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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Ticket to Adventure, by Roy J. Snell
+
+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: A Ticket to Adventure
+       A Mystery Story for Girls
+
+Author: Roy J. Snell
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2013 [EBook #44353]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TICKET TO ADVENTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _A Mystery Story for Girls_
+
+
+
+
+                              A TICKET TO
+                               ADVENTURE
+
+
+                                  _By_
+                              ROY J. SNELL
+
+
+                          The Reilly & Lee Co.
+                                Chicago
+
+
+                             COPYRIGHT 1937
+                                   BY
+                          THE REILLY & LEE CO.
+                        PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+  I The Little Man in Black                                           11
+  II The Indian Girl’s Warning                                        19
+  III Seven Golden Candlesticks                                       37
+  IV The Great Stump                                                  59
+  V Happy Landing                                                     68
+  VI A Wanderer Returns                                               76
+  VII And Then Came Adventure                                         87
+  VIII A Secret Is Told                                              101
+  IX Help from the Sky                                               112
+  X In Search of a Grandfather                                       121
+  XI The Fresh-Dough Club                                            131
+  XII Her Great Discovery                                            139
+  XIII A Bright New Dream                                            149
+  XIV “They Are Off”                                                 157
+  XV The Phantom Leader                                              165
+  XVI The Golden Quest                                               178
+  XVII The Black Seal’s Tooth                                        194
+  XVIII To Be or Not to Be                                           206
+  XIX Coasting Up Hill                                               216
+  XX Black Waters and Gray Dogs                                      227
+  XXI The Secret of the Great Stump                                  237
+
+
+
+
+                         A TICKET TO ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+                        THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK
+
+
+Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage,
+Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors,
+groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite
+suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in
+her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than
+she.
+
+“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting
+black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look
+like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she
+had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.
+
+Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought
+of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic
+morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane
+from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to
+Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could
+do about that. So—
+
+“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”
+
+To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.
+
+“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about
+this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.
+
+“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”
+
+“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home
+is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.
+
+“Then you—”
+
+Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke
+in upon them. “Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That’s good!” The
+man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of
+merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been
+hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was
+surprised and startled would not express it at all.
+
+She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man
+with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it
+touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight.
+There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap
+him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was
+little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those
+slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and
+her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.
+
+Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just
+now she stood quite still and waited.
+
+“So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?” The stranger stopped
+laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his
+appearance.
+
+“Shouldn’t want to meet him in the dark!” the girl thought with another
+shudder.
+
+“Want to know what he is, Miss?” the white man turned to Mary. “He’s an
+Eskimo.”
+
+“Oh, an—” Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.
+
+“Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo.” The man filled his voice with suggestions of
+loathing and utmost contempt. “Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating,
+greasy Eskimo that lives in a hole in the ground. That’s what he is to
+me. But to you he’s Mister Il-ay-ok. Bah!” The man turned and walked
+away.
+
+For a full moment nothing further was said. At last, in a steady,
+school-book voice the little man in black said, “Do you know what my
+people did to the first white man who visit our village?”
+
+“No. What?” Mary stared.
+
+“Shot him,” the little man’s voice dropped. “Shot him with a whale gun.
+Very big gun. Shoot big shell. Like this!” He held up a clenched fist.
+“Very bad man like this one. He talked too big,” the little man scowled.
+
+“And would you like to shoot that one?” Mary asked, nodding toward the
+retreating figure.
+
+“Not now. Mebby byum bye. You see,” the little man smiled, “I go to visit
+your country. I am—”
+
+At that moment Florence Huyler, Mary’s big cousin came booming along from
+behind the pile of goods, to cry: “Ah! There you are! I’ve been looking
+everywhere for you.”
+
+“Florence,” Mary stopped her, “this is Mr. Il-ay-ok. He’s from Alaska,
+and he wants to kill a white man, but not just now.” She laughed in spite
+of herself.
+
+“But this is Alaska.” Florence, who was big and strong as a man, looked
+at the little man and smiled as she asked, “Is this your home?”
+
+“No—no,” the little man bowed. “Much more north my home. Cape Nome
+sometimes and sometimes Cape Prince Wales.”
+
+“Oh you’ve been in Nome?” Florence’s eyes shone. “My grandfather went
+there years and years ago. He never came back.”
+
+“Name please?” the little man asked.
+
+“Tom Kennedy.”
+
+“Ah yes,” the little man beamed. “I know him. Big man. Very good man.”
+
+“What?” the big girl’s eyes fairly bulged. “You, you know my grandfather?
+No! No! He is dead. He must have died years ago.”
+
+“Not dead please. Tom Kennedy not dead,” the little man appeared puzzled.
+“No not dead. Let me tell you.” He took a step toward them. “Very big
+man. Very straight. Always smile. Let me show you.” To their vast
+surprise the girls saw the little man produce from an inside pocket a
+small, ivory paper knife. On its blade had been carved the likeness of a
+man’s face. It may not have been a very accurate picture, there was,
+however, one touch that could not be wrong, a scar above the left eye.
+“Tom Kennedy my friend,” the native said simply.
+
+“Tom Kennedy, my long-lost grandfather!” Florence stared in unbelief. “He
+is dead. And yet, he—he must be alive!” She closed her eyes as she tried
+to think clearly. Often and often as a small child she had heard her
+mother describe this man, her grandfather. Often too she had seen his
+picture. Always there had been that scar over the left eye.
+
+“Mary!” she exclaimed, her voice rising high. “My grandfather is alive,
+somewhere away up there!” she faced north. “I’m going.”
+
+“Oh, but you couldn’t leave us!” Mary’s tone vibrated with consternation.
+“You couldn’t leave us, not just now!”
+
+“That—that’s right. I couldn’t—not just now.” The big girl’s hands
+dropped limply to her side.
+
+From the distance came the long drawn hoarse hoot of a steamboat whistle.
+
+“Excuse please,” the little man who called himself Mr. Il-ay-ok bowed
+low. “My boat please. I go to visit America. Perhaps please, we meet
+again.”
+
+With the swift, sure movement of one who has followed a dog team over
+long, long miles or has hunted on the treacherous ice-floes, he was gone.
+
+“No,” Florence repeated slowly as if to herself, “I can’t leave you now.”
+
+For one full moment she stood staring at the spot from which the little
+man had vanished. Here indeed was a strange situation. All her life she
+had believed her grandfather dead. From her mother’s lips she had heard
+vague stories of how he had gone into the north and never returned. Now
+here was a little Eskimo saying, “Tom Kennedy my friend. Yes, I know him.
+He is alive.”
+
+“And he proved it too,” the girl whispered to herself.
+
+Then, of a sudden, her thoughts came back to the present and to her
+immediate surroundings.
+
+“What a jumble!” she said, looking at the heap of goods that, as moments
+passed, grew higher and higher. “How will they ever get them sorted out?”
+
+Turning to her cousin, bright-eyed, eager Mary, she said: “‘A ticket to
+adventure,’ that’s what the man back there in San Francisco called it, ‘a
+ticket to adventure.’ Will it truly be an adventure? I wonder.”
+
+“I hope so!” Mary’s eyes shone.
+
+Turning, the two girls walked away toward a distant spot on the long dock
+where a boy, who had barely grown into a young man, was struggling at the
+task of setting up a small umbrella tent.
+
+“See!” the big girl cried, “there’s Mark. He’s setting up our first home
+in a wilderness.”
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+                       THE INDIAN GIRL’S WARNING
+
+
+Hours later Florence stirred uneasily in her sleep, then half-awake
+murmured dreamily: “A ticket to adventure. That’s what he said, a
+ticket—”
+
+Conscious now that some disturbing sound had come to her in her sleep,
+she shook herself into further wakefulness.
+
+“Strange,” she murmured. “Everything is so strange.”
+
+Indeed it was. The bed on which she and Mary slept was hard, a mattress
+on the dock. About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.
+
+“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was
+the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail.
+And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers,
+modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this
+new land be?
+
+She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the
+wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of
+France were not new to her. But Alaska! How she had thrilled at thought
+of it! She was thinking of all this when, of a sudden, she raised herself
+on one elbow to listen. “What was that sound?” she whispered. It was
+faint, indistinct, disturbing.
+
+Then Mary sleeping at her side, did a strange thing. Sitting bolt upright
+she said: “Don’t you want to kill him?”
+
+For a space of seconds she appeared to listen for an answer. Then, with a
+sigh, she murmured, “Oh! All right. Some other time.” At that, she sank
+back in her place to draw the covers closely about her.
+
+“Talking in her sleep,” the big girl thought. “Dreaming of the little man
+in black. She—”
+
+There was that sound again, more distinct now. “A child crying in the
+night.” Florence listened intently.
+
+“It’s such a low cry,” she thought wearily, creeping back among the
+blankets. “It can’t be anything very much. There has been so much
+crying.”
+
+Ah yes, there had been children’s cries that day; rough, unkind words had
+been said at times to the children. Little wonder, for they had that
+day—hundreds of men, women and children—disembarked from a ship that
+carried them far toward their promised land, the Matamuska Valley in
+Alaska.
+
+They had been dumped quite unceremoniously, a whole shipload of people
+with cows, horses, dogs, cats, canaries, trucks, tractors, tents, lumber,
+hardware, groceries, shoes, hammers, saws, and clothespins on the dock at
+Anchorage. Men dashed about searching for tents and baggage. Women sought
+out lost or strayed pets. Children had cried and above it all had come
+the hoarse shout of some enthusiast: “On! On! to our new home! Three
+cheers for Alaska!”
+
+Over all this darkness had fallen. After a cold supper, having pitched
+their tents and spread their blankets, they had stretched out on the
+rough surface of the dock to sleep, if sleep they could. And now Florence
+was hearing that distressing moan of a child.
+
+“Near at hand,” she thought, raising herself on an elbow to listen once
+more, this time more closely. “A strange sort of cry. Can’t be a child
+from our party. I’ve heard them all cry.”
+
+Indeed she had. The long journey half way across America, then along the
+coast to Alaska had been hard on the children.
+
+“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered once again. They had come here,
+their little party of four, to begin life anew, to secure for themselves
+a home and if possible, a modest fortune. Would they win? With God’s
+help, could they? And was true adventure to be thrown in for good
+measure? The girl thrilled at the thought, for, ambitious as she
+undoubtedly was, she was human as well, and who does not feel his blood
+race at thought of adventure?
+
+However, at this moment something other than adventure called, the cry of
+a child in the night. Florence dearly loved small children. She could not
+bear to have them suffer.
+
+“I—I’ve just got to get out and hunt her up,” she murmured.
+
+With a shudder she dragged her feet from the warmth of the blankets,
+slipped on knickers and shoes, then crept out into the cheerless night.
+
+She did not have far to go. Huddled in a corner, out of the wind, she
+discovered two blanket-wrapped figures. Girls they were, one small, one
+large. Indians, she saw as she threw her light upon their dark faces.
+
+“What’s the matter?” she asked, striving to keep her teeth from
+chattering.
+
+“Dog bite her,” the older girl spoke in a slow, deep tone. “White man
+dog. Strange white man dog. Come steamboat this day.”
+
+“Yes,” Florence moved closer. “We all came by steamboat. There are many
+dogs. Too many! Let me see.”
+
+The small child thrust a trembling hand from a greasy blanket.
+
+“Ah!” Florence breathed. “That’s rather bad. Not very deep, but dog bites
+are bad. It must be dressed. I’ll be back.”
+
+Stepping quickly to the tent she poured warm water from a thermos bottle
+into a basin, snatched up a first-aid kit, then hurried back.
+
+“Here you are,” she said cheerily. “First we wash it. Then we dry it.
+Then—this will hurt a little, quite a bit, I guess.” She produced a
+bottle of iodine. “You tell her. Tell her it will hurt.” She spoke to the
+older girl, who said some words in her own language to the attentive
+child. When she had finished, Florence received her first reward—nor was
+it to be the last—for this bit of personal sacrifice, the child fixed
+upon her a look that registered perfect faith and confidence.
+
+Florence applied the severe remedy. Then she watched the child’s face. A
+single tear crept from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek.
+
+It hurt, that iodine, hurt terribly for the moment. Florence knew that.
+Yet not a muscle of the child’s face moved.
+
+“This,” Florence thought, with a little tightening at the throat, “is the
+spirit of the North. It is with this spirit that we all must face the
+trials and dangers that lie before us in this world. If we do this, we
+shall be real pioneers and we shall win.
+
+“We shall win!” she whispered hoarsely, as standing erect, hands clenched
+tight, she stood for a moment facing the bitter Arctic gale.
+
+“Feel better now?” she asked, dropping again to the child’s side.
+
+The child nodded.
+
+“All right. Now we’ll bind it up tight and it will be fine.”
+
+Five minutes later Florence saw the child’s head fall against her older
+sister’s side. Her pain gone, her cry stilled, she had fallen asleep.
+That was Florence’s second reward, but not her last.
+
+As she once more crept beneath the warm covers in her tent, she felt the
+slender arms of Mary, her cousin, close about her and heard her murmur
+with a shudder: “It is so far and so cold!”
+
+“She’s talking in her sleep again,” Florence told herself. Then, out of
+sympathy for the frailer girl, she too shuddered.
+
+Yes, it had been a long way and even though it was early June, it was
+cold. Yet Florence thrilled at thought of it all. That journey, how it
+had unfolded, first on paper, second in their minds, then in reality!
