toward a chair.
+
+"We'll reach Cordova inside of an hour," he said. "Doctor Marston says
+Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the _Nome_ in port
+until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make
+oath to that. Have you anything--in mind?"
+
+"Only one thing," replied Alan, "a determination to go ashore as soon as
+I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it. As
+for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or
+dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon him. It was
+merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me
+our location when she leaped into the sea."
+
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let
+Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant
+to him.
+
+"We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east
+of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a
+chance. And I hope you will find her."
+
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+"It's a bad blow for the ship--her first trip," he said. "But I'm not
+thinking of the _Nome_. I'm thinking of Mary Standish. My God, it is
+terrible! If it had been anyone else--_anyone_--" His words seemed to
+choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. "It is hard
+to believe--almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill
+herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin."
+
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain
+details of the girl's visit. But a number of things which she had
+trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon
+Rossland's influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort,
+and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in
+his eyes.
+
+"You're not responsible--not so much as you believe," he said. "Don't
+take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and
+let me know. You will do that--you will let me know?"
+
+"Yes, I shall let you know."
+
+"And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his
+assailant is still on board."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: "There is
+nothing in Miss Standish's room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your
+hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into
+the sea--before she went."
+
+"Such a thought is possible," agreed Alan evasively.
+
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face
+looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. "That's all,
+Alan. God knows I'd give this old life of mine to bring her back if I
+could. To me she was much like--someone--a long time dead. That's why I
+broke ship's regulations when she came aboard so strangely at Seattle,
+without reservation. I'm sorry now. I should have sent her ashore. But
+she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to ourselves a little of
+what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you do--"
+
+"I shall send you word."
+
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle's fingers still held to Alan's as
+they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky.
+The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the
+darkened sea.
+
+"A thunder-storm," said the captain.
+
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note
+in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And
+then he said,
+
+"Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives."
+
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he
+went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the
+whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A
+vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin.
+Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin
+bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in
+Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month
+in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the
+range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government
+railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence
+still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a
+man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain
+written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to
+go ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until
+morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of
+his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for
+physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The
+desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding
+back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of a pale
+face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the dispassionate
+calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was battering down
+his stoic resistance. In an hour--since he had heard the scream of the
+woman--he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid earth under
+his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that narrow strip of
+coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And
+not until Alan's feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a
+great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After
+he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply
+of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than
+darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there
+gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him.
+The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with
+a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near,
+as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the
+earth unaware.
+
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years
+ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen,
+half a mile up the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be there,
+where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay
+until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way
+instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces
+of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the
+mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden
+glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a white
+reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea he heard
+more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between two
+great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced
+to deadly combat.
+
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder
+that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled
+away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of
+signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air
+struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the
+thrill of storm.
+
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and
+the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash
+of the elements about his father's cabin and the roaring voices of the
+ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into
+the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there
+were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others
+yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought
+through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from
+dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen's cabin.
+
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky
+wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face,
+and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he
+could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his
+bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he
+flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage to the
+floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have
+forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he and
+Alan's father had tramped the mountains together.
+
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the
+frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent
+shoulders, his massive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard
+streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung
+off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty
+shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from
+Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+
+The Swede's voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing
+the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan's face made him
+pause to hear other words than his own.
+
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea,
+bracing his arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening
+beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that
+drenched him as he stood there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan,
+a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn
+the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out
+to sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its
+downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was
+blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch Alan
+could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber
+slicker, and Olaf's great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was like
+a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable gloom he
+opened speed until the _Norden_ was shooting with the swiftness of a
+torpedo through the sea.
+
+In Olaf's cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary
+Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered
+reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet
+might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty
+years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a body washed ashore,
+and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was at the bottom of the
+sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in Alan. It quickened with
+the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the slim craft leaped through
+the water.
+
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him
+there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the
+least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept
+telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All
+through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against
+odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction
+he was going to win now--that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in
+the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the
+islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he
+found her--
+
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in moments
+it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting to keep
+out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his mental
+pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind, and
+waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her pale
+face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over the
+sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep away
+from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do.
+It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking
+down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed
+blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
+
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in
+which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to _him_
+in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the
+_Nome_. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her
+confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when
+he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word,
+proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the
+courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, "You will
+understand--tomorrow."
+
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn
+lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the
+tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf
+did not press his folly upon him, but kept the _Norden_ pointed seaward,
+adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland loomed up
+in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day the rain
+subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped. Alan threw
+off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair. White mists
+began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of light. Olaf
+grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The sun was
+breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as the mist
+dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had
+washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the
+sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his
+body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the
+mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living
+things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of
+forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from behind
+veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly--in a final triumph of the sun--the
+Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.
+
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning
+at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But
+in Alan's there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of
+sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was
+missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt
+the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met the other's
+smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to the truth.
+
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan's
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay
+naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it
+inspired by the captain of the _Nome_, as Alan had given him reason to
+believe. There was more than grimness in the other's face, and a strange
+sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the
+straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly undulating
+surface of the sea.
+
+At last he said, "If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+_out there_," and he pointed.
+
+Alan stood up.
+
+"But she wouldn't be there now," Olaf added.
+
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down--at the bottom. He
+turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains
+was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of
+an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the rocks and
+timber that came down close to the sea.
+
+"That's McCormick's," he said.
+
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf's binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman's cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who
+knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes
+shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who
+came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in
+shallow water.
+
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of
+the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly.
+Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man.
+They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the _Nome_ and
+what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and
+believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in
+his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading its
+deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were
+frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of
+pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty
+dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if
+he found the girl's body.
+
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he
+had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not
+have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in
+the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he
+would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have
+guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf's face
+McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan
+Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the most
+precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his
+services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the
+little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.
+
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled
+gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when
+she heard what had happened aboard the _Nome_. Alan left the three
+together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the
+lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed--that this girl
+whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end of
+the world to Alan Holt.
+
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch.
+He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch
+canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left
+details of the drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for
+the finding of the body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many
+women were seeking before nightfall.
+
+"And remember," Sandy told each of them, "the chances are she'll wash
+ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes
+ashore at all."
+
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast.
+He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It
+was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the
+western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains reflecting its
+glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a great sickness,
+and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept slowly into his
+body and soul a new understanding of life. There was despair in his
+face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an obstinate
+will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed their
+grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a
+consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and
+with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something
+which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave
+him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself
+seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.
+
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy's wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had
+softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others
+had been. He knew. The woman's eyes told him, the almost mothering
+eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had coffee and food
+ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what
+he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of
+the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of
+Mary Standish.
+
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause
+of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen
+McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and
+how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of
+paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a
+lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about
+children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children--a lot of them.
+Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman's face
+was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something
+wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+
+"We're building a new cabin," he said, "and there's two rooms in it
+specially for kids."
+
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that
+was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A
+moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something
+which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to pass
+to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf's eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see.
+Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely love.
+It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt, should
+think of such a matter at all.
+
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of
+certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents
+tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with
+Olaf at the wheel of the _Norden_. It was sunset when they returned, and
+in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the
+mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak
+what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan
+waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which he had
+never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once upon a
+time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to Japan. He
+emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and the
+treachery of them.
+
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if
+Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days--probably
+weeks--if it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her
+for Alan to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of
+the sea. That was what he called it--"a peaceful resting-place"--and in
+his earnestness to soothe another's grief he blundered still more deeply
+into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and
+bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond
+the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.
+
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was
+in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in
+suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to
+Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He
+went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he
+entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in
+her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her cheeks,
+and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It was
+almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+
+"You--you didn't find her?" she asked.
+
+"No." His voice was tired and a little old. "Do you think I shall ever
+find her?"
+
+"Not as you have expected," she answered quietly. "She will never come
+like that." She seemed to be making an effort. "You--you would give a
+great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?"
+
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child
+looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips
+and nodded.
+
+"Of course. Everything I possess."
+
+"You--you--loved her--"
+
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the
+probing did not sting him; it was not a woman's curiosity that inspired
+them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not
+realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for
+himself, but for someone else--aloud.
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to
+be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief
+acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick's face and
+eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which
+had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of
+this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish's belongings, and gave
+it to Sandy's wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to
+speak in a businesslike way.
+
+"Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after
+I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you
+don't find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day." It seemed
+hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: "I don't think
+I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova,
+and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you
+do find her, you will look after her yourself, won't you, Mrs.
+McCormick?"
+
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do
+what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little
+thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to
+Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by.
+Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy
+about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down
+to the beach.
+
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars,
+when the _Norden's_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan
+looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that
+lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full.
+But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away,
+that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look
+back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that
+lay beneath the mountains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+That night, in Olaf's cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his
+life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and
+that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what
+happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part
+of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his
+mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions
+and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but
+he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he
+realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote
+a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter--carefully sealed--which was not to be opened unless they found
+Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy's cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the
+final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for
+Captain Rifle's ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of
+Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told
+briefly the disappointing details of his search.
+
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely
+forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank,
+Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the
+hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan's
+intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say
+about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
+now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
+himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
+Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
+businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might
+disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes.
+In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break
+down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had
+unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry
+the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him,
+uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told him.
+
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening
+camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland.
+Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was
+primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of
+their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax,
+and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the
+swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north,
+whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he
+lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its
+hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once
+more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering
+of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him.
+He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he
+mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A
+thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when
+Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the
+next range.
+
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor,
+and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old
+days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always
+the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for
+thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and he
+was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova much
+longer. Siberia was dragging him--that forbidden world of adventure and
+mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles across the
+strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he forgot Alan's
+tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep
+Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been dreamed of in
+Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was going if
+he lived another year or two--going to find his fortune or his end in
+the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes. Twice he had tried
+it since his old comrade had died, and twice he had been driven out. The
+next time he would know how to go about it, and he invited Alan to
+go with him.
+
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night ride
+across the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred
+plains of Tibet. It stirred old desires in Alan's blood, for he knew
+that of all frontiers the Siberian would be the last and the greatest,
+and that not only men, but nations, would play their part in the
+breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of firelight in Olaf's eyes.
+
+"And if we don't go in first from _this side_, Alan, the yellow fellows
+will come out some day from _that,"_ rumbled the old sour-dough,
+striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. "And when they do, they
+won't come over to us in ones an' twos an' threes, but in millions.
+That's what the yellow fellows will do when they once get started, an'
+it's up to a few Alaska Jacks an' Tough-Nut Bills to get their feet
+planted first on the other side. Will you go?"
+
+Alan shook his head. "Some day--but not now." The old flash was in his
+eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again--the fight to do his
+bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. "But you're right about the danger," he said. "It
+won't come from Japan to California. It will pour like a flood through
+Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn't the danger of the yellow
+man alone, Olaf. You've got to combine that with Bolshevism, the menace
+of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the little neck of
+water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American continent to
+bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a century, but it's
+coming sure as God makes light--if we let Alaska go down and out. And my
+way of preventing it is different from yours."
+
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. "I'm not
+proud of the States," he went on, as if speaking to something which he
+saw in the flames. "I can't be, after the ruin their unintelligent
+propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But they're our
+salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have factions in
+Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It's going to be
+largely a matter of education. We can't take Alaska down to the
+States--we've got to bring them up to us. We must make a large part of a
+hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the
+Gulf of Anadyr. It's God's own country we have north of Fifty-eight,
+Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a
+million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in
+Alaska and at Washington won't let them come. With coal enough under our
+feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We've
+got billions in copper and oil, but can't touch them. We should have
+some of the world's greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not,
+because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn't
+conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon
+industry--but they didn't. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of
+the plains.
+
+"The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and
+common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring
+about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will
+take place right here--in Alaska--and not in Siberia. And if we
+don't win--"
+
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf's bearded
+face.
+
+"Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr," he finished. "And if it ever does come, the people of
+the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska
+could have meant to the nation."
+
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after
+that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the
+fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her
+quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the
+lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as
+she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of
+this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have
+made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It was a thought which
+brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always these visions
+which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had faced him
+in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling, and her
+eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last moment
+of her plea for life.
+
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him
+in his restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was
+looking at the stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the
+grief in his soul they were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle force
+were at work in him subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of tragedy.
+Mary Standish was with him again, between the mountains at Skagway; she
+was at his side in the heart of the tundras, the sun in her shining hair
+and eyes, and all about them the wonder of wild roses and purple iris
+and white seas of sedge-cotton and yellow-eyed daisies, and birds
+singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the birds. And he heard the
+girl's voice, answering them in her happiness and turning that happiness
+from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke, it was with a
+little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was building a fire,
+and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the mountains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new
+import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach
+and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan
+out of the pit into which he had fallen. He understood, now, how it was
+that through many long years his father had worshiped the memory of a
+woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago. Unnumbered times
+he had seen the miracle of her presence in his father's eyes, and once,
+when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled valley back in the
+mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+
+"Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek,
+with the great rock in the sun? We rested there--before you were born!"
+
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan
+recalled the strange happiness in his father's face as he had looked
+down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that
+began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan's
+heart. It would never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be
+alone. He knew at last it was an undying part of him, as it had been a
+part of his father, clinging to him in sweet pain, encouraging him,
+pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
+beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
+grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
+about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
+could see farther than others, because he had known Alan's father as a
+brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt--straight,
+clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
+Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
+awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
+his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
+of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
+Alan's, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
+together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish, just
+as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt's name sacred in his own heart.
+Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of memories,
+observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his tongue, and
+he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his mind.
+
+He talked of Siberia--always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were
+soft with the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and
+filled with stars. Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty
+castles whose battlements reached up into the cloud-draperies of the
+sky. They kept close to the mainland and among the islands, camping
+early each evening. Birds were coming northward by the thousand, and
+each night Olaf's camp-fire sent up the delicious aroma of flesh-pots
+and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time came for Olaf
+to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede's eyes, and as
+a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably come
+when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+_Norden_ until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country.
+And he was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer
+which carried mail and the necessities of life to the string of
+settlements reaching a thousand miles out into the Pacific left
+Resurrection Bay, and he was given passage. Thereafter the countless
+islands of the North Pacific drifted behind, while always northward were
+the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the ramparted ranges
+beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional volcanoes, and
+at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the clouds. First
+touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at Uyak and
+Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island of Unga,
+and thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch Harbor and
+Unalaska. Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was berthed on a
+freighter, and on the twelfth day of June set foot in Nome.
+
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its
+peculiar, black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two solitary
+brick chimneys, brought a lump of joy into his throat as he watched its
+growing outlines from the small boat that brought him ashore. He could
+see one of the only two brick chimneys in northern Alaska gleaming in
+the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away, were the ragged peaks of the
+Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to them in half an hour,
+and over all the world between seemed to hover a misty gloom. But it was
+where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and unforgetable
+memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its frame buildings, its
+crooked streets, and what to others might have been ugliness, was a warm
+and thrilling thing. For here were his _people_. Here were the men and
+women who were guarding the northern door of the world, an epic place,
+filled with strong hearts, courage, and a love of country as
+inextinguishable as one's love of life. From this drab little place,
+shut out from all the world for half the year, young men and women went
+down to southern universities, to big cities, to the glamor and lure of
+"outside." But they always came back. Nome called them. Its loneliness
+in winter. Its gray gloom in springtime. Its glory in summer and autumn.
+It was the breeding-place of a new race of men, and they loved it as
+Alan loved it. To him the black wireless tower meant more than the
+Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten church spires more than the
+architectural colossi of New York and Washington. Beside one of the
+churches he had played as a boy. He had seen the steeples painted. He
+had helped make the crooked streets. And his mother had laughed and
+lived and died here, and his father's footprints had been in the white
+sands of the beach when tents dotted the shore like gulls.
+
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He
+was unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the
+grip which men's hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs
+down in the States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement.
+Small boys ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
+grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt had
+come back from the States. Before the day was over, it was on its way to
+Shelton and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the
+beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the news of his arrival Alan
+walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke's restaurant for a cup of
+coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen's offices in the Tin
+Bank Building.
+
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days
+before, and his brothers were "in" from the big ranges over on the
+Choris Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a
+tremendously successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty
+thousand head, when the final figures were in. A hundred other herds
+were prospering, and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
+with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a million reindeer were on
+the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when
+compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five thousand!
+In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
+the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome.
+After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best
+men fighting for Alaska's salvation at Washington, word was traveling
+from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to
+range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of
+miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
+office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
+strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten dollars
+a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty dollars;
+cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
+when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters
+of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and
+in the turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man just outside
+the reach of all the milk and honey in a wonderful land. Pauperizing,
+degrading, actually killing, the political misrule that had already
+driven 25 per cent of Alaska's population from their homes was to
+continue indefinitely. A President of the United States had promised to
+visit the mighty land of the north and see with his own eyes. But would
+he come? There had been other promises, many of them, and promises had
+always been futile. But it was a hope that crept through Alaska, and
+upon this hope men whose courage never died began to build. Freedom was
+on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph ultimately, as it
+always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned in the locks which
+had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their country,
+and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they
+might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when
+it came.
+
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged,
+and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of
+gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John
+Graham--interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever
+had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous
+legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an
+aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of
+conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the
+optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days
+were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping
+through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at
+hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth, for what
+remained of Alaska's men after years of hopelessness and distress were
+fighting men. And the women who had remained with them were the mothers
+and wives of a new nation in the making.
+
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have
+given his life if a few million people in the States could have known
+these women. Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of
+half a continent--possessing the power of the ballot--would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of
+existence; Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women
+were of the kind who greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter,
+with something greater than hope in their hearts. They, too, were
+builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and side
+by side with their men-folk they went on in this epic struggle for the
+building of a nation at the top of the world.
+
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape
+his lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part of
+him, and a secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even made
+evasions when questioned about his business and experiences at Cordova
+and up the coast. Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he was away
+from other men and women. He remembered it had been that way with his
+father, who was always happiest when in the deep mountains or the
+unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with an inner gladness when his
+business was finished and the day came for him to leave Nome.
+
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula. For
+one hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge,
+four-foot railway on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan, at
+times, as though Mary Standish were with him, riding in this strange way
+through a great wilderness. He could _see_ her. That was the strange
+thing which began to possess him. There were moments when her eyes were
+shining softly upon him, her lips smiling, her presence so real he might
+have spoken to her if Lomen had not been at his side. He did not fight
+against these visionings. It pleased him to think of her going with him
+into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque "pup-mobile," losing
+herself in the mountains and in his tundras, with all the wonder and
+glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a time, like the
+unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder and glory in
+these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind, and the miracle
+of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night, as Mary Standish
+had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of June there were
+twenty hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight between the hours
+of eleven and one. Sleep was no longer a matter of the rising and
+setting of the sun, but was regulated by the hands of the watch. A world
+frozen to the core for seven months was bursting open like a
+great flower.
+
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety people
+at Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to Keewalik, on
+Kotzebue Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried them to Choris
+Peninsula, where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and his huge herd
+of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide
+his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on to greater
+haste. For the first time in months he heard the crackling thunder of
+reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like a wild call from his own
+herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end came and his
+business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It was night, as
+his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta of the Kobuk
+River with him in a lighterage company's boat. But there was no
+darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the Redstone,
+two hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river winds. They
+had supper together on the shore. After that Paul Davidovich turned back
+with the slow sweep of the current, waving his hand until he was out
+of sight.
+
+Not until the sound of the Russian's motor-boat was lost in distance did
+Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him. At
+last, after months that had seemed like so many years, he was _alone_.
+North and eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew so well, a
+hundred and fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost unmapped,
+unpeopled, right up to the doors of his range in the slopes of the
+Endicott Mountains. A little cry from his own lips gave him a start. It
+was as if he had called out aloud to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and to Keok
+and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his way home and would soon be
+there. Never had this hidden land which he had found for himself seemed
+so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something about it that
+was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to that other thing
+which had become a part of him now. It was holding out its arms to him,
+understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel strongly and swiftly
+the space between. And he was ready to answer its call.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or
+sleep. The musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin
+timber of the river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It
+was the tundra he wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his face
+to the stars. He was eager to get away from timber and to feel the
+immeasurable space of the big country, the open country, about him. What
+fool had given to it the name of _Barren Lands_? What idiots people were
+to lie about it in that way on the maps! He strapped his pack over his
+shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren Lands!
+
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight
+hours of sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their
+glory--the Barren Lands of the map-makers, _his_ paradise. On a knoll he
+stood in the golden sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and
+stood with bared head, a whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary
+Standish could have lived to see _this_! He stretched out his arms, as
+if pointing for her eyes to follow, and her name was in his heart and
+whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable the tundras reached ahead of
+him--rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and golden and a glory of
+flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever known. Under his
+feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple violets,
+their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay a
+white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees in
+between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze, was
+the cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few days
+they would be opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody
+of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly
+aglow in the sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird
+instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and
+months when there was no real night. He picked up his pack and went on.
+From a pool hidden in the lush grasses of a distant hollow came to him
+the twilight honking of nesting geese and the quacking content of wild
+ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes of a lone "organ-duck" and
+the plaintive cries of plover, and farther out, where the shadows seemed
+deepening against the rim of the horizon, rose the harsh, rolling notes
+of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And then, from a clump of
+willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush whose throat was
+tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song of a robin.
+_Night!_ Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in his face.
+_Bedtime!_ He looked at his watch.
+
+It was nine o'clock. Nine o'clock, and the flowers still answering to
+the glow of the sun! And the people down there--in the States--called it
+a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the earth, a place
+of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even
+though men called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and
+knowledge. It was humorous. And it was tragic.
+
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in this
+velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup. A
+little creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass and
+spread out his blankets. A great stillness drew in about him, broken
+only by the old squaws and the loons. At eleven o'clock he could still
+see clearly the sleeping water-fowl on the surface of the pool. But the
+stars were appearing. It grew duskier, and the rose-tint of the sun
+faded into purple gloom as pale night drew near--four hours of rest that
+was neither darkness nor day. With a pillow of sedge and grass under his
+head he slept.
+
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the
+pool, with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among
+the grasses and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that he
+traveled steadily into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and
+almost without rest. It seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that
+country where all the bird-life of the world was born, for wherever
+there was water, in the pools and little streams and the hollows between
+the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was a babel of sound. Out of
+the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the irresistible pulse of
+motherhood filling him with its strength and its courage, and whispering
+to him its everlasting message that because of the glory and need and
+faith of life had God created this land of twenty-hour day and four-hour
+twilight. In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for
+gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place
+of darkness which its light could not quite enter.
+
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless
+spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision,
+she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At
+times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when
+he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was
+he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in
+spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his lips.
+For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would have
+lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the ship. She
+had died, not for him, but _because_ of him--because, in his failure to
+live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had broken down
+what must have been her last hope and her final faith. If he had been
+less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a greater wisdom,
+she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the rose-tinted
+dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear
+stars--happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things. At least
+so he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her
+even had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to
+fight for. He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains
+that might have bound her, or other inclinations that might have led
+her. He claimed her, now that she was dead, and knew that living he
+would have possessed her. Nothing could have kept him from that. But she
+was gone. And for that he was accountable, and the fifth night he lay
+sleepless under the stars, and like a boy he cried for her with his face
+upon his arm, and when morning came, and he went on, never had the world
+seemed so vast and empty.
+
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he
+traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within
+him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra
+call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their
+happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that. Their love had
+been a part of his life, and the knowledge that his response to this
+love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled him with dread. A
+strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his head, so that
+when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had come
+to these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great tundras,
+and he had built himself a little camp among them. He loved the place.
+It had seemed to him that now and then he must visit the forlorn trees
+to give them cheer and comradeship. His father's name was carved in the
+bole of the greatest of them all, and under it the date and day when the
+elder Holt had discovered them in a land where no man had gone before.
+And under his father's name was his mother's, and under that, his own.
+He had made of the place a sort of shrine, a green and sweet-flowered
+tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song and peace in summer and the
+weird aloneness of it in winter had played their parts in the making of
+his soul. Through many months he had anticipated this hour of his
+home-coming, when in the distance he would see the beckoning welcome of
+the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills and frosted peaks of the
+Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was looking at the trees and the
+mountains, and something was lacking in the thrill of them. He came up
+from the west, between two willow ridges through which ran the little
+creek from the warm springs, and he was within a quarter of a mile of
+them when something stopped him in his tracks.
+
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment
+he knew it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him.
+This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was
+shooting firecrackers!
+
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok's mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness
+Nawadlook never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his
+home-coming with a celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably
+imported a supply of "bing-bangs" from Allakakat or Tanana. The
+oppressive weight inside him lifted, and the smile remained on his lips.
+And then as if commanded by a voice, his eyes turned to the dead
+cottonwood stub which had sentineled the little oasis of trees for many
+years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely in the breeze that came
+with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of
+him, who wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old
+happiness, and he drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that grew
+almost up to the cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would walk
+suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing
+that would amaze and delight them.
+
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He
+heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one
+of the "giants" that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
+ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then
+up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see
+Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
+as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from
+her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his sight,
+watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his way so
+that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen, within a
+dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her, and Keok was
+still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something
+about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and
+seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not
+Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The
+slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the
+glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.
+
+"Keok!"
+
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+
+And then:
+
+"Mary!" he called. "_Mary Standish_!"
+
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt's face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
+had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on
+the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his
+home-coming.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+After that one calling of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no
+movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
+temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was
+rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of
+wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to
+pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, _alive!_
+He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color come into
+it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log and came
+toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed a long
+time to Alan.
+
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating
+up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
+away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must
+have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made
+an effort to recover himself.
+
+"You almost frightened me," she said. "We have been expecting you and
+watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn't see you."
+
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same
+voice, unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him
+yesterday and with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again
+today. It was impossible for him to realize in these moments the
+immeasurable distance that lay between their viewpoints. He was simply
+Alan Holt--she was the dead risen to life. Many times in his grief he
+had visualized what he would do if some miracle could bring her back to
+him like this; he had thought of taking her in his arms and never
+letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to pass, and she was
+within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to speak.
+
+"You--Mary Standish!" he said at last. "I thought--"
+
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another
+individual within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack
+of physical expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout with
+joy, yet the directing soul of action in him was stricken. She touched
+his arm hesitatingly.
+
+"I didn't think you would care," she said. "I thought you wouldn't
+mind--if I came up here."
+
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain,
+and the touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard
+himself cry out, a strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his
+breast. He held her close, crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers
+buried in her hair, her slender body almost broken in his arms. She was
+alive--she had come back to him--and he forgot everything in these blind
+moments but that great truth which was sweeping over him in a glorious
+inundation. Then, suddenly, he found that she was fighting him,
+struggling to free herself and putting her hands against his face in her
+efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing but her eyes,
+and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of finding--but horror.
+It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms relaxed. She
+staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her breath,
+her face very white.
+
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at him,
+as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not
+taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing
+the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his
+hands mutely.
+
+"You think--I came here for _that?_" she panted.
+
+"No," he said. "Forgive me. I am sorry."
+
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of
+shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him,
+which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back
+against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together.
+Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him was
+centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
+living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
+to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
+weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
+up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
+flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
+face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
+too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
+astonishment growing in her eyes.
+
+"You are alive," he said, giving voice again to the one thought pounding
+in his brain. "_Alive!_"
+
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
+of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to
+the girl.
+
+"Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?" she asked.
+
+"Your letter? At Nome?" He repeated the words, shaking his head. "No."
+
+"And all this time--you have been thinking--I was dead?"
+
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form
+of speech.
+
+"I wrote you there," she said. "I wrote the letter before I jumped into
+the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle's ship."
+
+"I didn't get it."
+
+"You didn't get it?" There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he
+had observed it, understanding.
+
+"Then you didn't mean that just now? You didn't intend to do it? It was
+because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief
+to find me alive. That was it, wasn't it?"
+
+Stupidly he nodded again. "Yes, it was a great relief."
+
+"You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn't help me," she went
+on. "So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I
+wrote. To all the world but you I am dead--to Rossland, Captain Rifle,
+everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit
+Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and
+picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the
+boats were making their search."
+
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side
+of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few
+moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had
+done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never
+happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made it
+impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.
+
+"Now I am here," she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. "I
+didn't think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind
+afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the _Nome_. And
+so--I am your guest, Mr. Holt."
+
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she
+smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she
+belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him
+permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pass away from
+him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His
+spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during the
+past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of
+things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his
+hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her
+own in them confidently.
+
+"It was like a bolt of lightning," he said, his voice free at last and
+trembling. "Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of you,
+and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find
+you alive. And _here!_"
+
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But
+reason had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+
+"It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake
+up and find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the
+other things--"
+
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of
+tears at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a
+lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in
+her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+
+"I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step," he
+said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come. "Then
+I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!"
+
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+
+"And when I found you here, and you didn't fade away like a ghost, I
+thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been
+wrong, I guess, or I wouldn't have done _that_. You see, it puzzled me
+that a ghost should be setting off firecrackers--and I suppose that was
+the first impulse I had of making sure you were real."
+
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a
+clear, wild voice with a sweet trill in it. "_Maa-rie!_" it called.
+"_Maa-rie!_"
+
+"Supper," nodded the girl. "You are just in time. And then we are going
+home in the twilight."
+
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his place
+as home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft coils
+of her hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and soul
+filled only with the beauty of her slim figure--a glory of life where
+for a long time he had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came into an
+open, soft with grass and strewn with flowers, and in this open a man
+was kneeling beside a fire no larger than his two hands, and at his
+side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair rippling
+down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with
+Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only
+one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She dropped the
+armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for
+him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner
+of her coming, was only a moment behind. And then he was shaking hands
+with Stampede, and Keok had slipped down among the flowers and was
+crying. That was like Keok. She always cried when he went away, and
+cried when he returned; and then, in another moment, it was Keok who was
+laughing first, and Alan noticed she no longer wore her hair in braids,
+as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in doing, but had it coiled about her
+head just as Mary Standish wore her own.
+
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of
+way. No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and
+nerves were fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming
+back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an
+unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities as
+they assembled themselves. In the edge of the tundra beyond the
+cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes
+which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads. He drew off his pack
+as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks. Nawadlook
+was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began to fill a
+pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today then
+tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had
+experienced shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back
+and dragged the old Alan Holt into existence again. It was like bringing
+an intelligence out of darkness into light.
+
+It was difficult for him--afterward--to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper
+things between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful
+Mary Standish who had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon
+of the _Nome_.
+
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of
+the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the
+tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had
+been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok's suggestion
+that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how
+quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea. She had smiled at him as
+she left, and a little farther out had waved her hand at him, as Keok
+and Nawadlook both had done, but not another word had passed between
+them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of sunset Alan stood
+watching them, and would have stared without speech until they were out
+of sight, if Stampede's fingers had not gripped his arm.
+
+"Now, go to it, Alan," he said. "I'm ready. Give me hell!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that
+Stampede brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and
+awakening inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man's
+invitation.
+
+"I've been a damn fool," he confessed. "And I'm waiting."
+
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things
+began to rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he had
+been one. His mind went back to the _Nome_. It seemed only a few hours
+ago--only yesterday--that the girl had so artfully deceived them all,
+and he had gone through hell because of that deception. The trickery had
+been simple, and exceedingly clever because of its simplicity; it must
+have taken a tremendous amount of courage, now that he clearly
+understood that at no time had she wanted to die.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "why she did a thing like that?"
+
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan's mind. "I
+couldn't keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree." And he added,
+"The little witch even threatened to shoot me!"
+
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. "Begin, Alan. I'm waiting.
+Go the limit."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin' her in the bush. You can't take it out of _her_ hide,
+can you?"
+
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent.
+Mary Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a
+quarter of a mile away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They
+trotted up a low ridge and disappeared.
+
+"It's none of my business," persisted Stampede, "but you didn't seem to
+expect her--"
+
+"You're right," interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack. "I didn't
+expect her. I thought she was dead."
+
+A low whistle escaped Stampede's lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his
+shoulders. Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the
+girl who had jumped overboard from the _Nome_, and if she had kept her
+secret, it was not his business just now to explain, even though he
+guessed that Stampede's quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A
+light was beginning to dispel the little man's bewilderment as they
+started toward the Range. He had seen Mary Standish frequently aboard
+the _Nome_; a number of times he had observed her in Alan's company, and
+he knew of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore, if
+Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few hours
+after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into the
+sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to discover
+this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+
+"It beats the devil!" he exclaimed suddenly.
+
+"It does," agreed Alan.
+
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the
+happiness that possessed him, and questions which he had found no
+interest in asking when aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling
+force. Why was it so tragically important to Mary Standish that the
+world should believe her dead? What was it that had driven her to appeal
+to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What was her mysterious
+association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska's deadliest enemy, John
+Graham--the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance if opportunity ever
+came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with its insistence,
+rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible for him to make.
+Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained silent in the
+lengthening twilight, while Alan's mind struggled to bring coherence and
+reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt. Why had she come to
+_his_ cabin aboard the _Nome_? Why had she played him with such
+conspicuous intent against Rossland, and why--in the end--had she
+preceded him to his home in the tundras? It was this question which
+persisted, never for an instant swept aside by the others. She had not
+come because of love for him. In a brutal sort of way he had proved
+that, for when he had taken her in his arms, he had seen distress and
+fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and more mysterious
+force had driven her.
+
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon
+him. He was like a man who had found life after a period of something
+that was worse than death, and with his happiness he felt himself
+twisted upon an upheaval of conflicting sensations and half convictions
+out of which, in spite of his effort to hold it back, suspicion began to
+creep like a shadow. But it was not the sort of suspicion to cool the
+thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he was quite ready to concede
+that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her flight from Seattle had
+been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had happened aboard ship
+was further proof, and her presence at his range a final one. Forces had
+driven her which it had been impossible for her to combat, and in
+desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had chosen him out of
+all the world to help her; she believed in him; she had faith that with
+him no harm could come, and his muscles tightened with sudden desire to
+fight for her.
+
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras
+and the soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He
+strained his eyes to catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when
+they came up out of hollows to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of
+evening were drawing closer, and he looked in vain. Bird-song grew
+softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and pools; the fire of the
+sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling of vivid rose
+and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet day,
+and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish. What
+had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with the
+thrilling fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her would
+be explained tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in him.
+Now that she had so utterly placed herself under his protection, she
+would tell him what she had not dared to disclose aboard the _Nome_. So
+he thought only of the silvery distance of twilight that separated them,
+and spoke at last to Stampede.
+
+"I'm rather glad you brought her," he said.
+
+"I didn't bring her," protested Stampede. "She _came_." He shrugged his
+shoulders with a grunt. "And furthermore I didn't manage it. She did
+that herself. She didn't come with me. I came with _her_."
+
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he
+glared fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed
+him. Alan saw it and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His
+keen vision and sense of humor were returning.
+
+"How did it happen?"
+
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and
+drew in a deep breath.
+
+"First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn't get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn't rain. You couldn't call it that,
+Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three other
+oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming, coach
+floating, driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I got in
+for Chitina. There was one other climbed in after me, and I wondered
+what sort of fool he was. I said something about being starved or I'd
+have hung to the train. The other didn't answer. Then I began to swear.
+I did, Alan. I cursed terrible. Swore at the Government for building
+such a road, swore at the rain, an' I swore at myself for not bringin'
+along grub. I said my belly was as empty as a shot-off cartridge, and I
+said it good an' loud. I was mad. Then a big flash of lightning lit up
+the coach. Alan, it was _her_ sittin' there with a box in her lap,
+facing me, drippin' wet, her eyes shining--and she was smiling at me!
+Yessir, _smiling_."
+
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+
+Alan stared at him in amazement. "The fourth night--after--" He caught
+himself. "Go on, Stampede!"
+
+"I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin' to sneak
+out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin' come again. But it
+caught me. An' there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her saying
+she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An' she called me Stampede, like
+she'd known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an' rocking and
+the thunder an' lightning an' rain piling up against each other like
+sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did
+that, Alan--_fed_ me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes
+shining and her lips smilin' as if all that hell about us made her
+happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how
+happy she was that I was goin' her way. _Her_ way, mind you, Alan, not
+_mine._ And that's just the way she's kept me goin' up to the minute you
+hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!"
+
+He lighted his pipe again. "Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?"
+
+"She didn't," replied Alan.
+
+"But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the
+happiest moment of her life, because _she_ was on her way up to your
+range, and I'd be such jolly good company for her. 'Jolly good'--them
+were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew she was coming up,
+she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand
+surprise. Said it was possible she'd buy your range, and she wanted to
+look it over before you arrived. An' it seems queer I can't remember
+anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and Chitina.
+When we took the train again, she began askin' a million questions about
+you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to, Alan--but
+everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and Fairbanks, and
+she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I'd have eat soap out of
+her hand if she'd offered it to me. Then, sort of sly and soft-like, she
+began asking questions about John Graham--and I woke up."
+
+"John Graham!" Alan repeated the name.
+
+"Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin' aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please--with her hand on my arm--she
+said she wasn't quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain't a lie what I'm
+going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a wonderful
+idea she had for surprisin' _you_. Said she knew you would return to the
+Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some fireworks. Said
+you was such a good American you'd be disappointed if you didn't have
+'em. So she took me in a store an' bought it out. Asked the man what
+he'd take for everything in his joint that had powder in it. Five
+hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk something out
+of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar bills in it an
+inch think. Then she asked _me_ to get them firecrackers 'n' wheels 'n'
+skyrockets 'n' balloons 'n' other stuff down to the boat, and she asked
+me just as if I was a sweet little boy who'd be tickled to death to
+do it!"
+
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne
+in secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his
+words upon his companion. Incredulity shot into Alan's eyes, and the
+humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that
+Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination. Yet what he had told him
+seemed impossible. Mary Standish had come aboard the _Nome_ a fugitive.
+All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and
+these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea.
+How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at Fairbanks
+as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian had also
+become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she
+played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died? And
+was this money--possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle--the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It
+was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was
+cut under his father's in the old cottonwood tree.
+
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: "You don't seem
+interested, Alan. But I'm going on, or I'll bust. I've got to tell you
+what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I won't
+say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!"
+
+"Go on," urged Alan. "I'm interested."
+
+"I got 'em on the boat," continued Stampede viciously. "And she with me
+every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not letting me out
+of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one hole to
+go in an' come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a little
+shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin'
+something, an' I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin' to do with it, she said, 'Stampede, that's
+for you,' an' when I went to thank her, she said: 'No, I don't mean it
+that way. I mean that if you try to run away from me again I'm going to
+fill you full of holes.' She said that! Threatened me. Then she bought
+me a new outfit from toe to summit--boots, pants, shirt, hat _and_ a
+necktie! And I didn't say a word, not a word. She just led me in an'
+bought what she wanted and made me put 'em on."
+
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on
+his pipe. "I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana," he
+half groaned. "Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote
+the luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. 'You're
+goin' to have a rest, Stampede,' she says to me, smiling so cool and
+sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. 'All you've got to do is show us
+the way and carry the bums.' 'Carry the what?' I asks. 'The bums,' she
+says, an' then she explains that a bum is a thing filled with powder
+which makes a terrible racket when it goes off. So I took the bums, and
+the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and dropped out. He had
+the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we whacked up his
+load among us. I couldn't stand up straight when we camped. We had
+crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range. And _would_ she
+let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she wouldn't! And all
+the time while they was puffing an' panting them Indians was worshipin'
+her with their eyes. The last day, when we camped with the Range almost
+in sight, she drew 'em all up in a circle about her and gave 'em each a
+handful of money above their pay. 'That's because I love you,' she says,
+and then she begins asking them funny questions. Did they have wives and
+children? Were they ever hungry? Did they ever know about any of their
+people starving to death? And just _why_ did they starve? And, Alan, so
+help me thunder if them Indians didn't talk! Never heard Indians tell so
+much. And in the end she asked them the funniest question of all, asked
+them if they'd heard of a man named John Graham. One of them had, and
+afterward I saw her talking a long time with him alone, and when she
+come back to me, her eyes were sort of burning up, and she didn't say
+good night when she went into her tent. That's all, Alan, except--"
+
+"Except what, Stampede?" said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw a
+flash of humor in the little man's eyes.
+
+"Except that she's done with everyone on the Range just what she did
+with me between Chitina and here," he said. "Alan, if she wants to say
+the word, why, _you_ ain't boss any more, that's all. She's been there
+ten days, and you won't know the place. It's all done up in flags,
+waiting for you. She an' Nawadlook and Keok are running everything but
+the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her, and the men--" He
+chuckled again. "Why, the men even go to the Sunday school she's
+started! I went. Nawadlook sings."
+
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, "Alan,
+you've been a big fool."
+
+"I know it, Stampede."
+
+"She's a--a flower, Alan. She's worth more than all the gold in the
+world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it's too late now.
+I'm warnin' you."
+
+"I don't quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?"
+
+"Because she likes me," declared Stampede a bit fiercely. "I'm after
+her myself, Alan. You can't butt in now."
+
+"Great Scott!" gasped Alan. "You mean that Mary Standish--"
+
+"I'm not talking about Mary Standish," said Stampede. "It's Nawadlook.
+If it wasn't for my whiskers--"
+
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale
+gloom ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long
+distance away.
+
+"One of them cussed bums," he explained. "That's why they hurried on
+ahead of us, Alan. _She_ says this Fourth of July celebration is going
+to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?"
+
+"I wonder," said Alan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named
+Ghost Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running
+down from the foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and
+in the depths lay abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn
+smooth by reindeer and caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet
+below the twilight of the plains, Alan dropped on his knees beside a
+little spring that he groped for among the stones, and as he drank he
+could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of water up and down the
+kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls and eternally
+dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede's face in the glow of
+another match, and the little man's eyes were staring into the black
+chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+
+"Alan, you've been up this gorge?"
+
+"It's a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill our
+fawns," replied Alan. "I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is supposed to
+be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will enter
+it. The bones of dead men lie up there."
+
+"Never prospected it?" persisted Stampede.
+
+"Never."
+
+Alan heard the other's grunt of disgust.
+
+"You're reindeer-crazy," he grumbled. "There's gold in this canyon.
+Twice I've found it where there were dead men's bones. They bring me
+good luck."
+
+"But these were Eskimos. They didn't come for gold."
+
+"I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I'm
+telling you there wasn't any of it left out of her when she was born!"
+He was silent for a moment, and then added: "When we came to that
+dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin' there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn't screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until
+it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and
+soppy with the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to
+pieces, and I guess I would if she hadn't put a hand on my gun. An' with
+a funny little smile she says: 'Don't do it, Stampede. It makes me think
+of someone I know--and I wouldn't want you to shoot him.' Darned funny
+thing to say, wasn't it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now, who
+the devil could look like a rotten skull?"
+
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They
+climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the
+tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a
+low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were
+lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge they looked out into
+a vast sweep of tundra which ran in among the out-guarding billows and
+hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form of a wide, semicircular bay.
+Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range, and scarcely had they
+reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its holster. Twice he
+blazed in the air.
+
+"Orders," he said a little sheepishly. "Orders, Alan!"
+
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from
+beyond the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra.
+It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a
+sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and
+all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it very
+soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under
+their feet.
+
+"Bums!" growled Stampede. "She's got Chink lanterns hanging up all
+about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found there
+was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!"
+
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until
+it seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then
+burst into innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed
+away with his forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied the
+magazine of his gun, the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning the
+chorus of sound that came from the range. A second rocket answered them.
+Two columns of flame leaped up from the earth as huge fires gained
+headway, and Alan could hear the shrill chorus of children's voices
+mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All the people of his range were
+there. They had come in from the timber-naked plateaux and high ranges
+where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying shacks of the
+tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration of
+effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it all!
+He knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that fact
+from choking up his heart a little.
+
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying--that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for the
+big fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms were
+booming their hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his steps.
+Over a little knoll, and he was looking at the buildings of the range,
+wildly excited figures running about, women and children flinging moss
+on the fires, the tom-tom beaters squatted in a half-circle facing the
+direction from which he would come, and fifty Chinese lanterns swinging
+in the soft night-breeze.
+
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of
+them. Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children.
+Nawadlook and Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for
+him in any fight or stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede
+his rifle and hastened on, determined to keep his eyes from questing for
+Mary Standish in these first minutes of his return. He sounded the
+tundra call, and men, women, and little children came running to meet
+him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the beaters leaped to
+their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of voice,
+laughter, children's squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands with
+both his own--hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men's shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty
+around him counting the children. First, last, and always these were
+_his people_. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power
+and possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great
+family, and he shook hands twice and three times with the same men and
+women, and lifted the same children from the arms of delighted mothers,
+and cried out greetings and familiarities with an abandon which a few
+minutes ago knowledge of Mary Standish's presence would have tempered.
+Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his
+cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch,
+stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna's head disappeared, and there
+came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered
+about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their
+semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his
+cabin came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the
+one thing intended for his understanding alone. It was playing "When
+Johnny Comes Marching Home."
+
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was
+alone. She was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear, the
+quiet pallor of her face, and the strain and repression which had seemed
+to be a part of her were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it was not
+with voice or action that she revealed herself. It was in her eyes, the
+flush of her cheeks and lips, the poise of her slim body as she waited
+for him. A thought flashed upon him that for a space she had forgotten
+herself and the shadow which had driven her to leap into the sea.
+
+"It is splendid!" she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. "I didn't guess how badly they wanted you back. It
+must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that."
+
+"And I thank you for your part," he replied. "Stampede has told me. It
+was quite a bit of trouble, wasn't it, with nothing more than the hope
+of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?" He nodded at the half-dozen
+flags over his cabin. "They're rather pretty."
+
+"It was no trouble. And I hope you don't mind. It has been great fun."
+
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It
+seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to
+speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+
+"Yes, I do mind," he said. "I mind so much that I wouldn't trade what
+has happened for all the gold in these mountains. I'm sorry because of
+what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn't trade that,
+either. I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad you're here. But something is
+missing. You know what it is. You must tell me about yourself. It is the
+only fair thing for you to do now."
+
+She touched his arm with her hand. "Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please--let us wait."
+
+"And then--tomorrow--"
+
+"It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine--just you--and your people--and
+their happiness." He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned by
+the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers. She nodded
+toward the buildings beyond his cabin. "I am with Keok and Nawadlook.
+They have given me a home." And then swiftly she added, "I don't think
+you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!"
+
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on
+his arm she drew away from him. His face did not show his
+disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him.
+
+"Your people are expecting things of you," she said. "A little later, if
+you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms."
+
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him
+and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart
+beating faster. She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not
+afraid of tomorrow. Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not
+frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away from
+himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood. It was as if something
+in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had dreamed
+through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and that
+possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a little
+nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him. Surely he
+would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to him tomorrow
+would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and he could
+not let her go away from him again.
+
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to
+discover himself doing things which he had never done before. His nature
+was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less
+detached. At his people's dances it was his habit to stand on the
+side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part.
+His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a new
+sense of freedom and a new desire to give physical expression to
+something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was kicking his feet and
+howling with the men, while the women dancers went through the muscular
+movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan. They had
+always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place between
+Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half
+breathless, did he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok
+was frankly amazed. Mary Standish's eyes were shining, and she clapped
+her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and
+waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the
+balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made
+only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking,
+shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic
+matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never
+had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he
+had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in
+the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack
+filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor--and
+then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In
+place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new
+covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk
+were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington and
+the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against the
+wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags. They
+recalled Alan's mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary Standish
+had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an American.
+Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the little flags.
+There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them there. She must
+have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the hour of his
+coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had purchased
+the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He went into his bedroom and
+found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair
+of red morocco slippers that he had never seen before. He took them up
+in his hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size
+of his feet.
+
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok's phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was
+gone. Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing
+stillness drew him to the window from which he could see the cabin where
+lived Keok and Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and shriveled
+Sokwenna. It was there Mary Standish had said she was staying. For a
+long time Alan watched it while the final sounds of the night drifted
+away into utter silence.
+
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer
+to his invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly
+his eyes traveled about the room.
+
+"Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you."
+
+"They seemed to be. I'm happy to be home again."
+
+"Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room."
+
+"I guessed as much," replied Alan. "Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped
+her."
+
+"Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an' thoughtful, hasn't she?"
+
+"And somewhat unusual," added Alan.
+
+"And she is pretty."
+
+"Most decidedly so."
+
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede's eyes. He twisted nervously in
+his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+
+"What's on your mind, Stampede?"
+
+"Hell, mostly," shot back Stampede with sudden desperation. "I've come
+loaded down with a dirty job, and I've kept it back this long because I
+didn't want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to
+himself what he knows about a woman, but I'm thinking this is a little
+different. I hate to do it. I'd rather take the chance of a snake-bite.
+But you'd shoot me if you knew I was keeping it to myself."
+
+"Keeping what to yourself?"
+
+"The truth, Alan. It's up to me to tell you what I know about this young
+woman who calls herself Mary Standish."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede's face, and the stolid effort he
+was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into
+words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion's promised
+disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation
+and relief. What he had passed through recently had burned out of him a
+certain demand upon human ethics which had been almost callous in its
+insistence, and while he believed that something very real and very
+stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary Standish north, he was now
+anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with any force of
+circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to know the truth,
+yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell it to him,
+and the fact that Stampede had in some way discovered this truth, and
+was about to make disclosure of it, was a tremendous lightening of the
+situation.
+
+"Go on," he said at last. "What do you know about Mary Standish?"
+
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes. "It's
+rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way I'm goin' to
+oughta be shot, and if it was anything else--_anything_--I'd keep it to
+myself. But you've got to know. And you can't understand just how rotten
+it is, either; you haven't ridden in a coach with her during a storm
+that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an' you haven't hit the trail
+with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you'd done
+that, Alan, you'd feel like killing a man who said anything
+against her."
+
+"I'm not inquiring into your personal affairs," reminded Alan. "It's
+your own business."
+
+"That's the trouble," protested Stampede. "It's not my business. It's
+yours. If I'd guessed the truth before we hit the Range, everything
+would have been different. I'd have rid myself of her some way. But I
+didn't find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok's
+music machine to their cabin. I've been trying to make up my mind what
+to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States, a
+pickpocket, a coiner, somebody's bunco pigeon chased by the
+police--almost anything--we could forgive her. Even if she'd shot up
+somebody--" He made a gesture of despair. "But she didn't. She's worse
+than that!"
+
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+
+"She's one of John Graham's tools sent up here to sneak and spy on you,"
+he finished desperately. "I'm sorry--but I've got the proof."
+
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm opened,
+and when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them. "Found it
+on the floor when I took the phonograph back," he explained. "It was
+twisted up hard. Don't know why I unrolled it. Just chance."
+
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper,
+watching closely the slight tensing of the other's face. After a moment
+Alan dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There
+was no longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been accepted
+as a guest. Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the sudden
+and almost imperceptible shrug of Alan's shoulders.
+
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. "Rather a
+missing link, isn't it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I'm
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost--you didn't tell me."
+
+"Almost," admitted Stampede.
+
+"And I wouldn't have blamed you. She's that kind--the kind that makes
+you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I'm going to believe
+that paper is a lie--until tomorrow. Will you take a message to Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I'm having breakfast at seven. Tell
+them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at eight. Later
+I'm going up into the foothills to look over the herds."
+
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan's part, and it was just the
+way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed
+of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course
+they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn't a shooting business--yet.
+But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table
+ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like
+that was in Alan's eyes.
+
+He opened the door. "I'll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight.
+Good night, Alan!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+Alan watched Stampede's figure until it had disappeared before he closed
+the door.
+
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the
+anxiety which the prospector's unexpected revealment had aroused in him.
+The other's footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the paper in
+his hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of ordinary
+business size and had been carelessly torn from the larger part of the
+page, so that nothing more than the signature and half a dozen lines of
+writing in a man's heavy script remained.
+
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have
+possessed, read as follows:
+
+"_--If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing facts
+and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands
+within a year_."
+
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John
+Graham.
+
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore
+for its maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself
+like a fibrous plant through all his plans for the future, had made of
+it an unforgetable writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand
+words written by his enemy, and the man who had been his father's enemy,
+all that he had kept away from Stampede's sharp eyes blazed in a sudden
+fury in his face. He dropped the paper as if it had been a thing
+unclean, and his hands clenched until his knuckles snapped in the
+stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the window through which a few
+moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary Standish's cabin.
+
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made
+in the one hour of his father's triumph--that hour in which the elder
+Holt might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not revolted
+in the last of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had witnessed.
+And Mary Standish was the instrument he had chosen to work his ends!
+
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend
+the absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or
+still the tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense to
+deny the fact that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary
+Standish; inadvertently she had kept it, had finally attempted to
+destroy it, and Stampede, by chance, had discovered a small but
+convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought he pieced together
+things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from the
+beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose, her
+boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor to
+work herself into his confidence--and with John Graham's signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and
+irrefutable evidence. The "industry" which Graham had referred to could
+mean only his own and Carl Lomen's, the reindeer industry which they had
+built up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his
+beef-baron friends were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this
+game of destruction clever Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+
+_But why had she leaped into the sea?_
+
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan's brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against
+his arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad
+convictions that possessed him. If Mary Standish's mission was to pave
+the way for his ruin, and if she was John Graham's agent sent for that
+purpose, what reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting
+to give the world the impression that she had ended her life at sea?
+Surely such an act could in no way have been related with any plot which
+she might have had against him! In building up this structure of her
+defense he made no effort to sever her relationship with John Graham;
+that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her actions, and many of the
+things she had said were links inevitably associating her with his
+enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John
+Graham, was working _against_ him? Could some conflict between them have
+been the reason for her flight aboard the _Nome_, and was it because she
+discovered Rossland there--John Graham's most trusted servant--that she
+formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what he
+knew to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated John
+Graham now, had at one time--and not very long ago--been an instrument
+of his trust; the letter he had written to her was positive proof of
+that. What it was that had caused a possible split between them and had
+inspired her flight from Seattle, and, later, her effort to bury a past
+under the fraud of a make-believe death, he might never learn, and just
+now he had no very great desire to look entirely into the whole truth of
+the matter. It was enough to know that of the past, and of the things
+that happened, she had been afraid, and it was in the desperation of
+this fear, with Graham's cleverest agent at her heels, that she had
+appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win him to her assistance,
+had taken the matter so dramatically into her own hands. And within that
+same hour a nearly successful attempt had been made upon Rossland's
+life. Of course the facts had shown that she could not have been
+directly responsible for his injury, but it was a haunting thing to
+remember as happening almost simultaneously with her disappearance
+into the sea.
+
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the
+night. Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper
+lanterns, and he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary
+Standish had placed over his cabin. There was something comforting in
+the sound, a solace to the dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a
+reminder of their day in Skagway when she had walked at his side with
+her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes and face filled with the
+inspiration of the mountains.
+
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously
+admirable about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine
+loveliness. She had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by
+courage--a courage which he would have been compelled to respect even in
+a man like John Graham, and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed to
+him as a virtue to be laid up apart and aside from any of the motives
+which might be directing it. From the beginning it had been a
+bewildering part of her--a clean, swift, unhesitating courage that had
+leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment would have hung
+waveringly; that one courage in all the world--a woman's courage--which
+finds in the effort of its achievement no obstacle too high and no abyss
+too wide though death waits with outreaching arms on the other side.
+And, surely, where there had been all this, there must also have been
+some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of physical gain,
+or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan's lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above his
+cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede's discovery had proclaimed
+her to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of reasoning
+on their part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and the
+injustice of their suspicions. He tried to force the conviction upon
+himself, and reentering the cabin he went to bed, still telling himself
+that a great lie had built itself up out of nothing, and that the God of
+all things was good to him because Mary Standish was alive, and
+not dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the
+preceding day did not make him overreach the time he had set for
+himself, and he was up at six o'clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her old
+habits, and a tub filled with cold water was waiting for him. He bathed,
+shaved himself, put on fresh clothes, and promptly at seven was at
+breakfast. The table at which he ordinarily sat alone was in a little
+room with double windows, through which, as he enjoyed his meals, he
+could see most of the habitations of the range. Unlike the average
+Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber brought down
+from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of
+flowers lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a
+little knoll that looked down into one of the watered hollows of the
+tundra, was Sokwenna's cabin. Because Sokwenna was the "old man" of the
+community and therefore the wisest--and because with him lived his
+foster-daughters, Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan's tribal
+colony--Sokwenna's cabin was next to Alan's in size. And Alan, looking
+at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than
+half-way between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent
+miracle of rising in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan
+knew the men-folk of the village had departed hours ago for the distant
+herds. Always, when the reindeer drifted into the higher and cooler
+feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was this apparent abandonment,
+and after last night's celebration the women and children were not yet
+awake to the activities of the long day, where the rising and setting of
+the sun meant so little.
+
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna's cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the
+sun on the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes,
+he knew it was Mary Standish.
+
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For
+half an hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in
+preparation for the coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they
+arrived, the minute hand of his watch was at the hour of eight.
+
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by
+the smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they
+spread out the papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion,
+set down a record of the winter's happenings. Tautuk's voice, slow and
+very deliberate in its unfailing effort to master English without a
+slip, had in it a subdued note of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk
+Toolik, who was quick and staccato in his manner of speech, using
+sentences seldom of greater length than three or four words, and who
+picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with pride as he
+lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound that
+always sent a chill up Alan's back.
+
+"A ver' fine and prosper' year," said Tautuk in response to Alan's first
+question as to general conditions. "We bean ver' fortunate."
+
+"One hell-good year," backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a gun.
+"Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year--she peach!"
+
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the
+affairs of the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through
+achievement, and the pioneer's pride in marking a new frontier with the
+creative forces of success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the
+passing of time. A hundred questions he had to ask, and the tongues of
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded with the things they desired to tell
+him. Their voices filled the room with a paean of triumph. His herds had
+increased by a thousand head during the fawning months of April and May,
+and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild, woodland caribou had
+produced a hundred calves of the super-animal whose flesh was bound to
+fill the markets of the States within a few years. Never had the moss
+been thicker under the winter snow; there had been no destructive fires;
+soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records had been beaten, and
+dairying in the edge of the Arctic was no longer an experiment, but an
+established fact, for Tautuk now had seven deer giving a pint and a half
+of milk each twice a day, nearly as rich as the best of cream from
+cattle, and more than twenty that were delivering from a cupful to a
+pint at a milking. And to this Amuk Toolik added the amazing record of
+their running-deer, Kauk, the three-year-old, had drawn a sledge five
+miles over unbeaten snow in thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds;
+Kauk and Olo, in team, had drawn the same sledge ten miles in twenty-six
+minutes and forty seconds, and one day he had driven the two
+ninety-eight miles in a mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka,
+the first of their inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and
+heavier beasts, he had drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three
+consecutive days at the rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks,
+Tanana, and the ranges of the Seward Peninsula agents of the swiftly
+spreading industry had offered as high as a hundred and ten dollars a
+head for breeding stock with the blood of the woodland caribou, and of
+these native and larger caribou of the tundras and forests seven young
+bulls and nine female calves had been captured and added to their own
+propagative forces.
+
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the
+way of ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the
+vast expanse of unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness of
+a hundred million people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory and
+reward of the conqueror through such achievement as this; a land
+betrayed rising at last out of the slime of political greed and
+ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening, that was destined in
+his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was Alaska rising up
+slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep, mountain-sealed
+forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth coming into
+possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in that
+long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its ultimate
+ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with
+the song of success.
+
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he
+looked at his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished with
+his papers and books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk's voice coming
+from the dark mouth of the underground icebox dug into the frozen
+subsoil of the tundra, and pausing at the glimmer of his old
+housekeeper's candle, he turned aside, descended the few steps, and
+entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight feet under the
+surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for some
+hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when
+alone, but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself
+that the tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness
+and luxuriance, never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below which
+point remained the icy cold placed there so long ago that "even the
+spirits did not know." He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring time
+and faith in terms of "spirits," which she had never quite given up for
+the missionaries, and was about to make his presence known when a voice
+interrupted him, so close at his side that the speaker, concealed in the
+shadow of the wall, could have reached out a hand and touched him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Holt!"
+
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in
+the gloom.
+
+"Good morning," he replied. "I was on my way to your place when
+Wegaruk's voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems like a
+friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak, Mammy?"
+he called.
+
+Wegaruk's strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the light
+from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell clearly
+upon Mary Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was as if a
+spotlight had been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit of
+darkness, and something about her, which was not her prettiness or the
+beauty that was in her eyes and hair, sent a sudden and unaccountable
+thrill through Alan. It remained with him when they drew back out of
+gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving Wegaruk to snuff her
+tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did not leave him
+when they walked over the tundra together toward Sokwenna's cabin. It
+was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which it was impossible for
+him to subdue or explain; something which he knew he should understand
+but could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge of this mystery was
+in the girl's face, glowing in a gentle embarrassment, as she told him
+she had been expecting him, and that Keok and Nawadlook had given up the
+cabin to them, so that he might question her uninterrupted. But with
+this soft flush of her uneasiness, revealing itself in her eyes and
+cheeks, he saw neither fear nor hesitation.
+
+In the "big room" of Sokwenna's cabin, which was patterned after his
+own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him
+to speak.
+
+"You love flowers," he said lamely. "I want to thank you for the flowers
+you placed in my cabin. And the other things."
+
+"Flowers are a habit with me," she replied, "and I have never seen such
+flowers as these. Flowers--and birds. I never dreamed that there were
+so many up here."
+
+"Nor the world," he added. "It is ignorant of Alaska."
+
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something
+about her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely
+thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from
+his eyes. The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a
+little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there was
+no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign
+that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In this
+moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that she was
+like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin, and who
+had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him to
+achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
+her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
+heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in
+the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the
+pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together with
+an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in
+sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:
+
+"Mary Standish, in God's name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
+come up here!"
+
+"I have come," she said, looking at him steadily, "because I know that
+a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her."
+
+"But you didn't know that--not until--the cottonwoods!" he protested.
+
+"Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick's cabin."
+
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at
+her like a man who had been struck, while intelligence--a dawning
+reason--an understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning,
+sent the still greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an
+exclamation of amazement.
+
+"You were at Ellen McCormick's! She gave you--_that!_"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don't
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I
+am going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you
+returned from searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn't know.
+But _she_ did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a
+woman, would promise not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a
+great deal of my faith, and my courage was about gone, and I was
+afraid of you."
+
+"Afraid of me?"
+
+"Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick when
+she asked you--that question; and when you answered as you did, I was
+like stone. I was amazed and didn't believe, for I was certain that
+after what had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a
+peculiar sense of honor were making the search for me. Not until two
+days later, when your letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we
+read them--"
+
+"You opened both?"
+
+"Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found--and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn't exactly fair, but you
+couldn't expect two women to resist a temptation like that. And--_I
+wanted to know_."
+
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the
+confession. Her gaze met Alan's with beautiful steadiness.
+
+"And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give me
+a fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my courage--and
+in the end you will drive me away--"
+
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering
+eyes, tears which she did not brush away, but through which, in a
+moment, she smiled at him as no woman had ever smiled at him before. And
+with the tears there seemed to possess her a pride which lifted her
+above all confusion, a living spirit of will and courage and womanhood
+that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and fear that had gathered
+in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+
+"You have come--because you know I love you, and you--"
+
+"Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you
+that inspired me, Alan Holt."
+
+"There must have been more than that," he persisted. "Some other
+reason."
+
+"Two," she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the dissolution of
+tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+
+"And those--"
+
+"One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that."
+
+"It has to do with John Graham?"
+
+She bowed her head. "Yes, with John Graham."
+
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment
+it seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the
+import of the thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed
+red instead of paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes burned
+with a lustrous fire.
+
+"John Graham," she repeated. "The man you hate and want to kill."
+
+Slowly he turned toward the door. "I am leaving immediately after dinner
+to inspect the herds up in the foothills," he said. "And you--_are
+welcome here_."
+
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at
+the door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+
+"Thank you, Alan Holt," she cried softly, "_Oh, I thank you!_!"
+
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last
+something had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a
+moment they stood in silence.
+
+"I'm sorry--sorry I said to you what I did that night on the _Nome_,"
+she said. "I accused you of brutality, of unfairness, of--of even worse
+than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big and clean and
+splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, _and you say I
+am welcome!_ And I don't want you to go. You have made me _want_ to tell
+you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will think
+as kindly of me as you can when you have heard."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the
+world. There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came
+like a sob to the girl's lips as she turned to the window and looked out
+into the blaze of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard
+Tautuk's voice, calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and
+he heard clearly Keok's merry laughter as she answered him. A
+gray-cheeked thrush flew up to the roof of Sokwenna's cabin and began to
+sing. It was as if these things had come as a message to both of them,
+relieving a tension, and significant of the beauty and glory and undying
+hope of life. Mary Standish turned from the window with shining eyes.
+
+"Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof," she said.
+
+"It is--possibly--because you are here," he replied.
+
+She regarded him seriously. "I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure,
+if I were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me.
+Hopelessness cannot be so deep that bird-song will not reach it."
+
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She
+closed the door which he had left partly open, and made a little gesture
+for him to resume the chair which he had left a few moments before. She
+seated herself first and smiled at him wistfully, half regretfully,
+as she said:
+
+"I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should have
+told you aboard the _Nome_. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid, but
+ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am not
+sorry it happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up here,
+and all this--your world, your people, and you--have meant a great deal
+to me. You will understand when I have made my confession."
+
+"No, I don't want that," he protested almost roughly. "I don't want you
+to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you wish to tell me as a
+friend, that's different. I don't want a confession, which would imply
+that I have no faith in you."
+
+"And you have faith in me?"
+
+"Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the same
+if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship."
+
+"Oh, _you mean that_!"
+
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed
+to see only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of
+the tundra daises behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to
+say tugging at his heart, he wondered why she was so white.
+
+"You mean that," her lips repeated slowly, "after all that has
+happened--even after--that part of a letter--which Stampede brought to
+you last night--"
+
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret
+between himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she
+saw it written in his face.
+
+"No, it wasn't Stampede," she said. "He didn't tell me. It--just
+happened. And after this letter--you still believe in me?"
+
+"I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am--most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham's signature was a lie."
+
+"It wasn't that--quite. But it didn't refer to you, or to me. It was
+part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while I was
+on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of them
+as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the whole of
+it. The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper which you
+did not return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the conventional
+thing for a woman to do--to use paper for padding in a soft-toed
+slipper."
+
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the
+tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer
+happiness. But Mary Standish's voice, continuing in its quiet and
+matter-of-fact way, held him speechless, though she could not fail to
+see the effect upon him of this simple explanation of the presence of
+Graham's letter.
+
+"I was in Nawadlook's room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of paper
+from the floor," she was saying. "I was looking at the slipper a few
+minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin on the
+ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it, and
+the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and went
+out. I hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the few
+words when I heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had laid
+it, hid myself in Nawadlook's room, and saw Stampede when he carried it
+to you. I don't know why I allowed it to be done. I had no reason. Maybe
+it was just--intuition, and maybe it was because--just in that hour--I
+so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and I thought
+that what Stampede had found would make you do it. And I deserve it! I
+deserve nothing better at your hands."
+
+"But it isn't true," he protested. "The letter was to Rossland."
+
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. "Better that it were true,
+and all that _is_ true were false," she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. "I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative
+would I accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to
+understand?"
+
+"I am afraid--I can not." Even as he persisted in denial, the pain which
+had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. "I understand--only--that I am glad
+you are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an
+hour ago."
+
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of
+rich color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining
+lashes that lay against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her
+breath, and her hands grew steady in her lap.
+
+"Would you mind--if I asked you first--to tell me _your_ story of John
+Graham?" she spoke softly. "I know it, a little, but I think it would
+make everything easier if I could hear it from you--now."
+
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light
+playing in her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she
+had not changed her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She
+raised her eyes, and the question her lips had formed was glowing in
+them as clearly as if she had voiced it again in words. A desire rose in
+him to speak to her as he had never spoken to another human being, and
+to reveal for her--and for her alone--the thing that had harbored
+itself in his soul for many years. Looking up at him, waiting, partial
+understanding softening her sweet face, a dusky glow in her eyes, she
+was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then laughed in a strange
+repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward her.
+
+"I think I know how my father must have loved my mother," he said. "But
+I can't make you feel it. I can't hope for that. She died when I was so
+young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me. But for my
+father she _never_ died, and as I grew older she became more and more
+alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if she
+were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned. And
+never could my father remain away from the place where she was buried
+very long at a time. He called it _home_, that little cup at the foot of
+the mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a paradise of
+birds and flowers keeping her company, and all the great, wild world she
+loved about her. There was the cabin, too; the little cabin where I was
+born, with its back to the big mountain, and filled with the handiwork
+of my mother as she had left it when she died. And my father too used to
+laugh and sing there--he had a clear voice that would roll half-way up
+the mountain; and as I grew older the miracle at times stirred me with a
+strange fear, so real to my father did my dead mother seem when he was
+home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish! Oh, it may seem weird and
+ghostly now, but it was _true_--so true that I have lain awake nights
+thinking of it and wishing that it had never been so!"
+
+"Then you have wished a great sin," said the girl in a voice that seemed
+scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. "I hope someone will feel
+toward me--some day--like that."
+
+"But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about," he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins. "Interests
+were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were reaching out,
+encroaching steadily a little nearer to our cup at the foot of the
+mountain. But my father did not dream of what might happen. It came in
+the spring of the year he took me on my first trip to the States, when I
+was eighteen. We were gone five months, and they were five months of
+hell for him. Day and night he grieved for my mother and the little home
+under the mountain. And when at last we came back--"
+
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the
+tundra or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+
+"When we came back," he repeated in a cold, hard voice, "a construction
+camp of a hundred men had invaded my father's little paradise. The cabin
+was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and this channel
+ran where my mother's grave had been. They had treated it with that
+same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand Indian
+graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud. And
+from the moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun rose
+in the heavens for him. His heart died, yet he went on living--for
+a time."
+
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her
+slim shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was
+as if he beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+
+"And the man who committed that crime--was John Graham," she said, in
+the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer
+would be.
+
+"Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work
+rather than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power;
+they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a
+grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my
+father and I went to see him; yes, _laughed_, in that noiseless, oily,
+inside way of his, as you might think of a snake laughing.
+
+"We found him among the men. My God, you don't know how I hated
+him!--Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool
+he was to think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I
+wanted to kill him, but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet,
+steady hand, and said: 'It is my duty, Alan. _My duty_.'
+
+"And then--it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham, but
+God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and
+with his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not
+unlocked them with my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of
+helpless pulp, and from the ground, with the last of the breath that was
+in him, he cursed my father, and he cursed me. He said that all the days
+of his life he would follow us, until we paid a thousand times for what
+we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have dragged a
+rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his clothes from
+him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he scourged him
+with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was unconscious and
+like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we went into the
+mountains."
+
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him,
+and now her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face were
+aflame, as if she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen
+between them.
+
+"And after that, Alan; after that--"
+
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it,
+scarcely understood.
+
+"John Graham kept his promise," he answered grimly. "The influence and
+money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was
+interested were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most
+heavily interested was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he
+partly owned in Dawson was bankrupted. One after another things
+happened, and after each happening my father would receive a polite note
+of regret from Graham, written as if the word actually came from a
+friend. But my father cared little for money losses now. His heart was
+drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and the grave
+that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at
+Nome, dead."
+
+"_Dead_!"
+
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary
+Standish, for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+
+"Yes--murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He didn't do it
+personally, but it was _his money_ that accomplished the end. Of course
+nothing ever came of it. I won't tell you how his influence and power
+have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of reindeer I had, and
+how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about me when I
+was down in the States last winter in an effort to make _your_ people
+see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him
+under our mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that
+won't save him when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I
+loosened my father's. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and his
+money have become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as he
+destroyed the life of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power
+ends, he will make of this great land nothing more than a shell out of
+which he and his kind have taken all the meat. And the hour of deadliest
+danger is now upon us."
+
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her where
+she sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it
+frightened him. And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and
+never had he seen such living pools of torture and of horror. He was
+amazed at the quietness of her voice when she began to speak, and
+startled by the almost deadly coldness of it.
+
+"I think you can understand--now--why I leaped into the sea, why I
+wanted the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you
+the truth," she said. "_I am John Graham's wife._"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Alan's first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a m�salliance of the sort Mary Standish
+had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes
+that from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in
+life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, the pitiless
+iron-man, without conscience and without soul, coarsened by power,
+fiendish in his iniquities, and old enough to be her father!
+
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled
+himself together without letting her see the physical part of the effort
+it was taking. And he tried to find something to say that would help
+clear her eyes of the agony that was in them.
+
+"That--is a most unreasonable thing--to be true," he said.
+
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the
+words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said,
+or acted, under the circumstances.
+
+She nodded. "It is. But the world doesn't look at it in that way. Such
+things just happen."
+
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies
+were heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer
+life in Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical
+worth, dryly but carefully written--and she had been reading it. It
+struck him as a symbol of the fight she was making, of her courage, and
+of her desire to triumph in the face of tremendous odds that must have
+beset her. He still could not associate her completely with John Graham.
+Yet his face was cold and white.
+
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a
+newspaper clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it
+to him.
+
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young
+and beautiful girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the
+girl's shoulder, was a picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were
+strangers to him. He read their names, and then the headlines. "A
+Hundred-Million-Dollar Love" was the caption, and after the word love
+was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty and the other thing, two great
+fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked at Mary Standish. It was
+impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+
+"I tore that from a paper in Cordova," she said. "They have nothing to
+do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don't you see something in her
+eyes? Can't you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
+things. But it seemed to me--when I saw her face--that in her eyes were
+agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
+hide them from the world. It's just another proof, one of thousands,
+that such unreasonable things do happen."
+
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
+which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
+He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
+little hands that lay in Mary Standish's lap. The warmth had gone out of
+it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between
+his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in
+particular. It was only the ticking of Keok's clock that broke the
+silence for a time. Then he released the hand, and it dropped in the
+girl's lap again. She had been looking steadily at the streak of gray in
+his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a light which he did not see,
+and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost imperceptible
+inclination of her head toward him.
+
+"I'm sorry I didn't know," he said. "I realize now how you must have
+felt back there in the cottonwoods."
+
+"No, you don't realize--_you don't!_" she protested.
+
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her
+again. It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as
+if he had unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was
+amazed at the swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+
+"You don't understand, and I am determined that you _shall_," she went
+on. "I would die before I let you go away thinking what is now in your
+mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be hated for the truth
+than because of the horrible thing which you must believe if I remain
+silent." She forced a wan smile to her lips. "You know, Belinda
+Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don't fit in now, do
+they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when
+Alaska was young--"
+
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+
+"I have committed a great folly," she said, hesitating an instant in his
+silence. "I see very clearly now the course I should have taken. You
+will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard what I
+am going to say. Your face is like--a rock."
+
+"It is because your tragedy is mine," he said.
+
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a
+vivid, feverish glow. "I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich," she
+said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. "I don't
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish
+and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter,
+who was grandfather's brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle
+Peter. He was a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a
+wheel-chair, and he was nearly seventy-five when he died. As a baby that
+wheel-chair, and my rides in it with him about the great house in which
+we lived, were my delights. He was my father and mother, everything that
+was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as a child, that if God
+was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God. It was Uncle Peter
+who told me, year after year, the old stories and legends of the
+Standishes. And he was always happy--always happy and glad and seeing
+nothing but sunshine though he hadn't stood on his feet for nearly sixty
+years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen, five days before my
+birthday came. I think he must have been to me what your father was
+to you."
+
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his
+face now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+
+"I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish," she went on. "He
+didn't love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I don't think I loved
+him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole world must have stood
+in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the world _was_
+afraid of him--bankers, presidents, even the strongest men in great
+financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the Grahams,
+and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the cleverest
+lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of the two
+families. My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died, so it
+was John Graham who was the actual working force behind the combined
+fortunes of the two families. Sometimes, as I now recall it, Uncle Peter
+was like a little child. I remember how he tried to make me understand
+just how big my grandfather's interests were by telling me that if two
+dollars were taken from every man, woman, and child in the United
+States, it would just about add up to what he and the Grahams possessed,
+and my Grandfather Standish's interests were three-quarters of the
+whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my Uncle Peter's
+face at times when I asked him how all this money was used, and where it
+was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and I never
+understood. I didn't know _why_ people feared my grandfather and John
+Graham. I didn't know of the stupendous power my grandfather's money had
+rolled up for them. I didn't know"--her voice sank to a shuddering
+whisper--"I didn't know how they were using it in Alaska, for instance.
+I didn't know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and death. I don't
+think even Uncle Peter knew _that_."
+
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a
+slow fire.
+
+"Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the
+biggest factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to
+suspect that John Graham was _anticipating_ a little girl of thirteen,
+and I didn't guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so grandly
+white of beard and hair, so like a god of power when he stood among men,
+was even then planning that I should be given to him, so that a
+monumental combination of wealth might increase itself still more in
+that juggernaut of financial achievement for which he lived. And to
+bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not fail, they set
+Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of face,
+and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had confidence in
+him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a brain which
+matched in cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham himself. And he
+did his work well, Alan."
+
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without embarrassment.
+With her nervous fingers tying and untying the two corners of a little
+handkerchief in her lap, she went on, after a moment of silence in which
+the ticking of Keok's clock seemed tense and loud.
+
+"When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to
+Sharpleigh as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently
+he educated me to the thought that it was right and just, and my
+greatest duty in life, to carry out the stipulation of my grandfather's
+will and marry John Graham. Otherwise, he told me--if that union was
+not brought about before I was twenty-two--not a dollar of the great
+fortune would go to the house of Standish; and because he was clever
+enough to know that money alone would not urge me, he showed me a letter
+which he said my Uncle Peter had written, and which I was to read on my
+seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter urged me to live up
+to the Standish name and join in that union of the two great fortunes
+which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I didn't dream the
+letter was a forgery. And in the end they won--and I promised."
+
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her
+fingers. "Do you despise me?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. "I love you."
+
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+
+"I promised," she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse that
+had made her ask him the question. "But it was to be business, a cold,
+unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him.
+In the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I
+would remain his wife--but never more than that. They agreed, and I in
+my ignorance believed.
+
+"I didn't see the trap. I didn't see the wicked triumph in John
+Graham's heart. No power could have made me believe then that he wanted
+to possess only _me_; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly
+lured into his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since
+Uncle Peter died I had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in
+a make-believe world of my own, and I read, read, read; and the thought
+grew stronger and stronger in me that I had lived another life
+somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years when the world was
+clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein money and
+power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of manhood
+and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these things,
+and yet because others had molded me, and because of my misguided
+Standish sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to
+John Graham.
+
+"In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more
+of the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I
+investigated a little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason
+for it, which has come to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost
+knew, at the last, that he was a monster, but the world had been told I
+was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with his fatherly hypocrisy was behind
+me, and John Graham treated me so courteously and so coolly that I did
+not suspect the terrible things in his heart and mind--and I went on
+with the bargain. _I married him._"
+
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal
+of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless
+expression of Alan's face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her
+like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back
+crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she
+continued, while he stood up and faced her.
+
+"You needn't go on," he interrupted in a voice so low and terribly hard
+that she felt the menacing thrill of it. "You needn't. I will settle
+with John Graham, if God gives me the chance."
+
+"You would have me stop _now_--before I have told you of the only shred
+of triumph to which I may lay claim!" she protested. "Oh, you may be
+sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of it all, but I
+swear before my God that I didn't realize it then, until it was too
+late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem--that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a
+deadly hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was a
+duty; that I should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the
+hands of those I trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or
+suspect that I was sacrificing _myself_; at no time, blind though you
+may call me, did I see a hint of that sickening danger into which I was
+voluntarily going. No, not even an hour before the wedding did I suspect
+that, for it had all been so coldly planned, like a great deal in
+finance--so carefully adjudged by us all as a business affair, that I
+felt no fear except that sickness of soul which comes of giving up one's
+life. And no hint of it came until the last of the few words were spoken
+which made us man and wife, and then I saw in John Graham's eyes
+something which I had never seen there before. And Sharpleigh--"
+
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+
+"I went to my room. I didn't lock my door, because never had it been
+necessary to do that. I didn't cry. No, I didn't cry. But something
+strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It seemed
+to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I
+saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind
+him, and locked it. My room. He had come into _my room!_ The
+unexpectedness of it--the horror--the insult roused me from my stupor. I
+sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm's reach of me, a
+look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to
+suspect--or fear. His arms were reaching out--
+
+"'You are my wife,' he said.
+
+"Oh, I knew, then. '_You are my wife_,' he repeated. I wanted to
+scream, but I couldn't; and then--then--his arms reached me; I felt them
+crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the poison of his
+lips was at my face--and I believed that I was lost, and that no power
+could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my room--the man
+who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me voice, who
+put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh--yes, laugh, and
+almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned
+him, and he freed me--while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that
+evening, and that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I
+said these things, smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a
+great, gloating, triumphant beast, believing that the obedience of
+wifehood was about to give him what he had expected to find through
+dishonor--and I was left alone.
+
+"I thought of only one thing then--escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived with
+Uncle Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never
+been--and it was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I
+wanted never to face it again, never to look into the eyes of those I
+had known. And even as these thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was
+filling a traveling bag in a fever of madness, and Uncle Peter was at my
+side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had no minutes to lose, for the
+man who had left me was clever and might guess the truth that lay hid
+behind my smiles and cajolery.
+
+"I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh's low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of laughter,
+and with it I heard John Graham's voice. I was thinking only of the
+sea--to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I drew
+money. I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any ship,
+and it seemed to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came to a
+great ship that was leaving for Alaska--and you know--what happened
+then--Alan Holt."
+
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was
+there, and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her
+eyes, but a soft glory of pride and exultation.
+
+"I am clean of John Graham," she cried. "_Clean!_"
+
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort of
+way, and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head that
+the tears might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining and
+clear as stars.
+
+"Do you despise me now?"
+
+"I love you," he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+
+"I am glad," she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+
+"And Rossland was on the _Nome_, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham," he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+
+She nodded. "Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped into
+the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead."
+
+"And Rossland was hurt."
+
+"Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends."
+
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood
+looking toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests
+of the mountains behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood
+beside him.
+
+"I understand," she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch upon
+his arm. "You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only one.
+That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom in the
+old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I must
+return with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry. I
+dread it. I--would rather die."
+
+"And I--" he began, then caught himself and pointed to the distant hills
+and mountains. "The herds are there," he said. "I am going to them. I
+may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to be here when
+I return?"
+
+"Yes, if that is your desire."
+
+"It is."
+
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+
+"And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that--alone--"
+
+"You won't be alone," he said quietly, still looking at the far-away
+hills. "If you go, I am going with you."
+
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and
+then, with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at the
+half-opened door of Nawadlook's room, and the glory in her eyes was the
+glory of his dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over the
+tundras in those days of grief and half-madness when he had thought
+she was dead.
+
+"I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick's cabin the day you came," she was
+saying. "And I thank God for giving me the madness and courage to come
+to _you_. I am not afraid of anything in the world now--because--_I love
+you, Alan_!"
+
+And as Nawadlook's door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that
+twisted the world about him until for a little it held neither vision
+nor space nor sound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden
+tundra haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream,
+Alan Holt set off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and Keok
+and Nawadlook at the corral bars, with Stampede little regretting that
+he was left behind to guard the range. For a mighty resolution had taken
+root in the prospector's heart, and he felt himself thrilled and a bit
+trembling at the nearness of the greatest drama that had ever entered
+his life. Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw that Keok
+and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+
+The ridge beyond the coul�e out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna's cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan
+set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven
+pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force which
+was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an
+inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his
+head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind
+which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go
+back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of
+forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim
+to his selfishness and passion in the moment when she stood at
+Nawadlook's door, telling him that she loved him. An iron hand had drawn
+him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand that kept his face
+to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated the words
+that had set his world on fire.
+
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing
+with him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully
+to understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental
+calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so
+unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the
+mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His
+happiness was almost an insanity. The dream wherein he had wandered with
+a spirit of the dead had come true; it was the old idyl in the flesh
+again, his father, his mother--and back in the cabin beyond the ridge
+such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid to return. He
+laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed exultation as
+he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words came
+to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would
+fight for her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and he
+walked so swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind with
+the deer, so that in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay
+between them.
+
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over
+him in its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what he
+had done--justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her as
+Mary Graham. But she was Graham's wife. And if he had gone to her in
+that moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook's
+door, if he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid
+the world at his feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham
+himself. Thought of the narrowness of his escape and of the first mad
+desire to call her back from Nawadlook's room, to hold her in his arms
+again as he had held her in the cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into his
+face. Something greater than his own fighting instinct had turned him to
+the open door of the cabin. It was Mary Standish--her courage, the-glory
+of faith and love shining in her eyes, her measurement of him as a man.
+She had not been afraid to say what was in her heart, because she knew
+what he would do.
+
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge
+of a slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows of
+sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were sweating.
+Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the sun had
+sunk to its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott
+foothills. Here they rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when a
+golden twilight filled the land, and then resumed the journey toward the
+mountains.
+
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the
+herds steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and
+valleys. Here they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in
+slowly moving streams wherever the doors of the hills and mountains
+opened into new grazing fields, until Alan's ten thousand reindeer were
+in three divisions, two of the greatest traveling westward, and one, of
+a thousand head, working north and east. The first and second days Alan
+remained with the nearest and southward herd. The third day he went on
+with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in the mountains and
+joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of feeding
+animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was
+becoming stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A
+multitude of emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary
+Standish must leave the range when he returned. He had a grim sense of
+honor, and a particularly devout one when it had to do with women, and
+though he conceded nothing of right and justice in the relationship
+which existed between the woman he loved and John Graham, he knew that
+she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible thing for her
+to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the States.
+The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent way, and
+when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his
+will held down, and yet never quite throttled completely--that something
+which urged him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own
+hands what a glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John
+Graham, if it ever came to that, in the madly desirable way he visioned
+for himself in those occasional moments when the fires of temptation
+blazed hottest.
+
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+
+"If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?"
+
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman's eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his
+stolid mind a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a
+reassuring hand upon his arm.
+
+"I don't mean she's going to, Tautuk," he laughed. "She loves you. I
+know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so hopeless as a lover
+that she is punishing you while she has the right--before she marries
+you. But if she _should_ marry someone else, what would you do?"
+
+"My brother?" asked Tautuk.
+
+"No."
+
+"A relative?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A friend?"
+
+"No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone Keok
+hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him."
+
+"I would kill him," said Tautuk quietly.
+
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should
+Mary Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything
+to escape from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and
+friends. She had scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled her
+life in the hazard, and in the end had come to him! Why should he not
+keep her? John Graham and the world believed she was dead. And he was
+master here. If--some day--Graham should happen to cross his path, he
+would settle the matter in Tautuk's way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and
+the world lay about him in a soft glow, and the valley below was filled
+with misty billows of twilight out of which came to him faintly the
+curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and the grunting contentment
+of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had known it would come
+in the end.
+
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd, and
+on the sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like Sokwenna's
+foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of white in
+him, and when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley where the
+deer were grazing, he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee Doodle on a
+mouth-organ. It was Tatpan who told him that an hour or two before an
+exhausted stranger had come into camp, looking for him, and that the man
+was asleep now, apparently more dead than alive, but had given
+instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours, and not a minute
+later. Together they had a look at him.
+
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a peculiarly
+boyish appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife, profoundly
+asleep. Tatpan looked at his big, silver watch and in a low voice
+described how the stranger had stumbled into camp, so tired he could
+scarcely put one foot ahead of the other; and that he had dropped down
+where he now lay when he learned Alan was with one of the other herds.
+
+"He must have come a long distance," said Tatpan, "and he has traveled
+fast."
+
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place
+him. He wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of
+his hand on the grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in sleep
+the mysterious stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about his
+revolver in a way that spoke of caution and experience.
+
+"If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him," said Alan.
+
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water
+that ran down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing
+the stranger. By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the
+little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and
+the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes
+twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his
+gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only
+one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like
+that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at
+once Tatpan's eyes began to bulge.
+
+"Stampede!" he cried.
+
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+
+"It's me," he conceded. "I had to do it. It was give one or t'other
+up--my whiskers _or her_. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an' the
+whiskers won. I cut cards, an' the whiskers won. I played Klondike
+ag'in' 'em, an' the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an' shaved
+'em. Do I look so bad, Alan?"
+
+"You look twenty years younger," declared Alan, stifling his desire to
+laugh when he saw the other's seriousness.
+
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. "Then why the devil did
+they laugh!" he demanded. "Mary Standish didn't laugh. She cried. Just
+stood an' cried, an' then sat down an' cried, she thought I was that
+blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an' had to go to bed.
+That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says
+it wasn't because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in
+me was so sudden she couldn't help it. Nawadlook says I've got a
+character-ful chin--"
+
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede's face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened.
+Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan
+felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This,
+at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down the old
+trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose fearlessness
+of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in Alaskan history
+which would never be forgotten. Where his first impulse had been to
+laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of other days,
+who, when in Stampede's presence, knew they were in the presence of a
+master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan knew why. The
+grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+
+"Some day, if we're lucky, there always comes a woman to make the world
+worth living in, Stampede," he said.
+
+"There does," replied Stampede.
+
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+
+"And I take it you love Mary Standish," he added, "and that you'd fight
+for her if you had to."
+
+"I would," said Alan.
+
+"Then it's time you were traveling," advised Stampede significantly.
+"I've been twelve hours on the trail without a rest. She told me to move
+fast, and I've moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said it was almost a
+matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted to stay,
+but she wouldn't let me. It's _you_ she wants. Rossland is at
+the range."
+
+"_Rossland_!"
+
+"Yes, Rossland. And it's my guess John Graham isn't far away. I smell
+happenings, Alan. We'd better hurry."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range,
+but to ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and
+specific direction was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and
+within the first half-dozen miles he had abandoned the adventure to
+continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan had no saddle-deer in his herd,
+and the swiftest messenger would require many hours in which to reach
+Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an hour after his
+arrival at Tatpan's camp. Stampede, declaring himself a new man after
+his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen to
+Alan's advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter's
+eyes as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race
+through the foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the
+grimness that had settled in the face behind him. His own mind was
+undergoing an upheaval of conjecture and wild questioning. That Rossland
+had discovered Mary Standish was not dead was the least astonishing
+factor in the new development. The information might easily have
+reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife Ellen. The astonishing
+thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up the trail of her
+flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more amazing fact that
+he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly at his range. His
+heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be directly under
+Graham's orders.
+
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to
+reveal all that had happened on the day of his departure for the
+mountains. He proceeded to do this without equivocation or hesitancy,
+for there now pressed upon him a grim anticipation of impending events
+ahead of them.
+
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other's disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face
+unchanged. Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish's
+confession of love at Nawadlook's door did the fighting lines soften
+about his comrade's eyes and mouth.
+
+Stampede's lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. "I knew that a
+long time ago," he said. "I guessed it that first night of storm in the
+coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana. She
+didn't tell me, but I wasn't blind. It was the note that puzzled and
+frightened me--the note she stuffed in her slipper. And Rossland told
+me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as he
+intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately."
+
+"And you left her alone after _that_?"
+
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan's
+suddenly quickened pace.
+
+"She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sokwenna won't sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he's
+watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick off a
+duck the other day at two hundred yards."
+
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could
+not name clutching at his heart, "Why did you say Graham might not be
+far away?"
+
+"In my bones," replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again. "In my
+bones!"
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes, too.
+Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he owns
+it. I take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something big to
+reckon with. He asked me how many men we had. I told him, stretching it
+a little. He grinned. He couldn't keep back that grin. It was as if a
+devil in him slipped out from hiding for an instant."
+
+Suddenly he caught Alan's arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men
+stared at each other.
+
+"Alan, we're short-sighted. I'm damned if I don't think we ought to call
+the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!"
+
+"You think it's that bad?"
+
+"Might be. If Graham's behind Rossland and has men with him--"
+
+"We're two and a half hours from Tatpan," said Alan, in a cold,
+unemotional voice. "He has only half a dozen men with him, and it will
+take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk Toolik.
+There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two with the
+upper. I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All are armed.
+It may be foolish, but I'm following your hunch."
+
+They gripped hands.
+
+"It's more than a hunch, Alan," breathed Stampede softly. "And for God's
+sake keep off the music as long as you can!"
+
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run
+toward the foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter
+of an hour they were lost to each other in the undulating distances of
+the tundra.
+
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence
+from the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan's
+camp had not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of
+the country gave him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he
+could make the distance in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled
+to add a rest of at least three or four hours during the night. It was
+now eight o'clock. By nine or ten the next morning he would be facing
+Rossland, and at about that same hour Tatpan's swift messengers would be
+closing in about Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. He knew the speed with which
+his herdsmen would sweep out of the mountains and over the tundras. Two
+years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his Eskimo people had traveled
+fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a hundred and nineteen
+miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He couldn't do
+that. But his people could--and _would_. He could see them sweeping in
+from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word went among them;
+he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then, like wolves
+scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting the tundra in
+their race for home--and war, if it was war that lay ahead of them.
+
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out of
+the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of pemmican
+when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coul�es when he came to
+them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a telltale cramp
+began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the rest which he
+knew he must take. It was one o'clock. Counting his journey to Tatpan's
+camp, he had been traveling almost steadily for seventeen hours.
+
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where
+a little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize how
+tired he had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all he
+wanted; he dared not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at
+last, and he slept. When he awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting
+him. He sat up with a jerk, then leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch
+told the story. He had slept soundly for six hours, instead of resting
+three or four with his eyes open.
+
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret
+what had happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate
+a breakfast of pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost
+time. The interval between fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he
+almost ran. That quarter of an hour brought him to the crest of the
+ridge from which he could look upon the buildings of the range. Nothing
+had happened that he could see. He gave a great gasp of relief, and in
+his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told him more than
+anything else the tension he had been under.
+
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna's
+cabin and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock, and
+he called out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he
+stepped in. Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.
+Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them,
+staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish. She came
+forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw Keok
+follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.
+
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the
+tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle she
+was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at his
+coming. It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart, even
+when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it. He held her hands
+close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them widen,
+as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden quick
+breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the hope that had
+deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not excited.
+He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her eyes and
+knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt the force
+of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at her. She
+gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken breath; a
+little cry that came of wonder--understanding--and unspeakable faith in
+this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of the
+tragedy that had come to destroy her.
+
+"Rossland is in your cabin," she whispered. "And John Graham is back
+there--somewhere--coming this way. Rossland says that if I don't go to
+him of my own free will--"
+
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+
+"I understand the rest," he said. They stood silent for a moment. The
+gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a
+little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that
+he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.
+
+"You didn't make a mistake the day I went away?" he asked. "You--love
+me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from
+her. Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they
+thought--Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun--for the bird
+was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was
+very still.
+
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little
+window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across
+his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and
+something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another
+day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and
+the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the
+heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the
+farther north.
+
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his
+fingers drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His eyes
+fixed themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath he
+mumbled the old chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in Sokwenna's
+brain, and after that his eyes closed, and again the vision grew out of
+darkness like a picture for him, a vision of twisting trails and of
+fighting men gathering with their faces set for war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+At the desk in Alan's living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed
+when he saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his
+sleeves rolled up, and it was evident he was making no effort to conceal
+his freedom with Alan's books and papers.
+
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had
+told Alan to attend to his own business on board the _Nome_. His
+attitude was that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even
+before he spoke. Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind
+that smile he was admiring the man's nerve. His hand met Rossland's
+casually, but there was no uncertainty in the warmth of the
+other's grip.
+
+"How d' do, Paris, old boy?" he greeted good-humoredly. "Saw you going
+in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I've been waiting for you. She's a
+little frightened. And we can't blame her. Menelaus is mightily upset.
+But mind me, Holt, I'm not blaming you. I'm too good a sport. Clever, I
+call it--damned clever. She's enough to turn any man's head. I only wish
+I were in your boots right now. I'd have turned traitor myself aboard
+the _Nome_ if she had shown an inclination."
+
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was
+inspiration again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was
+racing. But Rossland saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the
+cool smile on Alan's lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was
+meeting the situation. It pleased Graham's agent. He reseated himself in
+the desk-chair and motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+
+"I thought you were badly hurt," said Alan. "Nasty knife wound you got."
+
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. "There you have it again, Holt--the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit
+girls down in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn't she?