+
+Mark and Mary had lived with their mother in the Copper Country of
+Michigan. Because she had few relatives and was in need of a home,
+Florence had joined them there.
+
+No copper was being mined, so there was no work and, struggle as they
+might, they had grown poorer and poorer.
+
+Then had come word of what appeared to them a wonderful opportunity. The
+government was to send two hundred or more families to the rich Matamuska
+Valley in Alaska. They were to be given land and to be loaned money that
+they might make a fresh start.
+
+“Pioneers! They will be pioneers in a new land!” Florence, who was of
+true pioneer stock, young, sturdy and strong, had exclaimed. “Why should
+we not go?”
+
+Why, indeed? They had applied, had been accepted, and here they were at
+the seaport of the railroad that was to bear them on to their new world.
+
+“Tomorrow,” she whispered softly to herself. “Tomorrow, to—” At that she
+fell fast asleep.
+
+
+If the scene of confusion on the dock at Anchorage with the trucks,
+tractors, tents, and groceries had seemed strange, the picture before
+Florence, Mary and Mark a few days later might, to a casual observer,
+have seemed even more strange. Palmer, dream city of the future, lay
+before them. And such a city! A city of tents. Yet, city of tents as it
+was, it did not lack signs of excitement. This was the great day. On this
+day the future home owners of this rich valley, surrounded by its
+snow-capped mountains, were to draw lots for their tracts of land. Some
+tracts were close to Palmer, some ten or twelve miles away. A few
+settlers there were who wished for solitude in the far-off spots. Many
+hoped for tracts close in, where they might walk into town for their mail
+and to join in the latest gossip. Florence, Mary, and Mark had sensed the
+bleak loneliness of distant farms during the long winter. They too hoped
+for a spot close at hand.
+
+“Now,” Florence whispered as, after a long time of waiting in line, Mark
+approached the drawing stand. “Now it is your turn!”
+
+Mark’s hand trembled as it went out. Florence felt her heart pause, then
+go leaping. It meant so much, so very much, that tiny square of paper
+with a number on it.
+
+Turning away from the curious throng, Mark cupped his hand, then together
+they all three peered at that magic number.
+
+“One hundred and twelve!” Florence whispered tensely. “Here—here is our
+map. Where is our farm? Here! Here! Let’s look!”
+
+One moment of hurried search, then a sigh of disappointment. “Seven miles
+from town.” Mary dropped limply down upon a stump.
+
+“Might have been twelve,” Mark said cheerfully. “Bet there’s a bear or a
+moose right in the middle of it waiting to be made into hamburger. But
+then,” he sighed, “we couldn’t kill him. Can’t get a hunting license for
+a year.”
+
+Two hours later Mark and Mary with their mother and Florence close at
+hand were listening to a tempting offer. Ramsey McGregor, a huge man from
+the western plains, had drawn a tract of land only a half mile from town.
+He had no cow. The Hughes family owned a cow, a very good milker. If they
+would trade tracts of land and throw in the cow, they might have his farm
+close to town.
+
+“Think of it!” Mark cried. “Right in town, you might say!”
+
+“Y-e-s,” Florence agreed. “But then—” Already she had seen quite enough
+of the noisy, quarrelsome camp. And besides, there was the cow. Precious
+possession, old Boss. Cows were dear—milk was hardly to be had at any
+price. “And yet—” she sighed. Long tramps through the deep snow, with a
+wild Arctic blizzard beating her back, seemed to haunt her. “You’ll have
+to decide,” she said slowly. “It’s to be your home. I—I’m only a helper.”
+
+Into this crisis there stepped an angel in disguise, an unimportant
+appearing, dark-faced angel, the older of the two Indian girls Florence
+had seen and aided back there at the dock in Anchorage. Now the girl,
+approaching timidly, drew Florence’s head down to the level of her own
+and whispered, “Don’t trade!”
+
+“Why?” Florence whispered back.
+
+“Don’t trade,” the Indian girl repeated. “Bye and bye I show you.” She
+was gone.
+
+“What did she say?” Mark asked. Mark was slow, steady, thoughtful,
+dependable. Florence had no relative she liked so much.
+
+“She says not to trade.” There was a look of uncertainty on the big
+girl’s face.
+
+“Greasy little Indian girl,” Ramsey McGregor growled. “What does she
+know?”
+
+“Might know a lot,” Mark wrinkled his brow. “What do you say?” he turned
+to the others. “No trade?”
+
+“No trade, I’d say,” was Florence’s quick response.
+
+“Al—alright. No trade.” Mary swallowed hard. She had wanted to be near
+town.
+
+“Whatever you children want,” agreed the meek little mother. Life had
+pushed her about so long she was quite willing to take the strong arm of
+her son and to say, “You lead the way.”
+
+“It’s a lot like playing a hunch,” Mark laughed uncertainly. “After all,
+the claim we got is the claim we drew. Looks like God intended it that
+way. Besides there’s old Boss. We couldn’t—”
+
+“No, we couldn’t do without her,” Mary exclaimed. And so the matter was
+settled. Somewhere out there where the sun set would be their home.
+
+Two hours later Florence and Mary were enjoying a strange ride. From some
+unsuspected source, the Indian girl had secured five shaggy dogs. These
+were hitched, not to a sled, for there was no snow, but to a narrow
+three-wheeled cart equipped with auto wheels. Whence had come those auto
+wheels? Florence did not ask, enough that they eased their way over the
+bumps along the narrow, uneven trail that might, in time, become a road.
+
+The land they were passing over fascinated Mary, who had an eye for the
+beautiful. Now they passed through groves of sweet-scented, low-growing
+fir and spruce, now watched the pale green and white of quaking asp, and
+now went rolling over a low, level, treeless stretch where the early
+grass turned all to a luscious green, and white flowers stood out like
+stars.
+
+The surprise of their journey came when, after passing through a wide
+stretch of timber, they arrived quite suddenly upon an open space.
+
+“A clearing! A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”
+
+It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect,
+young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin,
+standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many
+a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the
+clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks
+swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.
+
+“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence
+across the threshold of the cabin.
+
+The large room they entered was almost bare. A rustic table, two
+home-made chairs, a great sheet-iron barrel, fashioned into a stove, a
+few dishes in the corner, a rusted frying pan and a kettle, that was
+about all. Yet, strangely enough, as Florence tiptoed across the
+threshold she found herself listening for the slow tick-tock, tick-tock,
+of an old-fashioned clock. With all its desolation there was somehow
+about the place an air of “home.”
+
+“Oh!” Mary breathed deeply. Then again, “Oh!”
+
+A stout ladder led to a tall loft where a bed might, for all they could
+tell, be waiting. At the back was a door opening into the small kitchen.
+
+“Home,” Florence breathed again.
+
+“Home,” Mary echoed.
+
+Then together they tiptoed out into the sunlight.
+
+Quite unexpectedly, the Indian girl spoke. “This,” she said, spreading
+her arms wide to take in the cabin, the clearing and the lake beyond,
+“this is it.”
+
+“Thi—this is what?” Mary stammered.
+
+“This,” replied the girl, “is your land.”
+
+“No!” Florence exclaimed. “It can’t be.”
+
+“But yes, it is your farm.” The girl smiled a happy smile. “This is the
+number you drew.”
+
+“Ours!” Florence whispered hoarsely. “An abandoned cabin, a clearing, a
+lake! All ours! And to think, we nearly missed it!” Then, quite wild with
+joy, she surprised the shy Indian girl by catching her up in her arms and
+kissing her on the cheek.
+
+At that very moment, as if it were part of some strange drama, there
+sounded from the edge of the clearing a loud: “Get up! Go ’long there!”
+and a traveling rig as strange as their own burst from the edge of the
+timber.
+
+A moment later, a little man on a high-wheeled, wobbly cart, shouted,
+“Whoa, January!” to his shaggy horse, then sat for a full moment staring
+at the three girls.
+
+“You’re some of them new settlers?” he said at last.
+
+Florence nodded. She was too much surprised to do more. The man, whose
+whiskers had grown for months all untrimmed and whose hair fell to his
+shoulders, looked as if he might have stepped from an illustration of Rip
+Van Winkle.
+
+“This your place?” he asked. Again the girl nodded.
+
+“Well,” his eyes swept the horizon, “you’re lucky maybe—and then again
+maybe not. There’s the clearin’ an’ the cabin, but maybe the cabin’s
+haunted.
+
+“No—no, not by ghosts!” he held up a hand. “By people who once lived
+here. It’s a notion of mine, this business of houses being haunted by
+living folks.
+
+“But then,” his voice dropped. “Mebby they’re dead. Some sort of
+foreigners they was, the ones that lived in this cabin. Came here durin’
+the war. Lot of queer ones in the valley them days. Deserters, some of
+’em. Some dodgin’ the draft. Some foreign spies.
+
+“Big man, that one,” he nodded toward the cabin. “Big woman. Hard
+workers. Not much to say for themselves.
+
+“One day they’d gone. Where? Why? No one knows. Spies, maybe. Government
+boat at Anchorage just at that time. Shot ’em, like as not, for spies.”
+
+Florence shuddered.
+
+“Maybe not,” the man went on. “Might come back—Chicaski was the name.
+Russians.”
+
+“If—if they come back, can they claim the cabin?” Florence was thrown
+into sudden consternation.
+
+“No-o. I guess not. Didn’t have no legal claim on it like as not. There’s
+other deserted cabins in the valley, lots of ’em. Folks got discouraged
+and quit. Raise plenty of things to eat. Can’t sell a thing. No market.
+Trap fox and mink, that’s all you can sell. Folks want things that don’t
+grow on land.
+
+“Got to git along,” he exclaimed, clucking to his horse. “Live back there
+five miles, I do. I’ll be seein’ you.
+
+“Git up! Go ’long there!” The strange little man gave his shaggy horse a
+light tap with the rein and the odd outfit went rattling away.
+
+“Peter Piper,” said the Indian girl, nodding after the man.
+
+“You mean that’s his name?” Florence asked in surprise.
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+“Oh!” Mary exclaimed. “And did he pick a peck of prickly pears?”
+
+The Indian girl stared at her until they all burst into fits of laughter.
+
+For all that, it was a sober Florence who journeyed back to Palmer.
+Strange words were passing through her mind. “Maybe it’s haunted. Raise
+anything. Can’t sell anything. No market—you want things that don’t grow
+on the ground.” Her world seemed to have taken on a whirling motion that,
+like clouds blown by the wind, showed first a bright, then a darker side.
+What was to come of it all?
+
+“A ticket to adventure,” she thought at last. “Perhaps that man was more
+right than he knew.”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+                       SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS
+
+
+Three days later Florence found herself seated on the shore of the little
+lake that lay at the edge of their claim. She was alone. “How still it
+is,” she whispered. Not a leaf moved. The dark surface of the lake lay
+before her like black glass.
+
+“The land of great silence,” she thought. She shuddered and knew not why.
+
+This was to her a strange world. All her life she had known excitement.
+The rattle of elevated trains, the honk of auto horns, the drum of
+airplane motors, all these seemed still to sound in her ears.
+
+“Rivers,” she whispered thoughtfully, “have eddies. There the water that
+has been rushing madly on comes to rest. Do lives have eddies? Has my
+life moved into an eddy?”
+
+She did not enjoy the thought. Adventure, thrills, suspense, mystery,
+these were her favorite words. How could one find them here? And yet,
+there was the cabin that lay just up the rise. Their cabin now, it had
+belonged to others. Russians probably, spies perhaps.
+
+“What if they come back?” Mary had whispered during their return journey
+from that first visit. “What if they demand the cabin?”
+
+“We’ll throw them out,” Florence had said, making a savage gesture. “I
+wonder if we would?” had been Mary’s reply. Florence wondered about that
+now. She wondered about many things. Why had she come to this place at
+all? Because of her love for the little family, her relatives, Mary,
+Mark, and their mother. Could love make people do things? She wondered.
+Could it make them do slow, hard, drudging, everyday things? If it could,
+how long would that last?
+
+The thoughts that came to her there were neither sad nor bitter. They
+were such dreamy thoughts as come after a long day of toil. They had
+worked, all of them; oh! how they had worked getting settled!
+
+“I—I’d like to go back, back to the city to the wild romance of many
+people!” she cried to the empty air of night.
+
+Then, of a sudden, she realized that she did not wish to go back, but
+rather to go on, on, on, on into the North. For, as she sat there she
+seemed to see again the little man, Mr. Il-ay-ok, and to hear him say,
+“Tom Kennedy, yes, I know him,” and Tom Kennedy was her long-lost
+grandfather.
+
+“Yes,” she exclaimed, “and I shall go!” Springing to her feet, she spread
+her arms wide. Seeking out the north star, she faced the land over which
+it hung. “Yes, Tom Kennedy, my grandfather, I am coming.
+
+“But not now—not now,” she murmured. “One thing at a time. I have given
+my word. I am to help these others win a home. Adventure, thrills,
+mystery, romance,” she repeated slowly, “can they be here?”
+
+Then as if in answer to her query, there came a faint sound. It grew
+louder, came closer, the night call of wild geese.
+
+“How—how perfect!” she breathed. “The lake, the damp night air, the
+silence, then a call from the sky.”
+
+She waited. She listened. The speeding flock came closer. At last they
+were circling. They would land. She caught the rush of wings directly
+over her head, then heard the faintest of splashes.
+
+“Happy landing!”
+
+But not for long. She was creeping silently away. They were pioneers.