+Tricked her into my cabin all right, but she wasn't like some other
+Indian girls I've known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or
+whoever it was got me through the open port. It wasn't bad. I was out of
+the hospital within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I
+wouldn't have seen Mrs. Graham one morning--through the window. What a
+little our fortunes hang to at times, eh? If it hadn't been for the girl
+and the knife and the hospital, I wouldn't be here now, and Graham
+wouldn't be bleeding his heart out with impatience--and you, Holt,
+wouldn't be facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into
+your life."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand," said Alan, hiding his face in the
+smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which had
+its effect upon Rossland. "Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?"
+
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland's eyes, and his voice became cool
+and hard. "Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Decidedly," said Alan.
+
+"You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham's wife?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you probably know--now--why she jumped into the sea, and why she
+ran away from Graham."
+
+"I do."
+
+"That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don't know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn't care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It's the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the
+day she was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the thought
+of possessing her. You know how he got her to marry him, and you know
+what happened afterward. But it makes no difference to him whether she
+hates him or not. He _wants_ her. And this"--he swept his arms out, "is
+the most beautiful place in the world in which to have her returned to
+him. I've been figuring from your books. Your property isn't worth over
+a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today. I'm here to offer
+you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is willing to forfeit
+all action he might have personally against you for stealing his wife,
+and in place of that will pay you five hundred thousand dollars for the
+privilege of having his honeymoon here, and making of this place a
+country estate where his wife may reside indefinitely, subject to her
+husband's visits when he is so inclined. There will be a stipulation, of
+course, requiring that the personal details of the deal be kept strictly
+confidential, and that you leave the country. Do I make myself clear?"
+
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as
+he watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out
+proposition upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to
+the point without an effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient
+dramatic sense to appreciate what the offer of half a million dollars
+meant to an individual who was struggling for existence at the edge of a
+raw frontier. Alan stood with his back toward him, facing a window. His
+voice was oddly strained when he answered. But that was quite natural,
+too, Rossland thought.
+
+"I am wondering if I understand you," he said. "Do you mean that if I
+sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?"
+
+"That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has his
+own."
+
+Alan tried to laugh. "I think I see the point--now. He isn't paying five
+hundred thousand for Miss Standish--I mean Mrs. Graham. He's paying it
+for the _isolation_."
+
+"Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him--to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to _get_
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one
+we're using now. You hit the word when you said 'isolation.' What a damn
+fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of it--half a
+million dollars!"
+
+"It sounds unreal," mused Alan, keeping his face to the window. "Why
+should he offer so much?"
+
+"You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a
+normal price wouldn't guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like that,
+you're a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your health
+depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn't it?"
+
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep smoke
+in front of his eyes. "Of course, I don't suppose he'd allow Mrs. Graham
+to escape back to the States--where she might do a little upsetting on
+her own account?"
+
+"He isn't throwing the money away," replied Rossland significantly.
+
+"She would remain here indefinitely?"
+
+"Indefinitely."
+
+"Probably never would return."
+
+"Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The
+little secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a
+beautiful summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely
+flowers. Birds. And the girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since
+she was fourteen."
+
+"And who hates him."
+
+"True."
+
+"Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife."
+
+"But it's up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That's not our business.
+If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get your range
+back pretty cheap."
+
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+
+"Here's partial payment--two hundred and fifty thousand. I have the
+papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give possession,
+I'll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining payment."
+
+Alan took the check. "I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland."
+
+"Yes, only a fool."
+
+"_And I am that fool_."
+
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his
+words did not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared away
+from before Alan's face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he stepped
+on it with his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The fury he
+had held back with almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+
+"If I could have Graham where you are now--_in that chair_--I'd give ten
+years of my life, Rossland. I would kill him. And you--_you_--"
+
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance of
+the beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+
+"What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn't necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish--_not_ Mary
+Graham--is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to _me_. I love her. She is mine--do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn't buy one hair from
+her head. I'm going to take her back to the States. She is going to get
+a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has
+nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham
+for me."
+
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+
+"Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!"
+
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent
+the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+
+"Go--before I kill you!"
+
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and
+the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten
+power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed
+quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan
+watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied
+by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did
+Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His
+breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did
+not return for his coat and hat.
+
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the
+table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at
+work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he
+hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him.
+He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god
+of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely.
+Graham would now get his message, and there could be no misunderstanding
+of purpose between them.
+
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at
+the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+
+"You sent him away," she cried softly.
+
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful
+glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland's hat and coat on a chair,
+the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and
+then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the
+last of that grim resolution which he had measured for himself, so that
+in a moment he was at her side, and had her in his arms. She made no
+effort to free herself as she had done in the cottonwoods, but turned
+her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid her face against his
+shoulder--while he, fighting vainly to find utterance for the thousand
+words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then buried his face
+in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it that he loved her,
+and was going to fight for her, and that no power on earth could take
+her away from him now. And these things he repeated until she raised her
+flushed face from his breast, and let him kiss her lips once more, and
+then freed herself gently from his arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish's face and in Alan's quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier
+which convention had raised against them, and now they felt the
+inevitable thrill of joy and triumph, and not the humiliating
+embarrassment of dishonor. They made no effort to draw a curtain upon
+their happiness, or to hide the swift heart-beat of it from each other.
+It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they stood apart, and something
+pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little freedom of space
+between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker and deeper
+grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her eyes
+when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she gave
+him her own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile, and she
+bowed her head a little, so that he was looking at her smooth hair, soft
+and sweet where he had caressed it a few moments before.
+
+"I thank God!" he said.
+
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech
+seemed trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking
+God for that moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had
+come to him. This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as
+he had known it, the beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands
+trembled. For something to do he set up the overturned table, and Mary
+Standish watched him with a quiet, satisfied wonder. She loved him, and
+she had come into his arms. She had given him her lips to kiss. And he
+laughed softly as he came to her side again, and looked over the tundra
+where Rossland had gone.
+
+"How long before you can prepare for the journey?" he asked.
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland
+lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail."
+
+Her hand pressed his arm. "We are going--_back?_ Is that it, Alan?"
+
+"Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?"
+
+"With you there--no."
+
+"And you will return with me--when it is over?"
+
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek
+touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+
+"Yes, I will come back with you."
+
+"And you will be ready?"
+
+"I am ready now."
+
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist
+rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions--the
+breath of life, of warmth, of growing things--all between him and the
+hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without
+another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek
+against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she
+had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had
+ceased to fight--she had given to him the precious right to fight
+for her.
+
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of
+the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the
+grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the
+significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even
+more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of
+hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction
+which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same
+horror--of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her--Rossland had
+divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done
+right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have
+exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham's
+flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and
+the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him,
+out there in the hollows of the tundra--
+
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had
+seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that
+brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told
+her a great deal. Yet she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what had
+been in his mind.
+
+"I am ready," she reminded him.
+
+"We must wait for Stampede," he said, reason returning to him. "He
+should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland is
+off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like
+Stampede between us and--"
+
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to
+her. She stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable
+desire to take her in his arms again.
+
+"He is between here and Tanana," she said with a little gesture of her
+head.
+
+"Rossland told you that?"
+
+"Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away."
+
+"Then you were not afraid that I--I might let them have you?"
+
+"I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that
+second letter at Ellen McCormick's, Alan!"
+
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone
+before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were
+approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still
+grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window
+under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a
+death's-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of
+the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the vast
+stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song of
+birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note in
+him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat like a
+spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare
+of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space
+which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered
+his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came
+hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like
+in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points
+of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan shiver as he
+watched him through the window.
+
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that
+jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand--and
+which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings--that
+he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the
+blood was near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the
+old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that
+had once run red. Alan was one of the few who, by reason of much effort,
+had learned the story of the kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago
+that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile tribe had descended upon his
+people, killing the men and stealing the women; and how at last Sokwenna
+and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with what women were left and
+made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day that was golden and
+filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their
+enemies and killed them to a man. All were dead now, all but Sokwenna.
+
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was
+no longer the cheerful and gentle "old man" of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook,
+who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an
+impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before
+Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his
+breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin
+hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the
+uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to
+an appointed task--the watching of the southward plain from the crest of
+a tall ridge two miles back on the Tanana trail. He was to return when
+the sun reached its horizon.
+
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which
+stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon
+as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once,
+without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced
+himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months,
+possibly a year this time. There was much to do, a mass of detail to
+attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to leave behind him. He
+must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write down certain
+laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation progressed,
+and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he fell into a
+habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and the
+impossibility of danger. He tried to make himself feel uncomfortably
+foolish at the thought of having ordered the herdsmen in. In all
+probability Graham would not appear at all, he told himself, or at least
+not for many days--or weeks; and if he did come, it would be to war in a
+legal way, and not with murder.
+
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the
+afternoon lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly to
+take the trail beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his side.
+Twice he saw her between noon and five o'clock, and by that time his
+writing was done. He looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his
+favorite rifle and automatic were working smoothly, and he called
+himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest with an extravagant
+number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this ammunition and
+two of his extra guns to Sokwenna's cabin, with the thought that it was
+this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted for defense
+in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it, and
+for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on their
+way to Nome.
+
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of
+the horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food
+which Wegaruk had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of
+the ravine, watching the twilight gathering where the coul�e ran
+narrower and deeper between the distant breasts of the tundra.
+
+"I am going to leave you for a little while," he said. "But Sokwenna has
+returned, and you will not be alone."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"As far as the cottonwoods, I think."
+
+"Then I am going with you."
+
+"I expect to walk very fast."
+
+"Not faster than I, Alan."
+
+"But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances."
+
+"I will help you." Her hand crept into his. "I am going with you, Alan,"
+she repeated.
+
+"Yes, I--think you are," he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his
+head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand in
+his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together
+since the day he had come from Nome.
+
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and
+sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made
+him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and
+Sokwenna's advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost
+Kloof and the country beyond.
+
+"I have been thinking a great deal today," she was saying, "because you
+have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of _you_. And--my
+thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness."
+
+"And I have been--in paradise," he replied.
+
+"You do not think that I am wicked?"
+
+"I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again."
+
+"Nor that I have been unwomanly?"
+
+"You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood."
+
+"Yet I have followed you--have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan."
+
+"For which I thank God," He breathed devoutly.
+
+"And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your
+arms, and have kissed me--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I am walking now with my hand in yours--"
+
+"And will continue to do so, if I can hold it."
+
+"And I am another man's wife," she shuddered.
+
+"You are mine," he declared doggedly. "You know it, and the Almighty God
+knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham's wife. You are
+legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and body you
+are free."
+
+"No, I am not free."
+
+"But you are!"
+
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: "Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am
+not. It is because--heart and soul--I belong to you."
+
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary
+Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and
+repeated softly, "Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!"
+
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still
+hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky,
+and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them,
+while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life. One
+mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were looking
+into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.
+
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now--the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick--but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall
+of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+
+"It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to _you_" he
+said. "And I think that if you hadn't come back to me I would have
+gone mad."
+
+"I have the letter. It is here"--and she placed a hand upon her breast.
+"Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?"
+
+"That you meant more to me than life."
+
+"And that--particularly--you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a tress of
+my hair for you if they found me."
+
+He nodded. "When I sat across the table from you aboard the _Nome_, I
+worshiped it and didn't know it. And since then--since I've had you
+here--every time. I've looked at you--" He stopped, choking the words
+back in his throat.
+
+"Say it, Alan."
+
+"I've wanted to see it down," he finished desperately. "Silly notion,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Why is it?" she asked, her eyes widening a little. "If you love it, why
+is it a silly notion to want to see it down?"
+
+"Why, I though possibly you might think it so," he added lamely.
+
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned
+suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back,
+and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until
+its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a
+silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a cry
+of gladness.
+
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in
+her hair. "Do you think it is nice, Alan?"
+
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed
+them to his lips and face.
+
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It
+was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand
+which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When
+he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the
+deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had
+stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.
+
+"What is it?" he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see
+what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over
+the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night--and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between
+it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach
+of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift
+as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion's face
+now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its
+suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought, and he
+laughed softly.
+
+But her hand clutched his arm. "I saw them," she cried, her voice
+breaking. "I saw them--out there against the sun--before the cloud
+came--and some of them were running, like animals--"
+
+"Shadows!" he exclaimed. "The long shadows of foxes running against the
+sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away--"
+
+"No, no, they were not that," she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. "They were not shadows. _They
+were men_!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
+have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of
+the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot
+striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that
+sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own.
+
+"Were they many?" he asked.
+
+"I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running--"
+
+"Behind us?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And they saw us?"
+
+"I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk."
+
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he
+could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his
+automatic holster.
+
+"You think _they have come_?" she whispered, and a cold dread was in her
+voice.
+
+"Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?"
+
+"No, no, I am not afraid."
+
+"Yet you are trembling."
+
+"It is this strange gloom, Alan."
+
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen
+times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where
+thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight
+thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it
+is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed
+to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty
+hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the
+world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was
+spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird
+chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes
+strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.
+
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing
+circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a
+moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion
+had seen. Graham's men were near, had seen them, and were getting
+between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if
+there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted,
+he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty
+of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the
+range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the
+overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and
+fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little
+short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or
+humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that he
+would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a
+tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain extent
+by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband "rescuing"
+his wife, while he--Alan Holt--was the woman's abductor and paramour,
+and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight
+ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of
+what that "rescue" would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and
+deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered
+itself in readiness for whatever might happen.
+
+If Graham's men had seen them, and were getting between them and
+retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead--and in this direction Alan
+walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could
+not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined
+about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose hair.
+For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow, listening for
+a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and held her
+there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was panting, and he
+could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her parted lips and
+kissed them.
+
+"You are not afraid?" he asked again.
+
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+"No!"
+
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. "Even if
+they saw us, and are Graham's men, we have given them the slip," he
+comforted her. "Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am
+sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly."
+
+"We must travel faster," she insisted. "I want to run."
+
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At
+intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and
+listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to
+the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own,
+but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her
+throat for an instant.
+
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath
+of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and
+about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing
+to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to
+be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out where its
+solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the girl's
+face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra were
+taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan
+recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge
+of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel,
+and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands.
+While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested
+with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running
+between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear, which
+in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained his
+feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the concealment
+of the willows.
+
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another
+voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found
+himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to
+loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl
+struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his
+brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun,
+and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in the gloom, as the
+merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he heard a shout, a loud
+shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he was thrown back; his
+head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled, and almost
+spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in him.
+He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers
+loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was
+killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as
+he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his
+pistol. The holster was empty.
+
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him,
+and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked
+him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and
+on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called
+out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had
+fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the
+water of the little spring from which she had been drinking. A mad curse
+leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now; he wanted to kill--to
+destroy what was already under his hands that he might leap upon this
+other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his hands twisted in her long
+hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a club the bearded
+man's head sagged backward, and Alan's fingers dug into his throat. It
+was a bull's neck. He tried to break it. Ten seconds--twenty--half a
+minute at the most--and flesh and bone would have given way--but before
+the bearded man's gasping cry was gone from his lips the second figure
+leaped upon Alan.
+
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was
+half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out
+and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he
+realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening
+horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan
+broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have
+silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl. She was creeping on
+her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long hair trailed in the
+trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the spring, and her hands
+were groping--groping--until they found what they were seeking.
+
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands
+had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to
+his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself
+over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he
+heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him,
+limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a moment
+caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his
+throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a
+heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By
+chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked
+the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the fight
+with a gun.
+
+"Come," he said.
+
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and
+put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud
+from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from
+the pool and the willows.
+
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the
+strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of
+storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from
+straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his own and
+set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last voice had
+come. He knew what was happening. Graham's men were cleverer than he had
+supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of
+them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the triumphant shout
+of the bearded man's companion had come. They were wondering why the
+call was not repeated, and were hallooing.
+
+Every nerve in Alan's body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him
+like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows
+they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his
+life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by
+two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and
+mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and civilization
+were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the unmapped tundras
+would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof remembered in its
+gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century ago. And the girl at
+his side, already disheveled and muddied by their hands--
+
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from
+his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up
+suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out
+as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an
+arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning
+flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to
+the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A
+moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the
+detonations of Alan's pistol continued to roll over the tundra.
+
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the
+stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary
+Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish
+gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with
+wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it
+clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand
+thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it--to
+his amazement--was a pistol. He recognized the weapon--one of a brace of
+light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented to him
+several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation swept over
+him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along she had
+prepared to fight--to fight with _him_ against their enemies! He wanted
+to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her how
+splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and
+they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier
+between them and the range.
+
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through
+the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and
+shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing
+that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was
+almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken
+the strength from her body. Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed
+the soft hair away from it, and kissed her lips and her eyes, while the
+pistol lay clenched against his breast. Even then, too hard-run to
+speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in his arms and darted
+into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not immediately
+find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed at
+her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little
+goddess hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as
+he hurried toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her
+arms about his neck, feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath,
+strengthened and made happy by her helplessness.
+
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching
+rain touched his face. He could see farther now--half-way back over the
+narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from
+his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath
+was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out
+the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them were no lights
+penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of houses. The
+silence of the place was death-like.
+
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow
+cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and
+loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He
+talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and
+spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot
+here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly
+uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the
+nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an
+answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.
+
+"What did he say?" asked the girl.
+
+"That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us."
+
+"And what else?" she persisted.
+
+"Old Sokwenna is superstitious--and nervous. He said some things that
+you wouldn't understand. You would probably think him mad if he told you
+the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here
+with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has
+been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every
+woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and
+Nawadlook wouldn't go. I'm glad of that, for if they were pursued and
+overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland--"
+
+"Death would be better," finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung more
+tightly to his arm.
+
+"Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna's place until Stampede
+and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won't dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now;
+we can shoot, but they won't risk the use of their rifles."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets--"
+
+They had reached Sokwenna's door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices
+came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at
+concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly
+and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could
+hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where they were
+entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying foes came
+from the edge of the ravine. Alan's heart stood still. There was
+something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of their
+enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window fell in
+with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna's rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied
+his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in
+the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the
+floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him
+what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready
+to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes of
+Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining
+cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle
+chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so
+they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and
+unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan.
+
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham's
+men would fire upon the cabin--when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna's fusillade, and a hail
+of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way
+through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement
+Alan was at Mary's side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside
+Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden,
+consuming fire.
+
+"I thought they wouldn't shoot at women," he said, and his voice was
+terrifying in its strange hardness. "I was mistaken. And I am
+sure--now--that I understand."
+
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer
+guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he
+was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both
+he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish
+in Sokwenna's cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing
+that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he fought until
+he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing less than
+murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and plot, was the
+victim marked for death.
+
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a
+significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to
+care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of
+Sokwenna's cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in
+turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the
+ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open
+with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen.
+
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in
+her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic,
+and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan
+pointed to the open trap.
+
+"Quick, get into that!" he cried. "It is the only safe place. You can
+load there and hand out the guns."
+
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was
+clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok
+climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above.
+
+"Go into the cellar!" commanded Alan. "Good God, if you don't--"
+
+A smile lit up Mary's face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet
+and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the
+rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from
+his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her
+shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said,
+"I am going to help you fight."
+
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an
+apron heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna's
+ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and
+his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men.
+What followed struck a smile from Mary's lips, and a moaning sob rose
+from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open
+window to face the winged death that was again beating a tattoo against
+the log walls of the cabin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his
+power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that
+he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death,
+there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift moments
+following Sokwenna's rifle-shots from the attic window.
+
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old
+warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan
+thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening
+mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them
+singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of
+chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log
+walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a
+ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle about
+that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was riding
+with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the direction
+from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at which to
+shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these he fired
+as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull the
+trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary Standish
+who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was waxen in its
+deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely, never for an
+instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of fear that
+flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It was for
+_him_. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a breathless
+prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the opening in front
+of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing, writhing serpent of
+death that struck something behind them in its venomous wrath. With a
+cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+
+"My God, they will kill you if you stand there!" she moaned. "Give me up
+to them, Alan. If you love me--give me up!"
+
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then
+another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were
+finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs
+of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl's slim
+body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the
+trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced
+Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun and
+the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
+its command.
+
+"If you don't stay there, I'll open the door and go outside to fight!
+Do you understand? _Stay there!_"
+
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
+another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
+following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
+hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
+suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and
+said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with the
+gun which she had loaded for him.
+
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok's lips when Alan was at the top
+of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
+of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
+seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
+Mary Standish.
+
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
+power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
+light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
+radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
+through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
+rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
+blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
+second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
+They were no longer white men, but savages.
+
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
+watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
+rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing
+in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination,
+three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer,
+and he knew what they were thinking--that the bullet-riddled cabin had
+lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at,
+and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man
+falls. Steadily he fired at the others--one, two, three, four--and two
+out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed upon him that
+it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for him,
+head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands. She
+was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or tears
+in her eyes.
+
+"Keep down!" he warned. "Keep down below the floor!"
+
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still
+existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now--from the
+shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light of
+his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled the
+night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the floor, so
+that the lower log of the building protected him. No living thing could
+have stood up against what was happening in these moments. Bullets tore
+through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs, crashing against
+metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles sputtered and went out,
+and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary Standish coming out of
+the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself down quickly, and she
+thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his heart froze with horror
+as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the floor as she stood there
+in that frightful moment, white and glorious in the face of the
+gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was at her side, and
+with her in his arms leaped into the pit.
+
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or
+two life seemed to leave her body.
+
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In
+the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a
+faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm.
+
+"We can get away--there!" she cried in a low voice. "I have opened the
+little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine."
+
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not
+dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and
+Nawadlook's words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle
+fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift
+words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his
+men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a
+considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could steal
+down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept them,
+and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails into
+the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in the
+cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
+Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that
+Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips
+move in the effort.
+
+"Go--for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine," he insisted,
+holding her away from him. "Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
+like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will
+be no hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than
+death. They will be like--like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves--broken--destroyed--"
+
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
+she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+
+"And _you!_" whispered Mary.
+
+"I must remain here. It is the only way."
+
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
+went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
+She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no
+word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was
+her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper,
+no farewell caress came with it.
+
+"Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains," were his last words.
+
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
+them.
+
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
+that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
+way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
+for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin
+was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at the
+windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a movement of
+life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so swiftly that his
+breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became sheets of
+conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire
+whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
+sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
+hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it
+stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from
+Sokwenna's cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and
+watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In
+spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress the
+grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical
+resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously
+through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could
+not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That
+he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant
+possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer
+if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a
+righteous end. Only Rossland's nerve, and what he might have to say,
+held back the vengeance within reach of Alan's hand.
+
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was
+within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed
+upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no
+other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly
+illumined the windows of Sokwenna's place. Was it conceivable that
+Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a
+parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He
+shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and
+his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+
+Rossland's voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+"Alan Holt! Are you there?"
+
+"Yes, I am here," shouted Alan, "and I have a line on your heart,
+Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?"
+
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing
+had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: "We are giving you a
+last chance, Holt. For God's sake, don't be a fool! The offer I made you
+today is still good. If you don't accept it--the law must take
+its course."
+
+"_The law!_" Alan's voice was a savage cry.
+
+"Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with
+felonious intent. But we don't want to press the law unless we are
+forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men and
+wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive. But we
+are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made you
+today. What do you say?"
+
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous
+assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And
+when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments,
+believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.
+
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old
+Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was
+creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange
+voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago,
+calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of
+vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of
+women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time
+he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the glare
+of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind him he
+heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill and
+with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him and
+the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning cabin. And
+then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna's
+last shot sped on its mission.
+
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment
+Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped,
+and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound,
+and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
+
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from
+life into death shocked every nerve in Alan's body. Horror for a brief
+space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and
+motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible
+silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry broke
+that silence, though it was made up of many men's voices. Deadly and
+thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had been
+killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had
+something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no
+mercy--nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands,
+and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in
+another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+
+"Come below!" he commanded. "We must be ready to leave through the
+cellar-pit."
+
+His hand touched Sokwenna's face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior's heart. There was no tremor or
+beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+
+The guns of Graham's men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets
+tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the
+shelter of the pit.
+
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting
+for him there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+In the astonishment with which Mary's unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her
+pale face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the
+cabin. That she had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back
+to him, filled him with instant dread, for the precious minutes he had
+fought for were lost, and the priceless time gained during the parley
+with Rossland counted for nothing.
+
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his
+hand and pull him down beside her.
+
+"Of course you didn't expect me to go," she said, in a voice that no
+longer trembled or betrayed excitement. "You didn't want me to be a
+coward. My place is with you."
+
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him
+as they were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up
+chokingly in his throat.
+
+"Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there--shot under a flag of
+truce," he said. "We can't have many minutes left to us."
+
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the
+cellar-pit opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it--alone--and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side it
+would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+
+"Where are Keok and Nawadlook?" he asked.
+
+"On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your plan
+that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to give
+myself up unless they did as I commanded them. And--Alan--the ravine is
+filled with the rain-mist, and dark--" She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+
+"It is our one chance," he said.
+
+"And aren't you glad--a little glad--that I didn't run away without
+you?"
+
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they smiled
+at him in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that was
+almost playfully chiding; and the glory of her love as she had proved it
+to him there drew from him what he knew to be the truth.
+
+"Yes--I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour--"
+
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep
+forth into the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the
+wet particles of it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets
+cut like knives over his head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on
+each side of Sokwenna's place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine,
+and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog
+that hid the coul�e.
+
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely.
+This was not what Alan had hoped for. Graham's men, enraged and made
+desperate by Rossland's death, would rush the cabin immediately.
+Scarcely had the thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly
+approaching shouts, the trampling of feet, and then the battering of
+some heavy object at the barricaded door of Sokwenna's cabin. In another
+minute or two their escape would be discovered and a horde of men would
+pour down into the ravine.
+
+Mary tugged at his hand. "Let us hurry," she pleaded.
+
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with
+her hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine,
+apparently in the face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden
+fear when their course came almost within the circle of light made by
+the burning cabin. Like shadows they sped into the deeper shelter of the
+corral buildings, and not until they paused there did she understand the
+significance of the hazardous chance they had taken. Already Graham's
+men were pouring into the ravine.
+
+"They won't suspect we've doubled on them until it is too late," said
+Alan exultantly. "We'll make for the kloof. Stampede and the herdsmen
+should arrive within a few hours, and when that happens--"
+
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled
+figure lay huddled against one of the corral gates.
+
+"He is hurt," whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+
+"I hope so," replied Alan pitilessly. "It will be unfortunate for us if
+he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way."
+
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing
+point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She
+heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper
+shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she
+noticed that the mist was no longer in her face. The sky was clearing.
+She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail
+over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of
+them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point when
+a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second and a
+third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout. There was
+something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly
+to them.
+
+"The wounded man," said Alan, in a voice of dismay. "He is calling the
+others. I should have killed him!"
+
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All
+her courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and
+quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They
+passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the
+pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen. Trained to
+the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan's ears caught faint
+sounds which his companion did not hear. The wounded man had succeeded
+in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain
+behind them.
+
+"Can you run a little farther?" he asked.
+
+"Where?"
+
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a
+cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran a
+little behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved them
+this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to
+clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached
+the kloof he would have to fight in the open. With Stampede at his side
+he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles with their
+enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open tundra from
+which they might have defied assault. But the nearness of the girl
+frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He was only an
+incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of
+death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her
+remained the unspeakable horror of Graham's lust and passion. But if
+they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the
+cliff, they could laugh at Graham's pack of beasts while they waited for
+the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the
+hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution
+came faintly rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a
+golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay
+between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer
+held shadow or illusionment.
+
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with surprising
+speed, heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her endurance
+amazed him. And he knew that without questioning him she had guessed the
+truth of what lay behind them. Then, all at once, she stopped, swayed
+like a reed, and would have fallen if his arms had not caught her.
+
+"Splendid!" he cried.
+
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was a
+swiftly beating little dynamo.
+
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a
+mile of the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary's
+splendid courage had won it for them.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried
+her through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of
+progress, counted now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight
+were flecking the plains. In another quarter of an hour moving objects
+would be distinctly visible a mile away.
+
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could
+feel their breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of
+the incongruity of the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It
+seemed inconceivable that this day, glorious in its freshness, and
+welcomed by the glad voice of all living things, should be a day of
+tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for him. He wanted to shout
+out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it seemed absurd that
+he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient bulk of his
+rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure which
+they bore.
+
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then on
+he climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge and
+scanned the tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he
+concluded their enemies believed they were hidden somewhere on the
+tundra not far from the range-houses.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow
+ravine, and half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof.
+For a space they rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long
+hair and plaited it in two braids. In these moments Alan encouraged her,
+but he did not lie. He told her the half-mile of tundra was their
+greatest hazard, and described the risks they would run. Carefully he
+explained what she was to do under certain circumstances. There was
+scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but they might be so
+far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to the kloof.
+If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be necessary to
+find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from behind
+succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue in the
+direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he followed more
+slowly, holding Graham's men back with his rifle until she reached the
+edge of the gorge. After that he would come to her as swiftly as he
+could run.
+
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra.
+About them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile
+back toward the range were moving figures; farther west were others, and
+eastward, almost at the edge of the ravine, were two men who would have
+discovered them in another moment if they had not descended into the
+hollow. Alan could see them kneeling to drink at the little coul�e which
+ran through it.
+
+"Don't hurry," he said, with a sudden swift thought. "Keep parallel with
+me and a distance away. They may not discover you are a woman and
+possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I stop.
+Follow my movements."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were
+soiled with muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her
+thus Alan laughed and cried out softly:
+
+"You beautiful little vagabond!"
+
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and
+after that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so
+cleverly that her action was better than his own--and so they had made
+their way over a third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly
+and cried, "Now, _run_!"
+
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the
+ravine and were running toward them.
+
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock
+which he had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+
+Close behind her, he said: "Don't hesitate a second. Keep on going. When
+they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn't stop."
+
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them.
+Then he drew close to Mary's side.
+
+"See that level place ahead? We'll cross it in another minute or two.
+When they come to it I'm going to stop, and catch them where they can't
+find shelter. But you must keep on going. I'll overtake you by the time
+you reach the edge of the kloof."
+
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level
+space she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready
+to choke her when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their
+enemies. But in her mind burned the low words of his command, his
+warning, and she did not look back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle of
+rock, which was now very near. She had almost reached it when the first
+shot came from behind her.
+
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and made
+pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned,
+and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham's men saw his
+ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their
+pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might
+use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought
+themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that
+flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could
+fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as
+a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her
+back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he joined her. A
+bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He did not return
+the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+
+"He won't dare to stand up until the others join him," he encouraged
+her. "We're beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few
+minutes longer--"
+
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed
+to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the
+gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught
+her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge to a
+table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he dropped down
+beside her, and held her close as they crept back under the shelving
+face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with a yawning
+chasm at their side. The trail widened as they descended, and at the
+last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter of a
+million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they picked
+their way, while the trickle and drip of water and the flesh-like
+clamminess of the air sent a strange shiver of awe through Mary
+Standish. There was no life here--only an age-old whisper that seemed a
+part of death; and when voices came from above, where Graham's men were
+gathering, they were ghostly and far away.
+
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked
+their way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages
+between the Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides
+an uncontrollable impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though
+she sensed the protection of their presence. They were like colossi,
+carved by hands long dead, and now guarded by spirits whose voices
+guttered low and secretly in the mysterious drip and trickle of unseen
+water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm death and vengeance had
+glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a rock crashed
+behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a cry broke
+from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never known
+before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from which she
+had escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable, for which
+she would never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan, and when at
+last the narrow fissure widened over their heads, and light came down
+and softened their way, he saw that her face was deathly white.
+
+"We are almost there," he comforted. "And--some day--you will love this
+gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it together all the way to
+the mountains."
+
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that
+was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this
+climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a
+great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a
+floor as level as a table and covered with soft white sand. Mary would
+never forget her first glimpse of this place; it was unreal, strange, as
+if a band of outlaw fairies had brought the white sand for a carpet, and
+had made this their hiding-place, where wind and rain and snow could
+never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to make her thought
+more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only fairies'
+feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain. So they
+were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight through that
+fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof itself that they
+must have hidden themselves. Something in the humor and gentle thought
+of it all made her smile at Alan. But his face had turned suddenly grim,
+and she looked up the kloof, where they had traveled through danger and
+come to safety. And then she saw that which froze all thought of fairies
+out of her heart.
+
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many
+of them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer
+light, and at their head was a man upon whom Mary's eyes fixed
+themselves in horror. White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed
+the truth.
+
+"That man in front?" he asked.
+
+She nodded. "Yes."
+
+"Is John Graham."
+
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+
+"Yes, John Graham."
+
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+
+"I think," he said, "that from here I can easily kill him!"
+
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone
+out of them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a
+prayer to him.
+
+"I am thinking of tomorrow--the next day--the years and years to come,
+_with you_," she whispered. "Alan, you can't kill John Graham--not until
+God shows us it is the only thing left for us to do. You can't--"
+
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl
+of a bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart
+stopped beating, and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body
+as she saw the swift and terrible change in the stricken face of the man
+she loved. He tried to smile at her, even as a red blot came where the
+streak of gray in his hair touched his forehead. And then he crumpled
+down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against the rocks.
+
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill
+her brain with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below
+hesitated and their hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible
+cry of a woman rang between the rock walls of the chasm. And following
+the cry a voice came down to them.
+
+"John Graham, I'm going to kill you--_kill you_--"
+
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task
+of vengeance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her
+soul, and she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed. But
+she did not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham. The
+troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted in gathering before
+her eyes, something she tried to brush away, but which obstinately
+refused to go. She did not know she was sobbing as she looked over the
+rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she had lost sight of John
+Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock and began climbing
+it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated she stood above the
+rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked alike, jumping and
+dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly
+it occurred to her that _all_ of them were John Grahams, and that she
+must kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding fairies might have
+guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when
+she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her
+first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down among the rocks at
+the crack of it. After that she continued to fire until the responseless
+click of the hammer told her the gun was empty. The explosions and the
+shock against her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain. She
+saw the men still coming, and they were so near she could see their
+faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in its desire to kill
+John Graham.
+
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His face
+was hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster,
+and sprang back to her rock. There was no time to wait or choose now,
+for his murderers were almost upon her. With all her strength she tried
+to fire accurately, but Alan's big gun leaped and twisted in her hand as
+she poured its fire wildly down among the rocks until it was empty. Her
+own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in the race to the kloof, and
+now when she found she had fired her last shot she waited through
+another instant of horror, until she was striking at faces that came
+within the reach of her arm. And then, like a monster created suddenly
+by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a moment's vision of
+his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a passion that was
+almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his arms came
+about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
+against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless
+weight against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone,
+and if the arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.
+
+And she could hear--clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came
+from up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that
+the strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+
+Graham's arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies' hiding-place with its
+white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+
+"Martens, it couldn't happen in a better place," he said to a man who
+stood near him. "Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider.
+If you don't clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this
+ambuscade will do the business in a hurry."
+
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others
+hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no
+cries, no shouts--nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+
+Graham's arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged
+inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of
+day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.
+
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its
+first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to
+climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy,
+very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not a
+sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could
+find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.
+
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the
+tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more
+reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the
+old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had
+thought was long dead--the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the
+eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede
+Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days he
+had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor
+conscience to bar the way, and his dream--a last great fight--was here
+to fill the final unwritten page of a life's drama that was almost
+closed. And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white
+sand unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides
+and rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a
+woman--and Alan Holt!
+
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men's faces turned
+that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the
+scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He was
+almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge. Two
+of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling
+interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a woman's voice filled with
+madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five men
+stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the cries came Mary
+Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her. The
+girl's hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and
+Graham's eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her. He
+caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully
+weak hands beat futilely in his face.
+
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.
+
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet
+of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and
+scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge
+when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of
+the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or
+swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down as
+if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one who
+fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched on
+his face.
+
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl
+crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body,
+her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a
+gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other
+could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation
+gripped Stampede. He saw Graham's pistol rise slowly and deliberately.
+He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham's face was the cold
+and unexcited triumph of a devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was
+four inches--perhaps five--away from the girl's. There was only
+that--and the extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the
+automatic seeking his heart. And then, in that last second, straight
+into the girl's staring eyes blazed Stampede's gun, and the four inches
+of leering face behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede,
+and not the girl, who closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and
+saw Mary Standish sobbing over Alan's body, and Graham lying face down
+in the sand, he reverently raised the gun from which he had fired the
+last shot, and pressed its hot barrel to his thin lips.
+
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her face
+in her hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die, for in
+this hour of triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for her. Alan
+was gone. Only death could have come with that terrible red blot on his
+forehead, just under the gray streak in his hair. And without him there
+was no longer a reason for her to live.
+
+She reached out her arms. "Give him to me," she whispered. "Give him to
+me."
+
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede's face. But she heard his voice.
+
+"It wasn't a bullet that hit him," Stampede was saying. "The bullet hit
+a rock, an' it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between
+the eyes. He isn't dead, _and he ain't going to die!_"
+
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies' hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was
+riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a
+girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at
+last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged
+into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped
+after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds like the
+clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long sleep,
+from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a face very
+near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of tears.
+
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, "Alan!"
+
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed
+against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth
+and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end
+of the race had come, and he had won.
+
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he
+sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him,
+and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old
+housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from
+him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the strange
+change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the
+question, for more than any others of his people did he love these two
+missing comrades of the tundras.
+
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened--but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told
+him of that.
+
+"Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away," he said.
+"We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the corrals.
+Now that Graham is dead, they're frightened stiff--afraid we're going to
+hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland to fight for
+them, they know they're lost."
+
+"And our men--my people?" asked Alan faintly.
+
+"Fought like devils."
+
+"Yes, I know. But--"
+
+"They didn't rest an hour in coming from the mountains."
+
+"You know what I mean, Stampede."
+
+"Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna," and he counted
+over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among them.
+
+"And Tautuk?"
+
+"He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone
+else attempts to do anything for him."
+
+"Then--I am glad Tautuk was hit," smiled Alan. And he asked, "Where is
+Amuk Toolik?"
+
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+
+"You'll have to ask _her_, Alan."
+
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that
+puzzled him.
+
+"You must wait," she said.
+
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and
+with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she
+told him the secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she
+nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was
+content to accept the punishment. So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and
+what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+
+"I don't need a doctor," he said, "but it was mighty thoughtful of you
+to send Amuk Toolik for one." Then he caught himself suddenly. "What a
+senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who need a doctor more
+than I do."
+
+Mary nodded. "But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now."
+And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip
+of her ear.
+
+"Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel," he said. "Then we
+will start for the States, as we planned."
+
+"You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the
+new house," she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he
+was stunned. "I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in
+the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very
+soon. I am sorry you find your business in the States so important,
+Alan. It will be a little lonesome with you away."
+
+He gasped. "Mary!"
+
+She did not turn. "_Mary!_"
+
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she
+faced him.
+
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips
+pressed to his.
+
+"It wasn't a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to
+marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait--"
+
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that
+brought a little sob of joy from her heart.
+
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little
+reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which
+he believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her
+desire to return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She
+wanted nothing down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders
+had left her, unless he could find some way of using it for the good of
+Alaska. And even then she was afraid it might lead to the breaking of
+her dream. For there was only one thing that would make her happy, and
+that was _his_ world. She wanted it just as it was--the big tundras, his
+people, the herds, the mountains--with the glory and greatness of God
+all about them in the open spaces. She now understood what he had meant
+when he said he was an Alaskan and not an American; she was that, too,
+an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would go on fighting with
+him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed until it
+seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes and
+secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his
+breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot
+flood of tears filled his eyes.
+
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary's
+head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she
+stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and
+glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were
+shining like stars as she looked at Alan.
+
+"It is Amuk Toolik," she said. "He has returned."
+
+"And--is he alone?" Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he
+waited for her answer.
+
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back
+his hair. "I must go and do up my hair, Alan," she said then. "It would
+never do for them to find me like this."
+
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on
+the roof of Sokwenna's cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was
+singing again.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 11867-8.txt or 11867-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Alaskan, by James Oliver Curwood,
+Illustrated by Walt Louderback
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Alaskan
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2004  [eBook #11867]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 11867-h.htm or 11867-h.zip:
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/8/6/11867/11867-h/11867-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/8/6/11867/11867-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALASKAN
+
+A Novel of the North
+
+By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+With Illustrations by Walt Louderback
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska, the new empire rising
+in the North, it is for me an honor and a privilege to dedicate
+this work.
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+Owosso, Michigan August 1, 1923
+
+
+
+
+THE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+It was as if the man was deliberately insulting her (Frontispiece).
+
+The long, black launch nosed its way out to sea.
+
+The man wore a gun ... within reach of his hand.
+
+Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not
+lost the spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead
+in him, and the fire which is built up of clean adventure and the
+association of strong men and a mighty country had not died out of his
+veins. He could still see the picturesque, feel the thrill of the
+unusual, and--at times--warm memories crowded upon him so closely that
+yesterday seemed today, and Alaska was young again, thrilling the world
+with her wild call to those who had courage to come and fight for her
+treasures, and live--or die.
+
+Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and
+the yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan
+mountains, something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
+
+"That is Alaska."
+
+The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment
+did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the
+almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled
+with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body
+was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the
+cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds lay like
+shimmering draperies.
+
+Then she turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said,
+and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor
+in her voice. "Your Alaska, Captain Rifle."
+
+Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the
+low moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now
+she asked: "What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon
+like that, and the stars so clear above!"
+
+"It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are
+in the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it
+were day you could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the
+Inside Passage. I have always called it the water-wonderland of the
+world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken--for we are
+almost alone on this side of the ship. Is it not proof? If I were right,
+the men and women in there--dancing, playing cards, chattering--would be
+crowding this rail. Can you imagine humans like that? But they can't see
+what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things. Ah, do
+you catch that in the air, Miss Standish--the perfume of flowers, of
+forests, of green things ashore? It is faint, but I catch it."
+
+"And so do I."
+
+She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she
+stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
+
+The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy;
+she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the
+rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted
+windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in
+her face which he could not understand.
+
+She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last
+minute--defying the necessity of making reservation where half a
+thousand others had been turned away--and chance had brought her under
+his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered
+a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he
+had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom
+of years. And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant
+poise of her head with which she was regarding the cabin windows now.
+
+She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives
+in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was
+impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all
+official regulations in coming aboard.
+
+In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience,
+he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some
+way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and
+sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
+
+He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very
+pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly
+attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted
+clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her
+eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her
+exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of
+beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he
+doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he
+would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation
+in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which
+others might not see--and hold his tongue.
+
+"We are not quite alone," she was saying. "There are others," and she
+made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
+
+"Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway," he said. "And the other is Alan
+Holt."
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the
+moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain's arm. "Listen," she
+whispered.
+
+"Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the
+shore, and there are glaciers all the way up."
+
+"And that other sound, like low wind--on a night so still and calm! What
+is it?"
+
+"You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss
+Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets
+rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the
+mountains, you hear that song."
+
+"And this man, Alan Holt," she reminded him. "He is a part of these
+things?"
+
+"Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska
+before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in
+Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him--"
+
+"Thirty-eight," she said, so quickly that for a moment he was
+astonished.
+
+Then he chuckled. "You are very good at figures."
+
+He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
+
+"This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He
+said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone--like me. He almost
+frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of
+ghosts as we talked there in the dusk."
+
+"Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse
+ate up men's lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to
+Klondike, Miss Standish," said Captain Rifle. "You will meet many like
+him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their faces--always
+the memory of those days that are gone."
+
+She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. "And Alan Holt? You
+know him well?"
+
+"Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have
+sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All
+northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the
+Endicott Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier."
+
+"He must be very brave."
+
+"Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish."
+
+"And honorable men--men you can trust and believe in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is odd," she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a
+bird-note in her throat. "I have never seen Alaska before, and yet
+something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a
+long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going
+home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan."
+
+"And you are--"
+
+"An American," she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her voice.
+"A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going
+north--to learn."
+
+"Only that, Miss Standish?"
+
+His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer.
+His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was
+filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
+
+"I must press the question," he said. "As the captain of this ship, and
+as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to
+tell me--in confidence, if you will have it so?"
+
+For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. "There is
+nothing, Captain Rifle."
+
+"And yet--you came aboard very strangely," he urged. "You will recall
+that it was most unusual--without reservation, without baggage--"
+
+"You forget the hand-bag," she reminded him.
+
+"Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag
+scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish."
+
+"But I did, Captain Rifle."
+
+"True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It
+was without precedent."
+
+"I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass."
+
+"Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the
+ship's regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were
+frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from
+something!"
+
+He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
+
+"Yes, I was running away--from something."
+
+Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed
+the thrill of the fight she was making.
+
+"And you will not tell me why--or from what you were escaping?"
+
+"I can not--tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But--it is
+possible--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I shall never reach Nome."
+
+Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung
+to him, and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged the
+hand to her breast. "I know just how good you have been to me," she
+cried. "I should like to tell you why I came aboard--like that. But I
+can not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!" With one free hand
+she pointed.
+
+"Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery
+of centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those
+things, Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or
+feel what you have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know
+it. And after all that, can't you--won't you--forget the strange manner
+in which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to
+put out of your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look
+back--and think. Please Captain Rifle--please!"
+
+So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his
+hand to her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant, leaving
+him speechless, his resolution gone.
+
+"I love you because you have been so good to me," she whispered, and as
+suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone
+at the rail.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid
+light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching
+her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which
+she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle.
+To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that went to
+make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first ships of
+the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the purser,
+had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the others; that
+was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had been at the same
+table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both breakfast hours,
+and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and
+of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them.
+This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or
+communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of
+his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst.
+Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the
+balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For
+him silence was not a burden.
+
+In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very
+quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape
+the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that
+darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill him, but
+merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even more than her
+gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to discuss the
+matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one thing, it would
+have been her hair--not so much the color of it as the care she
+evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He noted that
+it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the dinner
+lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth, silky coils
+in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense relief
+after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his
+six months' visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking,
+because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.
+
+He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of
+him--with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather
+Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his
+thick, blond hair. His interest had not reached anywhere near
+that point.
+
+Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested
+him, except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and
+greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the
+throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship _Nome_ under his
+feet at Seattle. He was going _home_. And home meant Alaska. It meant
+the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which
+civilization had not yet come with its clang and clamor. It meant
+friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he loved. Such was his
+reaction after six months of exile, six months of loneliness and
+desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
+
+"I'll not make the trip again--not for a whole winter--unless I'm sent
+at the point of a gun," he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after
+Mary Standish had left the deck. "An Eskimo winter is long enough, but
+one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer--for me."
+
+"I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
+Washington."
+
+"Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has
+forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to
+listen to him. We may get action."
+
+"May!" Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. "Alaska has been waiting ten
+years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you'll get anything.
+When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and
+what we need north of Fifty-eight--why, what's the use? Alaska might as
+well shut up shop!"
+
+"But she isn't going to do that," said Alan Holt, his face grimly set in
+the moonlight. "They've tried hard to get us, and they've made us shut
+up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites in the
+Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven out nine
+thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left are
+hard-boiled. We're not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are Alaskans,
+and we are not afraid to fight."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"That we'll have a square deal within another five years, or know the
+reason why. And another five years after that, we'll he shipping a
+million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty
+years we'll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons,
+eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who
+are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation systems."
+
+One of Alan Holt's hands was clenched at the rail. "Until I went down
+this winter, I didn't realize just how bad it was," he said, a note hard
+as iron in his voice. "Lomen is a diplomat, but I'm not. I want to fight
+when I see such things--fight with a gun. Because we happened to find
+gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as quickly as
+possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the skin will be
+worthless. That's modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for you!"
+
+"And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?"
+
+So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned
+and stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with
+the moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
+
+"You ask me a question, madam," said Alan Holt, bowing courteously. "No,
+I am not an American. I am an Alaskan."
+
+The girl's lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear.
+"Please pardon me for listening," she said. "I couldn't help it. I am an
+American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything else in
+the world--more than my religion, even. _America,_ Mr. Holt. And America
+doesn't necessarily mean a great many of America's people. I love to
+think that I first came ashore in the _Mayflower_. That is why my name
+is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska _is_ America."
+
+Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl's face was no longer placidly
+quiet. Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her
+voice, and he knew that in the light of day he would have seen fire in
+her cheeks. He smiled, and in that smile he could not quite keep back
+the cynicism of his thought.