+Pioneers lived off the land. Here was promise of roast goose for tomorrow
+dinner. Too bad to spoil romance, but life must go on.
+
+Slipping up to the cabin, she took Mark’s gun from its place beside the
+door. With her heart beating a tattoo against her ribs, she crept back.
+
+Closer and closer she crept until at last she lay, quite still, among the
+tall grass that skirted the pond.
+
+“Where are they?” she whispered to herself. No answer, save the distant
+flapping of wings. How was one to shoot a wild goose he could not see?
+
+“Ah, well,” she thought. “I can wait. There will be a moon.”
+
+Wait she did. Once again the strangely silent night, like some great,
+friendly ghost, seemed to enfold her in its arms. Far away loomed the
+mountains, close at hand spread the plains, and over all silence. Only
+now and again this silence was broken by the flapping of wings, a sudden
+challenging scream, the call that told her a rich dinner still awaited
+her.
+
+At last the moon crept over the white crested mountains. It turned the
+lake into a sheet of silver. Dark spots moved across that sheet. They
+came closer and closer. Thirty yards they were from shore, now twenty
+yards, and now ten yards. The girl caught one long sighing breath. Then,
+bang! Bang! Both barrels spoke.
+
+A moment later, waist deep, the girl waded for the shore. In each hand
+she carried a dead bird, two big, fat geese. Tomorrow there would be a
+feast. Romance? Adventure? Well, perhaps, a little. But much more was to
+come. She felt sure of that now. Her heart leaped as she hurried forward
+to meet Mark and Mary, who were racing toward her demanding what all the
+shooting was about.
+
+“A feast!” Mary cried joyously. “A real pioneer feast. Thanksgiving in
+June! The Pilgrim Fathers have nothing on us.”
+
+Such a feast as it was! Roast wild goose with dressing, great brown baked
+potatoes, slashed and filled with sweet home-made butter, all this topped
+with cottage pudding smothered in maple sauce.
+
+“Who says pioneering is a hard life?” Mark drawled when the meal was
+over.
+
+“It couldn’t be with such a glorious cook,” Florence smiled at her aunt.
+
+When, at last, she crept up to her bed in the loft that night, she was
+conscious of an unusual stiffness in her joints. Little wonder this, for
+all day long she had wielded a grubbing hoe, tearing out the roots of
+stubborn young trees. They were preparing their land for the plow. They
+would raise a crop if no one else among the new settlers did. What crops?
+That had not been fully decided.
+
+As Florence lay staring at the shadowy rafters she fell to musing about
+what life might be like if one remained in this valley year after year.
+“A farm of your own,” she thought, “cows, chickens, pigs, a husband,
+children.” Laughing softly, she turned on her side and fell asleep.
+
+Five days later their first real visitor arrived. She was Mrs. Swenson, a
+short, plump farm mother and old-time settler of the valley. She had
+lived here for fifteen years.
+
+Florence, who was churning while Mary and her mother were away in the
+town, gave her an enthusiastic welcome. The handle of the old-fashioned
+dasher churn went swish-swash.
+
+“Just keep right on churnin’,” Mrs. Swenson insisted. “You don’t dare
+stop or the butter won’t come.
+
+“It’s the strangest thing!” her eyes roved about the large room. “The
+Chicaskis—that was the name of the people who built this cabin—they
+disappeared, you might say, overnight.”
+
+“Oh! Did you know them?” the swish-swash stopped for a space of seconds.
+
+“Well, yes and no,” Mrs. Swenson smiled an odd smile. “No one got to know
+them very well. They left on foot,” she leaned forward in her chair.
+“They’d had a horse. They sold that to Tim Huston. So away they went,
+each of them with satchels in both hands. That’s all they took. It’s the
+strangest thing.”
+
+She paused. The churn went swish-swash. The little tin clock in the
+corner went tick-tick-tick. Florence’s lips parted.
+
+Then her visitor spoke again: “They had other things. Wonderful things. A
+huge copper kettle and,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “seven golden
+candlesticks. Leastwise, I always thought they was gold. She always had
+’em up there above the fireplace, and how they did shine! Gold! I’m sure
+of it.
+
+“They might have took them. Maybe they did, the candlesticks, I mean. But
+that huge copper kettle. They never took that, not in a satchel.
+
+“I don’t mind admitting,” Mrs. Swenson’s tone became confidential, “that
+those of us who’ve lived around here ever since have done a lot of
+snoopin’ about this old place, lookin’ for that copper kettle and—and
+other things.
+
+“There are those who say they hid gold, lots of Russian, or maybe German
+gold, around here somewhere. But, of course, you can’t believe all you
+hear. And no one has ever found anything, not even the big copper kettle.
+So,” she settled back in her chair, “perhaps there’s nothing to it after
+all. Mighty nice cabin, though,” her tone changed. “Make you a snug home
+in winter. Not like these cabins the other settlers are building out of
+green logs. Them logs are goin’ to warp something terrible when they dry.
+Then,” she threw back her head and laughed, “then the children will be
+crawlin’ through the cracks, and with the temperature at thirty
+below—think what that will be like!”
+
+Florence did think. She shuddered at the very mention of it, and
+whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the good God who had guided
+them to their snug cabin at the edge of the clearing beside that gem of a
+lake.
+
+At thought of it all, she gave herself an imaginary hug. From without
+came the steady pop-pop-pop of a gasoline motor. Mark was driving a small
+tractor, plowing their clearing. They were to have a crop this first
+year, for it was still June. Few settlers would have crops. They were
+lucky.
+
+She looked at her torn and blistered hand, then heaved a sigh of content.
+Those small trees had been stubborn, some had been thorny. It had been a
+heartbreaking job, but now all that was over. The tractor chugging
+merrily outside was music to her weary soul.
+
+The tractor? That, too, had been a streak of luck. Or was it luck? Mark
+had always loved fine machinery. Because of this he had made it his
+business for years to learn all about trucks, tractors, mine hoists,
+motor-boats, and all else that came within his narrow horizon. When he
+had asked down at Palmer about the use of a tractor the man in charge had
+said: “Over yonder they are. Not assembled yet. Put one up and you can
+use it.”
+
+“Sure. I’ll do that,” Mark grinned. And he did.
+
+Then they had wanted him to stay and set up others. He had turned his
+back on this promising position with good pay. He had come to this land
+to make a home for his family, and he was determined not to turn back. So
+here was the clearing, ten acres nearly plowed. A short task the
+harrowing would be. And then what should they plant?
+
+“I’ll ask Mrs. Swenson about that after a while,” Florence promised
+herself. Mrs. Swenson had come a long way and was to stay for dinner.
+Florence had raised biscuits and a large salmon baking in the oven of the
+stove they had brought up from Palmer. They were to have one more royal
+feast. Three other guests were to arrive soon.
+
+She smiled as she opened the oven door, releasing a wave of heat and
+delightful odors of cooking things.
+
+“Mr. McQueen’s an old dear,” she thought. “He’ll be the godfather of our
+little settlement. I’m sure of that.”
+
+Yes, the newly arrived settler whose land joined theirs at the back was
+an interesting old man. Gray haired and sixty, he stood straight as a
+ramrod, six feet four in his stockings. Strong, brave, wise with the
+wisdom that comes only with years, he would indeed prove a grand
+counsellor.
+
+And there was Dave, his son, just turned twenty. “Slow, silent, steady
+going, hard working, dependable,” had been Florence’s instant snap-shot
+of his character; nor was she likely to be wrong.
+
+Then, there was Bill Vale, whose land joined them on the west. How
+different was Bill! A dreamer, at twenty-two he was more a boy, less a
+man, than Dave. And Bill’s mother, who adored him, agreed with him in
+every detail. The girl’s brow wrinkled as she thought of Bill and his
+mother. How were such people to get on in a hard, new land? But then,
+what was the good of shouldering the problems of others? They had
+problems of their own. What were they to plant? That was their immediate
+problem and a large one.
+
+
+The meal was over and they were all seated before the broad, screened
+door, looking away at the lake, blue as the sky, when Florence asked a
+question:
+
+“Mrs. Swenson, what shall we plant?”
+
+Mrs. Swenson did not reply at once. The dinner they had eaten was a rich
+and jolly one, just such a dinner as Florence could prepare. The day was
+warm. Mrs. Swenson was fat and chubby. Perhaps she had all but fallen
+asleep.
+
+“Mrs. Swenson,” Florence repeated, louder this time, “what shall we
+plant?”
+
+“What’s that?” the good lady started. “Plant? Why, almost anything. Peas,
+beans, carrots, beets, some oats and barley for your cow. May not get
+ripe, but you cut it for fodder. Soy beans are good, too. And potatoes!
+You should have seen our potatoes last year, four hundred bushels on an
+acre!”
+
+“Four hundred on an acre!” Florence stared. “That would be four thousand
+on our ten acres if we planted it all to potatoes. Four thousand at how
+much a bushel, Mrs. Swenson?”
+
+“Why, dear, at nothing at all!” Mrs. Swenson exclaimed. “You can’t sell
+’em. We haven’t a market. A few go to Fairbanks. Those are all sold long
+ago.”
+
+No market. There it was again. Florence’s heart sank.
+
+“Potatoes and tomatoes,” Mark gave a sudden start. His face lighted as
+the earth lights when the sun slips from behind a cloud.
+
+“No,” said Mrs. Swenson, quite emphatically. “Not tomatoes. You’ll get
+huge vines and blossoms, beautiful blossoms, that’s all.”
+
+“Tomatoes,” Mark repeated with a slow, dreamy smile. “Bushels and bushels
+of tomatoes.”
+
+Mrs. Swenson stared at him in hurt surprise. “No tomatoes,” she said
+again.
+
+Florence favored Mark with a sidewise glance. She had seen that look on
+his face before two or three times and always something had come of it,
+something worth while. Like a song at sunrise, it warmed her heart.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, the subject was changed. “I don’t see what’s the
+good of a market. Not just now,” Bill Vale drawled. “The government’s
+willing to provide us everything we need to eat or wear, and a lot of
+things besides. Mother and I are getting a gasoline motor to run the
+washing machine and a buzz-saw. No freezing at twenty below sawing wood
+for me.”
+
+“Nor me,” laughed Dave McQueen. “I aim to work too fast on our old
+cross-cut saw to have time to freeze.”
+
+“Fact is, Bill,” Mark put in, “in the end we’ve got to pay for all these
+things.”
+
+“Yes,” Bill laughed lightly. “Got thirty years to pay, start in five
+years.”
+
+“Well,” the older McQueen drawled. “Five years have rolled round a dozen
+times in my lifetime. They all seemed strangely short. And when the
+payments start, they’ll be coming round with ominous regularity. Mark and
+Florence here have the right idea—keep debts down and get proceeds
+rolling in at the earliest possible moment.”
+
+“Tomatoes,” Mark said dreamily. “Bushels and bush—”
+
+At that they all started to their feet. From somewhere just out of their
+view had come the loud heehaw, heehaw of a donkey.
+
+“What?” Florence sprang out the door. Then her lips parted in a smile,
+for there before her stood one more odd character from this strange new
+world: the oddest, she thought, of them all.
+
+Tall, slim, white-haired, an old man sat astride a burro. And behind him
+came two other burros heavily laden with packs. From one pack protruded
+the handles of a pick and a shovel.
+
+“A forty-niner,” Florence thought.
+
+“A real old sourdough Alaskan prospector!” Bill exclaimed, wild with
+enthusiasm.
+
+“Whoa! Hello!” the old man shouted in one breath. “People livin’ here!
+That’s bad for me. I’ve been camping here as I came and went for a long
+spell.”
+
+“The latch-string is still on the outside,” Florence laughed a welcome.
+“We’ve got hot raised biscuits,” she encouraged. “Hot raised biscuits,
+sweet, home-churned butter and plenty of coffee.”
+
+“Hot raised biscuits.” The man passed a hand before his eyes. “And sweet
+butter. Haven’t heard those words in twenty years. Came to Alaska during
+the rush in ’97. Just out of college then. Been prospecting for gold ever
+since. Found it twice. It’s all gone now. But there’s gold in them
+hills.” His face lighted as he looked away at the snowy peaks. “Gold,” he
+repeated softly. “Sure,” his voice changed, the light in his eyes faded.
+“Sure. Hot biscuits and sweet butter. Sure, I’ll stop and rest awhile.”
+
+“Well, folks,” Mark stood looking away at his partly plowed field. “I’ve
+got to get back to work. Season’s short. Must get in our seed.”
+
+“Bill,” he slapped the tall boy on the back, “you’ve got an acre or two
+that’s nearly clear. You get busy and root out the brush. Then I’ll plow
+it for you.”
+
+“Yeah, maybe.” Bill scarcely heard. His eyes were on the prospector’s
+pack.
+
+“How about offering the same to us?” Dave asked.
+
+“Sure,” Mark exclaimed. “But you got a hard forty to clear, all timber,
+looks like.”
+
+“We’ve picked a spot,” Dave drawled. “We’ve got strong backs and weak
+minds, Dad and I have,” he laughed a roaring laugh. “We’ll have a garden
+spot ready in two days. You’ll see.”
+
+Florence flashed Dave an approving smile.
+
+“Mr. McQueen,” she said quietly, turning to Dave’s father, “we’re having
+some of the folks in for a sing Sunday afternoon. Mary will play our reed
+organ, you know. Per—perhaps you’d like to say a few words to the folks.”
+
+“Why, yes, I—” the old man hesitated. “I—I’m no orator, but I might say a
+word or two. Good, old-fashioned time we’ll have.”
+
+“Sure will!” Mark agreed.
+
+While the others returned to their work, Bill lingered behind to talk
+with the prospector. After laying out a generous supply of food, Florence
+retired to the kitchen and the dinner dishes. Through the door there
+drifted scraps of Bill’s talk with the old man.
+
+“Ever really find gold?”... “Lots of times.”... “Boy! That must have been
+great! I’m getting me a pick and shovel right now.”... “Take your time
+about that, son,” the old man counselled. “But there’s gold. Plenty of
+it. I’ll find it this time. Sure to.” His voice rose.
+
+“Any bears up there?” Bill asked.
+
+“Plenty of ’em. But I don’t bother ’em and they don’t bother me.”
+
+“I’d bother them,” Bill cried.
+
+“Yes,” Florence thought. “Bill would bother them.” She remembered the
+high-powered rifle that decorated Bill’s tent.
+
+“Temptation,” she thought, “does not belong to great cities alone. Here
+boys are tempted to go after big game, to search for gold, to chase
+rainbows.” Already Bill’s young brain was on fire.
+
+To her consternation, she suddenly realized that her blood too was
+racing. Had she caught the gleam of gold on the horizon? Would she listen
+to the call of wild adventure until it led her away into those
+snow-capped mountains?
+
+“No,” she whispered fiercely. She had come to this valley to help those
+she loved, Mary, Mark, and their mother, to assist them in securing for
+themselves a home. She would cling to that purpose. She _would_! She
+stamped her foot so hard the dishes rattled and Bill in the other room
+gave a sudden start.
+
+“Probably thought I was a bear,” she laughed low.
+
+Then a thought struck her with the force of a blow. “He said he’d been in
+Alaska since ’97. That old man said that,” she whispered. “Perhaps—” She
+sprang to the door.
+
+“Mister—er,” she hesitated.
+
+“Name’s Dale—Malcomb Dale,” the old man rose and bowed.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Dale,” Florence caught her breath. “You said you had been in
+Alaska a long time. Did you ever know a man named Tom Kennedy?”
+
+“Tom Kennedy! Sure! A fine man, but like the rest of us.” He smiled
+oddly. “A little touched in the head, you might say, always looking for
+gold.”
+
+“And did—did he ever find it?”
+
+“Yes, once, I’m told. Let’s see. That was, well, never mind what year.
+They found gold, he and his partner, found it way back of the beyond, you
+might say, and—”
+
+“And—” Florence prompted.
+
+“And they lost it.”
+
+“Lost—lost it?” Florence stared.
+
+“His partner, Dan Nolan, became ill. Tom Kennedy dragged him all the way
+to Nome on a small sled. No dogs. Stormed all that time. No trail,
+nothing. Got lost, nearly froze, but he came through. Powerful man, Tom
+Kennedy. Good man, too, best ever. True a man as ever lived.”
+
+“Oh, I—I’m glad.” Unbidden the words slipped out.
+
+The prospector stared at her. “I said they lost the mine, never found it
+again. Nolan died.”
+
+“And Tom Kennedy, he—”
+
+“He’s alive, far as I know. He’s always hunting that mine. Never found it
+yet. But then,” the old man sighed, “there’s plenty of us like that up
+here where the sun forgets to set in summer. Gets in your blood.
+
+“Well,” he put out a hand, “I’ll get my burros started. I—I’ll be goin’,”
+his voice was rich and mellow with years. “I shall not forget you. And
+when I strike it rich—” he hesitated, then smiled a smile that was like
+the sunset, “I’ll trade you gold and diamonds for raised biscuits and
+sweet butter.” He stared for a moment, as if seeing a vision of the past,
+then bowed himself out. He was gone. Bill went with him. How far he would
+go the girl could only guess.
+
+Left alone with her thoughts, Florence found herself wondering about many
+things. Was there truly no market for the things they raised? As the
+months and years rolled on, would there still be no market? Fairbanks, a
+small city to the north of them, was in need of many kinds of food. Could
+they not supply some of these needs?
+
+Then, of a sudden, she recalled Mark’s words, “Tomatoes. Bushels and
+bushels of tomatoes.” Why had he insisted, why repeated this word, even
+after Mrs. Swenson had said, “no tomatoes”? Mark had something in mind.
+What was it? She could not guess, but dared hope.
+
+She recalled Mrs. Swenson’s words about the mysterious pair that had,
+with so much labor, erected this cabin, cleared this land, then left it
+all. “I wonder why they left?”
+
+Then, “Seven golden candlesticks,” she murmured, “and a great copper
+kettle. We could use that kettle.” After that, in spite of her desire to
+be practical, she found herself searching the place from foundation to
+the loft. All she found was an ancient Dutch oven, rusted beyond
+reclaiming.
+
+“All the same,” she thought, “it _is_ strange what became of that copper
+kettle and—“ She did not allow the thought to finish itself. She had been
+about to think “gold.” She knew that in this land one must not dream—at
+least, not too much.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+                            THE GREAT STUMP
+
+
+There was one thing about their little farm that, from the first time she
+saw it, had seemed strange to Florence. Back of the house stood the stump
+of a forest giant. Fully three feet across it stood there, roots embedded
+deep, while all about it were pigmies of the tree world. There was not a
+tree on the farm that measured more than thirty feet tall. Why? Perhaps a
+fire had destroyed the primeval forest. Yet here was this great stump.
+
+She tried to picture the tree towering above its fellows. She found
+herself wishing that it had not been felled by some woodsman’s axe. Why
+had they cut it down? That they might build its logs into the house was a
+natural answer, yet the house contained no such logs. Well, here was a
+riddle.
+
+On top of the stump the original dwellers in the cabin had placed a
+massive flower-box. Somehow, they had secured wild morning-glory seeds
+and planted them there. These must, from year to year, have replanted
+themselves, for, even in June, the vines were beginning to droop over the
+edge of the box. By autumn the great stump would be a mass of flowers.
+However others might regard wild morning-glories, Florence knew she would
+adore them.
+
+She was standing staring at the stump and thinking of it with renewed
+wonder when Mark came in from his plowing.
+
+“There! That’s done,” he exclaimed as he dropped down upon a bench. “Now
+for the planting.” Then, to his cousin’s renewed astonishment, he said.
+“Bushels and bushels of tomatoes.”
+
+“Mark!” exclaimed Florence. “Why do you keep on insisting that we can
+raise tomatoes here when Mrs. Swenson, who has lived here so long, says
+we can’t?”
+
+“Because we can,” Mark grinned broadly.
+
+“How?”
+
+“Sit down and stop staring at that stump as if it hid some strange secret
+and I’ll tell you.”
+
+Florence sat down.
+
+“You know the way I have of poking about in all sorts of odd corners
+wherever I am,” Mark began. “Well, while we were in Anchorage I got to
+prowling round and stumbled upon a small greenhouse set way back on a
+side street where very few people would see it.
+
+“Well, you know you’ll always find something interesting in a greenhouse.
+Some new vegetable or flower, a strange form of moss or fungus, or even a
+new species of plant pest. So I went in.”
+
+“And you—”
+
+“I found tomato plants all in blossom, dozens and dozens of them in
+pots.”
+
+“But why—”
+
+“That’s what I asked the man—why? He said he’d raised them for some
+gardener in a town down south, half way to Seattle. Something had gone
+wrong with the man or his garden. He couldn’t use them so—”
+
+“There they were.”
+
+“Yes,” Mark agreed with uncommon enthusiasm. “There they were, and there,
+I am quite sure, they are still. They can be bought cheap, probably four
+hundred plants in pots. Must be tomatoes big as marbles on them by now.”
+
+“And you know,” he went on excitedly, “when you set out potted plants the
+blossoms and small tomatoes do not drop off, they just keep on growing.
+And here, where the sun will be shining almost twenty-four hours a day,
+they should just boom along. Have ripe tomatoes in six weeks. Then how
+those well-to-do people in Anchorage, Seward and Fairbanks will go after
+them! Tomatoes!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms wide. “Bushels and
+bushels of tomatoes; ripe, red gold!”
+
+“But if there is a frost?”
+
+“Yes,” Mark said with a drop in his voice. “A June frost. That happens
+sometimes. It’s a chance we’ll have to take. I’m going to Anchorage for
+those plants tomorrow.
+
+“You know,” his voice dropped, “I can’t see all this going in debt for
+the things you eat and wear, to say nothing of tools, machinery, and all
+that. It’s got to be paid sometime and it’s going to come hard.
+
+“It’s all right if you have to do it, better than getting no start at
+all. I’m not criticising anyone else. But, as for the Hughes family,
+we’re going to pay as we go if we can, and who knows but those tomatoes
+will pay for our winter’s supply of flour, sugar, and all the rest?”
+
+“Who knows?” Florence echoed enthusiastically.
+
+Six weeks had passed when once again Florence sat beside the lake. There
+was a moon tonight. It hung like a magic lantern above the snow-capped
+mountain. The lake reflected both mountains and moon so perfectly that
+for one who looked too long, it became not a lake at all, but mountains
+and moon.
+
+Florence had looked too long. She was dreaming of wandering among those
+jagged peaks in an exciting search. A search for gold. And why not? Had
+not the aged prospector appeared once more at their door? Had she not
+feasted him on hot-cakes and wild honey? Had he not repaid her with fresh
+tales of her grandfather’s doings in the very far north?
+
+“I shall go in search of him,” she told herself now. “A search for a
+grandfather,” she laughed. Well, why not? He had lost a rich gold mine.
+She was strong as a man, was Florence. No man, she was sure, could follow
+a dog team farther nor faster than she. She would find Tom Kennedy and
+together they would find that mine.
+
+“But first this!” she sighed as on other occasions, flinging her arms
+wide to take in the claim, the lake, and the cabin.
+
+“First what?” a voice close at hand said.
+
+Startled, she sprang to her feet. “Oh! It’s you, Mark.” She made a place
+for him beside her on a broad flat rock.
+
+“First your little farm,” she said soberly. “Tomatoes and potatoes and
+all the rest. A shelter for old Boss, everything that will go to make
+this a home for you and Mary and your mother.”
+
+“And you,” Mark’s voice was low.
+
+“No. Not for me, Mark. For you this is life. I understand that. I admire
+you for it. To have a home, and a small farm, to add to that year after
+year, to change the log cabin for a fine home, to have cattle and sheep
+and broad pasture and—” she hesitated, then went on, “and children, boys
+and girls, happy in their home. All this is your life and will be years
+on end. But for me, it is only—what should I say—an episode, one
+adventure among many, a grand and glorious experience.”
+
+“Yes,” Mark said, and there was kindness in his voice. “Yes, I suppose
+that is it. Awfully good of you to share the hardest year with us.”
+
+“What do you mean hardest?” Florence demanded. “It’s been glorious. And
+we are succeeding so well. Already the tomatoes are up to my shoulders.
+What a crop they will be!”
+
+“Yes,” Mark’s voice was husky. “We’ve been lucky.”
+
+For a time there was silence. Then Mark spoke again. “There was a time,
+and not so long ago, when I thought to myself, ‘Life’s stream must grow
+darker and deeper as we go along.’ But now—well—” he did not finish.
+
+“Now,” Florence laughed from sheer joy of living. “Now you must know that
+it grows lighter and brighter.”
+
+“Lighter and brighter,” Mark laughed softly. “Those are fine words,
+mighty fine.”
+
+“They’re grand words,” the girl cried. “True words, too. It—why, life is
+like a summer morning! Only day before yesterday I went out to find old
+Boss before dawn. It was more than half dark. Clouds along the horizon
+were all black. They looked ominous, threatening. Soon, some power behind
+them began to set them on fire. Redder and redder they shone, then they
+began to fade. Salmon colored, deep pink, pale pink, they faded and faded
+until like a ghost’s winding sheet they vanished. Lighter and brighter.
+Oh, Mark! how grand and beautiful life can be!” Leaping to her feet she
+did a wild dance, learned in some gypsy camp with her good friend, Petite
+Jeanne; then, dropping to her place beside the boy, she looked away into
+the night. For her, darkness held no terror, for well she knew there
+should be a brighter dawn.
+
+Of a sudden, as they sat there, each busy with thoughts of days that were
+to come, they were startled by a sudden loud splash.
+
+“Oh!” Florence jumped.
+
+“Only some big old land-locked salmon,” Mark chuckled.
+
+“I didn’t know—”
+
+“That they were here? Oh, sure! I’ve heard them before.”
+
+“Mark, I love to fish. Couldn’t we fix up something?”
+
+“Sure. There’s a line or two in the cabin and some three gang hooks. I’ll
+cut the handle off a silver-plated spoon. It’ll spin all right without
+the handle. That’ll fool ’em. You’ll see!”
+
+She did see. The very next day she saw what Mark’s inventive skill would
+do and, seeing, she found fresh adventure that might have ended badly had
+not some good angel guided one young man to an unusually happy landing.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+                             HAPPY LANDING
+
+
+Dull gray as a slate roof, the lake lay before Florence next morning.
+There was a threat of rain. From time to time, like scurrying wild
+things, little ripples ran across the water.
+
+“Just the time for a try at that big old salmon trout,” she exulted.
+
+They had a boat, of a sort. A great hollow log brought down from the
+hills, with its ends boarded up. It leaked, and it steered like a balky
+mule, but what of that? She would have a try at trolling.