+
+"And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?"
+
+"Nothing," she said. "And yet I love it." She pointed to the mountains.
+"I wish I might have been born among them. You are fortunate. You should
+love America."
+
+"Alaska, you mean!"
+
+"No, America." There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was not
+speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
+
+The irony on Alan's lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again.
+"If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came over
+in the _Mayflower_, I stand reproved," he said. "You should be an
+authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your
+relationship."
+
+"You are correct," she replied with a proud, little tilt of her glossy
+head, "though I think that only lately have I come to an understanding
+of its significance--and its responsibility. I ask your pardon again for
+interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just happened."
+
+She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a
+swift smile and passed down the promenade.
+
+The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of
+life.
+
+"A remarkable young woman," Alan remarked. "I imagine that the spirit of
+Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular
+olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost
+suppose he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite
+though rather indirect result."
+
+He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation
+of humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one
+could not miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a
+sting which he did not altogether intend.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the
+captain a question which was in his mind.
+
+"The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?"
+
+"Yes--rather," acknowledged Captain Rifle. "Hereafter she will ply
+directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we're doing the Inside
+Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
+Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven't seen fit to
+explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to
+do with it. We're landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by
+way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays,
+Holt. I can remember--"
+
+"So can I," nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay
+the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. "I
+remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
+He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget."
+
+"Men don't forget such women as Jane Hope," said the captain softly.
+
+"You knew her?"
+
+"Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years
+ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn't it? And when I look at Mary
+Standish and hear her voice--" He hesitated, as if betraying a secret,
+and then he added: "--I can't help thinking of the girl Donald Hardwick
+fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It's too bad she
+had to die."
+
+"She isn't dead," said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. "She
+isn't dead," he repeated. "That's the pity of it. She is as much a
+living thing to him today as she was twenty years ago."
+
+After a moment the captain said, "She was talking with him early this
+evening, Alan."
+
+"Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you."
+
+Alan shrugged his shoulders. "Not at all. I think she is a most
+admirable young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I'm going to
+promenade a bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs."
+
+The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his way,
+while the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
+
+To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship _Nome_ was more than a
+thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing
+with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a
+human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger
+list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names represented
+more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he
+loved, its heart's blood, its very element--"giving in." He knew that
+with the throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy, and hope
+were on their way north--and with these things also arrogance and greed.
+On board were a hundred conflicting elements--some that had fought for
+Alaska, others that would make her, and others that would destroy.
+
+He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and
+women whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew
+the tourists almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north had
+not yet seized upon them. They were voluble and rather excitedly
+enthusiastic in the face of beauty and awesomeness. The sour-doughs were
+tucked away here and there in shadowy nooks, watching in silence, or
+they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking their cigars or pipes,
+and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these two, the newcomers
+and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for Alan, the
+flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life north of
+Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked out those
+who belonged north of Fifty-eight.
+
+Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over the
+edge of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he
+recognized them as the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to
+work on the government railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of
+them was talking, filled with the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
+
+"I tell you," he said, "people don't know what they ought to know about
+Alaska. In school they teach us that it's an eternal icebox full of
+gold, and is headquarters for Santa Claus, because that's where reindeer
+come from. And grown-ups think about the same thing. Why"--he drew in a
+deep breath--"it's nine times as large as the state of Washington,
+twelve times as big as the state of New York, and we bought it from
+Russia for less than two cents an acre. If you put it down on the face
+of the United States, the city of Juneau would be in St. Augustine,
+Florida, and Unalaska would be in Los Angeles. That's how big it is, and
+the geographical center of our country isn't Omaha or Sioux City, but
+exactly San Francisco, California."
+
+"Good for you, sonny," came a quiet voice from beyond the group. "Your
+geography is correct. And you might add for the education of your people
+that Alaska is only thirty-seven miles from Bolshevik Siberia, and
+wireless messages are sent into Alaska by the Bolsheviks urging our
+people to rise against the Washington government. We've asked Washington
+for a few guns and a few men to guard Nome, but they laugh at us. Do you
+see a moral?"
+
+From half-amused interest Alan jerked himself to alert tension. He
+caught a glimpse of the gaunt, old graybeard who had spoken, but did not
+know him. And as this man turned away, a shadowy hulk in the moonlight,
+the same deep, quiet voice came back very clearly:
+
+"And if you ever care for Alaska, you might tell your government to hang
+a few such men as John Graham, sonny."
+
+At the sound of that name Alan felt the blood in him run suddenly hot.
+Only one man on the face of the earth did he hate with undying hatred,
+and that man was John Graham. He would have followed, seeking the
+identity of the stranger whose words had temporarily stunned the young
+engineers, when he saw a slim figure standing between him and the light
+of the smoking-room windows. It was Mary Standish. He knew by her
+attitude that she had heard the words of the young engineer and the old
+graybeard, but she was looking at _him_. And he could not remember that
+he had ever seen quite that same look in a woman's face before. It was
+not fright. It was more an expression of horror which comes from thought
+and mental vision rather than physical things. Instantly it annoyed Alan
+Holt. This was the second time she had betrayed a too susceptible
+reaction in matters which did not concern her. So he said, speaking to
+the silent young men a few steps away:
+
+"He was mistaken, gentlemen. John Graham should not be hung. That would
+be too merciful."
+
+He resumed his way then, nodding at them as he passed. But he had
+scarcely gone out of their vision when quick footsteps pattered behind
+him, and the girl's hand touched his arm lightly.
+
+"Mr. Holt, please--"
+
+He stopped, sensing the fact that the soft pressure of her fingers was
+not altogether unpleasant. She hesitated, and when she spoke again, only
+her finger-tips touched his arm. She was looking shoreward, so that for
+a moment he could see only the lustrous richness of her smooth hair.
+Then she was meeting his eyes squarely, a flash of challenge in the gray
+depths of her own.
+
+"I am alone on the ship," she said. "I have no friends here. I want to
+see things and ask questions. Will you ... help me a little?"
+
+"You mean ... escort you?"
+
+"Yes, if you will. I should feel more comfortable."
+
+Nettled at first, the humor of the situation began to appeal to him, and
+he wondered at the intense seriousness of the girl. She did not smile.
+Her eyes were very steady and very businesslike, and at the same time
+very lovely.
+
+"The way you put it, I don't see how I can refuse," he said. "As for the
+questions--probably Captain Rifle can answer them better than I."
+
+"I don't like to trouble him," she replied. "He has much to think about.
+And you are alone."
+
+"Yes, quite alone. And with very little to think about."
+
+"You know what I mean, Mr. Holt. Possibly you can not understand me, or
+won't try. But I'm going into a new country, and I have a passionate
+desire to learn as much about that country as I can before I get there.
+I want to know about many things. For instance--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you say what you did about John Graham? What did the other man
+mean when he said he should be hung?"
+
+There was an intense directness in her question which for a moment
+astonished him. She had withdrawn her fingers from his arm, and her slim
+figure seemed possessed of a sudden throbbing suspense as she waited for
+an answer. They had turned a little, so that in the light of the moon
+the almost flowerlike whiteness of her face was clear to him. With her
+smooth, shining hair, the pallor of her face under its lustrous
+darkness, and the clearness of her eyes she held Alan speechless for a
+moment, while his brain struggled to seize upon and understand the
+something about her which made him interested in spite of himself. Then
+he smiled and there was a sudden glitter in his eyes.
+
+"Did you ever see a dog fight?" he asked.
+
+She hesitated, as if trying to remember, and shuddered slightly. "Once."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"It was my dog--a little dog. His throat was torn--"
+
+He nodded. "Exactly. And that is just what John Graham is doing to
+Alaska, Miss Standish. He's the dog--a monster. Imagine a man with a
+colossal financial power behind him, setting out to strip the wealth
+from a new land and enslave it to his own desires and political
+ambitions. That is what John Graham is doing from his money-throne down
+there in the States. It's the financial support he represents, curse
+him! Money--and a man without conscience. A man who would starve
+thousands or millions to achieve his ends. A man who, in every sense of
+the word, is a murderer--"
+
+The sharpness of her cry stopped him. If possible, her face had gone
+whiter, and he saw her hands clutched suddenly at her breast. And the
+look in her eyes brought the old, cynical twist back to his lips.
+
+"There, I've hurt your puritanism again, Miss Standish," he said, bowing
+a little. "In order to appeal to your finer sensibilities I suppose I
+must apologize for swearing and calling another man a murderer. Well, I
+do. And now--if you care to stroll about the ship--"
+
+From a respectful distance the three young engineers watched Alan and
+Mary Standish as they walked forward.
+
+"A corking pretty girl," said one of them, drawing a deep breath. "I
+never saw such hair and eyes--"
+
+"I'm at the same table with them," interrupted another. "I'm second on
+her left, and she hasn't spoken three words to me. And that fellow she
+is with is like an icicle out of Labrador."
+
+And Mary Standish was saying: "Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those young
+engineers. I wish I were a man."
+
+"I wish you were," agreed Alan amiably.
+
+Whereupon Mary Standish's pretty mouth lost its softness for an instant.
+But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and the
+sweet air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was
+different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman's man. He
+admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or
+die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his
+sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born
+and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with
+the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious laps
+of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of
+the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But only now
+and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any given moment a
+supreme physical crisis had come, women would have turned instinctively
+in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
+
+He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
+The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle
+meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he
+could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his
+face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
+There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more
+forcefully than speech.
+
+Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present
+situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment
+Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the
+intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of the
+young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He chuckled.
+And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement, gave to her
+head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed once before,
+in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As if
+challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
+
+Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a
+decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl's hand did not
+merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was
+necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils
+of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her,
+together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to
+his stoicism.
+
+"It's not half bad," he expressed himself frankly. "I really believe I
+am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish."
+
+"Oh!" He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. "You
+thought--possibly--I might be dangerous?"
+
+"A little. I don't understand women. Collectively I think they are God's
+most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don't care much about them.
+But you--"
+
+She nodded approvingly. "That is very nice of you. But you needn't say I
+am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike."
+
+"Possibly--except in the way they dress their hair."
+
+"You like mine?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge
+cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
+
+They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard
+the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
+luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor
+built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands
+while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
+
+"If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
+let's go in," he suggested. "I know; of no better place. Are you afraid
+of smoke?"
+
+"No. If I were a man, I would smoke."
+
+"Perhaps you do?"
+
+"I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair."
+
+"Which would be a crime," he replied so earnestly that again he was
+surprised at himself.
+
+Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they
+entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue
+with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as
+many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up
+and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A
+few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed
+Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled blankets
+that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it with
+her toe.
+
+"What do they mean?" she asked.
+
+"We are overloaded," he explained. "Alaskan steam-ships have no steerage
+passengers as we generally know them. It isn't poverty that rides
+steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on
+the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there
+will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?"
+
+He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in,
+and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men
+were seated at this table.
+
+"The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
+earl--I forget his name," he said. "He doesn't look it, but he is a real
+sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
+The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men,
+and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with
+whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of
+George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The
+thud of Carmack's spade, as it hit first pay, was the 'sound heard round
+the world,' Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was
+the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish
+Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the strike was
+made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love with Belinda
+Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came into the north."
+
+"Why was she courageous?"
+
+"Because she came alone into a man's land, without a soul to fight for
+her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did. As
+long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda
+Mulrooney."
+
+"She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt."
+
+"Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss
+Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who
+posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. _Finis_,
+I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big
+whiskers--"
+
+He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a
+table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except
+his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and
+was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in
+its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his
+shoulders slightly and turned away.
+
+Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her
+cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could
+not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
+
+"If you will pardon me a moment," he said quietly, "I shall demand an
+explanation."
+
+Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
+
+"Please don't," she entreated. "It is kind of you, and you are just the
+sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would be
+absurd to notice it. Don't you think so?"
+
+In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her
+voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went
+from her face, leaving it strangely white.
+
+"I am at your service," he replied with a rather cold inclination of his
+head. "But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
+anything like that to go unchallenged."
+
+He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the
+deck.
+
+"One of John Graham's men," he said. "A fellow named Rossland, going up
+to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They'll choke
+the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff we
+call money can do, isn't it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian villages
+starving, and women and little children dying by the score because of
+this John Graham's money. Over-fishing did it, you understand. If you
+could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones,
+crying for a rag to eat--"
+
+Her hand clutched at his arm. "How could John Graham--do that?" she
+whispered.
+
+He laughed unpleasantly. "When you have been a year in Alaska you won't
+ask that question, Miss Standish. _How_? Why, simply by glutting his
+canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the natives
+have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he handles
+represents the fish trust--and many other things. Please don't
+misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without it
+we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the
+face of the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska
+does today. Ten thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men who
+have money to invest.
+
+"But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a despoiler,
+one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource into dollars
+as fast as he can, even though those operations make both land and water
+barren. You must remember until recently the government of Alaska as
+manipulated by Washington politicians was little better than that
+against which the American colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard thing for
+one to say about the country he loves, isn't it? And John Graham stands
+for the worst--he and the money which guarantees his power.
+
+"As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of
+Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics,
+that capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be
+interested. Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate
+bureaus at Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is
+it a wonder the patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like John
+Graham, dishonest and corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to
+work in?
+
+"But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow
+which has so long clouded Alaska's interests. There is now a growing
+concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of
+the Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska
+is a mighty empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go
+ahead in spite of all our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear.
+Some day--"
+
+Suddenly he caught himself. "There--I'm talking politics, and I should
+entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things," he
+apologized. "Shall we go to the lower decks?"
+
+"Or the open air," she suggested. "I am afraid this smoke is upsetting
+me."
+
+He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to the
+thickness of the air. Rossland's inexplicable rudeness had disturbed her
+more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
+
+"There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we
+should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?" he
+asked, when they were outside. "The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest
+Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who
+are--well--unusually good-looking, the Captain says."
+
+"And he has already made me acquainted with them," she laughed softly.
+"Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them. I had
+breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake."
+
+"The deuce you say! And that is why you were not at table? And the
+morning before--"
+
+"You noticed my absence?" she asked demurely.
+
+"It was difficult for me not to see an empty chair. On second thought, I
+think the young engineer called my attention to it by wondering if you
+were ill."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He is very much interested in you, Miss Standish. It amuses me to see
+him torture the corners of his eyes to look at you. I have thought it
+would be only charity and good-will to change seats with him."
+
+"In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer."
+
+"Probably not."
+
+"Have they ever suffered?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+"When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?"
+
+"I haven't seen them."
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shrug.
+
+"Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I
+think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking
+me to my cabin? It is number sixteen, on this deck."
+
+She walked with her fingers touching his arm again. "What is your room?"
+she asked.
+
+"Twenty-seven, Miss Standish."
+
+"This deck?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her
+hand, did the intimacy of her last questions strike him. He grunted and
+lighted a fresh cigar. A number of things occurred to him all at once,
+as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his
+cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These
+were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen
+before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington.
+
+It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary
+Standish was asleep. He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by
+the recurring insistency with which his mind turned to her. She was a
+clever girl, he admitted. He had asked her nothing about herself, and
+she had told him nothing, while he had been quite garrulous. He was a
+little ashamed when he recalled how he had unburdened his mind to a girl
+who could not possibly be interested in the political affairs of John
+Graham and Alaska. Well, it was not entirely his fault. She had fairly
+catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under the
+circumstances, he thought.
+
+He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole. Only
+the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the
+last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears. The ship, at
+last, was asleep. The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting
+the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark. Out
+of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out
+faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island. And he wondered, knowing the
+perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider than the length of the
+ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course instead of going around
+by Cape Decision. He could feel that the land was more distant now, but
+the _Nome_ was still pushing ahead under slow bell, and he could smell
+the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of the scent of forests that
+came from both east and west.
+
+Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps.
+They seemed to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a
+man's voice--and in answer to it a woman's. Instinctively he drew a step
+back and stood unseen in the gloom. There was no longer a sound of
+voices. In silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him
+in the moonlight. One of the two was Mary Standish. The man was
+Rossland, who had stared at her so boldly in the smoking-room.
+
+Amazement gripped Alan. He switched on his light and made his final
+arrangements for bed. He had no inclination to spy upon either Mary
+Standish or Graham's agent, but he possessed an inborn hatred of fraud
+and humbug, and what he had seen convinced him that Mary Standish knew
+more about Rossland than she had allowed him to believe. She had not
+lied to him. She had said nothing at all--except to restrain him from
+demanding an apology. Evidently she had taken advantage of him, but
+beyond that fact her affairs had nothing to do with his own business in
+life. Possibly she and Rossland had quarreled, and now they were making
+up. Quite probable, he thought. Silly of him to think over the matter
+at all.
+
+So he put out his light again and went to bed. But he had no great
+desire to sleep. It was pleasant to lie there, flat on his back, with
+the soothing movement of the ship under him, listening to the musical
+thrum of it. And it was pleasant to think of the fact that he was going
+home. How infernally long those seven months had been, down in the
+States! And how he had missed everyone he had ever known--even
+his enemies!
+
+He closed his eyes and visualized the home that was still thousands of
+miles away--the endless tundras, the blue and purple foothills of the
+Endicott Mountains, and "Alan's Range" at the beginning of them. Spring
+was breaking up there, and it was warm on the tundras and the southern
+slopes, and the pussy-willow buds were popping out of their coats like
+corn from a hopper.
+
+He prayed God the months had been kind to his people--the people of the
+range. It was a long time to be away from them, when one loved them as
+he did. He was sure that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his two chief herdsmen,
+would care for things as well as himself. But much could happen in seven
+months. Nawadlook, the little beauty of his distant kingdom, was not
+looking well when he left. He was worried about her. The pneumonia of
+the previous winters had left its mark. And Keok, her rival in
+prettiness! He smiled in the darkness, wondering how Tautuk's sometimes
+hopeless love affair had progressed. For Keok was a little heart-breaker
+and had long reveled in Tautuk's sufferings. An archangel of iniquity,
+Alan thought, as he grinned--but worth any man's risk of life, if he had
+but a drop of brown blood in him! As for his herds, they had undoubtedly
+fared well. Ten thousand head was something to be proud of--
+
+Suddenly he drew in his breath and listened. Someone was at his door
+and had paused there. Twice he had heard footsteps outside, but each
+time they had passed. He sat up, and the springs of his berth made a
+sound under him. He heard movement then, a swift, running movement--and
+he switched on his light. A moment later he opened the door. No one was
+there. The long corridor was empty. And then--a distance away--he heard
+the soft opening and closing of another door.
+
+It was then that his eyes saw a white, crumpled object on the floor. He
+picked it up and reentered his room. It was a woman's handkerchief. And
+he had seen it before. He had admired the pretty laciness of it that
+evening in the smoking-room. Rather curious, he thought, that he should
+now find it at his door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+For a few minutes after finding the handkerchief at his door, Alan
+experienced a feeling of mingled curiosity and disappointment--also a
+certain resentment. The suspicion that he was becoming involved in spite
+of himself was not altogether pleasant. The evening, up to a certain
+point, had been fairly entertaining. It was true he might have passed a
+pleasanter hour recalling old times with Stampede Smith, or discussing
+Kadiak bears with the English earl, or striking up an acquaintance with
+the unknown graybeard who had voiced an opinion about John Graham. But
+he was not regretting lost hours, nor was he holding Mary Standish
+accountable for them. It was, last of all, the handkerchief that
+momentarily upset him.
+
+Why had she dropped it at his door? It was not a dangerous-looking
+affair, to be sure, with its filmy lace edging and ridiculous
+diminutiveness. As the question came to him, he was wondering how even
+as dainty a nose as that possessed by Mary Standish could be much
+comforted by it. But it was pretty. And, like Mary Standish, there was
+something exquisitely quiet and perfect about it, like the simplicity of
+her hair. He was not analyzing the matter. It was a thought that came to
+him almost unconsciously, as he tossed the annoying bit of fabric on
+the little table at the head of his berth. Undoubtedly the dropping of
+it had been entirely unpremeditated and accidental. At least he told
+himself so. And he also assured himself, with an involuntary shrug of
+his shoulders, that any woman or girl had the right to pass his door if
+she so desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The
+argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in
+mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman--and such an
+absurdly inconsequential thing as a handkerchief.
+
+A second time he went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Keok and
+Nawadlook and the people of his range. From somewhere he had been given
+the priceless heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real,
+with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook's big, soft
+eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as
+usual over the heartlessness of Keok. He was beating a tom-tom that gave
+out the peculiar sound of bells, and to this Amuk Toolik was dancing the
+Bear Dance, while Keok clapped her hands in exaggerated admiration. Even
+in his dreams Alan chuckled. He knew what was happening, and that out of
+the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was enjoying Tautuk's jealousy.
+Tautuk was so stupid he would never understand. That was the funny part
+of it. And he beat his drum savagely, scowling so that he almost shut
+his eyes, while Keok laughed outright.
+
+It was then that Alan opened his eyes and heard the last of the ship's
+bells. It was still dark. He turned on the light and looked at his
+watch. Tautuk's drum had tolled eight bells, aboard the ship, and it was
+four o'clock in the morning.
+
+Through the open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a
+chill air which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few
+minutes after awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and
+he got up quietly and dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar he
+had laid aside at midnight. Not until he had finished dressing did he
+notice the handkerchief on the table. If its presence had suggested a
+significance a few hours before, he no longer disturbed himself by
+thinking about it. A bit of carelessness on the girl's part, that was
+all. He would return it. Mechanically he put the crumpled bit of cambric
+in his coat pocket before going on deck.
+
+He had guessed that he would be alone. The promenade was deserted.
+Through the ghost-white mist of morning he saw the rows of empty chairs,
+and lights burning dully in the wheel-house. Asian monsoon and the
+drifting warmth of the Japan current had brought an early spring to the
+Alexander Archipelago, and May had stolen much of the flowering softness
+of June. But the dawns of these days were chilly and gray. Mists and
+fogs settled in the valleys, and like thin smoke rolled down the sides
+of the mountains to the sea, so that a ship traveling the inner waters
+felt its way like a child creeping in darkness.
+
+Alan loved this idiosyncrasy of the Alaskan coast. The phantom mystery
+of it was stimulating, and in the peril of it was a challenging lure. He
+could feel the care with which the _Nome_ was picking her way northward.
+Her engines were thrumming softly, and her movement was a slow and
+cautious glide, catlike and slightly trembling, as if every pound of
+steel in her were a living nerve widely alert. He knew Captain Rifle
+would not be asleep and that straining eyes were peering into the white
+gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them, hazardously near,
+must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the still more
+pitiless glacial sandstones and granites of the coast, with that deadly
+finger of sea-washed reef between, along the lip of which they must
+creep to Juneau. And Juneau could not be far ahead.
+
+He leaned over the rail, puffing at the stub of his cigar. He was eager
+for his work. Juneau, Skagway, and Cordova meant nothing to him, except
+that they were Alaska. He yearned for the still farther north, the wide
+tundras, and the mighty achievement that lay ahead of him there. His
+blood sang to the surety of it now, and for that reason he was not sorry
+he had spent seven months of loneliness in the States. He had proved
+with his own eyes that the day was near when Alaska would come into her
+own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its romance, its thrill, but
+what was all the gold the mountains might possess compared with this
+greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the people he
+had met in the south had thought only of gold when they learned he was
+from Alaska. Always gold--that first, and then ice, snow, endless
+nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning everlastingly
+upon a blasted land in which men fought against odds and only the
+fittest survived. It was gold that had been Alaska's doom. When people
+thought of it, they visioned nothing beyond the old stampede days, the
+Chilkoot, White Horse, Dawson, and Circle City. Romance and glamor and
+the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs. But they were beginning
+to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even the Government was waking
+up, after proving there was something besides graft in railroad building
+north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen at Washington had
+listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen. And the beef
+barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him off and had offered a
+fortune for Lomen's forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward
+Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening. Absolute proof.
+
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist
+into the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore
+Roosevelt for putting what they called "the conservation shackles" on
+their country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt's far-sightedness had
+kept the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what
+money-power and greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today,
+but lay ready to serve with all her mighty resources the mother who had
+neglected her for a generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this
+opening up of a great land. It must be done resourcefully and with
+intelligence. Once the bars were down, Roosevelt's shadow-hand could not
+hold back such desecrating forces as John Graham and the syndicate he
+represented.
+
+Thought of Graham was an unpleasant reminder, and his face grew hard in
+the sea-mist. Alaskans themselves must fight against the licensed
+plunderers. And it would be a hard fight. He had seen the pillaging work
+of these financial brigands in a dozen states during the past
+winter--states raped of their forests, their lakes and streams robbed
+and polluted, their resources hewn down to naked skeletons. He had been
+horrified and a little frightened when he looked over the desolation of
+Michigan, once the richest timber state in America. What if the
+Government at Washington made it possible for such a thing to happen in
+Alaska? Politics--and money--were already fighting for just that thing.
+
+He no longer heard the throb of the ship under his feet. It was _his_
+fight, and brain and muscle reacted to it almost as if it had been a
+physical thing. And his end of that fight he was determined to win, if
+it took every year of his life. He, with a few others, would prove to
+the world that the millions of acres of treeless tundras of the north
+were not the cast-off ends of the earth. They would populate them, and
+the so-called "barrens" would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of
+reindeer herds as the American plains had never thundered to the beat of
+cattle. He was not thinking of the treasure he would find at the end of
+this rainbow of success which he visioned. Money, simply as money, he
+hated. It was the achievement of the thing that gripped him; the passion
+to hew a trail through which his beloved land might come into its own,
+and the desire to see it achieve a final triumph by feeding a half of
+that America which had laughed at it and kicked it when it was down.
+
+The tolling of the ship's bell roused him from the subconscious struggle
+into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he had no
+sympathy with himself when he fell into one of these mental spasms, as
+he called them. Without knowing it, he was a little proud of a certain
+dispassionate tolerance which he possessed--a philosophical mastery of
+his emotions which at times was almost cold-blooded, and which made some
+people think he was a thing of stone instead of flesh and blood. His
+thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly disturbing sensation passed
+through him now, when he found that unconsciously his fingers had twined
+themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket. He drew it out
+and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then, with a
+grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his
+pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of the ship.
+
+He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have been
+had he possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at all, for
+that matter--even an uncle or two who might have been interested in him.
+He remembered his father vividly, his mother a little less so, because
+his mother had died when he was six and his father when he was twenty.
+It was his father who stood out above everything else, like the
+mountains he loved. The father would remain with him always, inspiring
+him, urging him, encouraging him to live like a gentleman, fight like a
+man, and die at last unafraid. In that fashion the older Alan Holt had
+lived and died. But his mother, her face and voice scarcely remembered
+in the passing of many years, was more a hallowed memory to him than a
+thing of flesh and blood. And there had been no sisters or brothers.
+Often he had regretted this lack of brotherhood. But a sister.... He
+grunted his disapprobation of the thought. A sister would have meant
+enchainment to civilization. Cities, probably. Even the States. And
+slavery to a life he detested. He appreciated the immensity of his
+freedom. A Mary Standish, even though she were his sister, would be a
+catastrophe. He could not conceive of her, or any other woman like her,
+living with Keok and Nawadlook and the rest of his people in the heart
+of the tundras. And the tundras would always be his home, because his
+heart was there.
+
+He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd figure
+crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light that
+came with the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not
+asleep. He paused, unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself,
+groaned, and stood up. He was a little man, and his fiercely bristling
+red whiskers, wet with dew, were luxuriant enough for a giant. His head
+of tawny hair, bristling like his whiskers, added to the piratical
+effect of him above the neck, but below that part of his anatomy there
+was little to strike fear into the hearts of humanity. Some people
+smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their man, laughed
+outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny on
+Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart
+was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this
+little man who had written his name across so many pages of
+Alaskan history.
+
+This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest
+gunman between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic reminder
+of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his
+gang--days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a
+stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the same breath
+with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and
+a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their compasses by
+his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he stood in the gray
+of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew that Stampede Smith
+was broke again.
+
+"Good morning," he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked
+himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days. "Why
+so much loneliness, Stampede?"
+
+Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an
+Airedale's under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his
+whiskers. "I'm thinkin'," said he, "what a fool thing is money. Good
+mornin', Alan!"
+
+He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the
+lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede's
+last asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside him, so that
+their shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
+
+"Alan," said Stampede, "it ain't often I have a big thought, but I've
+been having one all night. Ain't forgot Bonanza, have you?"
+
+Alan shook his head. "As long as there is an Alaska, we won't forget
+Bonanza, Stampede."
+
+"I took a million out of it, next to Carmack's Discovery--an' went
+busted afterward, didn't I?"
+
+Alan nodded without speaking.
+
+"But that wasn't a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the Divide,"
+Stampede continued ruminatively. "Ain't forgot old Aleck McDonald, the
+Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the 'wash' of Ninety-eight we took up
+seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked thirty of doin'
+the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single clean-up, and that
+was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old Aleck went
+busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle. I
+had to grub-stake."
+
+He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted the
+first rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them and
+the unseen mountain tops.
+
+"Five times after that I made strikes and went busted," he said a little
+proudly. "And I'm busted again!"
+
+"I know it," sympathized Alan.
+
+"They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an' Frisco," chuckled
+Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully, "an' then bought me a
+ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them, don't you think? Couldn't have been
+more decent. I knew that fellow Kopf had a heart. That's why I trusted
+him with my money. It wasn't his fault he lost it."
+
+"Of course not," agreed Alan.
+
+"And I'm sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a fact."
+
+"You killed him?"
+
+"Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
+Holleran's place. Mighty sorry. Didn't think then how decent it was of
+him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the moment.
+He did me a favor in cleanin' me, Alan. He did, so help me! You don't
+realize how free an' easy an' beautiful everything is until
+you're busted."
+
+Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw
+the grim look in Alan's eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
+other's arm and shook it.
+
+"Alan, I mean it!" he declared. "That's why I think money is a fool
+thing. It ain't _spendin'_ money that makes me happy. It's _findin'_
+it--the gold in the mountains--that makes the blood run fast through my
+gizzard. After I've found it, I can't find any use for it in particular.
+I want to go broke. If I didn't, I'd get lazy and fat, an' some
+newfangled doctor would operate on me, and I'd die. They're doing a lot
+of that operatin' down in Frisco, Alan. One day I had a pain, and they
+wanted to cut out something from inside me. Think what can happen to a
+man when he's got money!"
+
+"You mean all that, Stampede?"
+
+"On my life, I do. I'm just aching for the open skies, Alan. The
+mountains. And the yellow stuff that's going to be my playmate till I
+die. Somebody'll grub-stake me in Nome."
+
+"They won't," said Alan suddenly. "Not if I can help it. Stampede, I
+want you. I want you with me up under the Endicott Mountains. I've got
+ten thousand reindeer up there. It's No Man's Land, and we can do as we
+please in it. I'm not after gold. I want another sort of thing. But I've
+fancied the Endicott ranges are full of that yellow playmate of yours.
+It's a new country. You've never seen it. God only knows what you may
+find. Will you come?"
+
+The humorous twinkle had gone out of Stampede's eyes. He was staring at
+Alan.
+
+"Will I _come?_ Alan, will a cub nurse its mother? Try me. Ask me. Say
+it all over ag'in."
+
+The two men gripped hands. Smiling, Alan nodded to the east. The last of
+the fog was clearing swiftly. The tips of the cragged Alaskan ranges
+rose up against the blue of a cloudless sky, and the morning sun was
+flashing in rose and gold at their snowy peaks. Stampede also nodded.
+Speech was unnecessary. They both understood, and the thrill of the life
+they loved passed from one to the other in the grip of their hands.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Breakfast hour was half over when Alan went into the dining-room. There
+were only two empty chairs at his table. One was his own. The other
+belonged to Mary Standish. There was something almost aggressively
+suggestive in their simultaneous vacancy, it struck him at first. He
+nodded as he sat down, a flash of amusement in his eyes when he observed
+the look in the young engineer's face. It was both envious and accusing,
+and yet Alan was sure the young man was unconscious of betraying an
+emotion. The fact lent to the eating of his grapefruit an accompaniment
+of pleasing and amusing thought. He recalled the young man's name. It
+was Tucker. He was a clean-faced, athletic, likable-looking chap. And an
+idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan told himself. The young
+engineer was more than casually interested in Mary Standish; he was in
+love. It was not a discovery which Alan made. It was a decision, and as
+soon as possible he would remedy the unfortunate omission of a general
+introduction at their table by bringing the two together. Such an
+introduction would undoubtedly relieve him of a certain responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him.
+
+So he tried to think. But in spite of his resolution he could not get
+the empty chair opposite him out of his mind. It refused to be
+obliterated, and when other chairs became vacant as their owners left
+the table, this one straight across from him continued to thrust itself
+upon him. Until this morning it had been like other empty chairs. Now it
+was persistently annoying, inasmuch as he had no desire to be so
+constantly reminded of last night, and the twelve o'clock tryst of Mary
+Standish with Graham's agent, Rossland.
+
+He was the last at the table. Tucker, remaining until his final hope of
+seeing Mary Standish was gone, rose with two others. The first two had
+made their exit through the door leading from the dining salon when the
+young engineer paused. Alan, watching him, saw a sudden change in his
+face. In a moment it was explained. Mary Standish came in. She passed
+Tucker without appearing to notice him, and gave Alan a cool little nod
+as she seated herself at the table. She was very pale. He could see
+nothing of the flush of color that had been in her cheeks last night. As
+she bowed her head a little, arranging her dress, a pool of sunlight
+played in her hair, and Alan was staring at it when she raised her eyes.
+They were coolly beautiful, very direct, and without embarrassment.
+Something inside him challenged their loveliness. It seemed
+inconceivable that such eyes could play a part in fraud and deception,
+yet he was in possession of quite conclusive proof of it. If they had
+lowered themselves an instant, if they had in any way betrayed a shadow
+of regret, he would have found an apology. Instead of that, his fingers
+touched the handkerchief in his pocket.
+
+"Did you sleep well, Miss Standish?" he asked politely.
+
+"Not at all," she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit
+unsettled. "I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I
+am afraid I have failed. Is that why you ask?"
+
+He was holding the handkerchief in his hand. "This is the first morning
+I have seen you at breakfast. I accepted it for granted you must have
+slept well. Is this yours, Miss Standish?"
+
+He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his
+fingers. In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was
+the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was
+disappointed not to catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+"It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?"
+
+"In front of my cabin door a little after midnight."
+
+He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail. He expected some
+kind of result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on
+her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the
+clear depths of her eyes. Her level glance was as innocent as a child's
+and as he looked at her, he thought of a child--a most beautiful
+child--and so utterly did he feel the discomfiture of his mental
+analysis of her that he rose to his feet with a frigid bow.
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Holt," she said. "You can imagine my sense of
+obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the
+ship with me. And this is my favorite."
+
+She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard
+her give the waiter an order for fruit and cereal. His blood was hot,
+but the flush of it did not show in his face. He felt the uncomfortable
+sensation of her eyes following him as he stalked through the door. He
+did not look back. Something was wrong with him, and he knew it. This
+chit of a girl with her smooth hair and clear eyes had thrown a grain of
+dust into the satisfactory mechanism of his normal self, and the grind
+of it was upsetting certain specific formulae which made up his life. He
+was a fool. He lighted a cigar and called himself names.
+
+Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning
+match. He looked up. It was Rossland. The man had a mere twist of a
+smile on his lips. In his eyes was a coolly appraising look as
+he nodded.
+
+"Beg pardon." The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him over
+Rossland's shoulder. He might as well have said, "I'm sorry, Boy, but
+you must keep out of my way."
+
+Alan smiled back and returned the nod. Once, in a spirit of sauciness,
+Keok had told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a humor
+to kill. They were like that now as they flashed their smile at
+Rossland. The sneering twist left Rossland's lips as he entered the
+dining-room.
+
+A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham's
+agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the
+tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tete-a-tete
+with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted
+him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table
+before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he
+understood the situation.
+
+He puffed at his cigar. Rossland's interference had spoiled a perfect
+lighting of it, and he struck another match. This time he was
+successful, and he was about to extinguish the burning end when he
+hesitated and held it until the fire touched his flesh. Mary Standish
+was coming through the door. Amazed by the suddenness of her appearance,
+he made no movement except to drop the match. Her eyes were flaming, and
+two vivid spots burned in her cheeks. She saw him and gave the slightest
+inclination to her head as she passed. When she had gone, he could not
+resist looking into the salon. As he expected, Rossland was seated in a
+chair next to the one she had occupied, and was calmly engaged in
+looking over the breakfast card.
+
+All this was rather interesting, Alan conceded, if one liked puzzles.
+Personally he had no desire to become an answerer of conundrums, and he
+was a little ashamed of the curiosity that had urged him to look in upon
+Rossland. At the same time he was mildly elated at the freezing
+reception which Miss Standish had evidently given to the dislikable
+individual who had jostled him in passing.
+
+He went on deck. The sun was pouring in an iridescent splendor over the
+snowy peaks of the mountains, and it seemed as if he could almost reach
+out his arms and touch them. The _Nome_ appeared to be drifting in the
+heart of a paradise of mountains. Eastward, very near, was the mainland;
+so close on the other hand that he could hear the shout of a man was
+Douglas Island, and ahead, reaching out like a silver-blue ribbon was
+Gastineau Channel. The mining towns of Treadwell and Douglas were
+in sight.
+
+Someone nudged him, and he found Stampede Smith at his side.
+
+"That's Bill Treadwell's place," he said. "Once the richest gold mines
+in Alaska. They're flooded now. I knew Bill when he was worrying about
+the price of a pair of boots. Had to buy a second-hand pair an' patched
+'em himself. Then he struck it lucky, got four hundred dollars
+somewhere, and bought some claims over there from a man named French
+Pete. They called it Glory Hole. An' there was a time when there were
+nine hundred stamps at work. Take a look, Alan. It's worth it."
+
+Somehow Stampede's voice and information lacked appeal. The decks were
+crowded with passengers as the ship picked her way into Juneau, and Alan
+wandered among them with a gathering sense of disillusionment pressing
+upon him. He knew that he was looking with more than casual interest for
+Mary Standish, and he was glad when Stampede bumped into an old
+acquaintance and permitted him to be alone. He was not pleased with the
+discovery, and yet he was compelled to acknowledge the truth of it. The
+grain of dust had become more than annoying. It did not wear away, as he
+had supposed it would, but was becoming an obsessive factor in his
+thoughts. And the half-desire it built up in him, while aggravatingly
+persistent, was less disturbing than before. The little drama in the
+dining-room had had its effect upon him in spite of himself. He liked
+fighters. And Mary Standish, intensely feminine in her quiet prettiness,
+had shown her mettle in those few moments when he had seen her flashing
+eyes and blazing cheeks after leaving Rossland. He began to look for
+Rossland, too. He was in a humor to meet him.
+
+Not until Juneau hung before him in all its picturesque beauty,
+literally terraced against the green sweep of Mount Juneau, did he go
+down to the lower deck. The few passengers ready to leave the ship
+gathered near the gangway with their luggage. Alan was about to pass
+them when he suddenly stopped. A short distance from him, where he could
+see every person who disembarked, stood Rossland. There was something
+grimly unpleasant in his attitude as he fumbled his watch-fob and eyed
+the stair from above. His watchfulness sent an unexpected thrill through
+Alan. Like a shot his mind jumped to a conclusion. He stepped to
+Rossland's side and touched his arm.
+
+"Watching for Miss Standish?" he asked.
+
+"I am." There was no evasion in Rossland's words. They possessed the
+hard and definite quality of one who had an incontestable authority
+behind him.
+
+"And if she goes ashore?"
+
+"I am going too. Is it any affair of yours, Mr. Holt? Has she asked you
+to discuss the matter with me? If so--"
+
+"No, Miss Standish hasn't done that."
+
+"Then please attend to your own business. If you haven't enough to take
+up your time, I'll lend you some books. I have several in my cabin."
+
+Without waiting for an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not
+follow. There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to
+imprecate but his own folly. Rossland's words were not an insult. They
+were truth. He had deliberately intruded in an affair which was
+undoubtedly of a highly private nature. Possibly it was a domestic
+tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation swept over him, and he was
+glad that Rossland did not even look back at him. He tried to whistle as
+he climbed back to the main-deck; Rossland, even though he detested the
+man, had set him right. And he would lend him books, if he wanted to be
+amused! Egad, but the fellow had turned the trick nicely. And it was
+something to be remembered. He stiffened his shoulders and found old
+Donald Hardwick and Stampede Smith. He did not leave them until the
+_Nome_ had landed her passengers and freight and was churning her way
+out of Gastineau Channel toward Skagway. Then he went to the
+smoking-room and remained there until luncheon hour.
+
+Today Mary Standish was ahead of him at the table. She was seated with
+her back toward him as he entered, so she did not see him as he came up
+behind her, so near that his coat brushed her chair. He looked across at
+her and smiled as he seated himself. She returned the smile, but it
+seemed to him an apologetic little effort. She did not look well, and
+her presence at the table struck him as being a brave front to hide
+something from someone. Casually he looked over his left shoulder.
+Rossland was there, in his seat at the opposite side of the room.
+Indirect as his glance had been, Alan saw the girl understood the
+significance of it. She bowed her head a little, and her long lashes
+shaded her eyes for a moment. He wondered why he always looked at her
+hair first. It had a peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been
+observant enough to know that she had rearranged it since breakfast, and
+the smooth coils twisted in mysterious intricacy at the crown of her
+head were like softly glowing velvet. The ridiculous thought came to
+him that he would like to see them tumbling down about her. They must be
+even more beautiful when freed from their bondage.
+
+The pallor of her face was unusual. Possibly it was the way the light
+fell upon her through the window. But when she looked across at him
+again, he caught for an instant the tiniest quiver about her mouth. He
+began telling her something about Skagway, quite carelessly, as if he
+had seen nothing which she might want to conceal. The light in her eyes
+changed, and it was almost a glow of gratitude he caught in them. He had
+broken a tension, relieved her of some unaccountable strain she was
+under. He noticed that her ordering of food was merely a pretense. She
+scarcely touched it, and yet he was sure no other person at the table
+had discovered the insincerity of her effort, not even Tucker, the
+enamored engineer. It was likely Tucker placed a delicate halo about her
+lack of appetite, accepting daintiness of that sort as an
+angelic virtue.
+
+Only Alan, sitting opposite her, guessed the truth. She was making a
+splendid effort, but he felt that every nerve in her body was at the
+breaking-point. When she arose from her seat, he thrust back his own
+chair. At the same time he saw Rossland get up and advance rather
+hurriedly from the opposite side of the room. The girl passed through
+the door first, Rossland followed a dozen steps behind, and Alan came
+last, almost shoulder to shoulder with Tucker. It was amusing in a way,
+yet beyond the humor of it was something that drew a grim line about the
+corners of his mouth.
+
+At the foot of the luxuriously carpeted stair leading from the dining
+salon to the main deck Miss Standish suddenly stopped and turned upon
+Rossland. For only an instant her eyes were leveled at him. Then they
+flashed past him, and with a swift movement she came toward Alan. A
+flush had leaped into her cheeks, but there was no excitement in her
+voice when she spoke. Yet it was distinct, and clearly heard
+by Rossland.
+
+"I understand we are approaching Skagway, Mr. Holt," she said. "Will you
+take me on deck, and tell me about it?"
+
+Graham's agent had paused at the foot of the stair and was slowly
+preparing to light a cigarette. Recalling his humiliation of a few hours
+before at Juneau, when the other had very clearly proved him a meddler,
+words refused to form quickly on Alan's lips. Before he was ready with
+an answer Mary Standish had confidently taken his arm. He could see the
+red flush deepening in her upturned face. She was amazingly unexpected,
+bewilderingly pretty, and as cool as ice except for the softly glowing
+fire in her cheeks. He saw Rossland staring with his cigarette half
+poised. It was instinctive for him to smile in the face of danger, and
+he smiled now, without speaking. The girl laughed softly. She gave his
+arm a gentle tug, and he found himself moving past Rossland, amazed but
+obedient, her eyes looking at him in a way that sent a gentle thrill
+through him.
+
+At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his
+shoulder: "You are splendid! I thank you, Mr. Holt."
+
+Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm,
+were like a dash of cold water in his face. Rossland could no longer see
+them, unless he had followed. The girl had played her part, and a second
+time he had accepted the role of a slow-witted fool. But the thought did
+not anger him. There was a remarkable element of humor about it for him,
+viewing himself in the matter, and Mary Standish heard him chuckling as
+they came out on deck.
+
+Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm. "It isn't funny," she
+reproved. "It is tragic to be bored by a man like that."
+
+He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask,
+and he wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her
+know he had seen her alone with Rossland at midnight. He looked down at
+her, and she met his scrutiny unflinchingly. She even smiled at him, and
+her eyes, he thought, were the loveliest liars he had ever looked into.
+He felt the stir of an unusual sentiment--a sort of pride in her, and he
+made up his mind to say nothing about Rossland. He was still absurdly
+convinced that he had not the smallest interest in affairs which were
+not entirely his own. Mary Standish evidently believed he was blind,
+and he would make no effort to spoil her illusion. Such a course would
+undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.
+
+Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the
+stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the
+ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she
+looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like
+a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both
+sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy
+crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting
+season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the
+liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to
+float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer
+thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a
+living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan
+wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to
+swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded
+door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into
+the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and
+thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place. Alan turned
+to speak, but what he saw in the girl's face held him silent. Her lips
+were parted, and she was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen
+before her eyes, something that bewildered her and even startled her.
+
+And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a
+tense whisper: "I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago.
+Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I have
+lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it--"
+
+A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at him,
+and he was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
+
+"I must go ashore here," she said. "I didn't know I would find it so
+soon. Please--"
+
+With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and saw
+the strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance he
+saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.
+
+In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand
+was resting confidently in the crook of Alan's arm. "Did you ever feel
+like killing a man, Mr. Holt?" she asked with an icy little laugh.
+
+"Yes," he answered rather unexpectedly. "And some day, if the right
+opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man--the man who
+murdered my father."
+
+She gave a little gasp of horror. "Your father--was--murdered--"
+
+"Indirectly--yes. It wasn't done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money
+was the weapon. Somebody's money. And John Graham was the man who
+struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And
+right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man
+Rossland--"
+
+"_No_." Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away.
+"I don't want you to ask an explanation of him," she said. "If he should
+make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway, Mr. Holt. That will
+be pleasanter."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western
+mountains, and the _Nome_ was churning slowly back through the narrow
+water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon
+fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to
+an impulse which he could not understand, and which in ordinary moments
+he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish ashore. For two
+hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions and listening to
+him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to him before. He
+had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured the wind-racked
+canon where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a day, from
+hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old days of
+romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and his gang
+of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy's sunken grave as the
+first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.
+
+But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about _himself_.
+And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had
+confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and
+beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to the
+indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart
+beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the Endicott
+Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people. There, he
+had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in her eyes
+and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on until he
+forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship's gangway to see when they
+returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and the
+miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
+described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
+replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the
+building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few
+years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and
+civilization and the breaking down of nature's last barriers before
+science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her
+gray eyes.
+
+And now, as they stood on the deck of the _Nome_ looking at the white
+peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight,
+doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
+
+"I would always love tents and old trails and nature's barriers. I envy
+Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities
+and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am
+sorry to see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this
+man--John Graham!"
+
+Her words startled him.
+
+"And I want you to tell me what he is doing--with his money--now." Her
+voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed, was clenched at the
+edge of the rail.
+
+"He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be
+replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case
+well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children
+by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives
+have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them die."
+
+It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.
+
+"And that--is all?"
+
+He laughed grimly. "Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
+Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in
+Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a
+gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men like
+John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and graft
+will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation would
+not be able to replace."
+
+She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
+ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
+of evening. "I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney," she said.
+"I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
+woman like her. She could fight, couldn't she? She could make a
+man's fight?"
+
+"Yes, and did make it."
+
+"And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
+she flung into the Yukon for luck."
+
+"Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger."
+
+She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
+which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
+
+"Then this, too, for luck--the luck of Mary Standish," she laughed
+softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
+
+She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
+done. "It isn't melodrama," she said. "I mean it. And I believe in it. I
+want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this gateway
+to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
+at the bottom of the Yukon."
+
+She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
+moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. "Thank you for the
+wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget
+it. It is dinner time. I must say good night."
+
+He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In
+returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was
+irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan's
+look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan's
+impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was
+a growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of
+poise which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be, but
+a cool brain was at work inside his head--a brain not easily disturbed
+by unimportant things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an agent of
+John Graham Alan looked upon him as an enemy, and as an acquaintance of
+Mary Standish he was as much of a mystery as the girl herself. And only
+now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning to sense the presence of a real
+authority behind Rossland's attitude.
+
+He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of
+practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing
+about the relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it
+involved himself, and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to
+please him. He could see no sport in an adventure of the kind it
+suggested, and the possibility that he had been misjudged by both
+Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger into his cheeks. He
+cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to wipe him out of
+existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the
+conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of
+way. He had made no effort to discover her history. He had not
+questioned her. At no time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon her
+personal affairs, and at no time had she offered information about
+herself, or an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had
+presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how
+dangerously near that hazard he had been--and he admired her for the
+splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the
+possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him
+overboard!
+
+There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the
+dining salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any
+increasing intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his
+experience had been, he resented the idea of being commandeered at
+unexpected moments. Had Mary Standish read his thoughts, her bearing
+toward him during the dinner hour could not have been more satisfying.
+There was, in a way, something seductively provocative about it. She
+greeted him with the slightest inclination of her head and a cool little
+smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either from him or from
+his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate reserve.
+
+Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he
+found himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation he
+had set down for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing
+glimpses at her hair when her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed
+it tonight until it was like softest velvet, with rich glints in it, and
+the amazing thought came to him that it would be sweetly pleasant to
+touch with one's hand. The discovery was almost a shock. Keok and
+Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never thought of it in this
+way. And he had never thought of Keok's pretty mouth as he was thinking
+of the girl's opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary
+Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance.
+
+When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as
+if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He
+tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an
+hour later, feeding a captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he
+thought, that a captive bear should be going north. Stampede explained.
+The animal was a pet and belonged to the Thlinkit Indians. There were
+seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed that the two girls watched
+him closely and whispered together. They were very pretty, with large,
+dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not look at him
+at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned away.
+
+With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they
+discussed the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan's
+plans for the future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his cabin
+to get maps and photographs. Stampede's eyes glistened as his mind
+seized upon the possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast land.
+An unknown country. And Alan was its first pioneer. The old thrill ran
+in Stampede's blood, and its infectiousness caught Alan, so that he
+forgot Mary Standish, and all else but the miles that lay between them
+and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward Peninsula. It was midnight when
+Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his
+body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through
+his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the
+comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and
+half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the
+stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled with an unspoken
+thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another generation and there
+would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more and the world would
+lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention and what the human
+race called progress.
+
+So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in
+that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in
+the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown.
+After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of
+unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth
+would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what
+she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been
+_her_ thought, too--that she would always love tents and old trails and
+nature's barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and automobiles
+come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had guessed what
+was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.
+
+A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was
+a quarter after twelve o'clock, an unusual hour for someone to be
+tapping at his door.
+
+It was repeated--a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again,
+quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened
+the door.
+
+It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
+
+He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And
+then he saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without
+waiting for him to speak or give her permission to enter. And it was
+Mary Standish herself who closed the door, while he stared at her in
+stupid wonderment--and stood there with her back against it, straight
+and slim and deathly pale.
+
+"May I come in?" she asked.
+
+"My God, you're in!" gasped Alan. "_You're in_."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to
+his room, entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of
+invitation from him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first
+explosion of astonishment he stood mute, while the girl looked at him
+steadily and her breath came a little quickly. But she was not excited.
+Even in his amazement he could see that. What he had thought was fright
+had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her so white, and never
+had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as while she stood
+there in these astounding moments with her back against the door.
+
+The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even
+her lips were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear and
+unafraid now, and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness of
+purpose that staggered him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal
+resentment, began to possess him as he waited for her to speak. This, at
+last, was the cost of his courtesies to her, The advantage she was
+taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and his mind flashed to
+the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the door.
+
+In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her
+quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips
+tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes
+tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her
+face in her hands, but looked at him bravely while the tear-drops
+glistened like diamonds on her cheeks. He felt his heart give way. She
+read his thoughts, had guessed his suspicion, and he was wrong.
+
+"You--you will have a seat, Miss Standish?" he asked lamely, inclining
+his head toward the cabin chair.
+
+"No. Please let me stand." She drew in a deep breath. "It is late, Mr.
+Holt?"
+
+"Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this," he assured her.
+"Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important
+business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss
+Standish."
+
+For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb
+in her white throat.
+
+"Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr.
+Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have
+come to your cabin at midnight--even aboard ship? And it is that with
+me--a matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that
+decision. I could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight."
+
+"And why me?" he asked. "Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some
+other? Is it because--"
+
+He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes, as
+if for an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but it
+was gone as quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without
+emotion, she answered him.
+
+"I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It
+is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to
+you as I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances, if
+I were a man. If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind
+about you is taking an advantage--then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But
+I am not sorry. I trust you. I know you will believe me good until I am
+proved bad. I have come to ask you to help me. Would you make it
+possible for another human being to avert a great tragedy if you found
+it in your power to do so?"
+
+He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing
+such a situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he
+would have called any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door
+and show his visitor out. But such a thought did not occur to him now.
+He was thinking of the handkerchief he had found the preceding midnight.
+Twice she had come to his cabin at a late hour.
+
+"It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible," he said,
+answering her question. "Tragedy is a nasty thing."
+
+She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her
+calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of
+helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the
+tilt of her dainty chin a bit higher.
+
+"Of course, I can't pay you," she said. "You are the sort of man who
+would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you to do.
+But I must have help. If I don't have it, and quickly"--she shuddered
+slightly and tried to smile--"something very unpleasant will happen, Mr.
+Holt," she finished.
+
+"If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle--"
+
+"No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You
+will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I may
+have your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you, whether
+you help me or not. Will you give me that pledge?"
+
+"Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish."
+
+He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not
+see the sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or
+the quicker throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint flush
+was gathering in her cheeks.
+
+"I want to leave the ship," she said.
+
+The simplicity of her desire held him silent.
+
+"And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night--before we reach
+Cordova."
+
+"Is that--your problem?" he demanded, astonished.
+
+"No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am
+dead. I can not reach Cordova alive."
+
+At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were
+insane. Her quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching
+steadiness. His brain all at once was crowded with questioning, but no
+word of it came to his lips.
+
+"You can help me," he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm voice,
+softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door. "I
+haven't a plan. But I know you can arrange one--if you will. It must
+appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard, anything,
+just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can not
+tell you why. I can not. Oh, I _can not_."
+
+A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant,
+leaving it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He
+could see courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.
+
+"I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I am
+mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven't gone
+to Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only answer I
+can make is that I have come to you because you are the only man in the
+world--in this hour--that I have faith in. Some day you will understand,
+if you help me. If you do not care to help me--"
+
+She stopped, and he made a gesture.
+
+"Yes, if I don't? What will happen then?"
+
+"I shall be forced to the inevitable," she said. "It is rather unusual,
+isn't it, to be asking for one's life? But that is what I mean."
+
+"I'm afraid--I don't quite understand."
+
+"Isn't it clear, Mr. Holt? I don't like to appear spectacular, and I
+don't want you to think of me as theatrical--even now. I hate that sort
+of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it is impossible
+for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to disappear, help
+me to live--and at the same time give all others the impression that I
+am dead--then I must do the other thing. I must really die."
+
+For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the
+shoulders and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of
+a child.
+
+"You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat
+of suicide?"
+
+"If you want to call it that--yes."
+
+"And you expect me to believe you?"
+
+"I had hoped you would."
+
+She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed
+her and half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the smallest
+effort to work upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved utterly.
+But he was not blind to the fact that she was making a brave fight, even
+though a lie was behind it, and with a consciousness of pride that
+bewildered him.
+
+She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going on
+within him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She had
+stated the facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her long
+lashes glistened a little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair glowed
+softly, so softly that he would never forget it, as she stood there with
+her back against the door, nor the strange desire that came to him--even
+then--to touch it with his hand.
+
+He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. "It is
+Rossland," he said. "You're afraid of Rossland?"
+
+"In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it were
+not for the other."
+
+The _other_! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had
+no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.
+
+"What other?" he demanded.
+
+"I can not tell you. I don't want you to hate me. And you would hate me
+if I told you the truth."
+
+"Then you confess you are lying," he suggested brutally.
+
+Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not anger
+her or shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little handkerchief
+to her eyes, and he turned toward the open port, puffing at his cigar,
+knowing she was fighting to keep the tears back. And she succeeded.
+
+"No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will
+not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you
+have given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is
+a kindness which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I
+thought--"
+
+"How could I bring about what you ask?" he interrupted.
+
+"I don't know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but I see
+now how foolish I have been. It is impossible." Her hand reached slowly
+for the knob of the door.
+
+"Yes, you are foolish," he agreed, and his voice was softer. "Don't let
+such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to your cabin and get
+a night's sleep. Don't let Rossland worry you. If you want me to settle
+with that man--"
+
+"Good night, Mr. Holt."
+
+She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and
+looked at him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in
+her eyes.
+
+"Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half a
+minute he would have called her back. But it was too late.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at
+ease. Mary Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left him
+like a soldier. But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught for
+an instant something which she had not betrayed in his cabin--a stab of
+what he thought was pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud
+regret, possibly a shadow of humiliation at last--or it may have been a
+pity for him. He was not sure. But it was not despair. Not once had she
+whimpered in look or word, even when the tears were in her eyes, and the
+thought was beginning to impress itself upon him that it was he--and not
+Mary Standish--who had shown a yellow streak this night. A half shame
+fell upon him as he smoked. For it was clear he had not come up to her
+judgment of him, or else he was not so big a fool as she had hoped he
+might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a loss to decide.
+
+It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in
+the analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and bred
+of the open country, it was as natural for him to recognize courage as
+it was for him to breathe. And the girl's courage was unusual, now that
+he had time to think about it. It was this thought of her coolness and
+her calm refusal to impose her case upon him with greater warmth that
+comforted him after a little. A young and beautiful woman who was
+actually facing death would have urged her necessity with more
+enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated it
+intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the moment,
+to give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea of a
+girl like Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously impossible.
+Her quiet and wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite care which
+she gave to herself emphasized the absurdity of such a supposition. She
+had come to him bravely. There was no doubt of that. She had merely
+exaggerated the importance of her visit.
+
+Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this
+conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled
+certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under
+sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd
+stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color
+to his visionings he exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled
+pipe, which he filled and lighted. Then he began walking back and forth
+in his cabin, like a big animal in a small cage, until at last he stood
+with his head half out of the open port, looking at the clear stars and
+setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift with the soft sea wind.
+
+He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him
+again, with sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little
+harsh with Miss Standish tonight, he would make up for it by apologizing
+tomorrow. She would probably have recovered her balance by that time,
+and they would laugh over her excitement and their little adventure.
+That is, he would. "I'm not at all curious in the matter," some
+persistent voice kept telling him, "and I haven't any interest in
+knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin." But he smoked
+viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have
+liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in
+bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish's words, "If I should make an
+explanation, you would hate me," or something to that effect. He
+couldn't remember exactly. And he didn't want to remember exactly, for
+it was none of his business.
+
+In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and
+half on the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began
+thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he
+figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of
+the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming. Carl
+Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska. They
+would go on to Nome together. After that he would spend a week or so in
+the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big portage to the
+Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still farther--beyond
+the last trails of civilized men--to his herds and his people. And
+Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of homesickness it
+was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams. But
+somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede
+Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok,
+laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was
+like Keok, Alan thought drowsily--she was always tormenting someone.
+
+He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his
+cabin, when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open
+sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white
+peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the
+sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The _Nome_ was pounding
+ahead at full speed, and Alan's blood responded suddenly to the
+impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the
+mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant
+miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between
+him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were losing
+time by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with Cordova he
+thought of Mary Standish.
+
+He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of her.
+The thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now that the
+time of that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded moments of
+embarrassment even when he was not directly accountable for them. But
+Mary Standish saved him any qualms of conscience which he might have had
+because of his lack of chivalry the preceding night. She was at the
+table. And she was not at all disturbed when he seated himself opposite
+her. There was color in her cheeks, a fragile touch of that warm glow in
+the heart of the wild rose of the tundras. And it seemed to him there
+was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than he had ever
+seen before.
+
+She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had
+evidently broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was
+the first time Alan had seen her interested in this way. He had no
+intention of listening, but something perverse and compelling overcame
+his will. He discovered the lady was going up to teach in a native
+school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that for many years she had
+taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda Mulrooney. He
+gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss Robson,
+the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she possessed of
+Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an address. The girl
+hesitated, then said she was not certain of her destination, but would
+write Miss Robson at Noorvik.
+
+"You will surely keep your promise?" urged Miss Robson.
+
+"Yes, I will keep my promise."
+
+A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that
+he thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few
+hours' sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her
+mental attitude, and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility
+which had persisted in attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured
+himself, could possibly see a note of tragedy in her appearance now. Nor
+was she different at luncheon or at dinner. During the day he saw
+nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of the fact that she was
+purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not displease him. It
+allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a normal sort
+of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked his
+black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of
+the ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his
+first meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked
+his two-mile promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a
+peculiar impression of aloneness. Something was missing. He did not
+acknowledge to himself what it was until, as if to convict him, he saw
+Mary Standish come out of the door leading from her cabin passageway,
+and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a moment he hesitated,
+then quietly he came up beside her.
+
+"It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish," he said, "and Cordova is
+only a few hours ahead of us."
+
+She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the
+shrouding darkness of the sea. "Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt," she
+repeated after him, "and Cordova is only a few hours ahead." Then, in
+the same soft, unemotional voice, she added: "I want to thank you for
+last night. You brought me to a great decision."
+
+"I fear I did not help you."
+
+It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he
+caught a shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.
+
+"I thought there were two ways," she said, "but you made me see there
+was only _one_." She emphasized that word. It seemed to come with a
+little tremble in her voice. "I was foolish. But please let us forget. I
+want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great
+experiment, and it takes all my courage."
+
+"You will win, Miss Standish," he said in a sure voice. "In whatever you
+undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of is
+the adventure of coming to Alaska--seeking your fortune--finding your
+life here--it will be glorious. I can assure you of that."
+
+She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
+
+"The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under
+the mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith
+which I have. I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when
+America was very young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must
+have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung
+back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that
+sometime--somewhere--I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had
+strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is
+that faith which gives me courage to go on with my experiment.
+That--and _you_!"
+
+Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.
+
+"You--and your suspicions and your brutality," she went on, her voice
+trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before him.
+"I wasn't going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me the
+opportunity, and it may do you good--after tomorrow. I came to you
+because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like
+your mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as
+clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them
+bad--and I lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when
+I came to your cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes,
+_afraid_--fearful of something happening which you didn't want to
+happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was
+a liar, and told me so. It wasn't fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn't _fair_.
+There were things which I couldn't explain to you, but I told you
+Rossland knew. I didn't keep everything back. And I believed you were
+big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my--friendship,
+even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much faith in myself--I
+didn't think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!"
+
+"Good God!" he cried. "Listen to me--Miss Standish--"
+
+She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile,
+and she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he
+called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the
+passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the
+darkness, and his face as white as the girl's had been. Her words had
+held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she
+believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror. And
+she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment and
+common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool--
+
+Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
+malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door.
+When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried
+again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he
+was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door
+did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would
+undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology
+in words.
+
+He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its
+disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
+comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes,
+her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had
+faced him remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away from
+the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears like
+diamonds on her cheeks. Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it.
+Something had escaped him which he could not understand. And she was
+holding him accountable.
+
+The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts
+to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string
+music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the
+dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw
+Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his
+arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay
+unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland's face rested against her
+fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan
+turned away, an unpleasant thought of Rossland's association with Mary
+Standish in his mind. He strolled down into the steerage. The Thlinkit
+people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the
+stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him
+after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest
+himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but
+after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was
+himself. The thrill he had always experienced with this particular
+writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even
+the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for
+a cigar--and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind
+refused to function, and there was no comfort in his cigar.
+
+He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously
+lied to himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a
+fight between himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his
+door. Mary Standish--the slim beauty of her--her courage--a score of
+things that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on
+his smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions
+that were struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad and
+entirely a fool, he told himself. But the assurance did him no good.
+
+He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made another
+effort to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o'clock music and
+dancing ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that he found
+himself becoming more interested in the first book he had started to
+read. His old satisfaction slowly returned to him. He relighted his
+cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he heard the ship's bells, eleven
+o'clock, and after that the half-hour and midnight. The printed pages
+were growing dim, and drowsily he marked his book, placed it on the
+table, and yawned. They must be nearing Cordova. He could feel the
+slackened speed of the _Nome_ and the softer throb of her engines.
+Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing inshore.
+
+And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman's scream. A piercing cry of
+terror, of agony--and of something else that froze the blood in his
+veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending
+in a moaning wail and a man's husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his
+window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He could not
+distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to respond. There
+came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by the pounding
+shock of reverse and the clanging alarm of a bell calling boats' crews
+to quarters.
+
+Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was
+overboard. And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of his
+body, for the pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an instant
+before him, and in her quiet voice she was telling him again that _this
+was the other way._ His face went white as he caught up his
+smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran down the dimly
+lighted corridor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship
+when Alan reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept
+slowly ahead against the force struggling to hold her back. He heard
+running feet, voices, and the rattle of davit blocks, and came up as the
+starboard boat aft began swinging over the smooth sea. Captain Rifle was
+ahead of him, half-dressed, and the second officer was giving swift
+commands. A dozen passengers had come from the smoking-room. There was
+only one woman. She stood a little back, partly supported in a man's
+arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at the man, and he knew
+from his appearance that she was the woman who had screamed.
+
+He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of
+oars, but the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to
+him distinctly in the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was the
+terrible sobbing of the woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed to
+sway under his feet. He was conscious of a crowd gathering about the
+empty davits, but he had eyes only for these two.
+
+"Was it a man--or a woman?" he asked.
+
+It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced
+from his lips. And the other man, with the woman's head crumpled against
+his shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.
+
+"A woman," he replied. "This is my wife. We were sitting here when she
+climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw
+her going."
+
+The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her
+eyes, but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband's arm.
+She struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to comfort
+her. And then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was haggard,
+and a glance told Alan that he knew.
+
+"Who was it?" he demanded.
+
+"This lady thinks it was Miss Standish."
+
+Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a
+moment in his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind
+him, and before him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed
+swiftly, with no sign of it in the immobility of his pale face.
+
+"Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and
+then--then--"
+
+It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a
+choking breath:
+
+"It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
+do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering."
+He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.
+
+Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and
+a strange calmness began to possess him. "You are quite sure it was the
+girl at my table?" he found himself saying. "Is it possible you might be
+mistaken?"
+
+"No," said the woman. "She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed
+her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
+before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I'm almost sure she smiled at
+me and was going to speak. And then--then--she was gone!"
+
+"I didn't know until my wife screamed," added the man. "I was seated
+facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind
+but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly."
+
+Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
+questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely
+sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had
+left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary
+Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had
+leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened
+it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the
+room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it
+from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman's scream. Mary
+Standish was gone.
+
+He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the
+pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted.
+Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he
+saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked
+up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little
+shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.
+
+He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly
+to confront Captain Rifle. The little man's face was like gray wax. For
+a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe
+crumpled in Alan's hand.
+
+"The boats got away quickly," he said in a husky voice. "We stopped
+inside the third-mile. If she can swim--there is a chance."
+
+"She won't swim," replied Alan. "She didn't jump in for that. She is
+gone."
+
+In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of
+his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched
+hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy
+of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of
+wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan's words. It took only a few
+seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going
+into details. The captain's hand was on Alan's arm when he finished,
+and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.
+
+"We'll talk with Rossland after the boats return," he said.
+
+He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
+
+Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held
+the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It
+took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain.
+Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a
+second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the
+passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of
+it came to him--failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the
+throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their
+eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And as
+he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an agony
+which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first
+law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the
+desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to
+rise up out of it and forgive him.
+
+He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask
+through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly
+coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she
+would have been right. His heart was gone.
+
+Two people were at Rossland's door when he came up. One was Captain
+Rifle, the other Marston, the ship's doctor. The captain was knocking
+when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
+
+"I can't rouse him," he said. "And I did not see him among the
+passengers."
+
+"Nor did I," said Alan.
+
+Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.
+
+"I think the circumstances permit," he explained. In a moment he looked
+up, puzzled. "The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in
+the lock."
+
+He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his
+knuckles were red. There was still no response.
+
+"Odd," he muttered.
+
+"Very odd," agreed Alan.
+
+His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash
+sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp,
+and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly,
+upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement
+and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.
+
+After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle
+close the door behind them, and from Marston's lips came a
+startled whisper:
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His
+arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the
+white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges
+and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock
+Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in that
+moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle's eyes met Alan's.
+The same thought--and in another instant disbelief--flashed from one to
+the other.
+
+Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. "A knife stab, close to
+the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not
+dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and
+dressing."
+
+"The door was locked on the inside," said Alan, as soon as the doctor
+was gone. "And the window is closed. It looks like--suicide. It is
+possible--there was an understanding between them--and Rossland chose
+this way instead of the sea?"
+
+Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into
+the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. "There is no knife,"
+he said stonily. And in a moment he added: "There are red stains on the
+window. It was not attempted suicide. It was--"
+
+"Murder."
+
+"Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone
+called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window.
+Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a
+long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We've got to
+believe that. It was a _man_."
+
+"Of course, a man," Alan nodded.
+
+They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle
+made a gesture toward the door. "Better go," he advised. "This is a
+ship's matter, and you won't want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it.
+Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you."
+
+The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan
+passed them, and he heard the door of Rossland's room close behind him.
+The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He
+went to Mary Standish's cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings
+and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard.
+Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and
+packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and
+explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them
+to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with
+the captain.
+
+Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He
+nodded toward a chair.
+
+"We'll reach Cordova inside of an hour," he said. "Doctor Marston says
+Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the _Nome_ in port
+until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make
+oath to that. Have you anything--in mind?"
+
+"Only one thing," replied Alan, "a determination to go ashore as soon as
+I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it. As
+for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or
+dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon him. It was
+merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me
+our location when she leaped into the sea."
+
+He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let
+Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant
+to him.
+
+"We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.
+If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east
+of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a
+chance. And I hope you will find her."
+
+Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.
+"It's a bad blow for the ship--her first trip," he said. "But I'm not
+thinking of the _Nome_. I'm thinking of Mary Standish. My God, it is
+terrible! If it had been anyone else--_anyone_--" His words seemed to
+choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. "It is hard
+to believe--almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill
+herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin."
+
+Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain
+details of the girl's visit. But a number of things which she had
+trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon
+Rossland's influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort,
+and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in
+his eyes.
+
+"You're not responsible--not so much as you believe," he said. "Don't
+take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and
+let me know. You will do that--you will let me know?"
+
+"Yes, I shall let you know."
+
+"And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his
+assailant is still on board."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: "There is
+nothing in Miss Standish's room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw
+things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your
+hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into
+the sea--before she went."
+
+"Such a thought is possible," agreed Alan evasively.
+
+Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face
+looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. "That's all,
+Alan. God knows I'd give this old life of mine to bring her back if I
+could. To me she was much like--someone--a long time dead. That's why I
+broke ship's regulations when she came aboard so strangely at Seattle,
+without reservation. I'm sorry now. I should have sent her ashore. But
+she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to ourselves a little of
+what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you do--"
+
+"I shall send you word."
+
+They shook hands, and Captain Rifle's fingers still held to Alan's as
+they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky.
+The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the
+darkened sea.
+
+"A thunder-storm," said the captain.
+
+His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note
+in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And
+then he said,
+
+"Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives."
+
+Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he
+went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the
+whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A
+vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.
+
+He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin.
+Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin
+bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in
+Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month
+in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the
+range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government
+railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence
+still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a
+man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain
+written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head
+and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to
+go ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until
+morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.
+
+Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not
+questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of
+his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for
+physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The
+desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding
+back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of a pale
+face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the dispassionate
+calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was battering down
+his stoic resistance. In an hour--since he had heard the scream of the
+woman--he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid earth under
+his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that narrow strip of
+coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.
+
+But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And
+not until Alan's feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a
+great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After
+he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply
+of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than
+darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there
+gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him.
+The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with
+a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near,
+as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the
+earth unaware.
+
+Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years
+ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen,
+half a mile up the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be there,
+where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay
+until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way
+instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces
+of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the
+mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden
+glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a white
+reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea he heard
+more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between two
+great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced
+to deadly combat.
+
+The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder
+that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled
+away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of
+signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air
+struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the
+thrill of storm.
+
+He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and
+the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash
+of the elements about his father's cabin and the roaring voices of the
+ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into
+the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there
+were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others
+yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought
+through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from
+dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen's cabin.
+
+He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky
+wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face,
+and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he
+could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his
+bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he
+flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage to the
+floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have
+forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he and
+Alan's father had tramped the mountains together.
+
+He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the
+frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent
+shoulders, his massive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard
+streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung
+off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty
+shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from
+Ericksen. They gripped hands.
+
+The Swede's voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose
+windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing
+the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan's face made him
+pause to hear other words than his own.
+
+Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea,
+bracing his arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening
+beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that
+drenched him as he stood there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan,
+a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
+
+From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn
+the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out
+to sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its
+downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was
+blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch Alan
+could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber
+slicker, and Olaf's great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was like
+a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable gloom he
+opened speed until the _Norden_ was shooting with the swiftness of a
+torpedo through the sea.
+
+In Olaf's cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary
+Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered
+reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet
+might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty
+years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a body washed ashore,
+and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was at the bottom of the
+sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in Alan. It quickened with
+the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the slim craft leaped through
+the water.
+
+Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him
+there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the
+least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept
+telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All
+through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against
+odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction
+he was going to win now--that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in
+the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the
+islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he
+found her--
+
+He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in moments
+it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting to keep
+out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his mental
+pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind, and
+waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her pale
+face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over the
+sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep away
+from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do.
+It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking
+down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed
+blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
+
+Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in
+which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to _him_
+in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the
+_Nome_. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her
+confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when
+he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word,
+proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the
+courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, "You will
+understand--tomorrow."
+
+He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn
+lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the
+tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf
+did not press his folly upon him, but kept the _Norden_ pointed seaward,
+adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland loomed up
+in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day the rain
+subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped. Alan threw
+off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair. White mists
+began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of light. Olaf
+grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The sun was
+breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as the mist
+dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
+
+The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had
+washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the
+sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his
+body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the
+mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living
+things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of
+forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from behind
+veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly--in a final triumph of the sun--the
+Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.
+
+The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning
+at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But
+in Alan's there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of
+sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was
+missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt
+the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met the other's
+smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to the truth.
+
+Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan's
+face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay
+naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it
+inspired by the captain of the _Nome_, as Alan had given him reason to
+believe. There was more than grimness in the other's face, and a strange
+sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the
+straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly undulating
+surface of the sea.
+
+At last he said, "If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
+_out there_," and he pointed.
+
+Alan stood up.
+
+"But she wouldn't be there now," Olaf added.
+
+In his heart he believed she was, straight down--at the bottom. He
+turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains
+was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of
+an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the rocks and
+timber that came down close to the sea.
+
+"That's McCormick's," he said.
+
+Alan made no answer. Through Olaf's binoculars he picked out the
+Scotchman's cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who
+knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes
+shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who
+came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in
+shallow water.
+
+They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of
+the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly.
+Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man.
+They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the _Nome_ and
+what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and
+believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in
+his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading its
+deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were
+frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of
+pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty
+dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if
+he found the girl's body.
+
+To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he
+had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not
+have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in
+the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he
+would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have
+guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf's face
+McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan
+Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the most
+precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his
+services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the
+little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.
+
+Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled
+gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when
+she heard what had happened aboard the _Nome_. Alan left the three
+together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the
+lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed--that this girl
+whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end of
+the world to Alan Holt.
+
+For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
+skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch.
+He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch
+canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left
+details of the drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for
+the finding of the body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many
+women were seeking before nightfall.
+
+"And remember," Sandy told each of them, "the chances are she'll wash
+ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes
+ashore at all."
+
+In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast.
+He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It
+was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the
+western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains reflecting its
+glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a great sickness,
+and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept slowly into his
+body and soul a new understanding of life. There was despair in his
+face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an obstinate
+will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed their
+grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a
+consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and
+with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something
+which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave
+him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself
+seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.
+
+Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy's wife were in the cabin when he
+returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had
+softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others
+had been. He knew. The woman's eyes told him, the almost mothering
+eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had coffee and food
+ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what
+he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of
+the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of
+Mary Standish.
+
+Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause
+of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen
+McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and
+how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of
+paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a
+lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about
+children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children--a lot of them.
+Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman's face
+was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something
+wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
+
+"We're building a new cabin," he said, "and there's two rooms in it
+specially for kids."
+
+There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that
+was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A
+moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something
+which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to pass
+to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf's eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see.
+Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely love.
+It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt, should
+think of such a matter at all.
+
+The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of
+certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents
+tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with
+Olaf at the wheel of the _Norden_. It was sunset when they returned, and
+in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the
+mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak
+what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan
+waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which he had
+never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once upon a
+time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to Japan. He
+emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and the
+treachery of them.
+
+Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if
+Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days--probably
+weeks--if it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her
+for Alan to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of
+the sea. That was what he called it--"a peaceful resting-place"--and in
+his earnestness to soothe another's grief he blundered still more deeply
+into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and
+bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond
+the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.
+
+Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was
+in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in
+suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to
+Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He
+went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he
+entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in
+her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her cheeks,
+and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It was
+almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
+
+"You--you didn't find her?" she asked.
+
+"No." His voice was tired and a little old. "Do you think I shall ever
+find her?"
+
+"Not as you have expected," she answered quietly. "She will never come
+like that." She seemed to be making an effort. "You--you would give a
+great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?"
+
+Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child
+looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips
+and nodded.
+
+"Of course. Everything I possess."
+
+"You--you--loved her--"
+
+Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the
+probing did not sting him; it was not a woman's curiosity that inspired
+them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not
+realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for
+himself, but for someone else--aloud.
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to
+be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief
+acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick's face and
+eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which
+had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of
+this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish's belongings, and gave
+it to Sandy's wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to
+speak in a businesslike way.
+
+"Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after
+I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you
+don't find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day." It seemed
+hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: "I don't think
+I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova,
+and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you
+do find her, you will look after her yourself, won't you, Mrs.
+McCormick?"
+
+Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do
+what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little
+thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to
+Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by.
+Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy
+about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down
+to the beach.
+
+The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars,
+when the _Norden's_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan
+looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that
+lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full.
+But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away,
+that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look
+back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that
+lay beneath the mountains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+That night, in Olaf's cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
+again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his
+life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and
+that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what
+happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part
+of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his
+mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions
+and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but
+he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he
+realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote
+a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
+letter--carefully sealed--which was not to be opened unless they found
+Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
+put into words in Sandy's cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
+spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the
+final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for
+Captain Rifle's ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of
+Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told
+briefly the disappointing details of his search.
+
+He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely
+forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank,
+Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the
+hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan's
+intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say
+about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
+now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
+himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
+Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
+businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might
+disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes.
+In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break
+down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had
+unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry
+the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him,
+uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told him.
+
+They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening
+camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland.
+Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was
+primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of
+their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax,
+and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the
+swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north,
+whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he
+lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its
+hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once
+more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering
+of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
+coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him.
+He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he
+mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A
+thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when
+Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the
+next range.
+
+Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor,
+and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old
+days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always
+the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for
+thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and he
+was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova much
+longer. Siberia was dragging him--that forbidden world of adventure and
+mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles across the
+strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he forgot Alan's
+tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep
+Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been dreamed of in
+Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was going if
+he lived another year or two--going to find his fortune or his end in
+the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes. Twice he had tried
+it since his old comrade had died, and twice he had been driven out. The
+next time he would know how to go about it, and he invited Alan to
+go with him.
+
+There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night ride
+across the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred
+plains of Tibet. It stirred old desires in Alan's blood, for he knew
+that of all frontiers the Siberian would be the last and the greatest,
+and that not only men, but nations, would play their part in the
+breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of firelight in Olaf's eyes.
+
+"And if we don't go in first from _this side_, Alan, the yellow fellows
+will come out some day from _that,"_ rumbled the old sour-dough,
+striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. "And when they do, they
+won't come over to us in ones an' twos an' threes, but in millions.
+That's what the yellow fellows will do when they once get started, an'
+it's up to a few Alaska Jacks an' Tough-Nut Bills to get their feet
+planted first on the other side. Will you go?"
+
+Alan shook his head. "Some day--but not now." The old flash was in his
+eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again--the fight to do his
+bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing
+the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a
+smoldering cloud. "But you're right about the danger," he said. "It
+won't come from Japan to California. It will pour like a flood through
+Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn't the danger of the yellow
+man alone, Olaf. You've got to combine that with Bolshevism, the menace
+of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the little neck of
+water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American continent to
+bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a century, but it's
+coming sure as God makes light--if we let Alaska go down and out. And my
+way of preventing it is different from yours."
+
+He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. "I'm not
+proud of the States," he went on, as if speaking to something which he
+saw in the flames. "I can't be, after the ruin their unintelligent
+propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But they're our
+salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have factions in
+Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It's going to be
+largely a matter of education. We can't take Alaska down to the
+States--we've got to bring them up to us. We must make a large part of a
+hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million
+of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the
+Gulf of Anadyr. It's God's own country we have north of Fifty-eight,
+Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a
+million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in
+Alaska and at Washington won't let them come. With coal enough under our
+feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We've
+got billions in copper and oil, but can't touch them. We should have
+some of the world's greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not,
+because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn't
+conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon
+industry--but they didn't. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of
+the plains.
+
+"The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
+are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and
+common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring
+about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will
+take place right here--in Alaska--and not in Siberia. And if we
+don't win--"
+
+He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf's bearded
+face.
+
+"Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
+Gulf of Anadyr," he finished. "And if it ever does come, the people of
+the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska
+could have meant to the nation."
+
+The force of the old spirit surged uppermost in Alan again, and after
+that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the
+fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her
+quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the
+lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as
+she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of
+this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have
+made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It was a thought which
+brought a painful thickening in his breath, for always these visions
+which Olaf could not see ended with Mary Standish as she had faced him
+in his cabin, her back against the door, her lips trembling, and her
+eyes softly radiant with tears in the broken pride of that last moment
+of her plea for life.
+
+He could not have told how long he slept that night. Dreams came to him
+in his restless slumber, and always they awakened him, so that he was
+looking at the stars again and trying not to think. In spite of the
+grief in his soul they were pleasant dreams, as though some gentle force
+were at work in him subconsciously to wipe away the shadows of tragedy.
+Mary Standish was with him again, between the mountains at Skagway; she
+was at his side in the heart of the tundras, the sun in her shining hair
+and eyes, and all about them the wonder of wild roses and purple iris
+and white seas of sedge-cotton and yellow-eyed daisies, and birds
+singing in the gladness of summer. He heard the birds. And he heard the
+girl's voice, answering them in her happiness and turning that happiness
+from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke, it was with a
+little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was building a fire,
+and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the mountains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new
+import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach
+and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan
+out of the pit into which he had fallen. He understood, now, how it was
+that through many long years his father had worshiped the memory of a
+woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago. Unnumbered times
+he had seen the miracle of her presence in his father's eyes, and once,
+when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled valley back in the
+mountains, the elder Holt had said:
+
+"Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
+me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek,
+with the great rock in the sun? We rested there--before you were born!"
+
+He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan
+recalled the strange happiness in his father's face as he had looked
+down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
+
+And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that
+began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan's
+heart. It would never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be
+alone. He knew at last it was an undying part of him, as it had been a
+part of his father, clinging to him in sweet pain, encouraging him,
+pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
+beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
+grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
+about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
+placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
+could see farther than others, because he had known Alan's father as a
+brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt--straight,
+clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
+Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
+awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
+his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
+of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
+Alan's, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
+together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish, just
+as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt's name sacred in his own heart.
+Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of memories,
+observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his tongue, and
+he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his mind.
+
+He talked of Siberia--always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
+Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were
+soft with the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and
+filled with stars. Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty
+castles whose battlements reached up into the cloud-draperies of the
+sky. They kept close to the mainland and among the islands, camping
+early each evening. Birds were coming northward by the thousand, and
+each night Olaf's camp-fire sent up the delicious aroma of flesh-pots
+and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time came for Olaf
+to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede's eyes, and as
+a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably come
+when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
+_Norden_ until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.
+
+Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country.
+And he was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer
+which carried mail and the necessities of life to the string of
+settlements reaching a thousand miles out into the Pacific left
+Resurrection Bay, and he was given passage. Thereafter the countless
+islands of the North Pacific drifted behind, while always northward were
+the gray cliffs of the Alaskan Peninsula, with the ramparted ranges
+beyond, glistening with glaciers, smoking with occasional volcanoes, and
+at times so high their snowy peaks were lost in the clouds. First
+touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at Uyak and
+Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island of Unga,
+and thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch Harbor and
+Unalaska. Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was berthed on a
+freighter, and on the twelfth day of June set foot in Nome.
+
+His home-coming was unheralded, but the little, gray town, with its
+peculiar, black shadowings, its sea of stove-pipes, and its two solitary
+brick chimneys, brought a lump of joy into his throat as he watched its
+growing outlines from the small boat that brought him ashore. He could
+see one of the only two brick chimneys in northern Alaska gleaming in
+the sun; beyond it, fifty miles away, were the ragged peaks of the
+Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk to them in half an hour,
+and over all the world between seemed to hover a misty gloom. But it was
+where he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and unforgetable
+memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its frame buildings, its
+crooked streets, and what to others might have been ugliness, was a warm
+and thrilling thing. For here were his _people_. Here were the men and
+women who were guarding the northern door of the world, an epic place,
+filled with strong hearts, courage, and a love of country as
+inextinguishable as one's love of life. From this drab little place,
+shut out from all the world for half the year, young men and women went
+down to southern universities, to big cities, to the glamor and lure of
+"outside." But they always came back. Nome called them. Its loneliness
+in winter. Its gray gloom in springtime. Its glory in summer and autumn.
+It was the breeding-place of a new race of men, and they loved it as
+Alan loved it. To him the black wireless tower meant more than the
+Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten church spires more than the
+architectural colossi of New York and Washington. Beside one of the
+churches he had played as a boy. He had seen the steeples painted. He
+had helped make the crooked streets. And his mother had laughed and
+lived and died here, and his father's footprints had been in the white
+sands of the beach when tents dotted the shore like gulls.
+
+When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then greeted him. He
+was unexpected. And the surprise of his arrival added strength to the
+grip which men's hands gave him. He had not heard voices like theirs
+down in the States, with a gladness in them that was almost excitement.
+Small boys ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
+grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt had
+come back from the States. Before the day was over, it was on its way to
+Shelton and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the
+beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the news of his arrival Alan
+walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke's restaurant for a cup of
+coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen's offices in the Tin
+Bank Building.
+
+For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days
+before, and his brothers were "in" from the big ranges over on the
+Choris Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a
+tremendously successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty
+thousand head, when the final figures were in. A hundred other herds
+were prospering, and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
+with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a million reindeer were on
+the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when
+compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five thousand!
+In another twenty years there would be ten million.
+
+But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
+the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome.
+After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best
+men fighting for Alaska's salvation at Washington, word was traveling
+from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to
+range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of
+miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
+office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
+strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten dollars
+a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty dollars;
+cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
+when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters
+of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and
+in the turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man just outside
+the reach of all the milk and honey in a wonderful land. Pauperizing,
+degrading, actually killing, the political misrule that had already
+driven 25 per cent of Alaska's population from their homes was to
+continue indefinitely. A President of the United States had promised to
+visit the mighty land of the north and see with his own eyes. But would
+he come? There had been other promises, many of them, and promises had
+always been futile. But it was a hope that crept through Alaska, and
+upon this hope men whose courage never died began to build. Freedom was
+on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph ultimately, as it
+always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned in the locks which
+had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their country,
+and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they
+might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when
+it came.
+
+In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged,
+and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of
+gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John
+Graham--interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever
+had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous
+legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an
+aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of
+conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the
+optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days
+were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping
+through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at
+hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth, for what
+remained of Alaska's men after years of hopelessness and distress were
+fighting men. And the women who had remained with them were the mothers
+and wives of a new nation in the making.
+
+These mothers and wives Alan met during his week in Nome. He would have
+given his life if a few million people in the States could have known
+these women. Something would have happened then, and the sisterhood of
+half a continent--possessing the power of the ballot--would have opened
+their arms to them. Men like John Graham would have gone out of
+existence; Alaska would have received her birthright. For these women
+were of the kind who greeted the sun each day, and the gloom of winter,
+with something greater than hope in their hearts. They, too, were
+builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and side
+by side with their men-folk they went on in this epic struggle for the
+building of a nation at the top of the world.
+
+Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary
+Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape
+his lips. The passing of each day had made her more intimately a part of
+him, and a secret part. He could not tell people about her. He even made
+evasions when questioned about his business and experiences at Cordova
+and up the coast. Curiously, she seemed nearer to him when he was away
+from other men and women. He remembered it had been that way with his
+father, who was always happiest when in the deep mountains or the
+unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with an inner gladness when his
+business was finished and the day came for him to leave Nome.
+
+Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula. For
+one hundred miles, up to Shelton, they rode over a narrow-gauge,
+four-foot railway on a hand-car drawn by dogs. And it seemed to Alan, at
+times, as though Mary Standish were with him, riding in this strange way
+through a great wilderness. He could _see_ her. That was the strange
+thing which began to possess him. There were moments when her eyes were
+shining softly upon him, her lips smiling, her presence so real he might
+have spoken to her if Lomen had not been at his side. He did not fight
+against these visionings. It pleased him to think of her going with him
+into the heart of Alaska, riding the picturesque "pup-mobile," losing
+herself in the mountains and in his tundras, with all the wonder and
+glory of a new world breaking upon her a little at a time, like the
+unfolding of a great mystery. For there was both wonder and glory in
+these countless miles running ahead and drifting behind, and the miracle
+of northward-sweeping life. The days were long. Night, as Mary Standish
+had always known night, was gone. On the twentieth of June there were
+twenty hours of day, with a dim and beautiful twilight between the hours
+of eleven and one. Sleep was no longer a matter of the rising and
+setting of the sun, but was regulated by the hands of the watch. A world
+frozen to the core for seven months was bursting open like a
+great flower.
+
+From Shelton, Alan and his companion visited the eighty or ninety people
+at Candle, and thence continued down the Keewalik River to Keewalik, on
+Kotzebue Sound. A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried them to Choris
+Peninsula, where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and his huge herd
+of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide
+his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on to greater
+haste. For the first time in months he heard the crackling thunder of
+reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like a wild call from his own
+herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end came and his
+business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It was night, as
+his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta of the Kobuk
+River with him in a lighterage company's boat. But there was no
+darkness. In the afternoon of the fourth day they came to the Redstone,
+two hundred miles above the mouth of the Kobuk as the river winds. They
+had supper together on the shore. After that Paul Davidovich turned back
+with the slow sweep of the current, waving his hand until he was out
+of sight.
+
+Not until the sound of the Russian's motor-boat was lost in distance did
+Alan sense fully the immensity of the freedom that swept upon him. At
+last, after months that had seemed like so many years, he was _alone_.
+North and eastward stretched the unmarked trail which he knew so well, a
+hundred and fifty miles straight as a bird might fly, almost unmapped,
+unpeopled, right up to the doors of his range in the slopes of the
+Endicott Mountains. A little cry from his own lips gave him a start. It
+was as if he had called out aloud to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and to Keok
+and Nawadlook, telling them he was on his way home and would soon be
+there. Never had this hidden land which he had found for himself seemed
+so desirable as it did in this hour. There was something about it that
+was all-mothering, all-good, all-sweetly-comforting to that other thing
+which had become a part of him now. It was holding out its arms to him,
+understanding, welcoming, inspiring him to travel strongly and swiftly
+the space between. And he was ready to answer its call.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. He had
+spent a long day with the Russian, but he felt no desire for rest or
+sleep. The musk-tang of the tundras, coming to him through the thin
+timber of the river-courses, worked like an intoxicant in his blood. It
+was the tundra he wanted, before he lay down upon his back with his face
+to the stars. He was eager to get away from timber and to feel the
+immeasurable space of the big country, the open country, about him. What
+fool had given to it the name of _Barren Lands_? What idiots people were
+to lie about it in that way on the maps! He strapped his pack over his
+shoulders and seized his rifle. Barren Lands!
+
+He set out, walking like a man in a race. And long before the twilight
+hours of sleep they were sweeping out ahead of him in all their
+glory--the Barren Lands of the map-makers, _his_ paradise. On a knoll he
+stood in the golden sun and looked about him. He set his pack down and
+stood with bared head, a whispering of cool wind in his hair. If Mary
+Standish could have lived to see _this_! He stretched out his arms, as
+if pointing for her eyes to follow, and her name was in his heart and
+whispering on his silent lips. Immeasurable the tundras reached ahead of
+him--rolling, sweeping, treeless, green and golden and a glory of
+flowers, athrill with a life no forest land had ever known. Under his
+feet was a crush of forget-me-nots and of white and purple violets,
+their sweet perfume filling his lungs as he breathed. Ahead of him lay a
+white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees in
+between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze, was
+the cotton-tufted sedge he loved. The pods were green. In a few days
+they would be opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
+
+He listened to the call of life. It was about him everywhere, a melody
+of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly
+aglow in the sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird
+instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and
+months when there was no real night. He picked up his pack and went on.
+From a pool hidden in the lush grasses of a distant hollow came to him
+the twilight honking of nesting geese and the quacking content of wild
+ducks. He heard the reed-like, musical notes of a lone "organ-duck" and
+the plaintive cries of plover, and farther out, where the shadows seemed
+deepening against the rim of the horizon, rose the harsh, rolling notes
+of cranes and the raucous cries of the loons. And then, from a clump of
+willows near him, came the chirping twitter of a thrush whose throat was
+tired for the day, and the sweet, sleepy evening song of a robin.
+_Night!_ Alan laughed softly, the pale flush of the sun in his face.
+_Bedtime!_ He looked at his watch.
+
+It was nine o'clock. Nine o'clock, and the flowers still answering to
+the glow of the sun! And the people down there--in the States--called it
+a frozen land, a hell of ice and snow at the end of the earth, a place
+of the survival of the fittest! Well, to just such extremes had
+stupidity and ignorance gone through all the years of history, even
+though men called themselves super-creatures of intelligence and
+knowledge. It was humorous. And it was tragic.
+
+At last he came to a shining pool between two tufted ridges, and in this
+velvety hollow the twilight was gathering like a shadow in a cup. A
+little creek ran out of the pool, and here Alan gathered soft grass and
+spread out his blankets. A great stillness drew in about him, broken
+only by the old squaws and the loons. At eleven o'clock he could still
+see clearly the sleeping water-fowl on the surface of the pool. But the
+stars were appearing. It grew duskier, and the rose-tint of the sun
+faded into purple gloom as pale night drew near--four hours of rest that
+was neither darkness nor day. With a pillow of sedge and grass under his
+head he slept.
+
+The song and cry of bird-life wakened him, and at dawn he bathed in the
+pool, with dozens of fluffy, new-born ducks dodging away from him among
+the grasses and reeds. That day, and the next, and the day after that he
+traveled steadily into the heart of the tundra country, swiftly and
+almost without rest. It seemed to him, at last, that he must be in that
+country where all the bird-life of the world was born, for wherever
+there was water, in the pools and little streams and the hollows between
+the ridges, the voice of it in the morning was a babel of sound. Out of
+the sweet breast of the earth he could feel the irresistible pulse of
+motherhood filling him with its strength and its courage, and whispering
+to him its everlasting message that because of the glory and need and
+faith of life had God created this land of twenty-hour day and four-hour
+twilight. In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for
+gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place
+of darkness which its light could not quite enter.
+
+The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless
+spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision,
+she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At
+times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when
+he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was
+he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in
+spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his lips.
+For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would have
+lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the ship. She
+had died, not for him, but _because_ of him--because, in his failure to
+live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had broken down
+what must have been her last hope and her final faith. If he had been
+less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a greater wisdom,
+she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the rose-tinted
+dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear
+stars--happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things. At least
+so he dreamed, in his immeasurable loneliness.