+
+Dropping on her knees at the back of the boat, she seized the paddle,
+then went gliding out across the gray, rippling water. Quite deftly she
+dropped in her silver spoon and played out her line.
+
+After that, for a full quarter hour, she paddled about in ever-widening
+circles. Once her heart skipped a beat. A strike! No, only a weed. She
+had come too near the shore. Casting the weed contemptuously away, she
+struck out for deeper water.
+
+Round and round she circled. Darker grew the surface of the lake. Going
+to rain, all right. Clouds were closing in, dropping lower and lower.
+Well, let it rain. Perhaps—
+
+Zing! What was that? Something very like a sledge-hammer hit her line.
+
+“Got him!
+
+“No. Oh, gee! No.” He was gone.
+
+Was he, though? One more wild pull. Then again a slack line. What sort of
+fish was this?
+
+Line all out. She would take in a little slack. Her hand gripped the line
+when again there came that mighty tug.
+
+“Got you,” she hissed.
+
+And so she had, but for how long? The line, she knew, was strong enough.
+But the rod and reel? They were mere playthings. Bought for perch and
+rock bass, not for thirty-pound salmon. Would they do their part? She was
+to see.
+
+Dropping her paddle, she settled low in her uncertain craft. A sudden
+rush of the fish might at any moment send her plunging into the lake. Not
+that she minded a ducking. She was a powerful swimmer. But could one land
+a salmon that way? She doubted this. And she did want that fish. What a
+grand feast! She’d get a picture, too. Send it to her friends—who
+believed her lost in a hopeless wilderness.
+
+“Yes, I—I’ve got to get you.” She began rolling in. The reel was
+pitifully small. She had not done a dozen turns when the tiny handle
+slipped from her grasp.
+
+Zing! sang the reel. Only by dropping the rod between her knees and
+pressing hard could she halt the salmon’s mad flight.
+
+“Ah,” she breathed, “I got you.”
+
+This time, throwing all the strength of her capable hands into the task,
+she reeled in until, with a sudden rush the fish broke water.
+
+“Oh! Oh!” she stared. “What a beauty! But look! You’re up, head, tail and
+all. How’re you hooked, anyway?”
+
+Before she could discover the answer he was down and away. Once again the
+reel sang. Once more its handle bored a hole in her right knee.
+
+“Dum!” she exclaimed as her boat began to move. “He’s heading for the
+weeds. He—he’ll snag himself off.”
+
+The boat gained momentum. Reel as she might, the fish gained ground. Deep
+under the surface were pike-weeds. She knew the spot, twenty yards away,
+perhaps. Now fifteen. Now—
+
+Wrapping the line about her shoe, she seized the paddle and began
+paddling frantically.
+
+“Ah! That gets you.” Slowly, reluctantly, the fish gave ground. Then,
+driven to madness, he broke water a full fifty yards from the boat. This
+move gave the line a sudden slack. The boat shot sidewise and all but
+overturned. In a desperate effort to right herself, the girl dropped her
+paddle. Before the boat had steadied itself the paddle was just out of
+her reach.
+
+“Oh, you! I’ll get you if I have to swim for it.”
+
+All this time, quite unknown to the girl, something was happening in the
+air as well as the water. There was the sound of heavy drumming overhead.
+Now it lost volume, and now picked up, but never did it quite end.
+
+Without a paddle, with her reel serving her badly, the girl was driven to
+desperation. Seizing the line, she began pulling it in hand over hand.
+This was a desperate measure; the line might break, the hook might loose
+its grip. No matter. It was her only chance.
+
+Yard by yard the line coiled up in the bottom of the boat. And now, of a
+sudden, the thunder of some powerful motor overhead grew louder. Still,
+in her wild effort to win her battle, the girl was deaf to it all.
+
+The line grew shorter and shorter, tighter and tighter. What a fish!
+Thirty yards away, perhaps, now twenty. Now—how should she land him? She
+had no gaff.
+
+That question remained unanswered, for at that instant things began to
+happen. The fish, in a last mad effort to escape, leaped full three feet
+in air. This was far too much for the crazy craft. Over it went and with
+it went the girl.
+
+That was not all; at the same instant a dark bulk loomed out of the
+clouds to come racing with the speed of thought towards the girl.
+
+“An—an airplane,” she gasped. Closing her eyes, she executed a sudden
+dive.
+
+This action would have proved futile, the pontoons of the plane sank
+deep. Fortunately, they passed some thirty feet from the spot where the
+girl disappeared.
+
+When she rose sputtering to the surface, her first thought was of the
+fish. No use. The line was slack, the salmon gone.
+
+She looked up at the plane. At that moment a young aviator was peering
+anxiously out over the fuselage.
+
+“Ah! There you are!” he beamed. “I’m awfully glad.”
+
+“Why don’t you look where you’re going? You cut my line. I lost my fish.”
+Florence was truly angry.
+
+“Fish? Oh, I see! You were fishing?” The young aviator stood up. He was
+handsome in an exciting sort of way. “But I say!” he exclaimed, “I’ll fix
+that. I’ve a whole leg of venison here in my old bus. What do you say we
+share it? Can you bake things?”
+
+“Sure, but my aunt can do it much better.” Florence climbed upon a
+pontoon to shake the water out of her hair.
+
+Five hours later, with the rain beating a tattoo on the well weathered
+roof of the cabin, they were seated about the hand-hewn table, the Hughes
+family, Florence, and the young aviator. Seven candles winked and blinked
+on the broad board. At the head sat Mark, and before him the first roast
+of wild venison the family had ever tasted. How brown and juicy it was!
+
+“Wonderful!” Florence murmured. “How did you get it?” the words slipped
+unbidden from her lips.
+
+“No secret about that,” Speed Samson, the aviator, smiled. “I’m a guide.
+Take people up into the mountains for fish and game. Just left a party up
+there. Going back in a week. It’s wonderful up there. Snow. Cold.
+Refreshing. Great! Want to go along?” He looked at Florence.
+
+“Why, I—” she hesitated.
+
+“Take you all,” his eyes swept them in a circle.
+
+“Can’t be done just now. Thanks all the same.” It was Mark who spoke.
+“We’re new here. Lots to do. Adventure will have to wait.
+
+“Of course,” he hastened to add, “I’m not talking for Florence.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you are!” the big girl flashed back. “I’m in this game the same
+as you, at least until snow flies.”
+
+“O. K.!” the aviator laughed. “When snow flies I’ll be back. Winter up
+here is the time for adventure.” He was looking now at Mary, whose dark
+eyes shone like twin stars. “I’ll take you for a long, long ride.”
+
+At that instant something rattled against the windowpane. Was it sleet
+driven by the rain or was it some spirit tapping a message, trying to
+tell Mary how long and eventful that ride would really be?
+
+Next day the smiling aviator went sailing away into a clear blue sky.
+Florence and Mary went back to their work, but things were not quite the
+same. They never are after one has dreamed a bright dream.
+
+Three days later, Florence got her fish, or was it his brother? He
+weighed twenty pounds. Of course that called for one more feast.
+Fortunately, one who works hard may enjoy a feast every day in the year
+and never waste much time. Truth is, only one who _does_ work hard can
+truly enjoy any feast to its full. The Hughes family enjoyed both work
+and wonderful food.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+                           A WANDERER RETURNS
+
+
+Florence stirred uneasily beneath the blankets. Morning was coming. A
+faint light was creeping in over the cabin loft where she and Mary slept
+in a great, home-made bed.
+
+More often than not it is a sound that disturbs our late slumbers.
+Florence had never become quite accustomed to the morning sounds about
+their little farm. All her life she had lived where boats chug-chugged in
+the harbor and auto horns sounded in the streets. Here more often than
+not it was the croak of a raven, the song of some small bird, the wild
+laugh of a loon on the lake that awoke her.
+
+Now, as a sharp suggestion of approaching winter filled the air, on more
+than one morning it was the quack-quack of some old gander of the wild
+duck tribe, flown to the lake from the far North, or the honk-honk of
+geese.
+
+All this was music to the nature-loving girl’s ear. And, of late, all of
+life seemed to her a great symphony full of beautiful melodies. The hard
+battle of summer was over. Bravely the battle had been fought. The Hughes
+family had come to this valley to win themselves a home. She was one of
+them, in spirit at least. The beginning they had made surpassed their
+expectations. Now, as she opened her eyes to find herself fully awake,
+she thought of it all.
+
+“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered low to herself, “that’s what the
+man said he was giving me. It’s been a ticket to duty and endless labor.
+And yet,” she sighed, “I’m not complaining.” A great wave of contentment
+swept over her. They were secure for the winter. That surely was
+something.
+
+“Adventure,” she laughed, silently. “Bill has had the adventure. He—”
+
+Her thoughts broke off. From somewhere, all but inaudible, a sound had
+reached her ear. More sensation than sound, she knew at once that it was
+made by no wild thing. But what could it be? She listened intently, but,
+like a song on their little battery radio, it had faded away.
+
+Yes—her thoughts went back to her neighbor—Bill Vale had sought adventure
+and had found it. With his mother still in Palmer, he had packed up a
+generous supply of food, charged to his mother’s account at the
+government commissary, and joining up with the dreamy-eyed prospector,
+Malcomb Dale, had gone away into the hills searching for gold.
+
+“Not that Bill’s mother would have objected,” Florence thought. “She
+would have said, ‘Bill is incurably romantic. The quest for gold appeals
+to him. All our desires in the end must be satisfied if we are to enjoy
+the more abundant life. Besides, what is there to do? There are six
+hundred men working in gangs. They will clear up our land for us and
+build cabins before snow flies. We shall be charged with it all, but then
+we have thirty years to pay.’ Yes, that is exactly what Bill’s mother
+would have said,” and the thought disgusted Florence not a little.
+
+So Bill had gone away into the mountains. The mountains, those glorious,
+snow-capped mountains! Florence, as she bent over her work in their large
+garden, had watched him start. And as she saw him disappear, she had, for
+the moment, envied him.
+
+Often and often, in the sweet cool of the evening, she and Mary had
+talked about how, in some breathing spell, they would borrow a horse and
+go packing away into those mountains. The breathing spell had never come.
+And now, the brief autumn was here. Winter was just around the corner.
+Florence had no regrets. Never before had she felt so happy and secure.
+
+Bill had been gone six weeks. The clearing and building crew had arrived
+while he was away. There was dead and down timber at the back of Bill’s
+lot that would have made a fine, secure cabin, had Bill been there to
+point it out. He was not there. So the cabin was built of green logs.
+Already you could see daylight through the cracks, and Bill’s mother, who
+had moved in with what to Florence seemed an unnecessary amount of
+furniture and equipment, was complaining bitterly about “the way the
+government has treated us poor folks.”
+
+Bill had returned at last. Sore-footed and ragged, his food gone, his
+high-priced rifle red with rust, he had returned triumphant. He had found
+gold. In the spring he would begin operations in a big way. Proudly he
+displayed six tiny nuggets, none of them bigger than a pea.
+
+“Seeds,” old John McQueen had called them. “Golden seeds of discontent.”
+But to Bill they were marvelous. For him they hid the cracks in their
+cabin, his unplowed field, his uncut woodpile. And, because she doted on
+her son, they hid all these things from his mother’s eyes as well—at
+least, for a time.
+
+“Poor Bill!” Florence sighed, as she snuggled down beneath the blankets.
+“He’s such a dreamer. He—”
+
+There was that strange sound again, like a speedboat motor. She laughed
+at the thought of a speedboat on their tiny lake. But now, as before, it
+faded away.
+
+Yes, with her help, the Hughes family had won. Their summer had been a
+complete success. How they had worked, morning to night. Mosquitoes and
+flies, tough sod and weeds, they had battled them all. And how they had
+been rewarded! Never had plants grown and flourished as theirs did.
+Mark’s tomatoes were a complete success. Twice, it was true, the mercury
+dropped to a point perilously near freezing and their heads rested on
+uneasy pillows. But the Alaskan weather man had been kind. Their bright
+red harvest, “bushels and bushels of tomatoes,” had come and had been
+sold at unbelievable prices. All along the Alaskan railroad, people had
+gone wild about their marvelous tomatoes.
+
+“And now,” the girl heaved another happy sigh. Now their little sodded-in
+cellar was packed full of potatoes, beets, turnips, and carrots; their
+shelves were lined with home-canned wild fruit, raspberries, blueberries,
+high bush cranberries, and their storeroom crowded with groceries, all
+paid for. What was more, a horse! “Old Nig,” bought from a discouraged
+settler, was in their small log barn. It was marvelous, truly marvelous!
+And yet, in this wild land full of possible exciting events, they had
+known no adventure.
+
+“Duty first,” John McQueen had said to her once. “And when duty is done,
+let adventure come as it may. And it _will_ come.”
+
+“Good old McQueen,” she sighed. “God surely knows all our needs. He sends
+us such men.”
+
+Suddenly her feet hit the floor with a bound. She had heard that sound
+once more. It was the drum of an airplane motor. She judged by the sound
+that it was circling for a landing, perhaps on their little lake. How
+wonderful! Was it their friend, the young aviator? Had he come for them?
+Her blood raced.
+
+“Mary!” she fairly screamed. “Wake up! An airplane! And it’s going to
+land. It’s landing right now.”
+
+They jumped into their clothes and were out on the cabin steps just in
+time to see the beautiful blue and gray airplane, graceful as any wild
+fowl, circle low to a perfect landing.