+
+He did not tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her
+even had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to
+fight for. He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains
+that might have bound her, or other inclinations that might have led
+her. He claimed her, now that she was dead, and knew that living he
+would have possessed her. Nothing could have kept him from that. But she
+was gone. And for that he was accountable, and the fifth night he lay
+sleepless under the stars, and like a boy he cried for her with his face
+upon his arm, and when morning came, and he went on, never had the world
+seemed so vast and empty.
+
+His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he
+traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within
+him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra
+call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their
+happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that. Their love had
+been a part of his life, and the knowledge that his response to this
+love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled him with dread. A
+strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his head, so that
+when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of
+cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had come
+to these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great tundras,
+and he had built himself a little camp among them. He loved the place.
+It had seemed to him that now and then he must visit the forlorn trees
+to give them cheer and comradeship. His father's name was carved in the
+bole of the greatest of them all, and under it the date and day when the
+elder Holt had discovered them in a land where no man had gone before.
+And under his father's name was his mother's, and under that, his own.
+He had made of the place a sort of shrine, a green and sweet-flowered
+tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song and peace in summer and the
+weird aloneness of it in winter had played their parts in the making of
+his soul. Through many months he had anticipated this hour of his
+home-coming, when in the distance he would see the beckoning welcome of
+the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills and frosted peaks of the
+Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was looking at the trees and the
+mountains, and something was lacking in the thrill of them. He came up
+from the west, between two willow ridges through which ran the little
+creek from the warm springs, and he was within a quarter of a mile of
+them when something stopped him in his tracks.
+
+At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment
+he knew it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him.
+This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was
+shooting firecrackers!
+
+A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok's mischievous habit of
+lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness
+Nawadlook never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his
+home-coming with a celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably
+imported a supply of "bing-bangs" from Allakakat or Tanana. The
+oppressive weight inside him lifted, and the smile remained on his lips.
+And then as if commanded by a voice, his eyes turned to the dead
+cottonwood stub which had sentineled the little oasis of trees for many
+years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely in the breeze that came
+with the evening sun, was an American flag!
+
+He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of
+him, who wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old
+happiness, and he drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that grew
+almost up to the cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would walk
+suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing
+that would amaze and delight them.
+
+He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He
+heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one
+of the "giants" that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
+ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then
+up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see
+Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
+as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from
+her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his sight,
+watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his way so
+that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen, within a
+dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her, and Keok was
+still standing on the log with her back toward him.
+
+It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something
+about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and
+seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not
+Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The
+slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the
+glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.
+
+"Keok!"
+
+Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?
+
+And then:
+
+"Mary!" he called. "_Mary Standish_!"
+
+She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt's face was the color of gray
+rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
+had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on
+the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his
+home-coming.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+After that one calling of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no
+movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
+temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was
+rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of
+wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to
+pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, _alive!_
+He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color come into
+it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log and came
+toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed a long
+time to Alan.
+
+He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating
+up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
+away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must
+have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made
+an effort to recover himself.
+
+"You almost frightened me," she said. "We have been expecting you and
+watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back
+over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn't see you."
+
+It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same
+voice, unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him
+yesterday and with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again
+today. It was impossible for him to realize in these moments the
+immeasurable distance that lay between their viewpoints. He was simply
+Alan Holt--she was the dead risen to life. Many times in his grief he
+had visualized what he would do if some miracle could bring her back to
+him like this; he had thought of taking her in his arms and never
+letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to pass, and she was
+within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to speak.
+
+"You--Mary Standish!" he said at last. "I thought--"
+
+He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another
+individual within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack
+of physical expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout with
+joy, yet the directing soul of action in him was stricken. She touched
+his arm hesitatingly.
+
+"I didn't think you would care," she said. "I thought you wouldn't
+mind--if I came up here."
+
+Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain,
+and the touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard
+himself cry out, a strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his
+breast. He held her close, crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers
+buried in her hair, her slender body almost broken in his arms. She was
+alive--she had come back to him--and he forgot everything in these blind
+moments but that great truth which was sweeping over him in a glorious
+inundation. Then, suddenly, he found that she was fighting him,
+struggling to free herself and putting her hands against his face in her
+efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing but her eyes,
+and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of finding--but horror.
+It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms relaxed. She
+staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her breath,
+her face very white.
+
+He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at him,
+as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not
+taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing
+the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his
+hands mutely.
+
+"You think--I came here for _that?_" she panted.
+
+"No," he said. "Forgive me. I am sorry."
+
+It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of
+shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him,
+which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back
+against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together.
+Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him was
+centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
+living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
+to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
+weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
+up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
+the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
+flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
+face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
+too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
+astonishment growing in her eyes.
+
+"You are alive," he said, giving voice again to the one thought pounding
+in his brain. "_Alive!_"
+
+It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
+of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to
+the girl.
+
+"Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?" she asked.
+
+"Your letter? At Nome?" He repeated the words, shaking his head. "No."
+
+"And all this time--you have been thinking--I was dead?"
+
+He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form
+of speech.
+
+"I wrote you there," she said. "I wrote the letter before I jumped into
+the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle's ship."
+
+"I didn't get it."
+
+"You didn't get it?" There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he
+had observed it, understanding.
+
+"Then you didn't mean that just now? You didn't intend to do it? It was
+because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief
+to find me alive. That was it, wasn't it?"
+
+Stupidly he nodded again. "Yes, it was a great relief."
+
+"You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn't help me," she went
+on. "So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I
+wrote. To all the world but you I am dead--to Rossland, Captain Rifle,
+everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit
+Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and
+picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the
+boats were making their search."
+
+In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side
+of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few
+moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had
+done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never
+happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made it
+impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.
+
+"Now I am here," she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. "I
+didn't think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind
+afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers
+whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the _Nome_. And
+so--I am your guest, Mr. Holt."
+
+There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she
+smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she
+belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him
+permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pass away from
+him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His
+spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during the
+past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the
+reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of
+things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his
+hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her
+own in them confidently.
+
+"It was like a bolt of lightning," he said, his voice free at last and
+trembling. "Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of you,
+and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find
+you alive. And _here!_"
+
+She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But
+reason had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.
+
+"It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I
+am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake
+up and find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the
+other things--"
+
+He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of
+tears at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a
+lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in
+her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
+
+"I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step," he
+said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come. "Then
+I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had
+created you!"
+
+A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
+
+"And when I found you here, and you didn't fade away like a ghost, I
+thought something was wrong with my head. Something must have been
+wrong, I guess, or I wouldn't have done _that_. You see, it puzzled me
+that a ghost should be setting off firecrackers--and I suppose that was
+the first impulse I had of making sure you were real."
+
+A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them. It was a
+clear, wild voice with a sweet trill in it. "_Maa-rie!_" it called.
+"_Maa-rie!_"
+
+"Supper," nodded the girl. "You are just in time. And then we are going
+home in the twilight."
+
+It made his heart thump, that casual way in which she spoke of his place
+as home. She went ahead of him, with the sun glinting in the soft coils
+of her hair, and he picked up his rifle and followed, eyes and soul
+filled only with the beauty of her slim figure--a glory of life where
+for a long time he had fashioned a spirit of the dead. They came into an
+open, soft with grass and strewn with flowers, and in this open a man
+was kneeling beside a fire no larger than his two hands, and at his
+side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair rippling
+down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with
+Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only
+one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She dropped the
+armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for
+him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner
+of her coming, was only a moment behind. And then he was shaking hands
+with Stampede, and Keok had slipped down among the flowers and was
+crying. That was like Keok. She always cried when he went away, and
+cried when he returned; and then, in another moment, it was Keok who was
+laughing first, and Alan noticed she no longer wore her hair in braids,
+as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in doing, but had it coiled about her
+head just as Mary Standish wore her own.
+
+These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of
+way. No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and
+nerves were fighting to recover themselves. His senses were swimming
+back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an
+unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities as
+they assembled themselves. In the edge of the tundra beyond the
+cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes
+which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads. He drew off his pack
+as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks. Nawadlook
+was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began to fill a
+pipe. He realized that because they had expected him, if not today then
+tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had
+experienced shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back
+and dragged the old Alan Holt into existence again. It was like bringing
+an intelligence out of darkness into light.
+
+It was difficult for him--afterward--to remember just what happened
+during the next half-hour. The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat
+opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper
+things between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful
+Mary Standish who had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon
+of the _Nome_.
+
+Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of
+the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the
+tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had
+been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok's suggestion
+that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how
+quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea. She had smiled at him as
+she left, and a little farther out had waved her hand at him, as Keok
+and Nawadlook both had done, but not another word had passed between
+them alone. And as they rode off in the warm glow of sunset Alan stood
+watching them, and would have stared without speech until they were out
+of sight, if Stampede's fingers had not gripped his arm.
+
+"Now, go to it, Alan," he said. "I'm ready. Give me hell!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was thus, with a note of something inevitable in his voice, that
+Stampede brought Alan back solidly to earth. There was a practical and
+awakening inspiration in the manner of the little red-whiskered man's
+invitation.
+
+"I've been a damn fool," he confessed. "And I'm waiting."
+
+The word was like a key opening a door through which a flood of things
+began to rush in upon Alan. There were other fools, and evidently he had
+been one. His mind went back to the _Nome_. It seemed only a few hours
+ago--only yesterday--that the girl had so artfully deceived them all,
+and he had gone through hell because of that deception. The trickery had
+been simple, and exceedingly clever because of its simplicity; it must
+have taken a tremendous amount of courage, now that he clearly
+understood that at no time had she wanted to die.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "why she did a thing like that?"
+
+Stampede shook his head, misunderstanding what was in Alan's mind. "I
+couldn't keep her back, not unless I tied her to a tree." And he added,
+"The little witch even threatened to shoot me!"
+
+A flash of exultant humor filled his eyes. "Begin, Alan. I'm waiting.
+Go the limit."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For letting her ride over me, of course. For bringing her up. For not
+shufflin' her in the bush. You can't take it out of _her_ hide,
+can you?"
+
+He twisted his red whiskers, waiting for an answer. Alan was silent.
+Mary Standish was leading the way up out of a dip in the tundra a
+quarter of a mile away, with Nawadlook and Keok close behind her. They
+trotted up a low ridge and disappeared.
+
+"It's none of my business," persisted Stampede, "but you didn't seem to
+expect her--"
+
+"You're right," interrupted Alan, turning toward his pack. "I didn't
+expect her. I thought she was dead."
+
+A low whistle escaped Stampede's lips. He opened his mouth to speak and
+closed it again. Alan observed him as he slipped the pack over his
+shoulders. Evidently his companion did not know Mary Standish was the
+girl who had jumped overboard from the _Nome_, and if she had kept her
+secret, it was not his business just now to explain, even though he
+guessed that Stampede's quick wits would readily jump at the truth. A
+light was beginning to dispel the little man's bewilderment as they
+started toward the Range. He had seen Mary Standish frequently aboard
+the _Nome_; a number of times he had observed her in Alan's company, and
+he knew of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore, if
+Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few hours
+after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into the
+sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to discover
+this amazing fact in his association with Mary Standish.
+
+"It beats the devil!" he exclaimed suddenly.
+
+"It does," agreed Alan.
+
+Cold, hard reason began to shoulder itself inevitably against the
+happiness that possessed him, and questions which he had found no
+interest in asking when aboard ship leaped upon him with compelling
+force. Why was it so tragically important to Mary Standish that the
+world should believe her dead? What was it that had driven her to appeal
+to him and afterward to jump into the sea? What was her mysterious
+association with Rossland, an agent of Alaska's deadliest enemy, John
+Graham--the one man upon whom he had sworn vengeance if opportunity ever
+came his way? Over him, clubbing other emotions with its insistence,
+rode a demand for explanations which it was impossible for him to make.
+Stampede saw the tense lines in his face and remained silent in the
+lengthening twilight, while Alan's mind struggled to bring coherence and
+reason out of a tidal wave of mystery and doubt. Why had she come to
+_his_ cabin aboard the _Nome_? Why had she played him with such
+conspicuous intent against Rossland, and why--in the end--had she
+preceded him to his home in the tundras? It was this question which
+persisted, never for an instant swept aside by the others. She had not
+come because of love for him. In a brutal sort of way he had proved
+that, for when he had taken her in his arms, he had seen distress and
+fear and a flash of horror in her face. Another and more mysterious
+force had driven her.
+
+The joy in him was a living flame even as this realization pressed upon
+him. He was like a man who had found life after a period of something
+that was worse than death, and with his happiness he felt himself
+twisted upon an upheaval of conflicting sensations and half convictions
+out of which, in spite of his effort to hold it back, suspicion began to
+creep like a shadow. But it was not the sort of suspicion to cool the
+thrill in his blood or frighten him, for he was quite ready to concede
+that Mary Standish was a fugitive, and that her flight from Seattle had
+been in the face of a desperate necessity. What had happened aboard ship
+was further proof, and her presence at his range a final one. Forces had
+driven her which it had been impossible for her to combat, and in
+desperation she had come to him for refuge. She had chosen him out of
+all the world to help her; she believed in him; she had faith that with
+him no harm could come, and his muscles tightened with sudden desire to
+fight for her.
+
+In these moments he became conscious of the evening song of the tundras
+and the soft splendor of the miles reaching out ahead of them. He
+strained his eyes to catch another glimpse of the mounted figures when
+they came up out of hollows to the clough-tops, but the lacy veils of
+evening were drawing closer, and he looked in vain. Bird-song grew
+softer; sleepy cries rose from the grasses and pools; the fire of the
+sun itself died out, leaving its radiance in a mingling of vivid rose
+and mellow gold over the edge of the world. It was night and yet day,
+and Alan wondered what thoughts were in the heart of Mary Standish. What
+had driven her to the Range was of small importance compared with the
+thrilling fact that she was just ahead of him. The mystery of her would
+be explained tomorrow. He was sure of that. She would confide in him.
+Now that she had so utterly placed herself under his protection, she
+would tell him what she had not dared to disclose aboard the _Nome_. So
+he thought only of the silvery distance of twilight that separated them,
+and spoke at last to Stampede.
+
+"I'm rather glad you brought her," he said.
+
+"I didn't bring her," protested Stampede. "She _came_." He shrugged his
+shoulders with a grunt. "And furthermore I didn't manage it. She did
+that herself. She didn't come with me. I came with _her_."
+
+He stopped and struck a match to light his pipe. Over the tiny flame he
+glared fiercely at Alan, but in his eyes was something that betrayed
+him. Alan saw it and felt a desire to laugh out of sheer happiness. His
+keen vision and sense of humor were returning.
+
+"How did it happen?"
+
+Stampede puffed loudly at his pipe, then took it from his mouth and
+drew in a deep breath.
+
+"First I remember was the fourth night after we landed at Cordova.
+Couldn't get a train on the new line until then. Somewhere up near
+Chitina we came to a washout. It didn't rain. You couldn't call it that,
+Alan. It was the Pacific Ocean falling on us, with two or three other
+oceans backing it up. The stage came along, horses swimming, coach
+floating, driver half drowned in his seat. I was that hungry I got in
+for Chitina. There was one other climbed in after me, and I wondered
+what sort of fool he was. I said something about being starved or I'd
+have hung to the train. The other didn't answer. Then I began to swear.
+I did, Alan. I cursed terrible. Swore at the Government for building
+such a road, swore at the rain, an' I swore at myself for not bringin'
+along grub. I said my belly was as empty as a shot-off cartridge, and I
+said it good an' loud. I was mad. Then a big flash of lightning lit up
+the coach. Alan, it was _her_ sittin' there with a box in her lap,
+facing me, drippin' wet, her eyes shining--and she was smiling at me!
+Yessir, _smiling_."
+
+Stampede paused to let the shock sink in. He was not disappointed.
+
+Alan stared at him in amazement. "The fourth night--after--" He caught
+himself. "Go on, Stampede!"
+
+"I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin' to sneak
+out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin' come again. But it
+caught me. An' there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her saying
+she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An' she called me Stampede, like
+she'd known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an' rocking and
+the thunder an' lightning an' rain piling up against each other like
+sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did
+that, Alan--_fed_ me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes
+shining and her lips smilin' as if all that hell about us made her
+happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was
+telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how
+happy she was that I was goin' her way. _Her_ way, mind you, Alan, not
+_mine._ And that's just the way she's kept me goin' up to the minute you
+hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!"
+
+He lighted his pipe again. "Alan, how the devil did she know I was
+hitting the trail for your place?"
+
+"She didn't," replied Alan.
+
+"But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the
+happiest moment of her life, because _she_ was on her way up to your
+range, and I'd be such jolly good company for her. 'Jolly good'--them
+were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew she was coming up,
+she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand
+surprise. Said it was possible she'd buy your range, and she wanted to
+look it over before you arrived. An' it seems queer I can't remember
+anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and Chitina.
+When we took the train again, she began askin' a million questions about
+you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to, Alan--but
+everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and Fairbanks, and
+she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I'd have eat soap out of
+her hand if she'd offered it to me. Then, sort of sly and soft-like, she
+began asking questions about John Graham--and I woke up."
+
+"John Graham!" Alan repeated the name.
+
+"Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get
+away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin' aboard a
+down-river boat, and cool as you please--with her hand on my arm--she
+said she wasn't quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help
+her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain't a lie what I'm
+going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a wonderful
+idea she had for surprisin' _you_. Said she knew you would return to the
+Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some fireworks. Said
+you was such a good American you'd be disappointed if you didn't have
+'em. So she took me in a store an' bought it out. Asked the man what
+he'd take for everything in his joint that had powder in it. Five
+hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk something out
+of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar bills in it an
+inch think. Then she asked _me_ to get them firecrackers 'n' wheels 'n'
+skyrockets 'n' balloons 'n' other stuff down to the boat, and she asked
+me just as if I was a sweet little boy who'd be tickled to death to
+do it!"
+
+In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne
+in secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his
+words upon his companion. Incredulity shot into Alan's eyes, and the
+humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that
+Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination. Yet what he had told him
+seemed impossible. Mary Standish had come aboard the _Nome_ a fugitive.
+All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and
+these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea.
+How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at Fairbanks
+as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian had also
+become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she
+played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died? And
+was this money--possibly the manner in which she had secured it in
+Seattle--the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into
+execution a little later?
+
+He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It
+was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was
+cut under his father's in the old cottonwood tree.
+
+Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: "You don't seem
+interested, Alan. But I'm going on, or I'll bust. I've got to tell you
+what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I won't
+say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!"
+
+"Go on," urged Alan. "I'm interested."
+
+"I got 'em on the boat," continued Stampede viciously. "And she with me
+every minute, smiling in that angel way of hers, and not letting me out
+of her sight a flick of her eyelash, unless there was only one hole to
+go in an' come out at. And then she said she wanted to do a little
+shopping, which meant going into every shack in town and buyin'
+something, an' I did the lugging. At last she bought a gun, and when I
+asked her what she was goin' to do with it, she said, 'Stampede, that's
+for you,' an' when I went to thank her, she said: 'No, I don't mean it
+that way. I mean that if you try to run away from me again I'm going to
+fill you full of holes.' She said that! Threatened me. Then she bought
+me a new outfit from toe to summit--boots, pants, shirt, hat _and_ a
+necktie! And I didn't say a word, not a word. She just led me in an'
+bought what she wanted and made me put 'em on."
+
+Stampede drew in a mighty breath, and a fourth time wasted a match on
+his pipe. "I was getting used to it by the time we reached Tanana," he
+half groaned. "Then the hell of it begun. She hired six Indians to tote
+the luggage, and we set out over the trail for your place. 'You're
+goin' to have a rest, Stampede,' she says to me, smiling so cool and
+sweet like you wanted to eat her alive. 'All you've got to do is show us
+the way and carry the bums.' 'Carry the what?' I asks. 'The bums,' she
+says, an' then she explains that a bum is a thing filled with powder
+which makes a terrible racket when it goes off. So I took the bums, and
+the next day one of the Indians sprained a leg, and dropped out. He had
+the firecrackers, pretty near a hundred pounds, and we whacked up his
+load among us. I couldn't stand up straight when we camped. We had
+crooks in our backs every inch of the way to the Range. And _would_ she
+let us cache some of that junk? Not on your life she wouldn't! And all
+the time while they was puffing an' panting them Indians was worshipin'
+her with their eyes. The last day, when we camped with the Range almost
+in sight, she drew 'em all up in a circle about her and gave 'em each a
+handful of money above their pay. 'That's because I love you,' she says,
+and then she begins asking them funny questions. Did they have wives and
+children? Were they ever hungry? Did they ever know about any of their
+people starving to death? And just _why_ did they starve? And, Alan, so
+help me thunder if them Indians didn't talk! Never heard Indians tell so
+much. And in the end she asked them the funniest question of all, asked
+them if they'd heard of a man named John Graham. One of them had, and
+afterward I saw her talking a long time with him alone, and when she
+come back to me, her eyes were sort of burning up, and she didn't say
+good night when she went into her tent. That's all, Alan, except--"
+
+"Except what, Stampede?" said Alan, his heart throbbing like a drum
+inside him.
+
+Stampede took his time to answer, and Alan heard him chuckling and saw a
+flash of humor in the little man's eyes.
+
+"Except that she's done with everyone on the Range just what she did
+with me between Chitina and here," he said. "Alan, if she wants to say
+the word, why, _you_ ain't boss any more, that's all. She's been there
+ten days, and you won't know the place. It's all done up in flags,
+waiting for you. She an' Nawadlook and Keok are running everything but
+the deer. The kids would leave their mothers for her, and the men--" He
+chuckled again. "Why, the men even go to the Sunday school she's
+started! I went. Nawadlook sings."
+
+For a moment he was silent. Then he said in a subdued voice, "Alan,
+you've been a big fool."
+
+"I know it, Stampede."
+
+"She's a--a flower, Alan. She's worth more than all the gold in the
+world. And you could have married her. I know it. But it's too late now.
+I'm warnin' you."
+
+"I don't quite understand, Stampede. Why is it too late?"
+
+"Because she likes me," declared Stampede a bit fiercely. "I'm after
+her myself, Alan. You can't butt in now."
+
+"Great Scott!" gasped Alan. "You mean that Mary Standish--"
+
+"I'm not talking about Mary Standish," said Stampede. "It's Nawadlook.
+If it wasn't for my whiskers--"
+
+His words were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale
+gloom ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a cannon a long
+distance away.
+
+"One of them cussed bums," he explained. "That's why they hurried on
+ahead of us, Alan. _She_ says this Fourth of July celebration is going
+to mean a lot for Alaska. Wonder what she means?"
+
+"I wonder," said Alan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named
+Ghost Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running
+down from the foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and
+in the depths lay abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn
+smooth by reindeer and caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet
+below the twilight of the plains, Alan dropped on his knees beside a
+little spring that he groped for among the stones, and as he drank he
+could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of water up and down the
+kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls and eternally
+dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede's face in the glow of
+another match, and the little man's eyes were staring into the black
+chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains.
+
+"Alan, you've been up this gorge?"
+
+"It's a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill our
+fawns," replied Alan. "I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is supposed to
+be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will enter
+it. The bones of dead men lie up there."
+
+"Never prospected it?" persisted Stampede.
+
+"Never."
+
+Alan heard the other's grunt of disgust.
+
+"You're reindeer-crazy," he grumbled. "There's gold in this canyon.
+Twice I've found it where there were dead men's bones. They bring me
+good luck."
+
+"But these were Eskimos. They didn't come for gold."
+
+"I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the
+matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I'm
+telling you there wasn't any of it left out of her when she was born!"
+He was silent for a moment, and then added: "When we came to that
+dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin' there like a
+poison toadstool, she didn't screech and pull back, but just gave a
+little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until
+it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and
+soppy with the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to
+pieces, and I guess I would if she hadn't put a hand on my gun. An' with
+a funny little smile she says: 'Don't do it, Stampede. It makes me think
+of someone I know--and I wouldn't want you to shoot him.' Darned funny
+thing to say, wasn't it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now, who
+the devil could look like a rotten skull?"
+
+Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They
+climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the
+tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a
+low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were
+lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge they looked out into
+a vast sweep of tundra which ran in among the out-guarding billows and
+hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form of a wide, semicircular bay.
+Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range, and scarcely had they
+reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its holster. Twice he
+blazed in the air.
+
+"Orders," he said a little sheepishly. "Orders, Alan!"
+
+Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from
+beyond the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra.
+It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a
+sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and
+all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it very
+soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under
+their feet.
+
+"Bums!" growled Stampede. "She's got Chink lanterns hanging up all
+about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found there
+was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!"
+
+From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until
+it seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then
+burst into innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed
+away with his forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied the
+magazine of his gun, the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning the
+chorus of sound that came from the range. A second rocket answered them.
+Two columns of flame leaped up from the earth as huge fires gained
+headway, and Alan could hear the shrill chorus of children's voices
+mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All the people of his range were
+there. They had come in from the timber-naked plateaux and high ranges
+where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying shacks of the
+tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration of
+effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it all!
+He knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that fact
+from choking up his heart a little.
+
+He had not heard what Stampede was saying--that he and Amuk Toolik and
+forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for the
+big fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms were
+booming their hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his steps.
+Over a little knoll, and he was looking at the buildings of the range,
+wildly excited figures running about, women and children flinging moss
+on the fires, the tom-tom beaters squatted in a half-circle facing the
+direction from which he would come, and fifty Chinese lanterns swinging
+in the soft night-breeze.
+
+He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of
+them. Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children.
+Nawadlook and Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for
+him in any fight or stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede
+his rifle and hastened on, determined to keep his eyes from questing for
+Mary Standish in these first minutes of his return. He sounded the
+tundra call, and men, women, and little children came running to meet
+him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the beaters leaped to
+their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of voice,
+laughter, children's squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands with
+both his own--hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown
+hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm
+affectionately against the men's shoulders, and talked, talked, talked,
+calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty
+around him counting the children. First, last, and always these were
+_his people_. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power
+and possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great
+family, and he shook hands twice and three times with the same men and
+women, and lifted the same children from the arms of delighted mothers,
+and cried out greetings and familiarities with an abandon which a few
+minutes ago knowledge of Mary Standish's presence would have tempered.
+Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his
+cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch,
+stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna's head disappeared, and there
+came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered
+about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their
+semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets
+hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his
+cabin came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the
+one thing intended for his understanding alone. It was playing "When
+Johnny Comes Marching Home."
+
+Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was
+alone. She was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear, the
+quiet pallor of her face, and the strain and repression which had seemed
+to be a part of her were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it was not
+with voice or action that she revealed herself. It was in her eyes, the
+flush of her cheeks and lips, the poise of her slim body as she waited
+for him. A thought flashed upon him that for a space she had forgotten
+herself and the shadow which had driven her to leap into the sea.
+
+"It is splendid!" she said when he came up to her, and her voice
+trembled a little. "I didn't guess how badly they wanted you back. It
+must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that."
+
+"And I thank you for your part," he replied. "Stampede has told me. It
+was quite a bit of trouble, wasn't it, with nothing more than the hope
+of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?" He nodded at the half-dozen
+flags over his cabin. "They're rather pretty."
+
+"It was no trouble. And I hope you don't mind. It has been great fun."
+
+He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It
+seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to
+speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion.
+
+"Yes, I do mind," he said. "I mind so much that I wouldn't trade what
+has happened for all the gold in these mountains. I'm sorry because of
+what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn't trade that,
+either. I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad you're here. But something is
+missing. You know what it is. You must tell me about yourself. It is the
+only fair thing for you to do now."
+
+She touched his arm with her hand. "Let us wait for tomorrow.
+Please--let us wait."
+
+"And then--tomorrow--"
+
+"It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.
+But not tonight. All this is too fine--just you--and your people--and
+their happiness." He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned by
+the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers. She nodded
+toward the buildings beyond his cabin. "I am with Keok and Nawadlook.
+They have given me a home." And then swiftly she added, "I don't think
+you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!"
+
+Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on
+his arm she drew away from him. His face did not show his
+disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him.
+
+"Your people are expecting things of you," she said. "A little later, if
+you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms."
+
+He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him
+and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart
+beating faster. She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not
+afraid of tomorrow. Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not
+frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away from
+himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood. It was as if something
+in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had dreamed
+through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and that
+possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a little
+nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him. Surely he
+would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to him tomorrow
+would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and he could
+not let her go away from him again.
+
+He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to
+discover himself doing things which he had never done before. His nature
+was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less
+detached. At his people's dances it was his habit to stand on the
+side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part.
+His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a new
+sense of freedom and a new desire to give physical expression to
+something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was kicking his feet and
+howling with the men, while the women dancers went through the muscular
+movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan. They had
+always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place between
+Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their
+instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half
+breathless, did he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok
+was frankly amazed. Mary Standish's eyes were shining, and she clapped
+her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and
+waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the
+balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made
+only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking,
+shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic
+matters, Alan went to his cabin.
+
+He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never
+had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he
+had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in
+the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack
+filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor--and
+then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In
+place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new
+covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk
+were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington and
+the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against the
+wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags. They
+recalled Alan's mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary Standish
+had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an American.
+Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the little flags.
+There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them there. She must
+have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the hour of his
+coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had purchased
+the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He went into his bedroom and
+found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair
+of red morocco slippers that he had never seen before. He took them up
+in his hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size
+of his feet.
+
+In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that
+Keok's phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was
+gone. Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing
+stillness drew him to the window from which he could see the cabin where
+lived Keok and Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and shriveled
+Sokwenna. It was there Mary Standish had said she was staying. For a
+long time Alan watched it while the final sounds of the night drifted
+away into utter silence.
+
+It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer
+to his invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly
+his eyes traveled about the room.
+
+"Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you."
+
+"They seemed to be. I'm happy to be home again."
+
+"Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room."
+
+"I guessed as much," replied Alan. "Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped
+her."
+
+"Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and
+flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an' thoughtful, hasn't she?"
+
+"And somewhat unusual," added Alan.
+
+"And she is pretty."
+
+"Most decidedly so."
+
+There was a puzzling look in Stampede's eyes. He twisted nervously in
+his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
+
+"What's on your mind, Stampede?"
+
+"Hell, mostly," shot back Stampede with sudden desperation. "I've come
+loaded down with a dirty job, and I've kept it back this long because I
+didn't want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to
+himself what he knows about a woman, but I'm thinking this is a little
+different. I hate to do it. I'd rather take the chance of a snake-bite.
+But you'd shoot me if you knew I was keeping it to myself."
+
+"Keeping what to yourself?"
+
+"The truth, Alan. It's up to me to tell you what I know about this young
+woman who calls herself Mary Standish."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The physical sign of strain in Stampede's face, and the stolid effort he
+was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into
+words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion's promised
+disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation
+and relief. What he had passed through recently had burned out of him a
+certain demand upon human ethics which had been almost callous in its
+insistence, and while he believed that something very real and very
+stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary Standish north, he was now
+anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with any force of
+circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to know the truth,
+yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell it to him,
+and the fact that Stampede had in some way discovered this truth, and
+was about to make disclosure of it, was a tremendous lightening of the
+situation.
+
+"Go on," he said at last. "What do you know about Mary Standish?"
+
+Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes. "It's
+rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way I'm goin' to
+oughta be shot, and if it was anything else--_anything_--I'd keep it to
+myself. But you've got to know. And you can't understand just how rotten
+it is, either; you haven't ridden in a coach with her during a storm
+that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an' you haven't hit the trail
+with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you'd done
+that, Alan, you'd feel like killing a man who said anything
+against her."
+
+"I'm not inquiring into your personal affairs," reminded Alan. "It's
+your own business."
+
+"That's the trouble," protested Stampede. "It's not my business. It's
+yours. If I'd guessed the truth before we hit the Range, everything
+would have been different. I'd have rid myself of her some way. But I
+didn't find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok's
+music machine to their cabin. I've been trying to make up my mind what
+to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States, a
+pickpocket, a coiner, somebody's bunco pigeon chased by the
+police--almost anything--we could forgive her. Even if she'd shot up
+somebody--" He made a gesture of despair. "But she didn't. She's worse
+than that!"
+
+He leaned a little nearer to Alan.
+
+"She's one of John Graham's tools sent up here to sneak and spy on you,"
+he finished desperately. "I'm sorry--but I've got the proof."
+
+His hand crept over the top of the table; slowly the closed palm opened,
+and when he drew it back, a crumpled paper lay between them. "Found it
+on the floor when I took the phonograph back," he explained. "It was
+twisted up hard. Don't know why I unrolled it. Just chance."
+
+He waited until Alan had read the few words on the bit of paper,
+watching closely the slight tensing of the other's face. After a moment
+Alan dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There
+was no longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been accepted
+as a guest. Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the sudden
+and almost imperceptible shrug of Alan's shoulders.
+
+It was Alan who spoke, after a half-mixture of silence. "Rather a
+missing link, isn't it? Adds up a number of things fairly well. And I'm
+grateful to you, Stampede. Almost--you didn't tell me."
+
+"Almost," admitted Stampede.
+
+"And I wouldn't have blamed you. She's that kind--the kind that makes
+you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I'm going to believe
+that paper is a lie--until tomorrow. Will you take a message to Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I'm having breakfast at seven. Tell
+them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at eight. Later
+I'm going up into the foothills to look over the herds."
+
+Stampede nodded. It was a good fight on Alan's part, and it was just the
+way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed
+of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course
+they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn't a shooting business--yet.
+But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table
+ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like
+that was in Alan's eyes.
+
+He opened the door. "I'll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight.
+Good night, Alan!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+Alan watched Stampede's figure until it had disappeared before he closed
+the door.
+
+Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the
+anxiety which the prospector's unexpected revealment had aroused in him.
+The other's footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the paper in
+his hand. It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of ordinary
+business size and had been carelessly torn from the larger part of the
+page, so that nothing more than the signature and half a dozen lines of
+writing in a man's heavy script remained.
+
+What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have
+possessed, read as follows:
+
+"_--If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing facts
+and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands
+within a year_."
+
+Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John
+Graham.
+
+A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore
+for its maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself
+like a fibrous plant through all his plans for the future, had made of
+it an unforgetable writing in his brain. Now that he held in his hand
+words written by his enemy, and the man who had been his father's enemy,
+all that he had kept away from Stampede's sharp eyes blazed in a sudden
+fury in his face. He dropped the paper as if it had been a thing
+unclean, and his hands clenched until his knuckles snapped in the
+stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the window through which a few
+moments ago he had looked in the direction of Mary Standish's cabin.
+
+So John Graham was keeping his promise, the deadly promise he had made
+in the one hour of his father's triumph--that hour in which the elder
+Holt might have rid the earth of a serpent if his hands had not revolted
+in the last of those terrific minutes which he as a youth had witnessed.
+And Mary Standish was the instrument he had chosen to work his ends!
+
+In these first minutes Alan could not find a doubt with which to fend
+the absoluteness of the convictions which were raging in his head, or
+still the tumult that was in his heart and blood. He made no pretense to
+deny the fact that John Graham must have written this letter to Mary
+Standish; inadvertently she had kept it, had finally attempted to
+destroy it, and Stampede, by chance, had discovered a small but
+convincing remnant of it. In a whirlwind of thought he pieced together
+things that had happened: her efforts to interest him from the
+beginning, the determination with which she had held to her purpose, her
+boldness in following him to the Range, and her apparent endeavor to
+work herself into his confidence--and with John Graham's signature
+staring at him from the table these things seemed conclusive and
+irrefutable evidence. The "industry" which Graham had referred to could
+mean only his own and Carl Lomen's, the reindeer industry which they had
+built up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his
+beef-baron friends were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this
+game of destruction clever Mary Standish had come to play a part!
+
+_But why had she leaped into the sea?_
+
+It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan's brain, a voice
+that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against
+his arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad
+convictions that possessed him. If Mary Standish's mission was to pave
+the way for his ruin, and if she was John Graham's agent sent for that
+purpose, what reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting
+to give the world the impression that she had ended her life at sea?
+Surely such an act could in no way have been related with any plot which
+she might have had against him! In building up this structure of her
+defense he made no effort to sever her relationship with John Graham;
+that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her actions, and many of the
+things she had said were links inevitably associating her with his
+enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
+another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
+
+Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John
+Graham, was working _against_ him? Could some conflict between them have
+been the reason for her flight aboard the _Nome_, and was it because she
+discovered Rossland there--John Graham's most trusted servant--that she
+formed her desperate scheme of leaping into the sea?
+
+Between the two oppositions of his thought a sickening burden of what he
+knew to be true settled upon him. Mary Standish, even if she hated John
+Graham now, had at one time--and not very long ago--been an instrument
+of his trust; the letter he had written to her was positive proof of
+that. What it was that had caused a possible split between them and had
+inspired her flight from Seattle, and, later, her effort to bury a past
+under the fraud of a make-believe death, he might never learn, and just
+now he had no very great desire to look entirely into the whole truth of
+the matter. It was enough to know that of the past, and of the things
+that happened, she had been afraid, and it was in the desperation of
+this fear, with Graham's cleverest agent at her heels, that she had
+appealed to him in his cabin, and, failing to win him to her assistance,
+had taken the matter so dramatically into her own hands. And within that
+same hour a nearly successful attempt had been made upon Rossland's
+life. Of course the facts had shown that she could not have been
+directly responsible for his injury, but it was a haunting thing to
+remember as happening almost simultaneously with her disappearance
+into the sea.
+
+He drew away from the window and, opening the door, went out into the
+night. Cool breaths of air gave a crinkly rattle to the swinging paper
+lanterns, and he could hear the soft whipping of the flags which Mary
+Standish had placed over his cabin. There was something comforting in
+the sound, a solace to the dishevelment of nerves he had suffered, a
+reminder of their day in Skagway when she had walked at his side with
+her hand resting warmly in his arm and her eyes and face filled with the
+inspiration of the mountains.
+
+No matter what she was, or had been, there was something tenaciously
+admirable about her, a quality which had risen even above her feminine
+loveliness. She had proved herself not only clever; she was inspired by
+courage--a courage which he would have been compelled to respect even in
+a man like John Graham, and in this slim and fragile girl it appealed to
+him as a virtue to be laid up apart and aside from any of the motives
+which might be directing it. From the beginning it had been a
+bewildering part of her--a clean, swift, unhesitating courage that had
+leaped bounds where his own volition and judgment would have hung
+waveringly; that one courage in all the world--a woman's courage--which
+finds in the effort of its achievement no obstacle too high and no abyss
+too wide though death waits with outreaching arms on the other side.
+And, surely, where there had been all this, there must also have been
+some deeper and finer impulse than one of destruction, of physical gain,
+or of mere duty in the weaving of a human scheme.
+
+The thought and the desire to believe brought words half aloud from
+Alan's lips, as he looked up again at the flags beating softly above his
+cabin. Mary Standish was not what Stampede's discovery had proclaimed
+her to be; there was some mistake, a monumental stupidity of reasoning
+on their part, and tomorrow would reveal the littleness and the
+injustice of their suspicions. He tried to force the conviction upon
+himself, and reentering the cabin he went to bed, still telling himself
+that a great lie had built itself up out of nothing, and that the God of
+all things was good to him because Mary Standish was alive, and
+not dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Alan slept soundly for several hours, but the long strain of the
+preceding day did not make him overreach the time he had set for
+himself, and he was up at six o'clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her old
+habits, and a tub filled with cold water was waiting for him. He bathed,
+shaved himself, put on fresh clothes, and promptly at seven was at
+breakfast. The table at which he ordinarily sat alone was in a little
+room with double windows, through which, as he enjoyed his meals, he
+could see most of the habitations of the range. Unlike the average
+Eskimo dwellings they were neatly built of small timber brought down
+from the mountains, and were arranged in orderly fashion like the
+cottages of a village, strung out prettily on a single street. A sea of
+flowers lay in front of them, and at the end of the row, built on a
+little knoll that looked down into one of the watered hollows of the
+tundra, was Sokwenna's cabin. Because Sokwenna was the "old man" of the
+community and therefore the wisest--and because with him lived his
+foster-daughters, Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan's tribal
+colony--Sokwenna's cabin was next to Alan's in size. And Alan, looking
+at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke
+rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
+
+The sun was already up almost to its highest point, a little more than
+half-way between the horizon and the zenith, performing the apparent
+miracle of rising in the north and traveling east instead of west. Alan
+knew the men-folk of the village had departed hours ago for the distant
+herds. Always, when the reindeer drifted into the higher and cooler
+feeding-grounds of the foothills, there was this apparent abandonment,
+and after last night's celebration the women and children were not yet
+awake to the activities of the long day, where the rising and setting of
+the sun meant so little.
+
+As he rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna's cabin. A
+solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the
+sun on the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes,
+he knew it was Mary Standish.
+
+He turned his back stoically to the window and lighted his pipe. For
+half an hour after that he sorted out his papers and range-books in
+preparation for the coming of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, and when they
+arrived, the minute hand of his watch was at the hour of eight.
+
+That the months of his absence had been prosperous ones he perceived by
+the smiling eagerness in the brown faces of his companions as they
+spread out the papers on which they had, in their own crude fashion,
+set down a record of the winter's happenings. Tautuk's voice, slow and
+very deliberate in its unfailing effort to master English without a
+slip, had in it a subdued note of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk
+Toolik, who was quick and staccato in his manner of speech, using
+sentences seldom of greater length than three or four words, and who
+picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with pride as he
+lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound that
+always sent a chill up Alan's back.
+
+"A ver' fine and prosper' year," said Tautuk in response to Alan's first
+question as to general conditions. "We bean ver' fortunate."
+
+"One hell-good year," backed up Amuk Toolik with the quickness of a gun.
+"Plenty calf. Good hoof. Moss. Little wolf. Herds fat. This
+year--she peach!"
+
+After this opening of the matter in hand Alan buried himself in the
+affairs of the range, and the old thrill, the glow which comes through
+achievement, and the pioneer's pride in marking a new frontier with the
+creative forces of success rose uppermost in him, and he forgot the
+passing of time. A hundred questions he had to ask, and the tongues of
+Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded with the things they desired to tell
+him. Their voices filled the room with a paean of triumph. His herds had
+increased by a thousand head during the fawning months of April and May,
+and interbreeding of the Asiatic stock with wild, woodland caribou had
+produced a hundred calves of the super-animal whose flesh was bound to
+fill the markets of the States within a few years. Never had the moss
+been thicker under the winter snow; there had been no destructive fires;
+soft-hoof had escaped them; breeding records had been beaten, and
+dairying in the edge of the Arctic was no longer an experiment, but an
+established fact, for Tautuk now had seven deer giving a pint and a half
+of milk each twice a day, nearly as rich as the best of cream from
+cattle, and more than twenty that were delivering from a cupful to a
+pint at a milking. And to this Amuk Toolik added the amazing record of
+their running-deer, Kauk, the three-year-old, had drawn a sledge five
+miles over unbeaten snow in thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds;
+Kauk and Olo, in team, had drawn the same sledge ten miles in twenty-six
+minutes and forty seconds, and one day he had driven the two
+ninety-eight miles in a mighty endurance test; and with Eno and Sutka,
+the first of their inter-breed with the wild woodland caribou, and
+heavier beasts, he had drawn a load of eight hundred pounds for three
+consecutive days at the rate of forty miles a day. From Fairbanks,
+Tanana, and the ranges of the Seward Peninsula agents of the swiftly
+spreading industry had offered as high as a hundred and ten dollars a
+head for breeding stock with the blood of the woodland caribou, and of
+these native and larger caribou of the tundras and forests seven young
+bulls and nine female calves had been captured and added to their own
+propagative forces.
+
+For Alan this was triumph. He saw nothing of what it all meant in the
+way of ultimate personal fortune. It was the earth under his feet, the
+vast expanse of unpeopled waste traduced and scorned in the blindness of
+a hundred million people, which he saw fighting itself on the glory and
+reward of the conqueror through such achievement as this; a land
+betrayed rising at last out of the slime of political greed and
+ignorance; a giant irresistible in its awakening, that was destined in
+his lifetime to rock the destiny of a continent. It was Alaska rising up
+slowly but inexorably out of its eternity of sleep, mountain-sealed
+forces of a great land that was once the cradle of the earth coming into
+possession of life and power again; and his own feeble efforts in that
+long and fighting process of planting the seeds which meant its ultimate
+ascendancy possessed in themselves their own reward.
+
+Long after Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had gone, his heart was filled with
+the song of success.
+
+He was surprised at the swiftness with which time had gone, when he
+looked at his watch. It was almost dinner hour when he had finished with
+his papers and books and went outside. He heard Wegaruk's voice coming
+from the dark mouth of the underground icebox dug into the frozen
+subsoil of the tundra, and pausing at the glimmer of his old
+housekeeper's candle, he turned aside, descended the few steps, and
+entered quietly into the big, square chamber eight feet under the
+surface, where the earth had remained steadfastly frozen for some
+hundreds of thousands of years. Wegaruk had a habit of talking when
+alone, but Alan thought it odd that she should be explaining to herself
+that the tundra-soil, in spite of its almost tropical summer richness
+and luxuriance, never thawed deeper than three or four feet, below which
+point remained the icy cold placed there so long ago that "even the
+spirits did not know." He smiled when he heard Wegaruk measuring time
+and faith in terms of "spirits," which she had never quite given up for
+the missionaries, and was about to make his presence known when a voice
+interrupted him, so close at his side that the speaker, concealed in the
+shadow of the wall, could have reached out a hand and touched him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Holt!"
+
+It was Mary Standish, and he stared rather foolishly to make her out in
+the gloom.
+
+"Good morning," he replied. "I was on my way to your place when
+Wegaruk's voice brought me here. You see, even this icebox seems like a
+friend after my experience in the States. Are you after a steak, Mammy?"
+he called.
+
+Wegaruk's strong, squat figure turned as she answered him, and the light
+from her candle, glowing brightly in a split tomato can, fell clearly
+upon Mary Standish as the old woman waddled toward them. It was as if a
+spotlight had been thrown upon the girl suddenly out of a pit of
+darkness, and something about her, which was not her prettiness or the
+beauty that was in her eyes and hair, sent a sudden and unaccountable
+thrill through Alan. It remained with him when they drew back out of
+gloom and chill into sunshine and warmth, leaving Wegaruk to snuff her
+tomato-can lantern and follow with the steak, and it did not leave him
+when they walked over the tundra together toward Sokwenna's cabin. It
+was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which it was impossible for
+him to subdue or explain; something which he knew he should understand
+but could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge of this mystery was
+in the girl's face, glowing in a gentle embarrassment, as she told him
+she had been expecting him, and that Keok and Nawadlook had given up the
+cabin to them, so that he might question her uninterrupted. But with
+this soft flush of her uneasiness, revealing itself in her eyes and
+cheeks, he saw neither fear nor hesitation.
+
+In the "big room" of Sokwenna's cabin, which was patterned after his
+own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
+flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him
+to speak.
+
+"You love flowers," he said lamely. "I want to thank you for the flowers
+you placed in my cabin. And the other things."
+
+"Flowers are a habit with me," she replied, "and I have never seen such
+flowers as these. Flowers--and birds. I never dreamed that there were
+so many up here."
+
+"Nor the world," he added. "It is ignorant of Alaska."
+
+He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something
+about her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely
+thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from
+his eyes. The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a
+little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there was
+no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign
+that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In this
+moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that she was
+like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin, and who
+had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him to
+achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
+her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
+heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in
+the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the
+pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together with
+an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in
+sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:
+
+"Mary Standish, in God's name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
+come up here!"
+
+"I have come," she said, looking at him steadily, "because I know that
+a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
+her even though he may not possess her."
+
+"But you didn't know that--not until--the cottonwoods!" he protested.
+
+"Yes, I did. I knew it in Ellen McCormick's cabin."
+
+She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at
+her like a man who had been struck, while intelligence--a dawning
+reason--an understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning,
+sent the still greater thrill of its shock through him. He gave an
+exclamation of amazement.
+
+"You were at Ellen McCormick's! She gave you--_that!_"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, the dress you brought from the ship. Please don't
+scold me, Mr. Holt. Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I
+am going to tell you. I was in the cabin that last day, when you
+returned from searching for me in the sea. Mr. McCormick didn't know.
+But _she_ did. I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a
+woman, would promise not to tell you I was there. You see, I had lost a
+great deal of my faith, and my courage was about gone, and I was
+afraid of you."
+
+"Afraid of me?"
+
+"Yes, afraid of everybody. I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick when
+she asked you--that question; and when you answered as you did, I was
+like stone. I was amazed and didn't believe, for I was certain that
+after what had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a
+peculiar sense of honor were making the search for me. Not until two
+days later, when your letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we
+read them--"
+
+"You opened both?"