+
+With mad scurrying, wild ducks and geese were off the water and away on
+the wing, leaving the intruders to the perfect quiet of a glorious autumn
+morning.
+
+A short time later they were all at the water’s edge, Florence, Mary,
+Mark, Bill, and Dave. The hydroplane had been anchored. Three men had
+just put off in a small boat.
+
+“Hello, there,” one of them shouted. “How’s the chances for sourdough
+pancakes and coffee?” It was Speed Samson.
+
+“Fine!” Florence laughed. “Plate of hots coming up.”
+
+“This is not to be our trip.” There was a note of disappointment in
+Florence’s tone as she murmured these words to Mary. “He’s got a hunting
+party. Probably going after moose or grizzly bears.” Nevertheless, she
+was ready enough to offer to the party the true hospitality of the north.
+Soon their plates were piled high with cakes, their cups steaming with
+fragrant brown coffee.
+
+As Florence sat talking to them, one of the men, all rigged out in
+hunting belt filled with shells, riding breeches and high boots, seemed
+familiar to her. Who was he? For the life of her, she could not think.
+
+It was Mary who dispelled her doubt. “Florence,” once they were alone in
+the kitchen, she gripped her arm hard, “that man’s the one who roared at
+the little Eskimo, Mr. Il-ay-ok, back there on the dock in Anchorage.”
+
+“That’s right,” Florence’s whisper rose shrill and high. “I don’t like
+him and I don’t think I ever shall.”
+
+“Why did he hate that little man?”
+
+“Who knows?” Florence answered hastily. “Anyway, his name is Peter
+Loome.”
+
+“How—how do you know that?”
+
+Florence did not catch this, she was already hurrying away.
+
+“We’re bound for the big-game hunting ground,” one of the men was
+explaining to Mark. “Wonderful sport! Wild sheep and goats, moose and big
+brown bear!”
+
+“Man, you’re lucky!” Bill exclaimed.
+
+Mark made no response.
+
+“Your motor don’t sound just right,” Mark said as the conversation
+lagged.
+
+“What’s wrong with it?” the young pilot demanded.
+
+“Can’t quite tell,” Mark puckered his brow.
+
+“Ever fly?” The pilot looked at him sharply.
+
+“No-o. But then your motor’s just like the ones we had in some speedboats
+back in the Copper Country. I tinkered with them. You get to know by the
+sound,” Mark replied modestly.
+
+“Want to turn her over once or twice?” the pilot invited.
+
+“Sure. Be glad to.”
+
+Two hours later grim, greasy, but triumphant, Mark emerged from the
+plane. He had located the trouble and had remedied it.
+
+“Say-ee, you’re good!” the pilot was enthusiastic. “Want to go along as
+my mechanic? Grand trip! Shoot goats, bears, moose, and—”
+
+“Can’t get away just now,” said Mark quietly. “Thanks all the same.”
+
+Just the same, there was a look of longing in his eye that Florence knew
+all too well. He had two passions, had Mark. He loved growing things and
+wonderful machinery. Growing was over for this year. Dull, dreary days of
+autumn were at hand. For him, to spend two weeks or even a month watching
+over that matchless motor would be bliss.
+
+“No-o,” he repeated slowly, almost mournfully. “I can’t go. There is
+still work to be done before snow flies.”
+
+“Say!” Bill put in. “Take me. I’ll go.”
+
+“Know anything about motors?”
+
+“Sure, a lot,” Bill, never too modest, replied.
+
+“All right. Get your things.” A half hour later, Bill sailed off to one
+more adventure.
+
+“Yes,” Florence thought with a grim smile. “He’s spent two weeks felling
+green trees to cut with his new buzz-saw. Be fine wood in twelve months.
+But how about next January? Poor Bill!”
+
+Strange to say, the one thought that often haunted both Florence and Mary
+was the realization that their splendid cabin had been built by someone
+else. That this someone had hidden a big copper kettle and, perhaps,
+seven golden candlesticks near the cabin, then had gone away, did not
+seem to matter. “What if they should come back?” Florence asked herself
+over and over.
+
+Then, one bright autumn day, their dark dream came true. Busy in the
+kitchen, Florence did not notice the approach of a stranger. Only when
+she heard heavy footsteps outside did she hurry into the large front
+room. Then, through the open door, she heard a loud sigh, followed by the
+creak of a bench as a heavy person settled upon it. After that, in a
+voice she could not mistake, though she had never heard it before, there
+came: “Ah! Home at last!”
+
+“Madam Chicaski, the original owner of the cabin,” the girl thought in
+wild consternation. “She has returned!”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+                        AND THEN CAME ADVENTURE
+
+
+When you buy a house, or even a cabin in the wilderness, how much of it
+do you really buy? All of it or only part? The walls, the roof, the
+floor, surely all these are yours. But all those other things, the little
+cupboard in the corner, all carved out from logs with crude tools, but
+done so well for someone who has been loved—do you buy this too? And all
+the other delicate touches that made a house a home, can you buy these or
+do you only try to buy these and fail? It was thus that Florence thought
+as she sat dreaming in the sun outside the cabin.
+
+From within came the sound of voices. Her aunt and Madam Chicaski were
+talking. Already her aunt had come to love the company of this huge
+Russian woman who had first made this cabin into a home.
+
+A week had passed and still the woman lingered. How long would she stay?
+No one knew nor seemed to care overmuch. She insisted on working, this
+stout old woman. And how she did work! When Mark began going to the
+forest cutting dead trees and dragging them in with the tractor for the
+winter’s supply of wood, she shouldered an axe and went along. Then how
+the trees came crashing down! Even Mark was no match for her. In five
+days a great pile of wood loomed up beside the cabin. High time, too, for
+the first flurry of snow had arrived.
+
+That Madam Chicaski had a gentler side they learned as she talked beside
+the fire in the long evenings. She told of her own adventure on this very
+spot when the valley was all but unknown and life for her was new. Many
+things she told, tales that brought forth smiles and tears.
+
+One subject she never touched upon, nor was she asked to tell, what had
+become of the great copper kettle, the seven golden candlesticks and all
+else that had been left behind. “If she stays long enough, in time I
+shall know,” Florence assured herself.
+
+There were other things she did not tell. Why had she left the valley and
+how? Where was her husband now? This much was certain, she was not now in
+want. Florence had come upon her one afternoon unobserved. She was
+thumbing a large roll of bills. At the slightest sound she concealed them
+under her ample dress.
+
+At times she acted strangely. She would go to the back of the yard and
+stand, for a quarter hour or more, contemplating the great stump. Over
+this, during the summer, morning-glories had bloomed in profusion. At
+that moment it was covered only by dry and rustling vines. At such times
+as this on the Russian woman’s face was a look of devotion. “Like one
+saying her prayers,” Florence thought.
+
+There came a day when, for a time at least, all thoughts of the
+mysterious Madam Chicaski were banished from the little family’s
+thoughts. Mystery was replaced by thrilling adventure.
+
+Once again the air was filled with sound. A large, gray hydroplane came
+zooming in from the west. They were waiting at the water’s edge, the
+Hughes family and Madam, when the pilot taxied his plane close in to
+shore. Florence was not there. She was away on a visit to Palmer.
+
+“How would you like to paddle out and get me?” the pilot invited as he
+climbed out upon the fuselage.
+
+Mark rowed out in their small home-made skiff.
+
+“I’m on an errand of mercy,” the man explained at once, “and I’m going to
+need some help. Just received a message by short-wave radio that some men
+are in trouble up in the mountains.”
+
+“Hunters?” Mark suggested.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“In a blue and gray plane?” Mary’s dark eyes widened. How about Bill, she
+was thinking. Despite his shortcomings, Bill held a large place in
+slender Mary’s heart.
+
+“Any—any one hurt?” she asked.
+
+“One of the hunters has been badly handled by a bear,” the man went on.
+“Something’s gone wrong with their motor, too. They can’t bring him out.”
+
+“Bear?” said Mark. “That’s sure to be Bill. He’d march right up and shoot
+a bear in the eye.”
+
+“Yes—yes, it must be Bill,” Mary exclaimed, striving in vain to control
+her emotions. “We must do something to help him. What can we do?” Months
+shut away from the outside world had drawn their little company close
+together. Bound by bonds of friendship and mutual understanding, despite
+the faults of some, they were very close to one another.
+
+“You can help a great deal,” said the pilot, “that is,” he hesitated, “if
+you’re willing to take a chance.”
+
+“A—a chance?” Mary stammered.
+
+“Sure,” the man smiled, “you look like a good nurse. Your brother, here,
+I am told, is a fine motor mechanic. Climb in the plane and come along
+with me—both of you.”
+
+“A ticket to adventure!” The words so often repeated now echoed in Mary’s
+ears.
+
+“What do you say?” Mark turned to her.
+
+“There—there’s still work to be done,” she stammered.
+
+“The work can wait. This appears a plain call of duty.” Mark’s voice
+trembled ever so slightly.
+
+“All right. We’ll go.” Mary felt a thrill course up her spine. At the
+same instant she caught the eye of Dave Kennedy. In those fine eyes she
+read something quite wonderful, a look of admiration and yet of concern.
+
+She and Dave had become great friends. Dave was a wonderful fellow. His
+Scotch mother was small, quite frail, yet altogether lovely. When their
+logs in their cabin walls had begun to warp, Dave and his father had
+sodded it up, quite to the eaves. Now they were all set for winter.
+
+“I’ll look after your horse and cow and—and cut the wood,” Dave said
+huskily. “I only wish I might take your place.” He looked Mary squarely
+in the eye.
+
+“I’m glad you can’t,” she laughed, looking away. “I’m sure it will be a
+wonderful adventure.”
+
+“Cold up there,” suggested the pilot. “We shall need blankets and food.
+We may have to freeze in and fly out on skis.”
+
+The Hughes family was not stingy. A huge cart-load of supplies was
+carried to the water’s edge, then ferried to the airplane.
+
+“I stay,” said stout Madam Chicaski. “I stay until you come back. I look
+after everything.” Mary’s heart warmed to this powerful old woman.
+
+“Goodbye,” she screamed as the motor thundered. “Goodbye, everyone.” A
+moment later, for the first time in her life, she was rising toward the
+upper spaces where clouds are made.
+
+The moments that followed will ever remain like the memory of a dream in
+the girl’s mind. Though the motor roared, they appeared to be standing
+still in mid-air while a strangely beautiful world glided beneath them.
+Here a ribbon that was a stream wound on between dark green bands that
+were fringes of forest, here a tiny lake mirrored the blue sky, there a
+broad stretch of swamp-land lay brown and drear, while ever before them,
+seeming to beckon them on—to what, to service or to death?—were the
+snow-capped mountains.
+
+So an hour passed. Swamps vanished. Jagged rocks appeared. Hemlock and
+spruce, dark as night, stood out between fields of glistening snow.
+
+And then, with a quick intake of breath, Mary sighted a tiny lake. Half
+hidden among rocky crags, it seemed the most marvelous part of this dream
+that was not a dream. And yes—clutching at her breast to still her
+heart’s wild beating, she shouted to her silent, awe-struck brother:
+
+“That is the place!”
+
+Nor was she wrong. With a sudden thundering swoop that set her head
+spinning, the powerful ship of the air circled low for a landing.
+
+“Now!” she breathed, and again, “Now!”
+
+One instant it seemed they would graze the rocks to the left of them, the
+next the bank of trees to the right. And then—
+
+“What was that?” Mark shouted suddenly.
+
+As the pontoons of the plane touched the surface of the lake, there had
+come a strange ripping sound.
+
+They had not long to wait for the answer. Hardly had the airplane taxied
+to a spot twenty feet from a shelving bank, when the plane began settling
+on one side.
+
+“Tough luck!” exclaimed the pilot. “A little ice formed on the lake. Must
+have punctured a pontoon. No real danger, I guess. Those fellows should
+be here any—”
+
+“Yes! Yes! There they are now!” Mary exclaimed, pointing to a spot where
+two men were putting off in a small boat.
+
+The boat, she saw at once, was one used on their own small lake not so
+many days before. In a narrow cove she sighted the blue and gray
+airplane.
+
+“Well!” laughed their pilot. “Here we are.”
+
+“Yes,” the girl thought soberly. “Here we are. Two hundred miles from
+anywhere in a frozen wilderness. Two disabled airplanes. Food for a
+month. One injured boy. Fine outlook.”
+
+The instant her eyes fell upon the men in the boat she experienced one
+more shock. Peter Loome, the man with a hard face, who hated all Eskimos,
+was there. She barely suppressed a shudder. Just why she feared and all
+but hated this man she was not able at that moment to say.
+
+She was not one to see the dull gray side of life’s little cloud for
+long. The instant they reached the improvised camp she asked after the
+injured person and was not surprised to find that it was Bill.
+
+“That bear,” Bill drawled as she dressed the rather deep wounds on his
+arms and chest, “took an unfair advantage of me. He could run a lot
+faster’n any man. And he ran the wrong way. Funny part was, when he got
+up with me, he wanted to hug me. If he hadn’t been badly hurt, he’d have
+killed me.”
+
+“If you’d left him alone in the first place, probably he wouldn’t have
+bothered you,” Mary said soberly.
+
+“No-o, probably not,” Bill replied ruefully.
+
+“Oh, well,” one of the hunters consoled him, “you’ll have his skin for a
+rug back there in your cabin this winter.”