+
+"Of course. One was to be read immediately, the other when I was
+found--and I had found myself. Maybe it wasn't exactly fair, but you
+couldn't expect two women to resist a temptation like that. And--_I
+wanted to know_."
+
+She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the
+confession. Her gaze met Alan's with beautiful steadiness.
+
+"And then I believed. I knew, because of what you said in that letter,
+that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give me
+a fighting chance if I came to you. But it has taken all my courage--and
+in the end you will drive me away--"
+
+Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering
+eyes, tears which she did not brush away, but through which, in a
+moment, she smiled at him as no woman had ever smiled at him before. And
+with the tears there seemed to possess her a pride which lifted her
+above all confusion, a living spirit of will and courage and womanhood
+that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and fear that had gathered
+in his mind. He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.
+
+"You have come--because you know I love you, and you--"
+
+"Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you
+that inspired me, Alan Holt."
+
+"There must have been more than that," he persisted. "Some other
+reason."
+
+"Two," she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the dissolution of
+tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.
+
+"And those--"
+
+"One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will
+make you despise me. I am sure of that."
+
+"It has to do with John Graham?"
+
+She bowed her head. "Yes, with John Graham."
+
+For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment
+it seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the
+import of the thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed
+red instead of paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes burned
+with a lustrous fire.
+
+"John Graham," she repeated. "The man you hate and want to kill."
+
+Slowly he turned toward the door. "I am leaving immediately after dinner
+to inspect the herds up in the foothills," he said. "And you--_are
+welcome here_."
+
+He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at
+the door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.
+
+"Thank you, Alan Holt," she cried softly, "_Oh, I thank you!_!"
+
+And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last
+something had broken away from her control. He faced her, and for a
+moment they stood in silence.
+
+"I'm sorry--sorry I said to you what I did that night on the _Nome_,"
+she said. "I accused you of brutality, of unfairness, of--of even worse
+than that, and I want to take it all back. You are big and clean and
+splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an
+association with the man who has injured you so terribly, _and you say I
+am welcome!_ And I don't want you to go. You have made me _want_ to tell
+you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will think
+as kindly of me as you can when you have heard."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+It seemed to Alan that in an instant a sudden change had come over the
+world. There was silence in the cabin, except for the breath which came
+like a sob to the girl's lips as she turned to the window and looked out
+into the blaze of golden sunlight that filled the tundra. He heard
+Tautuk's voice, calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and
+he heard clearly Keok's merry laughter as she answered him. A
+gray-cheeked thrush flew up to the roof of Sokwenna's cabin and began to
+sing. It was as if these things had come as a message to both of them,
+relieving a tension, and significant of the beauty and glory and undying
+hope of life. Mary Standish turned from the window with shining eyes.
+
+"Every day the thrush comes and sings on our cabin roof," she said.
+
+"It is--possibly--because you are here," he replied.
+
+She regarded him seriously. "I have thought of that. You know, I have
+faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more
+beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure,
+if I were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me.
+Hopelessness cannot be so deep that bird-song will not reach it."
+
+He nodded, trying to answer in that way. He felt uncomfortable. She
+closed the door which he had left partly open, and made a little gesture
+for him to resume the chair which he had left a few moments before. She
+seated herself first and smiled at him wistfully, half regretfully,
+as she said:
+
+"I have been very foolish. What I am going to tell you now I should have
+told you aboard the _Nome_. But I was afraid. Now I am not afraid, but
+ashamed, terribly ashamed, to let you know the truth. And yet I am not
+sorry it happened so, because otherwise I would not have come up here,
+and all this--your world, your people, and you--have meant a great deal
+to me. You will understand when I have made my confession."
+
+"No, I don't want that," he protested almost roughly. "I don't want you
+to put it that way. If I can help you, and if you wish to tell me as a
+friend, that's different. I don't want a confession, which would imply
+that I have no faith in you."
+
+"And you have faith in me?"
+
+"Yes; so much that the sun will darken and bird-song never seem the same
+if I lose you again, as I thought I had lost you from the ship."
+
+"Oh, _you mean that_!"
+
+The words came from her in a strange, tense, little cry, and he seemed
+to see only her eyes as he looked at her face, pale as the petals of
+the tundra daises behind her. With the thrill of what he had dared to
+say tugging at his heart, he wondered why she was so white.
+
+"You mean that," her lips repeated slowly, "after all that has
+happened--even after--that part of a letter--which Stampede brought to
+you last night--"
+
+He was surprised. How had she discovered what he thought was a secret
+between himself and Stampede? His mind leaped to a conclusion, and she
+saw it written in his face.
+
+"No, it wasn't Stampede," she said. "He didn't tell me. It--just
+happened. And after this letter--you still believe in me?"
+
+"I must. I should be unhappy if I did not. And I am--most perversely
+hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John
+Graham's signature was a lie."
+
+"It wasn't that--quite. But it didn't refer to you, or to me. It was
+part of a letter written to Rossland. He sent me some books while I was
+on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of them
+as a marker. It was really quite unimportant, when one read the whole of
+it. The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper which you
+did not return to Ellen McCormick. You know that is the conventional
+thing for a woman to do--to use paper for padding in a soft-toed
+slipper."
+
+He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk
+and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the
+tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer
+happiness. But Mary Standish's voice, continuing in its quiet and
+matter-of-fact way, held him speechless, though she could not fail to
+see the effect upon him of this simple explanation of the presence of
+Graham's letter.
+
+"I was in Nawadlook's room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of paper
+from the floor," she was saying. "I was looking at the slipper a few
+minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin on the
+ship, and the paper must have dropped then. I saw Stampede read it, and
+the shock that came in his face. Then he placed it on the table and went
+out. I hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the few
+words when I heard him returning. I returned the paper where he had laid
+it, hid myself in Nawadlook's room, and saw Stampede when he carried it
+to you. I don't know why I allowed it to be done. I had no reason. Maybe
+it was just--intuition, and maybe it was because--just in that hour--I
+so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and I thought
+that what Stampede had found would make you do it. And I deserve it! I
+deserve nothing better at your hands."
+
+"But it isn't true," he protested. "The letter was to Rossland."
+
+There was no responsive gladness in her eyes. "Better that it were true,
+and all that _is_ true were false," she said in a quiet, hopeless
+voice. "I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words
+implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative
+would I accept in place of what I actually am. Do you begin to
+understand?"
+
+"I am afraid--I can not." Even as he persisted in denial, the pain which
+had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he
+felt dread of what lay behind it. "I understand--only--that I am glad
+you are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an
+hour ago."
+
+She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of
+rich color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining
+lashes that lay against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her
+breath, and her hands grew steady in her lap.
+
+"Would you mind--if I asked you first--to tell me _your_ story of John
+Graham?" she spoke softly. "I know it, a little, but I think it would
+make everything easier if I could hear it from you--now."
+
+He stood up and looked down upon her where she sat, with the light
+playing in her hair; and then he moved to the window, and back, and she
+had not changed her position, but was waiting for him to speak. She
+raised her eyes, and the question her lips had formed was glowing in
+them as clearly as if she had voiced it again in words. A desire rose in
+him to speak to her as he had never spoken to another human being, and
+to reveal for her--and for her alone--the thing that had harbored
+itself in his soul for many years. Looking up at him, waiting, partial
+understanding softening her sweet face, a dusky glow in her eyes, she
+was so beautiful that he cried out softly and then laughed in a strange
+repressed sort of way as he half held out his arms toward her.
+
+"I think I know how my father must have loved my mother," he said. "But
+I can't make you feel it. I can't hope for that. She died when I was so
+young that she remained only as a beautiful dream for me. But for my
+father she _never_ died, and as I grew older she became more and more
+alive for me, so that in our journeys we would talk about her as if she
+were waiting for us back home and would welcome us when we returned. And
+never could my father remain away from the place where she was buried
+very long at a time. He called it _home_, that little cup at the foot of
+the mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a paradise of
+birds and flowers keeping her company, and all the great, wild world she
+loved about her. There was the cabin, too; the little cabin where I was
+born, with its back to the big mountain, and filled with the handiwork
+of my mother as she had left it when she died. And my father too used to
+laugh and sing there--he had a clear voice that would roll half-way up
+the mountain; and as I grew older the miracle at times stirred me with a
+strange fear, so real to my father did my dead mother seem when he was
+home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish! Oh, it may seem weird and
+ghostly now, but it was _true_--so true that I have lain awake nights
+thinking of it and wishing that it had never been so!"
+
+"Then you have wished a great sin," said the girl in a voice that seemed
+scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. "I hope someone will feel
+toward me--some day--like that."
+
+"But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
+to tell you about," he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
+tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins. "Interests
+were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were reaching out,
+encroaching steadily a little nearer to our cup at the foot of the
+mountain. But my father did not dream of what might happen. It came in
+the spring of the year he took me on my first trip to the States, when I
+was eighteen. We were gone five months, and they were five months of
+hell for him. Day and night he grieved for my mother and the little home
+under the mountain. And when at last we came back--"
+
+He turned again to the window, but he did not see the golden sun of the
+tundra or hear Tautuk calling from the corral.
+
+"When we came back," he repeated in a cold, hard voice, "a construction
+camp of a hundred men had invaded my father's little paradise. The cabin
+was gone; a channel had been cut from the waterfall, and this channel
+ran where my mother's grave had been. They had treated it with that
+same desecration with which they have destroyed ten thousand Indian
+graves since then. Her bones were scattered in the sand and mud. And
+from the moment my father saw what had happened, never another sun rose
+in the heavens for him. His heart died, yet he went on living--for
+a time."
+
+Mary Standish had bowed her face in her hands. He saw the tremor of her
+slim shoulders; and when he came back, and she looked up at him, it was
+as if he beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.
+
+"And the man who committed that crime--was John Graham," she said, in
+the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer
+would be.
+
+"Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
+States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
+protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work
+rather than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power;
+they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a
+grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my
+father and I went to see him; yes, _laughed_, in that noiseless, oily,
+inside way of his, as you might think of a snake laughing.
+
+"We found him among the men. My God, you don't know how I hated
+him!--Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
+vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool
+he was to think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I
+wanted to kill him, but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet,
+steady hand, and said: 'It is my duty, Alan. _My duty_.'
+
+"And then--it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham, but
+God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and
+with his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not
+unlocked them with my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of
+helpless pulp, and from the ground, with the last of the breath that was
+in him, he cursed my father, and he cursed me. He said that all the days
+of his life he would follow us, until we paid a thousand times for what
+we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have dragged a
+rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his clothes from
+him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he scourged him
+with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was unconscious and
+like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we went into the
+mountains."
+
+During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him,
+and now her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face were
+aflame, as if she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen
+between them.
+
+"And after that, Alan; after that--"
+
+She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it,
+scarcely understood.
+
+"John Graham kept his promise," he answered grimly. "The influence and
+money behind him haunted us wherever we went. My father had been
+successful, but one after another the properties in which he was
+interested were made worthless. A successful mine in which he was most
+heavily interested was allowed to become abandoned. A hotel which he
+partly owned in Dawson was bankrupted. One after another things
+happened, and after each happening my father would receive a polite note
+of regret from Graham, written as if the word actually came from a
+friend. But my father cared little for money losses now. His heart was
+drying up and his life ebbing away for the little cabin and the grave
+that were gone from the foot of the mountain. It went on this way for
+three years, and then, one morning, my father was found on the beach at
+Nome, dead."
+
+"_Dead_!"
+
+Alan heard only the gasping breath in which the word came from Mary
+Standish, for he was facing the window, looking steadily away from her.
+
+"Yes--murdered. I know it was the work of John Graham. He didn't do it
+personally, but it was _his money_ that accomplished the end. Of course
+nothing ever came of it. I won't tell you how his influence and power
+have dogged me; how they destroyed the first herd of reindeer I had, and
+how they filled the newspapers with laughter and lies about me when I
+was down in the States last winter in an effort to make _your_ people
+see a little something of the truth about Alaska. I am waiting. I know
+the day is coming when I shall have John Graham as my father had him
+under our mountain twenty years ago. He must be fifty now. But that
+won't save him when the time comes. No one will loosen my hands as I
+loosened my father's. And all Alaska will rejoice, for his power and his
+money have become twin monsters that are destroying Alaska just as he
+destroyed the life of my father. Unless he dies, and his money-power
+ends, he will make of this great land nothing more than a shell out of
+which he and his kind have taken all the meat. And the hour of deadliest
+danger is now upon us."
+
+He looked at Mary Standish, and it was as if death had come to her where
+she sat. She seemed not to breathe, and her face was so white it
+frightened him. And then, slowly, she turned her eyes upon him, and
+never had he seen such living pools of torture and of horror. He was
+amazed at the quietness of her voice when she began to speak, and
+startled by the almost deadly coldness of it.
+
+"I think you can understand--now--why I leaped into the sea, why I
+wanted the world to think I was dead, and why I have feared to tell you
+the truth," she said. "_I am John Graham's wife._"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Alan's first thought was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the
+almost physical impossibility of a mesalliance of the sort Mary Standish
+had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes
+that from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in
+life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, the pitiless
+iron-man, without conscience and without soul, coarsened by power,
+fiendish in his iniquities, and old enough to be her father!
+
+A slow smile twisted his lips, but he did not know he smiled. He pulled
+himself together without letting her see the physical part of the effort
+it was taking. And he tried to find something to say that would help
+clear her eyes of the agony that was in them.
+
+"That--is a most unreasonable thing--to be true," he said.
+
+It seemed to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the
+words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said,
+or acted, under the circumstances.
+
+She nodded. "It is. But the world doesn't look at it in that way. Such
+things just happen."
+
+She reached for a book which lay on the table where the tundra daisies
+were heaped. It was a book written around the early phases of pioneer
+life in Alaska, taken from his own library, a volume of statistical
+worth, dryly but carefully written--and she had been reading it. It
+struck him as a symbol of the fight she was making, of her courage, and
+of her desire to triumph in the face of tremendous odds that must have
+beset her. He still could not associate her completely with John Graham.
+Yet his face was cold and white.
+
+Her hand trembled a little as she opened the book and took from it a
+newspaper clipping. She did not speak as she unfolded it and gave it
+to him.
+
+At the top of two printed columns was the picture of a young
+and beautiful girl; in an oval, covering a small space over the
+girl's shoulder, was a picture of a man of fifty or so. Both were
+strangers to him. He read their names, and then the headlines. "A
+Hundred-Million-Dollar Love" was the caption, and after the word love
+was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty and the other thing, two great
+fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked at Mary Standish. It was
+impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
+
+"I tore that from a paper in Cordova," she said. "They have nothing to
+do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don't you see something in her
+eyes? Can't you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
+things. But it seemed to me--when I saw her face--that in her eyes were
+agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
+hide them from the world. It's just another proof, one of thousands,
+that such unreasonable things do happen."
+
+He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
+which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
+He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
+little hands that lay in Mary Standish's lap. The warmth had gone out of
+it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between
+his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in
+particular. It was only the ticking of Keok's clock that broke the
+silence for a time. Then he released the hand, and it dropped in the
+girl's lap again. She had been looking steadily at the streak of gray in
+his hair. And a light came into her eyes, a light which he did not see,
+and a little tremble of her lips, and an almost imperceptible
+inclination of her head toward him.
+
+"I'm sorry I didn't know," he said. "I realize now how you must have
+felt back there in the cottonwoods."
+
+"No, you don't realize--_you don't!_" she protested.
+
+In an instant, it seemed to him, a vibrant, flaming life swept over her
+again. It was as if his words had touched fire to some secret thing, as
+if he had unlocked a door which grim hopelessness had closed. He was
+amazed at the swiftness with which color came into her cheeks.
+
+"You don't understand, and I am determined that you _shall_," she went
+on. "I would die before I let you go away thinking what is now in your
+mind. You will despise me, but I would rather be hated for the truth
+than because of the horrible thing which you must believe if I remain
+silent." She forced a wan smile to her lips. "You know, Belinda
+Mulrooneys were very well in their day, but they don't fit in now, do
+they? If a woman makes a mistake and tries to remedy it in a fighting
+sort of way, as Belinda Mulrooney might have done back in the days when
+Alaska was young--"
+
+She finished with a little gesture of despair.
+
+"I have committed a great folly," she said, hesitating an instant in his
+silence. "I see very clearly now the course I should have taken. You
+will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard what I
+am going to say. Your face is like--a rock."
+
+"It is because your tragedy is mine," he said.
+
+She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a
+vivid, feverish glow. "I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich," she
+said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. "I don't
+remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish
+and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter,
+who was grandfather's brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle
+Peter. He was a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a
+wheel-chair, and he was nearly seventy-five when he died. As a baby that
+wheel-chair, and my rides in it with him about the great house in which
+we lived, were my delights. He was my father and mother, everything that
+was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as a child, that if God
+was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God. It was Uncle Peter
+who told me, year after year, the old stories and legends of the
+Standishes. And he was always happy--always happy and glad and seeing
+nothing but sunshine though he hadn't stood on his feet for nearly sixty
+years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen, five days before my
+birthday came. I think he must have been to me what your father was
+to you."
+
+He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his
+face now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.
+
+"I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish," she went on. "He
+didn't love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I don't think I loved
+him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole world must have stood
+in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the world _was_
+afraid of him--bankers, presidents, even the strongest men in great
+financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the Grahams,
+and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the cleverest
+lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of the two
+families. My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died, so it
+was John Graham who was the actual working force behind the combined
+fortunes of the two families. Sometimes, as I now recall it, Uncle Peter
+was like a little child. I remember how he tried to make me understand
+just how big my grandfather's interests were by telling me that if two
+dollars were taken from every man, woman, and child in the United
+States, it would just about add up to what he and the Grahams possessed,
+and my Grandfather Standish's interests were three-quarters of the
+whole. I remember how a hunted look would come into my Uncle Peter's
+face at times when I asked him how all this money was used, and where it
+was. And he never answered me as I wanted to be answered, and I never
+understood. I didn't know _why_ people feared my grandfather and John
+Graham. I didn't know of the stupendous power my grandfather's money had
+rolled up for them. I didn't know"--her voice sank to a shuddering
+whisper--"I didn't know how they were using it in Alaska, for instance.
+I didn't know it was feeding upon starvation and ruin and death. I don't
+think even Uncle Peter knew _that_."
+
+She looked at Alan steadily, and her gray eyes seemed burning up with a
+slow fire.
+
+"Why, even then, before Uncle Peter died, I had become one of the
+biggest factors in all their schemes. It was impossible for me to
+suspect that John Graham was _anticipating_ a little girl of thirteen,
+and I didn't guess that my Grandfather Standish, so straight, so grandly
+white of beard and hair, so like a god of power when he stood among men,
+was even then planning that I should be given to him, so that a
+monumental combination of wealth might increase itself still more in
+that juggernaut of financial achievement for which he lived. And to
+bring about my sacrifice, to make sure it would not fail, they set
+Sharpleigh to the task, because Sharpleigh was sweet and good of face,
+and gentle like Uncle Peter, so that I loved him and had confidence in
+him, without a suspicion that under his white hair lay a brain which
+matched in cunning and mercilessness that of John Graham himself. And he
+did his work well, Alan."
+
+A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without embarrassment.
+With her nervous fingers tying and untying the two corners of a little
+handkerchief in her lap, she went on, after a moment of silence in which
+the ticking of Keok's clock seemed tense and loud.
+
+"When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died. I wish you could
+understand all that followed without my telling you: how I clung to
+Sharpleigh as a father, how I trusted him, and how cleverly and gently
+he educated me to the thought that it was right and just, and my
+greatest duty in life, to carry out the stipulation of my grandfather's
+will and marry John Graham. Otherwise, he told me--if that union was
+not brought about before I was twenty-two--not a dollar of the great
+fortune would go to the house of Standish; and because he was clever
+enough to know that money alone would not urge me, he showed me a letter
+which he said my Uncle Peter had written, and which I was to read on my
+seventeenth birthday, and in that letter Uncle Peter urged me to live up
+to the Standish name and join in that union of the two great fortunes
+which he and Grandfather Standish had always planned. I didn't dream the
+letter was a forgery. And in the end they won--and I promised."
+
+She sat with bowed head, crumpling the bit of cambric between her
+fingers. "Do you despise me?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied in a tense, unimpassioned voice. "I love you."
+
+She tried to look at him calmly and bravely. In his face again lay the
+immobility of rock, and in his eyes a sullen, slumbering fire.
+
+"I promised," she repeated quickly, as if regretting the impulse that
+had made her ask him the question. "But it was to be business, a cold,
+unsentimental business. I disliked John Graham. Yet I would marry him.
+In the eyes of the law I would be his wife; in the eyes of the world I
+would remain his wife--but never more than that. They agreed, and I in
+my ignorance believed.
+
+"I didn't see the trap. I didn't see the wicked triumph in John
+Graham's heart. No power could have made me believe then that he wanted
+to possess only _me_; that he was horrible enough to want me even
+without love; that he was a great monster of a spider, and I the fly
+lured into his web. And the agony of it was that in all the years since
+Uncle Peter died I had dreamed strange and beautiful dreams. I lived in
+a make-believe world of my own, and I read, read, read; and the thought
+grew stronger and stronger in me that I had lived another life
+somewhere, and that I belonged back in the years when the world was
+clean, and there was love, and vast reaches of land wherein money and
+power were little guessed of, and where romance and the glory of manhood
+and womanhood rose above all other things. Oh, I wanted these things,
+and yet because others had molded me, and because of my misguided
+Standish sense of pride and honor, I was shackling myself to
+John Graham.
+
+"In the last months preceding my twenty-second birthday I learned more
+of the man than I had ever known before; rumors came to me; I
+investigated a little, and I began to find the hatred, and the reason
+for it, which has come to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost
+knew, at the last, that he was a monster, but the world had been told I
+was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with his fatherly hypocrisy was behind
+me, and John Graham treated me so courteously and so coolly that I did
+not suspect the terrible things in his heart and mind--and I went on
+with the bargain. _I married him._"
+
+She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal
+of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless
+expression of Alan's face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her
+like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back
+crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she
+continued, while he stood up and faced her.
+
+"You needn't go on," he interrupted in a voice so low and terribly hard
+that she felt the menacing thrill of it. "You needn't. I will settle
+with John Graham, if God gives me the chance."
+
+"You would have me stop _now_--before I have told you of the only shred
+of triumph to which I may lay claim!" she protested. "Oh, you may be
+sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of it all, but I
+swear before my God that I didn't realize it then, until it was too
+late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
+been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem--that I should
+marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a
+deadly hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was a
+duty; that I should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the
+hands of those I trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or
+suspect that I was sacrificing _myself_; at no time, blind though you
+may call me, did I see a hint of that sickening danger into which I was
+voluntarily going. No, not even an hour before the wedding did I suspect
+that, for it had all been so coldly planned, like a great deal in
+finance--so carefully adjudged by us all as a business affair, that I
+felt no fear except that sickness of soul which comes of giving up one's
+life. And no hint of it came until the last of the few words were spoken
+which made us man and wife, and then I saw in John Graham's eyes
+something which I had never seen there before. And Sharpleigh--"
+
+Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.
+
+"I went to my room. I didn't lock my door, because never had it been
+necessary to do that. I didn't cry. No, I didn't cry. But something
+strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It seemed
+to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
+to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I
+saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind
+him, and locked it. My room. He had come into _my room!_ The
+unexpectedness of it--the horror--the insult roused me from my stupor. I
+sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm's reach of me, a
+look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to
+suspect--or fear. His arms were reaching out--
+
+"'You are my wife,' he said.
+
+"Oh, I knew, then. '_You are my wife_,' he repeated. I wanted to
+scream, but I couldn't; and then--then--his arms reached me; I felt them
+crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the poison of his
+lips was at my face--and I believed that I was lost, and that no power
+could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my room--the man
+who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me voice, who
+put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh--yes, laugh, and
+almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned
+him, and he freed me--while I told him that in these first few hours of
+wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that
+evening, and that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I
+said these things, smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a
+great, gloating, triumphant beast, believing that the obedience of
+wifehood was about to give him what he had expected to find through
+dishonor--and I was left alone.
+
+"I thought of only one thing then--escape. I saw the truth. It swept
+over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived with
+Uncle Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never
+been--and it was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I
+wanted never to face it again, never to look into the eyes of those I
+had known. And even as these thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was
+filling a traveling bag in a fever of madness, and Uncle Peter was at my
+side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had no minutes to lose, for the
+man who had left me was clever and might guess the truth that lay hid
+behind my smiles and cajolery.
+
+"I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
+Sharpleigh's low laughter in the library. It was a new kind of laughter,
+and with it I heard John Graham's voice. I was thinking only of the
+sea--to get away on the sea. A taxi took me to my bank, and I drew
+money. I went to the wharves, intent only on boarding a ship, any ship,
+and it seemed to me that Uncle Peter was leading me; and we came to a
+great ship that was leaving for Alaska--and you know--what happened
+then--Alan Holt."
+
+With a sob she bowed her face in her hands, but only an instant it was
+there, and when she looked at Alan again, there were no tears in her
+eyes, but a soft glory of pride and exultation.
+
+"I am clean of John Graham," she cried. "_Clean!_"
+
+He stood twisting his hands, twisting them in a helpless, futile sort of
+way, and it was he, and not the girl, who felt like bowing his head that
+the tears might come unseen. For her eyes were bright and shining and
+clear as stars.
+
+"Do you despise me now?"
+
+"I love you," he said again, and made no movement toward her.
+
+"I am glad," she whispered, and she did not look at him, but at the
+sunlit plain which lay beyond the window.
+
+"And Rossland was on the _Nome_, and saw you, and sent word back to
+Graham," he said, fighting to keep himself from going nearer to her.
+
+She nodded. "Yes; and so I came to you, and failing there, I leaped into
+the sea, for I wanted them to think I was dead."
+
+"And Rossland was hurt."
+
+"Yes. Strangely. I heard of it in Cordova. Men like Rossland frequently
+come to unexpected ends."
+
+He went to the door which she had closed, and opened it, and stood
+looking toward the blue billows of the foothills with the white crests
+of the mountains behind them. She came, after a moment, and stood
+beside him.
+
+"I understand," she said softly, and her hand lay in a gentle touch upon
+his arm. "You are trying to see some way out, and you can see only one.
+That is to go back, face the creatures I hate, regain my freedom in the
+old way. And I, too, can see no other way. I came on impulse; I must
+return with impulse and madness burned out of me. And I am sorry. I
+dread it. I--would rather die."
+
+"And I--" he began, then caught himself and pointed to the distant hills
+and mountains. "The herds are there," he said. "I am going to them. I
+may be gone a week or more. Will you promise me to be here when
+I return?"
+
+"Yes, if that is your desire."
+
+"It is."
+
+She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
+
+"And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face
+all that--alone--"
+
+"You won't be alone," he said quietly, still looking at the far-away
+hills. "If you go, I am going with you."
+
+It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and
+then, with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at the
+half-opened door of Nawadlook's room, and the glory in her eyes was the
+glory of his dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over the
+tundras in those days of grief and half-madness when he had thought
+she was dead.
+
+"I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick's cabin the day you came," she was
+saying. "And I thank God for giving me the madness and courage to come
+to _you_. I am not afraid of anything in the world now--because--_I love
+you, Alan_!"
+
+And as Nawadlook's door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the
+sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that
+twisted the world about him until for a little it held neither vision
+nor space nor sound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden
+tundra haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream,
+Alan Holt set off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and Keok
+and Nawadlook at the corral bars, with Stampede little regretting that
+he was left behind to guard the range. For a mighty resolution had taken
+root in the prospector's heart, and he felt himself thrilled and a bit
+trembling at the nearness of the greatest drama that had ever entered
+his life. Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw that Keok
+and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
+
+The ridge beyond the coulee out of which Mary Standish had come with
+wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna's cabin,
+and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan
+set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven
+pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
+
+Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force which
+was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an
+inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his
+head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind
+which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go
+back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of
+forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim
+to his selfishness and passion in the moment when she stood at
+Nawadlook's door, telling him that she loved him. An iron hand had drawn
+him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand that kept his face
+to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated the words
+that had set his world on fire.
+
+He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
+essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing
+with him. Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully
+to understand. And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental
+calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so
+unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the
+mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting. His
+happiness was almost an insanity. The dream wherein he had wandered with
+a spirit of the dead had come true; it was the old idyl in the flesh
+again, his father, his mother--and back in the cabin beyond the ridge
+such a love had cried out to him. And he was afraid to return. He
+laughed the fact aloud, happily and with an unrepressed exultation as
+he strode ahead of the pack-train, and with that exultation words came
+to his lips, words intended for himself alone, telling him that Mary
+Standish belonged to him, and that until the end of eternity he would
+fight for her and keep her. Yet he kept on, facing the mountains, and he
+walked so swiftly that Tautuk and Amuk Toolik fell steadily behind with
+the deer, so that in time long dips and swells of the tundra lay
+between them.
+
+With grim persistence he kept at himself, and at last there swept over
+him in its ultimate triumph a compelling sense of the justice of what he
+had done--justice to Mary Standish. Even now he did not think of her as
+Mary Graham. But she was Graham's wife. And if he had gone to her in
+that moment of glorious confession when she had stood at Nawadlook's
+door, if he had violated her faith when, because of faith, she had laid
+the world at his feet, he would have fallen to the level of John Graham
+himself. Thought of the narrowness of his escape and of the first mad
+desire to call her back from Nawadlook's room, to hold her in his arms
+again as he had held her in the cottonwoods, brought a hot fire into his
+face. Something greater than his own fighting instinct had turned him to
+the open door of the cabin. It was Mary Standish--her courage, the-glory
+of faith and love shining in her eyes, her measurement of him as a man.
+She had not been afraid to say what was in her heart, because she knew
+what he would do.
+
+Mid-afternoon found him waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge
+of a slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows of
+sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were sweating.
+Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the sun had
+sunk to its lowest plane they came to the first of the Endicott
+foothills. Here they rested until the coolness of deeper evening, when a
+golden twilight filled the land, and then resumed the journey toward the
+mountains.
+
+Midsummer heat and the winged pests of the lower lands had driven the
+herds steadily into the cooler altitudes of the higher plateaux and
+valleys. Here they had split into telescoping columns which drifted in
+slowly moving streams wherever the doors of the hills and mountains
+opened into new grazing fields, until Alan's ten thousand reindeer were
+in three divisions, two of the greatest traveling westward, and one, of
+a thousand head, working north and east. The first and second days Alan
+remained with the nearest and southward herd. The third day he went on
+with Tautuk and two pack-deer through a break in the mountains and
+joined the herdsmen of the second and higher multitude of feeding
+animals. There began to possess him a curious disinclination to hurry,
+and this aversion grew in a direct ratio with the thought which was
+becoming stronger in him with each mile and hour of his progress. A
+multitude of emotions were buried under the conviction that Mary
+Standish must leave the range when he returned. He had a grim sense of
+honor, and a particularly devout one when it had to do with women, and
+though he conceded nothing of right and justice in the relationship
+which existed between the woman he loved and John Graham, he knew that
+she must go. To remain at the range was the one impossible thing for her
+to do. He would take her to Tanana. He would go with her to the States.
+The matter would be settled in a reasonable and intelligent way, and
+when he came back, he would bring her with him.
+
+But beneath this undercurrent of decision fought the thing which his
+will held down, and yet never quite throttled completely--that something
+which urged him with an unconquerable persistence to hold with his own
+hands what a glorious fate had given him, and to finish with John
+Graham, if it ever came to that, in the madly desirable way he visioned
+for himself in those occasional moments when the fires of temptation
+blazed hottest.
+
+The fourth night he said to Tautuk:
+
+"If Keok should marry another man, what would you do?"
+
+It was a moment before Tautuk looked at him, and in the herdsman's eyes
+was a wild, mute question, as if suddenly there had leaped into his
+stolid mind a suspicion which had never come to him before. Alan laid a
+reassuring hand upon his arm.
+
+"I don't mean she's going to, Tautuk," he laughed. "She loves you. I
+know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so hopeless as a lover
+that she is punishing you while she has the right--before she marries
+you. But if she _should_ marry someone else, what would you do?"
+
+"My brother?" asked Tautuk.
+
+"No."
+
+"A relative?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A friend?"
+
+"No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone Keok
+hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him."
+
+"I would kill him," said Tautuk quietly.
+
+It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should
+Mary Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything
+to escape from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and
+friends. She had scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled her
+life in the hazard, and in the end had come to him! Why should he not
+keep her? John Graham and the world believed she was dead. And he was
+master here. If--some day--Graham should happen to cross his path, he
+would settle the matter in Tautuk's way. Later, while Tautuk slept, and
+the world lay about him in a soft glow, and the valley below was filled
+with misty billows of twilight out of which came to him faintly the
+curious, crackling sound of reindeer hoofs and the grunting contentment
+of the feeding herd, the reaction came, as he had known it would come
+in the end.
+
+The morning of the fifth day he set out alone for the eastward herd, and
+on the sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like Sokwenna's
+foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of white in
+him, and when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley where the
+deer were grazing, he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee Doodle on a
+mouth-organ. It was Tatpan who told him that an hour or two before an
+exhausted stranger had come into camp, looking for him, and that the man
+was asleep now, apparently more dead than alive, but had given
+instructions to be awakened at the end of two hours, and not a minute
+later. Together they had a look at him.
+
+He was a small, ruddy-faced man with carroty blond hair and a peculiarly
+boyish appearance as he lay doubled up like a jack-knife, profoundly
+asleep. Tatpan looked at his big, silver watch and in a low voice
+described how the stranger had stumbled into camp, so tired he could
+scarcely put one foot ahead of the other; and that he had dropped down
+where he now lay when he learned Alan was with one of the other herds.
+
+"He must have come a long distance," said Tatpan, "and he has traveled
+fast."
+
+Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan. Yet he could not place
+him. He wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of
+his hand on the grass. His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in sleep
+the mysterious stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about his
+revolver in a way that spoke of caution and experience.
+
+"If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him," said Alan.
+
+He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water
+that ran down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing
+the stranger. By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the
+little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and
+the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes
+twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his
+gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only
+one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like
+that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at
+once Tatpan's eyes began to bulge.
+
+"Stampede!" he cried.
+
+Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
+apologetically.
+
+"It's me," he conceded. "I had to do it. It was give one or t'other
+up--my whiskers _or her_. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an' the
+whiskers won. I cut cards, an' the whiskers won. I played Klondike
+ag'in' 'em, an' the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an' shaved
+'em. Do I look so bad, Alan?"
+
+"You look twenty years younger," declared Alan, stifling his desire to
+laugh when he saw the other's seriousness.
+
+Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. "Then why the devil did
+they laugh!" he demanded. "Mary Standish didn't laugh. She cried. Just
+stood an' cried, an' then sat down an' cried, she thought I was that
+blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an' had to go to bed.
+That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says
+it wasn't because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in
+me was so sudden she couldn't help it. Nawadlook says I've got a
+character-ful chin--"
+
+Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede's face. A
+steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened.
+Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan
+felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This,
+at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down the old
+trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose fearlessness
+of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in Alaskan history
+which would never be forgotten. Where his first impulse had been to
+laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of other days,
+who, when in Stampede's presence, knew they were in the presence of a
+master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan knew why. The
+grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
+
+"Some day, if we're lucky, there always comes a woman to make the world
+worth living in, Stampede," he said.
+
+"There does," replied Stampede.
+
+He looked steadily at Alan.
+
+"And I take it you love Mary Standish," he added, "and that you'd fight
+for her if you had to."
+
+"I would," said Alan.
+
+"Then it's time you were traveling," advised Stampede significantly.
+"I've been twelve hours on the trail without a rest. She told me to move
+fast, and I've moved. I mean Mary Standish. She said it was almost a
+matter of life and death that I find you in a hurry. I wanted to stay,
+but she wouldn't let me. It's _you_ she wants. Rossland is at
+the range."
+
+"_Rossland_!"
+
+"Yes, Rossland. And it's my guess John Graham isn't far away. I smell
+happenings, Alan. We'd better hurry."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range,
+but to ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and
+specific direction was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and
+within the first half-dozen miles he had abandoned the adventure to
+continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan had no saddle-deer in his herd,
+and the swiftest messenger would require many hours in which to reach
+Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an hour after his
+arrival at Tatpan's camp. Stampede, declaring himself a new man after
+his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen to
+Alan's advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
+
+A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter's
+eyes as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race
+through the foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the
+grimness that had settled in the face behind him. His own mind was
+undergoing an upheaval of conjecture and wild questioning. That Rossland
+had discovered Mary Standish was not dead was the least astonishing
+factor in the new development. The information might easily have
+reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife Ellen. The astonishing
+thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up the trail of her
+flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more amazing fact that
+he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly at his range. His
+heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be directly under
+Graham's orders.
+
+Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to
+reveal all that had happened on the day of his departure for the
+mountains. He proceeded to do this without equivocation or hesitancy,
+for there now pressed upon him a grim anticipation of impending events
+ahead of them.
+
+Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other's disclosures. The
+smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face
+unchanged. Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish's
+confession of love at Nawadlook's door did the fighting lines soften
+about his comrade's eyes and mouth.
+
+Stampede's lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. "I knew that a
+long time ago," he said. "I guessed it that first night of storm in the
+coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana. She
+didn't tell me, but I wasn't blind. It was the note that puzzled and
+frightened me--the note she stuffed in her slipper. And Rossland told
+me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as he
+intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately."
+
+"And you left her alone after _that_?"
+
+Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan's
+suddenly quickened pace.
+
+"She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
+White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sokwenna won't sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he's
+watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick off a
+duck the other day at two hundred yards."
+
+They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could
+not name clutching at his heart, "Why did you say Graham might not be
+far away?"
+
+"In my bones," replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again. "In my
+bones!"
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
+cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes, too.
+Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he owns
+it. I take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something big to
+reckon with. He asked me how many men we had. I told him, stretching it
+a little. He grinned. He couldn't keep back that grin. It was as if a
+devil in him slipped out from hiding for an instant."
+
+Suddenly he caught Alan's arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
+sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men
+stared at each other.
+
+"Alan, we're short-sighted. I'm damned if I don't think we ought to call
+the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!"
+
+"You think it's that bad?"
+
+"Might be. If Graham's behind Rossland and has men with him--"
+
+"We're two and a half hours from Tatpan," said Alan, in a cold,
+unemotional voice. "He has only half a dozen men with him, and it will
+take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk Toolik.
+There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two with the
+upper. I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All are armed.
+It may be foolish, but I'm following your hunch."
+
+They gripped hands.
+
+"It's more than a hunch, Alan," breathed Stampede softly. "And for God's
+sake keep off the music as long as you can!"
+
+He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run
+toward the foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter
+of an hour they were lost to each other in the undulating distances of
+the tundra.
+
+Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence
+from the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan's
+camp had not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of
+the country gave him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he
+could make the distance in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled
+to add a rest of at least three or four hours during the night. It was
+now eight o'clock. By nine or ten the next morning he would be facing
+Rossland, and at about that same hour Tatpan's swift messengers would be
+closing in about Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. He knew the speed with which
+his herdsmen would sweep out of the mountains and over the tundras. Two
+years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his Eskimo people had traveled
+fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a hundred and nineteen
+miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He couldn't do
+that. But his people could--and _would_. He could see them sweeping in
+from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word went among them;
+he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then, like wolves
+scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting the tundra in
+their race for home--and war, if it was war that lay ahead of them.
+
+Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out of
+the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of pemmican
+when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coulees when he came to
+them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a telltale cramp
+began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the rest which he
+knew he must take. It was one o'clock. Counting his journey to Tatpan's
+camp, he had been traveling almost steadily for seventeen hours.
+
+Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where
+a little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize how
+tired he had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all he
+wanted; he dared not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at
+last, and he slept. When he awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting
+him. He sat up with a jerk, then leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch
+told the story. He had slept soundly for six hours, instead of resting
+three or four with his eyes open.
+
+After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret
+what had happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate
+a breakfast of pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost
+time. The interval between fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he
+almost ran. That quarter of an hour brought him to the crest of the
+ridge from which he could look upon the buildings of the range. Nothing
+had happened that he could see. He gave a great gasp of relief, and in
+his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told him more than
+anything else the tension he had been under.
+
+Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna's
+cabin and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock, and
+he called out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he
+stepped in. Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.
+Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them,
+staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish. She came
+forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw Keok
+follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.
+
+Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the
+tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle she
+was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at his
+coming. It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart, even
+when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it. He held her hands
+close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them widen,
+as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden quick
+breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the hope that had
+deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not excited.
+He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her eyes and
+knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt the force
+of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at her. She
+gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken breath; a
+little cry that came of wonder--understanding--and unspeakable faith in
+this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of the
+tragedy that had come to destroy her.
+
+"Rossland is in your cabin," she whispered. "And John Graham is back
+there--somewhere--coming this way. Rossland says that if I don't go to
+him of my own free will--"
+
+He felt the shudder that ran through her.
+
+"I understand the rest," he said. They stood silent for a moment. The
+gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
+child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a
+little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that
+he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.
+
+"You didn't make a mistake the day I went away?" he asked. "You--love
+me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from
+her. Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they
+thought--Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun--for the bird
+was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was
+very still.
+
+Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little
+window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across
+his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and
+something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another
+day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and
+the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the
+heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the
+farther north.
+
+Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his
+fingers drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His eyes
+fixed themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath he
+mumbled the old chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in Sokwenna's
+brain, and after that his eyes closed, and again the vision grew out of
+darkness like a picture for him, a vision of twisting trails and of
+fighting men gathering with their faces set for war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+At the desk in Alan's living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened
+behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed
+when he saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his
+sleeves rolled up, and it was evident he was making no effort to conceal
+his freedom with Alan's books and papers.
+
+He advanced, holding out a hand. This was not the same Rossland who had
+told Alan to attend to his own business on board the _Nome_. His
+attitude was that of one greeting a friend, smiling and affable even
+before he spoke. Something inspired Alan to return the smile. Behind
+that smile he was admiring the man's nerve. His hand met Rossland's
+casually, but there was no uncertainty in the warmth of the
+other's grip.
+
+"How d' do, Paris, old boy?" he greeted good-humoredly. "Saw you going
+in to Helen a few minutes ago, so I've been waiting for you. She's a
+little frightened. And we can't blame her. Menelaus is mightily upset.
+But mind me, Holt, I'm not blaming you. I'm too good a sport. Clever, I
+call it--damned clever. She's enough to turn any man's head. I only wish
+I were in your boots right now. I'd have turned traitor myself aboard
+the _Nome_ if she had shown an inclination."
+
+He proffered a cigar, a big, fat cigar with a gold band. It was
+inspiration again that made Alan accept it and light it. His blood was
+racing. But Rossland saw nothing of that. He observed only the nod, the
+cool smile on Alan's lips, the apparent nonchalance with which he was
+meeting the situation. It pleased Graham's agent. He reseated himself in
+the desk-chair and motioned Alan to another chair near him.
+
+"I thought you were badly hurt," said Alan. "Nasty knife wound you got."
+
+Rossland shrugged his shoulders. "There you have it again, Holt--the
+hell of letting a pretty face run away with you. One of the Thlinkit
+girls down in the steerage, you know. Lovely little thing, wasn't she?
+Tricked her into my cabin all right, but she wasn't like some other
+Indian girls I've known. The next night a brother, or sweetheart, or
+whoever it was got me through the open port. It wasn't bad. I was out of
+the hospital within a week. Lucky I was put there, too. Otherwise I
+wouldn't have seen Mrs. Graham one morning--through the window. What a
+little our fortunes hang to at times, eh? If it hadn't been for the girl
+and the knife and the hospital, I wouldn't be here now, and Graham
+wouldn't be bleeding his heart out with impatience--and you, Holt,
+wouldn't be facing the biggest opportunity that will ever come into
+your life."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand," said Alan, hiding his face in the
+smoke of his cigar and speaking with an apparent indifference which had
+its effect upon Rossland. "Your presence inclines me to believe that
+luck has rather turned against me. Where can my advantage be?"
+
+A grim seriousness settled in Rossland's eyes, and his voice became cool
+and hard. "Holt, as two men who are not afraid to meet unusual
+situations, we may as well call a spade a spade in this matter, don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Decidedly," said Alan.
+
+"You know that Mary Standish is really Mary Standish Graham, John
+Graham's wife?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you probably know--now--why she jumped into the sea, and why she
+ran away from Graham."
+
+"I do."
+
+"That saves a lot of talk. But there is another side to the story which
+you probably don't know, and I am here to tell it to you. John Graham
+doesn't care for a dollar of the Standish fortune. It's the girl he
+wants, and has always wanted. She has grown up under his eyes. From the
+day she was fourteen years old he has lived and planned with the thought
+of possessing her. You know how he got her to marry him, and you know
+what happened afterward. But it makes no difference to him whether she
+hates him or not. He _wants_ her. And this"--he swept his arms out, "is
+the most beautiful place in the world in which to have her returned to
+him. I've been figuring from your books. Your property isn't worth over
+a hundred thousand dollars as it stands on hoof today. I'm here to offer
+you five times that for it. In other words, Graham is willing to forfeit
+all action he might have personally against you for stealing his wife,
+and in place of that will pay you five hundred thousand dollars for the
+privilege of having his honeymoon here, and making of this place a
+country estate where his wife may reside indefinitely, subject to her
+husband's visits when he is so inclined. There will be a stipulation, of
+course, requiring that the personal details of the deal be kept strictly
+confidential, and that you leave the country. Do I make myself clear?"
+
+Alan rose to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least,
+Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as
+he watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out
+proposition upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to
+the point without an effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient
+dramatic sense to appreciate what the offer of half a million dollars
+meant to an individual who was struggling for existence at the edge of a
+raw frontier. Alan stood with his back toward him, facing a window. His
+voice was oddly strained when he answered. But that was quite natural,
+too, Rossland thought.
+
+"I am wondering if I understand you," he said. "Do you mean that if I
+sell Graham the range, leave it bag and baggage, and agree to keep my
+mouth shut thereafter, he will give me half a million dollars?"
+
+"That is the price. You are to take your people with you. Graham has his
+own."
+
+Alan tried to laugh. "I think I see the point--now. He isn't paying five
+hundred thousand for Miss Standish--I mean Mrs. Graham. He's paying it
+for the _isolation_."
+
+"Exactly. It was a last-minute hunch with him--to settle the matter
+peaceably. We started up here to get his wife. You understand, to _get_
+her, and settle the matter with you in a different way from the one
+we're using now. You hit the word when you said 'isolation.' What a damn
+fool a man can make of himself over a pretty face! Think of it--half a
+million dollars!"
+
+"It sounds unreal," mused Alan, keeping his face to the window. "Why
+should he offer so much?"
+
+"You must keep the stipulation in mind, Holt. That is an important part
+of the deal. You are to keep your mouth shut. Buying the range at a
+normal price wouldn't guarantee it. But when you accept a sum like that,
+you're a partner in the other end of the transaction, and your health
+depends upon keeping the matter quiet. Simple enough, isn't it?"
+
+Alan turned back to the table. His face was pale. He tried to keep smoke
+in front of his eyes. "Of course, I don't suppose he'd allow Mrs. Graham
+to escape back to the States--where she might do a little upsetting on
+her own account?"
+
+"He isn't throwing the money away," replied Rossland significantly.
+
+"She would remain here indefinitely?"
+
+"Indefinitely."
+
+"Probably never would return."
+
+"Strange how squarely you hit the nail on the head! Why should she
+return? The world believes she is dead. Papers were full of it. The
+little secret of her being alive is all our own. And this will be a
+beautiful summering place for Graham. Magnificent climate. Lovely
+flowers. Birds. And the girl he has watched grow up, and wanted, since
+she was fourteen."
+
+"And who hates him."
+
+"True."
+
+"Who was tricked into marrying him, and who would rather die than live
+with him as his wife."
+
+"But it's up to Graham to keep her alive, Holt. That's not our business.
+If she dies, I imagine you will have an opportunity to get your range
+back pretty cheap."
+
+Rossland held a paper out to Alan.
+
+"Here's partial payment--two hundred and fifty thousand. I have the
+papers here, on the desk, ready to sign. As soon as you give possession,
+I'll return to Tanana with you and make the remaining payment."
+
+Alan took the check. "I guess only a fool would refuse an offer like
+this, Rossland."
+
+"Yes, only a fool."
+
+"_And I am that fool_."
+
+So quietly did Alan speak that for an instant the significance of his
+words did not fall with full force upon Rossland. The smoke cleared away
+from before Alan's face. His cigar dropped to the floor, and he stepped
+on it with his foot. The check followed it in torn scraps. The fury he
+had held back with almost superhuman effort blazed in his eyes.
+
+"If I could have Graham where you are now--_in that chair_--I'd give ten
+years of my life, Rossland. I would kill him. And you--_you_--"
+
+He stepped back a pace, as if to put himself out of striking distance of
+the beast who was staring at him in amazement.
+
+"What you have said about her should condemn you to death. And I would
+kill you here, in this room, if it wasn't necessary for you to take my
+message back to Graham. Tell him that Mary Standish--_not_ Mary
+Graham--is as pure and clean and as sweet as the day she was born. Tell
+him that she belongs to _me_. I love her. She is mine--do you
+understand? And all the money in the world couldn't buy one hair from
+her head. I'm going to take her back to the States. She is going to get
+a square deal, and the world is going to know her story. She has
+nothing to conceal. Absolutely nothing. Tell that to John Graham
+for me."
+
+He advanced upon Rossland, who had risen from his chair; his hands were
+clenched, his face a mask of iron.
+
+"Get out! Go before I flay you within an inch of your rotten life!"
+
+The energy which every fiber in him yearned to expend upon Rossland sent
+the table crashing back in an overturned wreck against the wall.
+
+"Go--before I kill you!"
+
+He was advancing, even as the words of warning came from his lips, and
+the man before him, an awe-stricken mass of flesh that had forgotten
+power and courage in the face of a deadly and unexpected menace, backed
+quickly to the door and escaped. He made for the corrals, and Alan
+watched from his door until he saw him departing southward, accompanied
+by two men who bore packs on their shoulders. Not until then did
+Rossland gather his nerve sufficiently to stop and look back. His
+breathless voice carried something unintelligible to Alan. But he did
+not return for his coat and hat.
+
+The reaction came to Alan when he saw the wreck he had made of the
+table. Another moment or two and the devil in him would have been at
+work. He hated Rossland. He hated him now only a little less than he
+hated John Graham, and that he had let him go seemed a miracle to him.
+He felt the strain he had been under. But he was glad. Some little god
+of common sense had overruled his passion, and he had acted wisely.
+Graham would now get his message, and there could be no misunderstanding
+of purpose between them.
+
+He was staring at the disordered papers on his desk when a movement at
+the door turned him about. Mary Standish stood before him.
+
+"You sent him away," she cried softly.
+
+Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, her face lit up with a beautiful
+glow. She saw the overturned table, Rossland's hat and coat on a chair,
+the evidence of what had happened and the quickness of his flight; and
+then she turned her face to Alan again, and what he saw broke down the
+last of that grim resolution which he had measured for himself, so that
+in a moment he was at her side, and had her in his arms. She made no
+effort to free herself as she had done in the cottonwoods, but turned
+her mouth up for him to kiss, and then hid her face against his
+shoulder--while he, fighting vainly to find utterance for the thousand
+words in his throat, stood stroking her hair, and then buried his face
+in it, crying out at last in the warm sweetness of it that he loved her,
+and was going to fight for her, and that no power on earth could take
+her away from him now. And these things he repeated until she raised her
+flushed face from his breast, and let him kiss her lips once more, and
+then freed herself gently from his arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+For a Space they stood apart, and in the radiant loveliness of Mary
+Standish's face and in Alan's quiet and unimpassioned attitude were
+neither shame nor regret. In a moment they had swept aside the barrier
+which convention had raised against them, and now they felt the
+inevitable thrill of joy and triumph, and not the humiliating
+embarrassment of dishonor. They made no effort to draw a curtain upon
+their happiness, or to hide the swift heart-beat of it from each other.
+It had happened, and they were glad. Yet they stood apart, and something
+pressed upon Alan the inviolableness of the little freedom of space
+between them, of its sacredness to Mary Standish, and darker and deeper
+grew the glory of pride and faith that lay with the love in her eyes
+when he did not cross it. He reached out his hand, and freely she gave
+him her own. Lips blushing with his kisses trembled in a smile, and she
+bowed her head a little, so that he was looking at her smooth hair, soft
+and sweet where he had caressed it a few moments before.
+
+"I thank God!" he said.
+
+He did not finish the surge of gratitude that was in his heart. Speech
+seemed trivial, even futile. But she understood. He was not thanking
+God for that moment, but for a lifetime of something that at last had
+come to him. This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as
+he had known it, the beginning of a new. He stepped back, and his hands
+trembled. For something to do he set up the overturned table, and Mary
+Standish watched him with a quiet, satisfied wonder. She loved him, and
+she had come into his arms. She had given him her lips to kiss. And he
+laughed softly as he came to her side again, and looked over the tundra
+where Rossland had gone.
+
+"How long before you can prepare for the journey?" he asked.
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
+through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland
+lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail."
+
+Her hand pressed his arm. "We are going--_back?_ Is that it, Alan?"
+
+"Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?"
+
+"With you there--no."
+
+"And you will return with me--when it is over?"
+
+He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek
+touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.
+
+"Yes, I will come back with you."
+
+"And you will be ready?"
+
+"I am ready now."
+
+The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist
+rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions--the
+breath of life, of warmth, of growing things--all between him and the
+hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without
+another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek
+against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she
+had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had
+ceased to fight--she had given to him the precious right to fight
+for her.
+
+It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of
+the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the
+grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the
+significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even
+more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of
+hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction
+which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same
+horror--of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her--Rossland had
+divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done
+right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have
+exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham's
+flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and
+the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
+indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him,
+out there in the hollows of the tundra--
+
+The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had
+seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that
+brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had told
+her a great deal. Yet she was not afraid, unless it was fear of what had
+been in his mind.
+
+"I am ready," she reminded him.
+
+"We must wait for Stampede," he said, reason returning to him. "He
+should be here sometime tonight, or in the morning. Now that Rossland is
+off my nerves, I can see how necessary it is to have someone like
+Stampede between us and--"
+
+He did not finish, but what he had intended to say was quite clear to
+her. She stood in the doorway, and he felt an almost uncontrollable
+desire to take her in his arms again.
+
+"He is between here and Tanana," she said with a little gesture of her
+head.
+
+"Rossland told you that?"
+
+"Yes. And there are others with him, so many that he was amused when I
+told him you would not let them take me away."
+
+"Then you were not afraid that I--I might let them have you?"
+
+"I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that
+second letter at Ellen McCormick's, Alan!"
+
+He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone
+before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were
+approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still
+grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window
+under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a
+death's-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of
+the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the vast
+stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song of
+birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note in
+him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat like a
+spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare
+of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space
+which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered
+his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came
+hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like
+in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points
+of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan shiver as he
+watched him through the window.
+
+In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that
+jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand--and
+which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings--that
+he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the
+blood was near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the
+old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that
+had once run red. Alan was one of the few who, by reason of much effort,
+had learned the story of the kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago
+that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile tribe had descended upon his
+people, killing the men and stealing the women; and how at last Sokwenna
+and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with what women were left and
+made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day that was golden and
+filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their
+enemies and killed them to a man. All were dead now, all but Sokwenna.
+
+For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was
+no longer the cheerful and gentle "old man" of his people; the old man
+who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook,
+who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an
+impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before
+Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his
+breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his thin
+hands gripping like bird-claws to his rifle. Alan threw off the
+uncomfortable feeling that had gripped him for a moment, and set him to
+an appointed task--the watching of the southward plain from the crest of
+a tall ridge two miles back on the Tanana trail. He was to return when
+the sun reached its horizon.
+
+Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which
+stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon
+as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once,
+without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced
+himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months,
+possibly a year this time. There was much to do, a mass of detail to
+attend to, a volume of instructions and advice to leave behind him. He
+must at least see Stampede, and it was necessary to write down certain
+laws for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. As this work of preparation progressed,
+and the premonition persisted in remaining with him, he fell into a
+habit of repeating to himself the absurdity of fears and the
+impossibility of danger. He tried to make himself feel uncomfortably
+foolish at the thought of having ordered the herdsmen in. In all
+probability Graham would not appear at all, he told himself, or at least
+not for many days--or weeks; and if he did come, it would be to war in a
+legal way, and not with murder.
+
+Yet his uneasiness did not leave him. As the hours passed and the
+afternoon lengthened, the invisible something urged him more strongly to
+take the trail beyond the cottonwoods, with Mary Standish at his side.
+Twice he saw her between noon and five o'clock, and by that time his
+writing was done. He looked at his guns carefully. He saw that his
+favorite rifle and automatic were working smoothly, and he called
+himself a fool for filling his ammunition vest with an extravagant
+number of cartridges. He even carried an amount of this ammunition and
+two of his extra guns to Sokwenna's cabin, with the thought that it was
+this cabin on the edge of the ravine which was best fitted for defense
+in the event of necessity. Possibly Stampede might have use for it, and
+for the guns, if Graham should come after he and Mary were well on their
+way to Nome.
+
+After supper, when the sun was throwing long shadows from the edge of
+the horizon, Alan came from a final survey of his cabin and the food
+which Wegaruk had prepared for his pack, and found Mary at the edge of
+the ravine, watching the twilight gathering where the coulee ran
+narrower and deeper between the distant breasts of the tundra.
+
+"I am going to leave you for a little while," he said. "But Sokwenna has
+returned, and you will not be alone."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"As far as the cottonwoods, I think."
+
+"Then I am going with you."
+
+"I expect to walk very fast."
+
+"Not faster than I, Alan."
+
+"But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before
+twilight shuts out the distances."
+
+"I will help you." Her hand crept into his. "I am going with you, Alan,"
+she repeated.
+
+"Yes, I--think you are," he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his
+head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand in
+his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together
+since the day he had come from Nome.
+
+There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and
+sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made
+him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and
+Sokwenna's advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost
+Kloof and the country beyond.
+
+"I have been thinking a great deal today," she was saying, "because you
+have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of _you_. And--my
+thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness."
+
+"And I have been--in paradise," he replied.
+
+"You do not think that I am wicked?"
+
+"I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again."
+
+"Nor that I have been unwomanly?"
+
+"You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood."
+
+"Yet I have followed you--have thrust myself at you, fairly at your
+head, Alan."
+
+"For which I thank God," He breathed devoutly.
+
+"And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your
+arms, and have kissed me--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I am walking now with my hand in yours--"
+
+"And will continue to do so, if I can hold it."
+
+"And I am another man's wife," she shuddered.
+
+"You are mine," he declared doggedly. "You know it, and the Almighty God
+knows it. It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham's wife. You are
+legally entangled with him, and that is all. Heart and soul and body you
+are free."
+
+"No, I am not free."
+
+"But you are!"
+
+And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder: "Alan, because
+you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am
+not. It is because--heart and soul--I belong to you."
+
+He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary
+Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and
+repeated softly, "Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!"
+
+Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still
+hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky,
+and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them,
+while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life. One
+mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were looking
+into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.
+
+It was strange that he should think of the letter now--the letter he had
+written to Ellen McCormick--but think of it he did, and said what was in
+his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall
+of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.
+
+"It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to _you_" he
+said. "And I think that if you hadn't come back to me I would have
+gone mad."
+
+"I have the letter. It is here"--and she placed a hand upon her breast.
+"Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?"
+
+"That you meant more to me than life."
+
+"And that--particularly--you wanted Ellen McCormick to keep a tress of
+my hair for you if they found me."
+
+He nodded. "When I sat across the table from you aboard the _Nome_, I
+worshiped it and didn't know it. And since then--since I've had you
+here--every time. I've looked at you--" He stopped, choking the words
+back in his throat.
+
+"Say it, Alan."
+
+"I've wanted to see it down," he finished desperately. "Silly notion,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Why is it?" she asked, her eyes widening a little. "If you love it, why
+is it a silly notion to want to see it down?"
+
+"Why, I though possibly you might think it so," he added lamely.
+
+Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned
+suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back,
+and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until
+its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a
+silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a cry
+of gladness.
+
+She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in
+her hair. "Do you think it is nice, Alan?"
+
+He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed
+them to his lips and face.
+
+Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It
+was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand
+which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When
+he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the
+deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had
+stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.
+
+"What is it?" he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see
+what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over
+the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
+night--and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
+dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between
+it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach
+of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift
+as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion's face
+now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its
+suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought, and he
+laughed softly.
+
+But her hand clutched his arm. "I saw them," she cried, her voice
+breaking. "I saw them--out there against the sun--before the cloud
+came--and some of them were running, like animals--"
+
+"Shadows!" he exclaimed. "The long shadows of foxes running against the
+sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
+sneaking away--"
+
+"No, no, they were not that," she breathed tensely, and her fingers
+clung more fiercely to his arm. "They were not shadows. _They
+were men_!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
+have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of
+the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot
+striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that
+sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own.
+
+"Were they many?" he asked.
+
+"I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running--"
+
+"Behind us?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And they saw us?"
+
+"I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk."
+
+He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he
+could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his
+automatic holster.
+
+"You think _they have come_?" she whispered, and a cold dread was in her
+voice.
+
+"Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
+afraid?"
+
+"No, no, I am not afraid."
+
+"Yet you are trembling."
+
+"It is this strange gloom, Alan."
+
+Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen
+times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where
+thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight
+thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it
+is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed
+to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty
+hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the
+world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was
+spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
+crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird
+chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes
+strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.
+
+And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing
+circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a
+moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion
+had seen. Graham's men were near, had seen them, and were getting
+between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if
+there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted,
+he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty
+of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the
+range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just
+what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the
+overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and
+fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little
+short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or
+humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that he
+would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a
+tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain extent
+by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband "rescuing"
+his wife, while he--Alan Holt--was the woman's abductor and paramour,
+and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
+
+His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight
+ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of
+what that "rescue" would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and
+deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered
+itself in readiness for whatever might happen.
+
+If Graham's men had seen them, and were getting between them and
+retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead--and in this direction Alan
+walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could
+not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined
+about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose hair.
+For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow, listening for
+a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and held her
+there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was panting, and he
+could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her parted lips and
+kissed them.
+
+"You are not afraid?" he asked again.
+
+Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast.
+"No!"
+
+He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. "Even if
+they saw us, and are Graham's men, we have given them the slip," he
+comforted her. "Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am
+sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly."
+
+"We must travel faster," she insisted. "I want to run."
+
+Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At
+intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and
+listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to
+the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own,
+but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her
+throat for an instant.
+
+At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath
+of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and
+about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing
+to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to
+be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out where its
+solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the girl's
+face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra were
+taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan
+recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden.
+
+The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge
+of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel,
+and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands.
+While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested
+with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running
+between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear, which
+in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained his
+feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the concealment
+of the willows.
+
+A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another
+voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found
+himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to
+loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl
+struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his
+brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun,
+and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in the gloom, as the
+merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he heard a shout, a loud
+shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he was thrown back; his
+head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled, and almost
+spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in him.
+He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers
+loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was
+killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as
+he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his
+pistol. The holster was empty.
+
+He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him,
+and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked
+him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and
+on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called
+out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had
+fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the
+water of the little spring from which she had been drinking. A mad curse
+leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now; he wanted to kill--to
+destroy what was already under his hands that he might leap upon this
+other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his hands twisted in her long
+hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a club the bearded
+man's head sagged backward, and Alan's fingers dug into his throat. It
+was a bull's neck. He tried to break it. Ten seconds--twenty--half a
+minute at the most--and flesh and bone would have given way--but before
+the bearded man's gasping cry was gone from his lips the second figure
+leaped upon Alan.
+
+He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was
+half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out
+and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he
+realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening
+horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan
+broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have
+silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl. She was creeping on
+her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long hair trailed in the
+trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the spring, and her hands
+were groping--groping--until they found what they were seeking.
+
+Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands
+had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to
+his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself
+over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he
+heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him,
+limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a moment
+caught the swaying girl in his arms.
+
+The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his
+throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a
+heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By
+chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked
+the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the fight
+with a gun.
+
+"Come," he said.
+
+His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and
+put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud
+from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from
+the pool and the willows.
+
+In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the
+strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of
+storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from
+straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his own and
+set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last voice had
+come. He knew what was happening. Graham's men were cleverer than he had
+supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of
+them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the triumphant shout
+of the bearded man's companion had come. They were wondering why the
+call was not repeated, and were hallooing.
+
+Every nerve in Alan's body was concentrated for swift and terrible
+action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him
+like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows
+they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his
+life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by
+two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and
+mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and civilization
+were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the unmapped tundras
+would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof remembered in its
+gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century ago. And the girl at
+his side, already disheveled and muddied by their hands--
+
+His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from
+his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up
+suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out
+as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an
+arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning
+flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to
+the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A
+moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the
+detonations of Alan's pistol continued to roll over the tundra.
+
+The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the
+stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary
+Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish
+gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with
+wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it
+clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand
+thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it--to
+his amazement--was a pistol. He recognized the weapon--one of a brace of
+light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented to him
+several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation swept over
+him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along she had
+prepared to fight--to fight with _him_ against their enemies! He wanted
+to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her how
+splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and
+they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier
+between them and the range.
+
+Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through
+the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and
+shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing
+that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was
+almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken
+the strength from her body. Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed
+the soft hair away from it, and kissed her lips and her eyes, while the
+pistol lay clenched against his breast. Even then, too hard-run to
+speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in his arms and darted
+into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not immediately
+find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed at
+her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little
+goddess hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as
+he hurried toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her
+arms about his neck, feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath,
+strengthened and made happy by her helplessness.
+
+Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching
+rain touched his face. He could see farther now--half-way back over the
+narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from
+his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath
+was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out
+the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them were no lights
+penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of houses. The
+silence of the place was death-like.
+
+And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow
+cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and
+loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He
+talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and
+spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot
+here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly
+uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the
+nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an
+answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.
+
+"What did he say?" asked the girl.
+
+"That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us."
+
+"And what else?" she persisted.
+
+"Old Sokwenna is superstitious--and nervous. He said some things that
+you wouldn't understand. You would probably think him mad if he told you
+the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here
+with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has
+been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every
+woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and
+Nawadlook wouldn't go. I'm glad of that, for if they were pursued and
+overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland--"
+
+"Death would be better," finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung more
+tightly to his arm.
+
+"Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had
+us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna's place until Stampede
+and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won't dare to
+assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now;
+we can shoot, but they won't risk the use of their rifles."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And
+bullets--"
+
+They had reached Sokwenna's door, and in that moment they hesitated and
+turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices
+came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at
+concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly
+and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could
+hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where they were
+entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying foes came
+from the edge of the ravine. Alan's heart stood still. There was
+something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of their
+enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window fell in
+with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist.
+
+It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that
+Sokwenna's rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale
+stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied
+his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in
+the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the
+floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him
+what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready
+to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes of
+Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining
+cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle
+chambers as fast as the guns were emptied.
+
+In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so
+they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and
+unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan.
+
+He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham's
+men would fire upon the cabin--when hell broke suddenly loose out in the
+night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna's fusillade, and a hail
+of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way
+through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement
+Alan was at Mary's side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside
+Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden,
+consuming fire.
+
+"I thought they wouldn't shoot at women," he said, and his voice was
+terrifying in its strange hardness. "I was mistaken. And I am
+sure--now--that I understand."
+
+With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer
+guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he
+was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both
+he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish
+in Sokwenna's cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing
+that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he fought until
+he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing less than
+murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and plot, was the
+victim marked for death.
+
+The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a
+significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to
+care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of
+Sokwenna's cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in
+turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the
+ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open
+with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen.
+
+Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in
+her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic,
+and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan
+pointed to the open trap.
+
+"Quick, get into that!" he cried. "It is the only safe place. You can
+load there and hand out the guns."
+
+Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was
+clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok
+climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above.
+
+"Go into the cellar!" commanded Alan. "Good God, if you don't--"
+
+A smile lit up Mary's face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a
+ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet
+and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the
+rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from
+his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her
+shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said,
+"I am going to help you fight."
+
+Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an
+apron heavy with the weight of cartridges.
+
+And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna's
+ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and
+his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men.
+What followed struck a smile from Mary's lips, and a moaning sob rose
+from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open
+window to face the winged death that was again beating a tattoo against
+the log walls of the cabin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his
+power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that
+he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death,
+there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift moments
+following Sokwenna's rifle-shots from the attic window.
+
+Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old
+warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan
+thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening
+mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them
+singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of
+chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log
+walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a
+ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle about
+that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was riding
+with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the direction
+from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at which to
+shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these he fired
+as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull the
+trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary Standish
+who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was waxen in its
+deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely, never for an
+instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of fear that
+flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It was for
+_him_. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a breathless
+prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the opening in front
+of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing, writhing serpent of
+death that struck something behind them in its venomous wrath. With a
+cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
+
+"My God, they will kill you if you stand there!" she moaned. "Give me up
+to them, Alan. If you love me--give me up!"
+
+A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then
+another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were
+finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs
+of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl's slim
+body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the
+trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced
+Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun and
+the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
+its command.
+
+"If you don't stay there, I'll open the door and go outside to fight!
+Do you understand? _Stay there!_"
+
+His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
+another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
+following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
+
+In that upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
+warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
+hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
+suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and
+said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with the
+gun which she had loaded for him.
+
+The scream had scarcely gone from Keok's lips when Alan was at the top
+of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
+of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
+seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
+Mary Standish.
+
+From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
+power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
+light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
+radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
+through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
+rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
+blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
+second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
+They were no longer white men, but savages.
+
+He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
+watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
+rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing
+in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination,
+three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer,
+and he knew what they were thinking--that the bullet-riddled cabin had
+lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at,
+and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man
+falls. Steadily he fired at the others--one, two, three, four--and two
+out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed upon him that
+it was good shooting under the circumstances.
+
+He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for him,
+head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands. She
+was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or tears
+in her eyes.
+
+"Keep down!" he warned. "Keep down below the floor!"
+
+He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still
+existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now--from the
+shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light of
+his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled the
+night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the floor, so
+that the lower log of the building protected him. No living thing could
+have stood up against what was happening in these moments. Bullets tore
+through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs, crashing against
+metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles sputtered and went out,
+and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary Standish coming out of
+the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself down quickly, and she
+thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his heart froze with horror
+as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the floor as she stood there
+in that frightful moment, white and glorious in the face of the
+gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was at her side, and
+with her in his arms leaped into the pit.
+
+A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or
+two life seemed to leave her body.
+
+A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In
+the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a
+faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm.
+
+"We can get away--there!" she cried in a low voice. "I have opened the
+little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine."
+
+Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not
+dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and
+Nawadlook's words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle
+fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift
+words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his
+men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a
+considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could steal
+down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept them,
+and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails into
+the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in the
+cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
+
+The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
+Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that
+Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips
+move in the effort.
+
+"Go--for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine," he insisted,
+holding her away from him. "Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
+like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
+husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will
+be no hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than
+death. They will be like--like two beautiful lambs thrown among
+wolves--broken--destroyed--"
+
+Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
+she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
+
+"And _you!_" whispered Mary.
+
+"I must remain here. It is the only way."
+
+Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
+went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
+She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no
+word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was
+her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper,
+no farewell caress came with it.
+
+"Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
+mountains," were his last words.
+
+He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
+them.
+
+He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
+that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
+way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
+for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin
+was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at the
+windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a movement of
+life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so swiftly that his
+breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became sheets of
+conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire
+whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
+
+Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
+sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
+hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it
+stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from
+Sokwenna's cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and
+watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In
+spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress the
+grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical
+resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously
+through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could
+not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
+sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That
+he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant
+possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer
+if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a
+righteous end. Only Rossland's nerve, and what he might have to say,
+held back the vengeance within reach of Alan's hand.
+
+He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was
+within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed
+upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no
+other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly
+illumined the windows of Sokwenna's place. Was it conceivable that
+Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a
+parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He
+shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and
+his men were more than capable of such a crime.
+
+Rossland's voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
+"Alan Holt! Are you there?"
+
+"Yes, I am here," shouted Alan, "and I have a line on your heart,
+Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?"
+
+There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing
+had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: "We are giving you a
+last chance, Holt. For God's sake, don't be a fool! The offer I made you
+today is still good. If you don't accept it--the law must take
+its course."
+
+"_The law!_" Alan's voice was a savage cry.
+
+"Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
+recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with
+felonious intent. But we don't want to press the law unless we are
+forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men and
+wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive. But we
+are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made you
+today. What do you say?"
+
+Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous
+assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And
+when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments,
+believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.
+
+Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old
+Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was
+creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange
+voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago,
+calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of
+vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of
+women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time
+he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the glare
+of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind him he
+heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill and
+with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him and
+the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning cabin. And
+then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna's
+last shot sped on its mission.
+
+At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment
+Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped,
+and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound,
+and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
+
+The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from
+life into death shocked every nerve in Alan's body. Horror for a brief
+space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and
+motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible
+silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry broke
+that silence, though it was made up of many men's voices. Deadly and
+thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had been
+killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had
+something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no
+mercy--nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands,
+and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
+breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
+
+Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in
+another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
+
+"Come below!" he commanded. "We must be ready to leave through the
+cellar-pit."
+
+His hand touched Sokwenna's face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
+and then grew still over the old warrior's heart. There was no tremor or
+beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
+
+The guns of Graham's men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
+into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets
+tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the
+shelter of the pit.
+
+He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting
+for him there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+In the astonishment with which Mary's unexpected presence confused him
+for a moment, Alan stood at the edge of the trap, staring down at her
+pale face, heedless of the terrific gun-fire that was assailing the
+cabin. That she had not gone with Keok and Nawadlook, but had come back
+to him, filled him with instant dread, for the precious minutes he had
+fought for were lost, and the priceless time gained during the parley
+with Rossland counted for nothing.
+
+She saw his disappointment and his danger, and sprang up to seize his
+hand and pull him down beside her.
+
+"Of course you didn't expect me to go," she said, in a voice that no
+longer trembled or betrayed excitement. "You didn't want me to be a
+coward. My place is with you."
+
+He could make no answer to that, with her beautiful eyes looking at him
+as they were, but he felt his heart grow warmer and something rise up
+chokingly in his throat.
+
+"Sokwenna is dead, and Rossland lies out there--shot under a flag of
+truce," he said. "We can't have many minutes left to us."
+
+He was looking at the square of light where the tunnel from the
+cellar-pit opened into the ravine. He had planned to escape through
+it--alone--and keep up a fight in the open, but with Mary at his side it
+would be a desperate gantlet to run.
+
+"Where are Keok and Nawadlook?" he asked.
+
+"On the tundra, hurrying for the mountains. I told them it was your plan
+that I should return to you. When they doubted, I threatened to give
+myself up unless they did as I commanded them. And--Alan--the ravine is
+filled with the rain-mist, and dark--" She was holding his free hand
+closely to her breast.
+
+"It is our one chance," he said.
+
+"And aren't you glad--a little glad--that I didn't run away without
+you?"
+
+Even then he saw the sweet and tremulous play of her lips as they smiled
+at him in the gloom, and heard the soft note in her voice that was
+almost playfully chiding; and the glory of her love as she had proved it
+to him there drew from him what he knew to be the truth.
+
+"Yes--I am glad. It is strange that I should be so happy in a moment
+like this. If they will give us a quarter of an hour--"
+
+He led the way quickly to the square of light and was first to creep
+forth into the thick mist. It was scarcely rain, yet he could feel the
+wet particles of it, and through this saturated gloom whining bullets
+cut like knives over his head. The blazing cabin illumined the open on
+each side of Sokwenna's place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine,
+and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog
+that hid the coulee.
+
+Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely.
+This was not what Alan had hoped for. Graham's men, enraged and made
+desperate by Rossland's death, would rush the cabin immediately.
+Scarcely had the thought leaped into his mind when he heard swiftly
+approaching shouts, the trampling of feet, and then the battering of
+some heavy object at the barricaded door of Sokwenna's cabin. In another
+minute or two their escape would be discovered and a horde of men would
+pour down into the ravine.
+
+Mary tugged at his hand. "Let us hurry," she pleaded.
+
+What happened then seemed madness to the girl, for Alan turned and with
+her hand held tightly in his started up the side of the ravine,
+apparently in the face of their enemies. Her heart throbbed with sudden
+fear when their course came almost within the circle of light made by
+the burning cabin. Like shadows they sped into the deeper shelter of the
+corral buildings, and not until they paused there did she understand the
+significance of the hazardous chance they had taken. Already Graham's
+men were pouring into the ravine.
+
+"They won't suspect we've doubled on them until it is too late," said
+Alan exultantly. "We'll make for the kloof. Stampede and the herdsmen
+should arrive within a few hours, and when that happens--"
+
+A stifled moan interrupted him. Half a dozen paces away a crumpled
+figure lay huddled against one of the corral gates.
+
+"He is hurt," whispered Mary, after a moment of silence.
+
+"I hope so," replied Alan pitilessly. "It will be unfortunate for us if
+he lives to tell his comrades we have passed this way."
+
+Something in his voice made the girl shiver. It was as if the vanishing
+point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs. She
+heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper
+shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom. And then she
+noticed that the mist was no longer in her face. The sky was clearing.
+She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail
+over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of
+them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point when
+a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second and a
+third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout. There was
+something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly
+to them.
+
+"The wounded man," said Alan, in a voice of dismay. "He is calling the
+others. I should have killed him!"
+
+He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side. All
+her courage and endurance had returned. She breathed easily and
+quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan. They
+passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the
+pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen. Trained to
+the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan's ears caught faint
+sounds which his companion did not hear. The wounded man had succeeded
+in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain
+behind them.
+
+"Can you run a little farther?" he asked.
+
+"Where?"
+
+He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a
+cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light. Alan ran a
+little behind her. He was afraid of the light. Only gloom had saved them
+this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to
+clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached
+the kloof he would have to fight in the open. With Stampede at his side
+he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles with their
+enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open tundra from
+which they might have defied assault. But the nearness of the girl
+frightened him. She, after all, was the hunted thing. He was only an
+incident. From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of
+death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her
+remained the unspeakable horror of Graham's lust and passion. But if
+they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the
+cliff, they could laugh at Graham's pack of beasts while they waited for
+the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.
+
+He watched the sky. It was clearing steadily. Even the mists in the
+hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution
+came faintly rose-tinted lights. It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a
+golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay
+between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer
+held shadow or illusionment.
+
+The girl did not pause, but continued to run lightly and with surprising
+speed, heeding only the direction which he gave her. Her endurance
+amazed him. And he knew that without questioning him she had guessed the
+truth of what lay behind them. Then, all at once, she stopped, swayed
+like a reed, and would have fallen if his arms had not caught her.
+
+"Splendid!" he cried.
+
+She lay gasping for breath, her face against his breast. Her heart was a
+swiftly beating little dynamo.
+
+They had gained the edge of a shallow ravine that reached within half a
+mile of the kloof. It was this shelter he had hoped for, and Mary's
+splendid courage had won it for them.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her again, as he had carried
+her through the nigger-head bottom. Every minute, every foot of
+progress, counted now. Range of vision was widening. Pools of sunlight
+were flecking the plains. In another quarter of an hour moving objects
+would be distinctly visible a mile away.
+
+With his precious burden in his arms, her lips so near that he could
+feel their breath, her heart throbbing, he became suddenly conscious of
+the incongruity of the bird-song that was wakening all about them. It
+seemed inconceivable that this day, glorious in its freshness, and
+welcomed by the glad voice of all living things, should be a day of
+tragedy, of horror, and of impending doom for him. He wanted to shout
+out his protest and say that it was all a lie, and it seemed absurd that
+he should handicap himself with the weight and inconvenient bulk of his
+rifle when his arms wanted to hold only that softer treasure which
+they bore.
+
+In a little while Mary was traveling at his side again. And from then on
+he climbed at intervals to the higher swellings of the gully edge and
+scanned the tundra. Twice he saw men, and from their movements he
+concluded their enemies believed they were hidden somewhere on the
+tundra not far from the range-houses.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the end of the shallow
+ravine, and half a mile of level plain lay between them and the kloof.
+For a space they rested, and in this interval Mary smoothed her long
+hair and plaited it in two braids. In these moments Alan encouraged her,
+but he did not lie. He told her the half-mile of tundra was their
+greatest hazard, and described the risks they would run. Carefully he
+explained what she was to do under certain circumstances. There was
+scarcely a chance they could cross it unobserved, but they might be so
+far ahead of the searchers that they could beat them out to the kloof.
+If enemies appeared between them and the kloof, it would be necessary to
+find a dip or shelter of rock, and fight; and if pursuers from behind
+succeeded in out-stripping them in the race, she was to continue in the
+direction of the kloof as fast as she could go, while he followed more
+slowly, holding Graham's men back with his rifle until she reached the
+edge of the gorge. After that he would come to her as swiftly as he
+could run.
+
+They started. Within five minutes they were on the floor of the tundra.
+About them in all directions stretched the sunlit plains. Half a mile
+back toward the range were moving figures; farther west were others, and
+eastward, almost at the edge of the ravine, were two men who would have
+discovered them in another moment if they had not descended into the
+hollow. Alan could see them kneeling to drink at the little coulee which
+ran through it.
+
+"Don't hurry," he said, with a sudden swift thought. "Keep parallel with
+me and a distance away. They may not discover you are a woman and
+possibly may think we are searchers like themselves. Stop when I stop.
+Follow my movements."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+Now, in the sunlight, she was not afraid. Her cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes bright as stars as she nodded at him. Her face and hands were
+soiled with muck-stain, her dress spotted and torn, and looking at her
+thus Alan laughed and cried out softly:
+
+"You beautiful little vagabond!"
+
+She sent the laugh back, a soft, sweet laugh to give him courage, and
+after that she watched him closely, falling in with his scheme so
+cleverly that her action was better than his own--and so they had made
+their way over a third of the plain when Alan came toward her suddenly
+and cried, "Now, _run_!"
+
+A glance showed her what was happening. The two men had come out of the
+ravine and were running toward them.
+
+Swift as a bird she was ahead of Alan, making for a pinnacle of rock
+which he had pointed out to her at the edge of the kloof.
+
+Close behind her, he said: "Don't hesitate a second. Keep on going. When
+they are a little nearer I am going to kill them. But you mustn't stop."
+
+At intervals he looked behind him. The two men were gaining rapidly. He
+measured the time when less than two hundred yards would separate them.
+Then he drew close to Mary's side.
+
+"See that level place ahead? We'll cross it in another minute or two.
+When they come to it I'm going to stop, and catch them where they can't
+find shelter. But you must keep on going. I'll overtake you by the time
+you reach the edge of the kloof."
+
+She made no answer, but ran faster; and when they had passed the level
+space she heard his footsteps growing fainter, and her heart was ready
+to choke her when she knew the time had come for him to turn upon their
+enemies. But in her mind burned the low words of his command, his
+warning, and she did not look back, but kept her eyes on the pinnacle of
+rock, which was now very near. She had almost reached it when the first
+shot came from behind her.
+
+Without making a sound that would alarm her, Alan had stumbled, and made
+pretense of falling. He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned,
+and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham's men saw his
+ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their
+pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might
+use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought
+themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that
+flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could
+fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as
+a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her
+back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he joined her. A
+bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He did not return
+the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
+
+"He won't dare to stand up until the others join him," he encouraged
+her. "We're beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few
+minutes longer--"
+
+She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed
+to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the
+gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught
+her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge to a
+table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he dropped down
+beside her, and held her close as they crept back under the shelving
+face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with a yawning
+chasm at their side. The trail widened as they descended, and at the
+last they reached the bottom, with the gloom and shelter of a
+million-year-old crevasse hovering over them. Grim and monstrous rocks,
+black and slippery with age, lay about them, and among these they picked
+their way, while the trickle and drip of water and the flesh-like
+clamminess of the air sent a strange shiver of awe through Mary
+Standish. There was no life here--only an age-old whisper that seemed a
+part of death; and when voices came from above, where Graham's men were
+gathering, they were ghostly and far away.
+
+But here, too, was refuge and safety. Mary could feel it as they picked
+their way through the chill and gloom that lay in the silent passages
+between the Gargantuan rocks. When her hands touched their naked sides
+an uncontrollable impulse made her shrink closer to Alan, even though
+she sensed the protection of their presence. They were like colossi,
+carved by hands long dead, and now guarded by spirits whose voices
+guttered low and secretly in the mysterious drip and trickle of unseen
+water. This was the haunted place. In this chasm death and vengeance had
+glutted themselves long before she was born; and when a rock crashed
+behind them, accidentally sent down by one of the men above, a cry broke
+from her lips. She was frightened, and in a way she had never known
+before. It was not death she feared here, nor the horror from which she
+had escaped above, but something unknown and indescribable, for which
+she would never be able to give a reason. She clung to Alan, and when at
+last the narrow fissure widened over their heads, and light came down
+and softened their way, he saw that her face was deathly white.
+
+"We are almost there," he comforted. "And--some day--you will love this
+gloomy kloof as I love it, and we will travel it together all the way to
+the mountains."
+
+A few minutes later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that
+was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this
+climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a
+great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a
+floor as level as a table and covered with soft white sand. Mary would
+never forget her first glimpse of this place; it was unreal, strange, as
+if a band of outlaw fairies had brought the white sand for a carpet, and
+had made this their hiding-place, where wind and rain and snow could
+never blow. And up the face of the cavern, as if to make her thought
+more real, led a ragged fissure which it seemed to her only fairies'
+feet could travel, and which ended at the level of the plain. So they
+were tundra fairies, coming down from flowers and sunlight through that
+fissure, and it was from the evil spirits in the kloof itself that they
+must have hidden themselves. Something in the humor and gentle thought
+of it all made her smile at Alan. But his face had turned suddenly grim,
+and she looked up the kloof, where they had traveled through danger and
+come to safety. And then she saw that which froze all thought of fairies
+out of her heart.
+
+Men were coming through the chaos and upheaval of rock. There were many
+of them, appearing out of the darker neck of the gorge into the clearer
+light, and at their head was a man upon whom Mary's eyes fixed
+themselves in horror. White-faced she looked at Alan. He had guessed
+the truth.
+
+"That man in front?" he asked.
+
+She nodded. "Yes."
+
+"Is John Graham."
+
+He heard the words choking in her throat.
+
+"Yes, John Graham."
+
+He swung his rifle slowly, his eyes burning with a steely fire.
+
+"I think," he said, "that from here I can easily kill him!"
+
+Her hand touched his arm; she was looking into his eyes. Fear had gone
+out of them, and in its place was a soft and gentle radiance, a
+prayer to him.
+
+"I am thinking of tomorrow--the next day--the years and years to come,
+_with you_," she whispered. "Alan, you can't kill John Graham--not until
+God shows us it is the only thing left for us to do. You can't--"
+
+The crash of a rifle between the rock walls interrupted her. The snarl
+of a bullet followed the shot. She heard it strike, and her heart
+stopped beating, and the rigidity of death came into her limbs and body
+as she saw the swift and terrible change in the stricken face of the man
+she loved. He tried to smile at her, even as a red blot came where the
+streak of gray in his hair touched his forehead. And then he crumpled
+down at her feet, and his rifle rattled against the rocks.
+
+She knew it was death. Something seemed to burst in her head and fill
+her brain with the roar of a flood. She screamed. Even the men below
+hesitated and their hearts jumped with a new sensation as the terrible
+cry of a woman rang between the rock walls of the chasm. And following
+the cry a voice came down to them.
+
+"John Graham, I'm going to kill you--_kill you_--"
+
+And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set herself to the task
+of vengeance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending her young filled her
+soul, and she moaned in her grief and despair as the seconds passed. But
+she did not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham. The
+troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted in gathering before
+her eyes, something she tried to brush away, but which obstinately
+refused to go. She did not know she was sobbing as she looked over the
+rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but she had lost sight of John
+Graham. They reached the upheaval of shattered rock and began climbing
+it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated she stood above the
+rampart that had sheltered her. The men looked alike, jumping and
+dodging like so many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly
+it occurred to her that _all_ of them were John Grahams, and that she
+must kill swiftly and accurately. Only the hiding fairies might have
+guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when
+she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her
+first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down among the rocks at
+the crack of it. After that she continued to fire until the responseless
+click of the hammer told her the gun was empty. The explosions and the
+shock against her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain. She
+saw the men still coming, and they were so near she could see their
+faces clearly. And again her soul cried out in its desire to kill
+John Graham.
+
+She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees beside Alan. His face
+was hidden in his arm. Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster,
+and sprang back to her rock. There was no time to wait or choose now,
+for his murderers were almost upon her. With all her strength she tried
+to fire accurately, but Alan's big gun leaped and twisted in her hand as
+she poured its fire wildly down among the rocks until it was empty. Her
+own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in the race to the kloof, and
+now when she found she had fired her last shot she waited through
+another instant of horror, until she was striking at faces that came
+within the reach of her arm. And then, like a monster created suddenly
+by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a moment's vision of
+his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a passion that was
+almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his arms came
+about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
+against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless
+weight against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone,
+and if the arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.
+
+And she could hear--clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came
+from up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that
+the strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
+
+Graham's arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies' hiding-place with its
+white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.
+
+"Martens, it couldn't happen in a better place," he said to a man who
+stood near him. "Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider.
+If you don't clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this
+ambuscade will do the business in a hurry."
+
+Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others
+hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no
+cries, no shouts--nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.
+
+Graham's arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
+her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged
+inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of
+day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.
+
+Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its
+first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to
+climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy,
+very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not a
+sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could
+find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.
+
+From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the
+tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more
+reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the
+old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had
+thought was long dead--the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the
+eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede
+Smith. He saw under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days he
+had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor
+conscience to bar the way, and his dream--a last great fight--was here
+to fill the final unwritten page of a life's drama that was almost
+closed. And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white
+sand unheard and unseen. Six to one! Six men with guns at their sides
+and rifles in their hands. What a glorious end it would be, for a
+woman--and Alan Holt!
+
+He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men's faces turned
+that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the
+scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard. He was
+almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge. Two
+of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling
+interruption. A cry, a shrill scream, a woman's voice filled with
+madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five men
+stared in the direction of its agony. Close upon the cries came Mary
+Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her. The
+girl's hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and
+Graham's eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her. He
+caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully
+weak hands beat futilely in his face.
+
+And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.
+
+It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet
+of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and
+scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge
+when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of
+the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or
+swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down as
+if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one who
+fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched on
+his face.
+
+And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
+
+During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl
+crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body,
+her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a
+gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other
+could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation
+gripped Stampede. He saw Graham's pistol rise slowly and deliberately.
+He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham's face was the cold
+and unexcited triumph of a devil. Stampede saw only that face. It was
+four inches--perhaps five--away from the girl's. There was only
+that--and the extending arm, the crooking finger, the black mouth of the
+automatic seeking his heart. And then, in that last second, straight
+into the girl's staring eyes blazed Stampede's gun, and the four inches
+of leering face behind her was suddenly blotted out. It was Stampede,
+and not the girl, who closed his eyes then; and when he opened them and
+saw Mary Standish sobbing over Alan's body, and Graham lying face down
+in the sand, he reverently raised the gun from which he had fired the
+last shot, and pressed its hot barrel to his thin lips.
+
+Then he went to Alan. He raised the limp head, while Mary bowed her face
+in her hands. In her anguish she prayed that she, too, might die, for in
+this hour of triumph over Graham there was no hope or joy for her. Alan
+was gone. Only death could have come with that terrible red blot on his
+forehead, just under the gray streak in his hair. And without him there
+was no longer a reason for her to live.
+
+She reached out her arms. "Give him to me," she whispered. "Give him to
+me."
+
+Through the agony that burned in her eyes she did not see the look in
+Stampede's face. But she heard his voice.
+
+"It wasn't a bullet that hit him," Stampede was saying. "The bullet hit
+a rock, an' it was a chip from the rock that caught him square between
+the eyes. He isn't dead, _and he ain't going to die!_"
+
+How many weeks or months or years it was after his last memory of the
+fairies' hiding-place before he came back to life, Alan could make no
+manner of guess. But he did know that for a long, long time he was
+riding through space on a soft, white cloud, vainly trying to overtake a
+girl with streaming hair who fled on another cloud ahead of him; and at
+last this cloud broke up, like a great cake of ice, and the girl plunged
+into the immeasurable depths over which they were sailing, and he leaped
+after her. Then came strange lights, and darkness, and sounds like the
+clashing of cymbals, and voices; and after those things a long sleep,
+from which he opened his eyes to find himself in a bed, and a face very
+near, with shining eyes that looked at him through a sea of tears.
+
+And a voice whispered to him, sweetly, softly, joyously, "Alan!"
+
+He tried to reach up his arms. The face came nearer; it was pressed
+against his own, soft arms crept about him, softer lips kissed his mouth
+and eyes, and sobbing whispers came with their love, and he knew the end
+of the race had come, and he had won.
+
+This was the fifth day after the fight in the kloof; and on the sixth he
+sat up in his bed, bolstered with pillows, and Stampede came to see him,
+and then Keok and Nawadlook and Tatpan and Topkok and Wegaruk, his old
+housekeeper, and only for a few minutes at a time was Mary away from
+him. But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the strange
+change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the
+question, for more than any others of his people did he love these two
+missing comrades of the tundras.
+
+It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened--but he
+would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told
+him of that.
+
+"Graham had over thirty men with him, and only ten got away," he said.
+"We have buried sixteen and are caring for seven wounded at the corrals.
+Now that Graham is dead, they're frightened stiff--afraid we're going to
+hand them over to the law. And without Graham or Rossland to fight for
+them, they know they're lost."
+
+"And our men--my people?" asked Alan faintly.
+
+"Fought like devils."
+
+"Yes, I know. But--"
+
+"They didn't rest an hour in coming from the mountains."
+
+"You know what I mean, Stampede."
+
+"Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna," and he counted
+over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among them.
+
+"And Tautuk?"
+
+"He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
+She is with him night and day, and as jealous as a little cat if anyone
+else attempts to do anything for him."
+
+"Then--I am glad Tautuk was hit," smiled Alan. And he asked, "Where is
+Amuk Toolik?"
+
+Stampede hung his head and blushed like a boy.
+
+"You'll have to ask _her_, Alan."
+
+And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.
+
+She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that
+puzzled him.
+
+"You must wait," she said.
+
+Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and
+with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she
+told him the secret. Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she
+nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was
+content to accept the punishment. So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and
+what he was doing, still remained a mystery.
+
+A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.
+
+"I don't need a doctor," he said, "but it was mighty thoughtful of you
+to send Amuk Toolik for one." Then he caught himself suddenly. "What a
+senseless fool I am! Of course there are others who need a doctor more
+than I do."
+
+Mary nodded. "But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik
+to Tanana. He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now."
+And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip
+of her ear.
+
+"Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel," he said. "Then we
+will start for the States, as we planned."
+
+"You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the
+new house," she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he
+was stunned. "I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in
+the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very
+soon. I am sorry you find your business in the States so important,
+Alan. It will be a little lonesome with you away."
+
+He gasped. "Mary!"
+
+She did not turn. "_Mary!_"
+
+He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she
+faced him.
+
+And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips
+pressed to his.
+
+"It wasn't a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to
+marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I
+can wait--"
+
+But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that
+brought a little sob of joy from her heart.
+
+And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary
+Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little
+reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which
+he believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her
+desire to return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She
+wanted nothing down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders
+had left her, unless he could find some way of using it for the good of
+Alaska. And even then she was afraid it might lead to the breaking of
+her dream. For there was only one thing that would make her happy, and
+that was _his_ world. She wanted it just as it was--the big tundras, his
+people, the herds, the mountains--with the glory and greatness of God
+all about them in the open spaces. She now understood what he had meant
+when he said he was an Alaskan and not an American; she was that, too,
+an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would go on fighting with
+him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed until it
+seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes and
+secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his
+breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot
+flood of tears filled his eyes.
+
+So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary's
+head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she
+stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and
+glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were
+shining like stars as she looked at Alan.
+
+"It is Amuk Toolik," she said. "He has returned."
+
+"And--is he alone?" Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he
+waited for her answer.
+
+Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back
+his hair. "I must go and do up my hair, Alan," she said then. "It would
+never do for them to find me like this."
+
+And suddenly, in a moment, their fingers entwined and tightened, for on
+the roof of Sokwenna's cabin the little gray-cheeked thrush was
+singing again.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALASKAN***
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+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
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+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
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