+
+“Not for me,” Bill exploded. “I’ve been cold long enough. That cabin
+leaks air. Soon’s I get back I’ll be startin’ for old Alabam’, or at
+least some place that’s warm.”
+
+Mary frowned but said nothing. Already she had come to love that valley
+where their cabin stood by the little lake. If it was her good fortune to
+return there in safety she would not ask for more. As for Bill, he had,
+she thought, brought all his troubles upon himself. But Bill was wounded
+and ill. What he needed, at the moment, was kindness and gentle care, not
+advice.
+
+That night Mary and Mark sat down for some time beside a glowing
+campfire. Bill was resting well, would sleep, they thought, quietly. The
+others, too, had retired.
+
+“Mark,” the girl’s tone was sober, “I’ve always wanted adventure. Most
+young people want adventure in one form or another, I guess. But when it
+comes—”
+
+“It doesn’t seem so wonderful after all,” Mark laughed low.
+
+“Well, no,” his sister agreed.
+
+“May not be so bad after all,” Mark said cheerfully. “While you were
+taking care of Bill, we floated three large dry logs out to our damaged
+ship. We lashed them to the pontoon support. That means she won’t sink
+any more. And when we are frozen in, we—”
+
+“Frozen in!” Mary was startled. She had realized in a vague sort of way
+that at this very moment the thin ice on the lake was hardening, that
+they could not hope to get away on pontoons, yet the thought of a forced
+wait was disturbing.
+
+“How—how long?” she managed to ask.
+
+“Perhaps ten days, perhaps a month. Depends on the weather.”
+
+“Ten days, a month!” The girl’s head swam. Adventure! Surely this was it!
+
+“But, Mark,” her voice was low with emotion, “so many things might
+happen. A storm may come roaring up the mountainside and—”
+
+“And wreck the planes beyond repair. Yes, but we’ll do our best and we
+must trust God for the rest.”
+
+“Yes,” the girl thought. “We must trust Him and do our best.”
+
+Then, because she did not wish longer to dwell upon their own position,
+she forced her thoughts into other channels. She tried to picture the
+folks at home—mother, quietly knitting by the fire, Florence, if she were
+back from Palmer, poring over a book, and silent, occupied only with her
+thoughts, the strange Madam Chicaski.
+
+How often she had wished she might read that woman’s thoughts. Did she
+sometimes think of the missing copper kettle and the seven golden
+candlesticks? If so, what did she think? What was in her mind as she
+stood for a long time staring at the great stump?
+
+“We’ll get away from here,” the girl thought at last. “We’ll go back to
+our snug cabin and the joys of winter. How peaceful and secure we shall
+be. Let the wind roar. We shall be snug and warm.
+
+“And Sunday! What a day that will be! The Petersons with the twins will
+come over in a bobsled, and the Dawsons in their home-made cutter. The
+Sabins have a dog team. What sings we shall have!
+
+“Mark!” she exclaimed. “It’s too bad you had to give up training your
+dogs.” Mark had befriended five shaggy dogs deserted by settlers gone
+back to the States.
+
+“Be back to the dogs before you know it. Besides,” Mark laughed a low,
+merry laugh, “there’s the cat. What the dogs can’t do, the cat can.” (He
+was speaking of his caterpillar tractor. They called these “cats” for
+short.)
+
+“Yes,” Mary joined in the laugh. “But it will be truly thrilling to have
+a dog team. Wish we had it right now. Then if everything went wrong we
+could drive out.”
+
+“Yes, but everything won’t go wrong.” Mark rose and yawned sleepily.
+“You’ll see.”
+
+“Will we see?” the girl asked herself as, a quarter of an hour later, she
+crept beneath heavy blankets to lie down upon a bed of sweet-scented
+boughs. She knew their plans in a general sort of way. The gray plane
+carried skis. The blue and gray one had none. Mark and the pilots would
+work on the disabled motor of the blue and gray. If they got it working
+they would make skis for it. The two planes would take off on skis as
+soon as the ice was safe.
+
+“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered. “When and how will our adventure
+end? Ah, well, Mr. McQueen says that so long as our adventure comes in
+the line of duty, Providence will see us through, so surely there is
+nothing to fear.” With this comforting thought, she fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+                            A SECRET IS TOLD
+
+
+To Mary the days that followed were strange beyond belief. The beauty of
+mountain sunshine on glistening snow, gray rocks, and black forests was
+entrancing. The sudden up-rushing of a storm, threatening as it did to
+destroy their only means of escape, was terrifying beyond words.
+
+Many and many were the times that she wished that it might have been
+Florence who had been whirled off on this wild adventure instead of
+herself. “She is so much stronger than I,” she said to Mark. “She has
+seen so much more of life and seems so much older.”
+
+“You had your first-aid lessons in school,” Mark said, a note of
+encouragement in his tone. “This is one grand opportunity for putting
+them into practice.”
+
+“Sure,” Bill agreed, overhearing the conversation. “I’m so tough you
+couldn’t kill me off any way you try.”
+
+“I won’t try to kill you off, Bill.” Mary’s tone was all too sober.
+
+“I know, Mary,” Bill’s voice suddenly went husky. “You’re one grand gal.
+I don’t deserve half I get, big bum that I am.
+
+“But say,” his voice dropped to a mere whisper, “perhaps I shouldn’t say
+it, but I wouldn’t have got it so bad if that fellow Peter Loome had done
+his part.”
+
+“Done his part?” Mary stared.
+
+“Sure. Don’t you know? He was with me. Had a powerful 30-40 rifle in his
+hands. Saw the bear come after me when I fired and what did he do but
+stand right still and laugh! Roared good and plenty as if it was all
+being done in the movies. When I yelled at him he did limber up and get
+in a shot or two. I never did make him out. Something loose in his
+make-up, I guess.”
+
+“Something sure,” Mark agreed solemnly. Right then and there he wished
+Loome had not chanced to be one of the party.
+
+“Not a bit of help, that fellow,” he added after a moment’s silence.
+“Grumbles about everything, always demanding that we get going at once,
+insists he is losing a chance at big money by the delay. Then, when we
+give him an opportunity to help he bungles everything. I never saw such a
+fellow.”
+
+“Big money,” Mary thought to herself. “Wonder if that has anything to do
+with Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, and that far north country?” She was to
+know.
+
+Daily, under her nursing, Bill improved. Nightly, but oh, so slowly, the
+ice on the lake thickened.
+
+Each day the men labored at the task of making the planes fit for travel.
+Mark’s genius for fixing things at last won over the sulky motor. Once
+again it purred sweetly or thundered wildly at man’s will.
+
+Slowly, painstakingly, the men hewed from solid logs, skis for the
+smaller plane. Would these, cut from green wood, as they must be, stand
+the strain of taking off? They must wait and see.
+
+To escape haunting, unnamed fears, Mary began exploring the mountain
+ledges. First she sought out a wild animal trail leading down, down,
+down, over tumbled rocks, through aisles of trees, over the frozen bed of
+a narrow stream to a spot where the land appeared to drop from beneath
+her. Creeping out on a flat rock, she gazed in awed silence down a sheer
+four hundred feet or more to the treetops of one more forest. Was the
+trail she found, made by wild sheep and goats, safe for men? She doubted
+it, yet the time might come when they must follow that trail or starve.
+She returned silent and thoughtful.
+
+That night a storm swept up from the valley. All night her small tent
+bulged, flapped and cracked. All night she shuddered beneath her
+blankets, as she listened to the men shouting to one another down there
+on the frozen lake. They were, she knew, battling the storm, straining at
+guy ropes to save the planes.
+
+At dawn the wind died away. The temperature dropped. As she drew her feet
+from the blankets she found the air unbelievably cold.
+
+“Freezing fast,” she thought. “Just what we want if only—”
+
+She did not finish. Instead, she hurried into her clothes and then, after
+racing to a rocky ledge, found to her consternation that, for a space of
+seconds, she did not have the courage to look down at the lake. That one
+look would be the answer to a question that meant great hope or near
+despair.
+
+One look at last, then a drop to her knees as she murmured:
+
+“Thank God.” The planes were safe.
+
+Next instant she was on her feet and racing to camp ready to serve hot
+coffee and sourdough pancakes to the battlers of the night.
+
+“Boo! How gloriously cold!” exclaimed the older of the two pilots. “A day
+and a night of this and we shall be away.”
+
+There was still some work to be done on the plane. The storm had strained
+at every strut and guy. It was necessary to test all these and to tighten
+some. That night, after a hasty supper, the men made their way back to
+the frozen surface of the lake.
+
+With Bill snugly tucked away in the tent at her back, Mary sat before a
+glowing fire of spruce logs. How grand was the night, after that storm!
+Not a cloud was in the sky. Not soon would she forget it, dark spruce
+trees towering toward the sky, gray walls of rocks like grim fortresses
+of some mythical giant, the cold, still white of snow and above it all, a
+great, golden moon.
+
+“The North!” she murmured. “Ah, the North!”
+
+And yet, as she thought of it now, they were not so very far north. She
+looked up and away at the north star and wondered vaguely about
+Florence’s grandfather, Tom Kennedy, way up there almost beneath that
+star. Tom Kennedy was not her grandfather, he was on the other side of
+Florence’s family, yet, so intimate had the relations between herself and
+her big cousin become, she felt a sudden, burning desire to accompany her
+on her quest for her grandfather, if indeed the quest was ever begun.
+
+Had she but known it, Florence was at that very moment in Anchorage
+making inquiries regarding transportation to Nome. Only a few days
+before, Mark, having received his last payment for the summer’s crop, had
+pressed a crisp new fifty-dollar bill into her reluctant hand.
+
+“You earned it and much more,” had been his husky reply to her protest.
+“You’ve been a regular farm hand and—and a brick.”
+
+Fifty dollars! What could one not do with that? It seemed now that
+nothing much could be done. Had there been a boat, it might have been
+possible to secure steerage passage. There was no boat, ice had closed
+sea transportation for nine long months.
+
+“Your only chance is the air-mail plane,” a kindly storekeeper assured
+her, “and air travel costs money in the north. Nothing like what it was
+in the days of dog-team travel, but plenty. Fifty dollars? Why, Miss,
+that wouldn’t buy oil for the trip. Better wait for spring. Then you can
+go by boat.”
+
+Wait until spring? Nine months? Spring? That was time for work on the
+little valley farm. “Winter is the time for adventure,” she recalled the
+young aviator’s words.
+
+“I’ll manage it some way. I—I’ve got to,” she turned suddenly away.
+
+Meantime, in her mountain fastness, Mary was thinking of the long-lost
+grandfather and wondering vaguely about Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, when,
+catching a slight sound, she looked up to see Peter Loome sitting beside
+her.
+
+This sudden discovery was startling. By the light of the fire this man’s
+face was more repulsive than by day. She wondered, with a touch of panic,
+why he was here. Then, reassured by the nearness of Bill in the tent and
+of her friends below on the lake, she settled back in her place.
+
+For a long time they sat there in silence with the eyes of night, the
+stars, looking down upon them. Then, because she could endure the silence
+no longer, and because she truly wanted to know, Mary said, “Mr. Loome,
+why do you hate that little Eskimo who calls himself Mr. Il-ay-ok?”
+
+“Why, I,” the man started, “I—well, you see, he’s in my way, er—that is,
+he wants to be. He won’t be long. I—” the man’s voice rose, “I’ll smash
+him!” His foot crashed down upon the rocks. “Like that!”
+
+“Why?” Mary’s voice was low.
+
+For some time there came no answer. In the sky a star began sliding. It
+cut a circle and disappeared in the dark blue of night. A streak of light
+reached for the milky way. Northern lights, the girl thought.
+
+Suddenly the man spoke. “I don’t mind tellin’ you. You’ll never be up
+there,” he pointed toward the north. “None of you dirt-diggers down here
+will ever be up there where the north begins, where men and dogs fight
+fer what they git an’ ask neither odds ner quarters.”
+
+Mary caught her breath as he paused. He is sort of a rough poet she
+thought. At that moment she almost admired him. But not for long.
+
+“It’s the reindeer,” he burst out. “Eskimo’s got ’em. Too many of ’em.
+What does an Eskimo know about makin’ money? Nothin’! Then what’s the
+good of him havin’ all them reindeer? No good!” He spat on the snow.
+
+“Well, at last the Government is seein’ reason,” he went on after a time.
+“The Government’s told the Eskimo they gotta take their reindeer
+back—back—back, way back to the mountains where there’s plenty of feed.
+
+“Think the Eskimos’ll do it?” He squinted his eyes at her. “Narry a one.
+They’ll stick to the shore. They’ll hunt seal an’ walrus, or starve.
+That’s where their homes is, on the coast, allus has been, allus will be.
+
+“So,” his voice dropped. “So they’ll sell their reindeer, sell ’em cheap.
+And who’ll buy? Me! Me and my company. We got money. We’ll get rich on
+reindeer. Reindeer!” Leaping to his feet, he started pacing like some
+wild beast before the fire.
+
+“This Il-ay-ok,” he went on after a time. “He thinks he can stop us. He’s
+educated. Think of it! Educated! An Eskimo educated!” he laughed
+hoarsely.
+
+“He seemed such a nice, polite little man,” Mary ventured.
+
+“Well, maybe he is. Polite!” one more burst of laughter. “But he won’t
+get nowhere with politeness. He’s outside now, down in Washington. The
+last boat’s come from up yonder. No more for nine months. Reindeer got to
+get into the mountains before this old year dies. What can this polite
+Il-ay-ok do about that?”
+
+“There are airplanes,” Mary suggested.
+
+“Yes. Like them down there!” the man exploded. “I wish to—they’d get the
+things going. He might escape me, your polite, greasy little Es-ki-mo.
+
+“‘Dear little Es-ki-mo,’” he chanted hoarsely, “‘Leave all your ice and
+snow. Come play with me.’ I used to sing that in school. Can you
+e-mag-ine!” His laugh rose louder than before. Then, of a sudden, it
+faded. Footsteps were heard approaching.
+
+“Well,” Mark said cheerfully. “Everything is O. K. We’ll be out of here
+in twenty-four hours.”
+
+“Good! That-a-boy!” Peter Loome patted him on the back.
+
+As for Mary, she suddenly found herself wishing that their stay here
+might be prolonged, she was thinking of the polite little man who called
+himself “Mr. Il-ay-ok.”
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+                           HELP FROM THE SKY
+
+
+True to Mark’s prophecy, dawn of the following day found them on the
+move. By the light of a candle, hotcakes and coffee had been stowed away
+under their belts. Now they were ready to pack up.
+
+As Mary stepped from the tent her eyes fell upon a pair of lifeless eyes
+that seemed to stare down upon her. One of the hunters had killed a
+moose. All this time, well out of the reach of thieving wild creatures,
+its head had hung there in a tree. It seemed now a little strange that
+those dead eyes could give her such a start.
+
+“Nonsense!” she whispered, stamping her foot. “Enough to dread without
+that.” And indeed there was. Despite the fact that the men agreed on the
+solidness of the ice, she dreaded the take-off. What if the ice were
+thinner in some places than at others? What if it should give way at just
+the wrong time? What of the planes? Were they truly fit for service? And
+what of those hand-made skis? All these fears were banished by the
+excitement of breaking camp. Tents were taken down, bedding was made into
+bundles, and bags were packed. Bill, now quite able to walk, but with
+arms still smothered in bandages, was helped down the trail.
+
+Mary thrilled anew as she approached the small blue and gray plane. “A
+ticket to adventure,” she whispered for the hundredth time. Then her face
+sobered. Was this to be the end of adventure or only its beginning? An
+hour’s safe flying would bring them to the cabin where there awaited
+dishes to wash, beds to make, paths to shovel, all the daily round.
+“Yes,” she told herself with renewed interest, “yes, and Madam Chicaski
+to wonder about. Where adventure ends, mystery begins.”
+
+One thing pleased her, she was to travel with Bill and Mark in the
+smaller plane. She liked being with her friends. She was very fond of
+Speed Samson, the smiling young pilot. She feared and hated Peter Loome.
+
+“I am taking the hunters straight to Anchorage. They seem to be in one
+grand rush,” Dave Breen, pilot of the large gray plane, said. Then aside
+to Mary he whispered, “They’re paying me well. Hunt me up in Anchorage
+and I’ll buy you a hot fudge sundae.” Mary smiled her thanks. They were
+fine fellows, these pilots, just how fine she was later to learn.
+
+The take-off was exciting. She shuddered as they glided over the ice. An
+ominous crack-crack-crack sent chills up her spine, yet the ice held.
+There had been a light snowfall. The snow was sticky, it would not let
+them go. Round and round the lake they whirled. Louder and louder the
+motors thundered. Then someone shouted “Up!” and up they went whirling
+away over the treetops.
+
+Once again the glorious panorama of dark forest, gray crags, winding
+streams and blankets of snow lay beneath them.
+
+“We’re going home! Home!” Mary shouted in Mark’s ear. Mark nodded
+soberly. He was listening. Listening for what? Mary knew well enough, for
+trouble, motor trouble.
+
+“There will be no trouble,” she assured herself. Once again she thought
+of home. What a place of joy that once deserted valley of the North had
+become for them. She thought of the worried millions in the cities and
+scattered over the plain far to the south of them—worried millions
+wondering where the next week’s food supply was to come from. She thought
+of their well-lined cupboards, of their cellar bursting with good things
+to eat, then sighed a sigh of content.
+
+This mood was short-lived. Even she caught and understood the strange
+shudders that shook the small plane. A moment of this and they went
+circling downward toward the shining white surface of a small lake. Once
+again her heart was in her mouth. They had left the higher altitudes
+where the nights were bitter cold. They were equipped with skis. Would
+this new lake be frozen hard enough for that? Scarcely time for these few
+flashing thoughts and bump—they hit the lake. Bump—bump—bump. What
+glorious bumps those were. They meant one more happy landing.
+
+Dismounting, the girl stared aloft while the large gray plane circled
+over them. Once, twice, three times it circled through the blue, then,
+with a sudden burst of speed, like some wild duck that had heard the bang
+of a hunter’s gun, it sped straight away.
+
+
+Florence was walking disconsolately back and forth along the pier at
+Anchorage early that same afternoon. She was deep in her own thoughts.
+Having gone for a visit to Palmer, she had been invited to come for a
+stay at Anchorage. Sending a note back to her cousins, she had taken the
+train for Anchorage.
+
+Strangely enough, Mary had met high adventure, while she was meeting with
+bitter disappointment. She had so hoped that her lone fifty-dollar bill
+would somehow carry her to that charmed city of her grandfather, Nome,
+Alaska.
+
+“No chance!” she murmured low. “Not a chance in the world.” And yet, she
+dared hope.
+
+Now catching the drone of an airplane motor, she shaded her eyes to look
+away toward the east. Standing where she was, she watched the large gray
+plane come driving in, then circling low, make a perfect landing.
+
+“Oh!” she breathed. “If only—” she did not finish, but marched soberly on
+her way.
+
+Having made a round of the city’s stores, she was headed back to the home
+of her hostess. “Tomorrow,” she thought, “I shall go back to our happy
+valley.” But would it be so happy for her? When one longs to be in one
+place, can he be truly happy in another? Who knows? As it turned out,
+Florence would not be obliged to test her ability to be happy.
+
+Of a sudden, as she walked along, she heard someone call: “Florence!
+Florence Huyler!” Turning about, she found herself facing a total
+stranger.
+
+“You are Florence Huyler,” the man smiled.
+
+“How—how did you know?” she gasped.
+
+“If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have turned about so quickly,” he
+laughed. “Ever try calling out quite loudly, ‘John!’ at the edge of a
+large crowd? No, of course not. Just try it sometime. You’ll be surprised
+at the number of Johns that turn to answer.
+
+“But that—” his voice changed, “that’s not the point. Suppose you heard
+of the accident?”
+
+“Accident? No! I—” her face paled.
+
+“Now, now! nothing to be excited about,” he warned. “You’ve been away
+from home so you haven’t heard. Your friend Bill got clawed up a bit by a
+bear. Say!” his voice rose. “Want to come in here and sit on a stool
+while I tell you? I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”
+
+“Al—all right.”
+
+Three minutes later, their feet dangling from stools, they were drinking
+coffee, munching doughnuts, and talking.
+
+“So you see,” the aviator ended his story, “your cousin did me a mighty
+fine turn. I got a good fee for bringing those hunters out and so if you
+or he ever need a lift, just signal me by Morse code or any other way and
+I’ll turn my motor over P.D.Q.
+
+“Of course,” he added, “I’m off to Nome tomorrow, but I’ll be back. Back
+before you know it. Not such a long trip that.
+
+“But say!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” The girl’s face had turned
+purple.
+
+“Choked! Well, I’ll be! Here, let me—” He began pounding her on the back.
+
+“Just—just a—a—piece of dough—doughnut,” she managed to sputter at last.
+“Went—dow—down the wrong way.”
+
+“Do you get that way often?” he grinned.
+
+“Only when people tell me they’re going to Nome.”
+
+“What’s so awful about that?”
+
+“Awful? It’s glorious. If only—”
+
+“If only what?”
+
+“If only I were going!”
+
+“And why not?”
+
+Fishing in her pocket, she displayed her only banknote.
+
+“That’s good money,” the pilot felt of it with thumb and finger.
+
+“But not enough,” she shook her head sadly.
+
+“For what?”
+
+“A trip to Nome.”
+
+“To Nome! You want to go to Nome? You’re off, child! You’re off right
+now. There’s just room for one more. Got the Bowmans to take up, three of
+’em. Big reindeer people. Grand folks! Just room for you.”
+
+“Tha—” Florence could not finish. She had choked again, but not on a
+doughnut. Mutely she held out the crumpled bill.
+
+“Put it in your pocket, child,” his tone was gruff but kind, “you’ll need
+it. But say! Why do you want to go to Nome?”
+
+“Got a grandfather up there.”
+
+“And haven’t seen him for a long time,” he added for her.
+
+“Never saw him!”
+
+“What? Never saw your grandfather? Say! That’s terrible. I had two of
+’em. Grand old sports. Both gone now. Say! That’s great! And you’re going
+with me to hunt up your grandfather. That, why that’s like moving
+pictures. Going? Of course you’re going! Due to take off at nine a. m.”
+He slid off the stool, then held out a hand. “Glad to have met you. Meet
+you again right here at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Will you be here?”
+
+Would she? If necessary she would form a one-man line and stand right
+here in the snow and cold until the sun rose and the clock said a half
+hour after eight.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+                       IN SEARCH OF A GRANDFATHER
+
+
+Nothing very serious had happened to the blue and gray plane that was
+carrying Mary and her friends toward their home.
+
+“A loose wire connection, that’s all,” the pilot explained as he read the
+worry wrinkles on the girl’s brow. “Have it fixed before you know it. And
+then—”
+
+“Home,” Mary breathed. How she loved that word. Would she ever want to
+leave that home again?
+
+A half hour later they were once again in the air. One more half hour and
+their skis touched the frozen surface of their own small lake.
+
+“Welcome home,” Dave shouted as he came racing toward them. “Just in time
+for a feast. Tim Barber got a deer yesterday. We’re having a roast of it
+for dinner, your mother and—”
+
+“And Madam Chicaski?”
+
+“Oh, sure!” Dave laughed. “You couldn’t drive her away. And who’d want
+to? She’s been a splendid help to your mother, milked the cow, fed the
+horse, hauled wood, everything. And now,” he laughed, “I think she’s
+fixing to run a trap-line. From somewhere she’s dug out a lot of rusty
+traps and is shining them up.”
+
+“Has she—” Mary hesitated.
+
+“Revealed her secrets—copper kettle, golden candlesticks, all that? Not a
+word.
+
+“But Mary,” Dave took both her hands. “How good it is to see you back.”
+
+“I—I’m glad to be back, David,” Mary blushed in spite of herself.
+
+“And how about me?” Bill demanded in a bantering tone. “You should be
+glad I’m back.”
+
+“We are, Bill,” Mrs. Hughes said with a friendly smile. “Awfully glad to
+have you back.”
+
+“But you’ll not have me long. Boo!” Bill shuddered. “I’m off with the
+wild birds for a warmer climate.”
+
+“You’ll be back, Bill,” the elder McQueen rumbled. “You’ve been a pioneer
+for a summer. After that you may not want to be a pioneer, but you’ll be
+one all the same. The snow-peaked mountains, the timber that turns to
+green in spring and gold in autumn, the lure of gold, the call of the
+wild will bring you back.”
+
+“I don’t know about that.” For once Bill’s face took on a sober look.
+
+Turning about, Mrs. Hughes led them all, like a brood of chicks, to the
+cabin where the delicious odor of roast venison greeted their nostrils.
+Over that venison, now turning it, now testing, and now turning again,
+large, silent, mysterious, hovered Madam Chicaski.
+
+
+“So you’re going to Nome by plane?” the eyes of Mrs. Maver, Florence’s
+gray-haired hostess at Anchorage, shone. “Going with the Bowmans? Why,
+that’s splendid. They are old friends of ours. We knew them before they
+went to Nome. I must have them over to dinner.” And she did.
+
+“So you’re going north with us?” Mrs. Bowman, a round, jolly person,
+beamed on Florence as they entered the small parlor to await the
+announcement of dinner. “Never been there before, have you?”
+
+“No, I—”
+
+“You’ll enjoy it. Why, you’re just the sort of girl for that country.
+Healthy! Look at her cheeks, John,” Mrs. Bowman turned to her husband.
+
+“You’d make a grand prospector,” Mr. Bowman, a large, ruddy-faced man,
+laughed. “Going after gold, I suppose.”
+
+“I—I might,” Florence admitted timidly. “But first I must find my
+grandfather.”
+
+“Your grandfather?” Mrs. Bowman stared at her. “Is he in Nome?”
+
+“Yes, I—”
+
+“Look, John!” Mrs. Bowman broke in excitedly. “This is Tom Kennedy’s
+granddaughter. She, why, she’s the living image of him!”
+
+“You are right, my dear,” the husband admitted.
+
+“Oh! And do I truly look like him?” Florence’s mind went into a wild
+whirl. “I am his granddaughter, but who’d have thought—”
+
+“That we could tell it? That is strange. But such things do happen. Shall
+we be seated?” Mrs. Bowman took a chair.
+
+“Let me tell you,” she leaned forward, “your grandfather is a wonderful
+man, truly remarkable.”
+
+“He—he is?” Florence stared. “I thought—”
+
+“That he was just an old sourdough prospector,” Mr. Bowman put in. “Not a
+bit of it. He is a prospector, has been for thirty-five years. Found gold
+once and lost it again to save his partner’s life. Yes, a prospector, but
+a long beard, hair to the shoulders, beer guzzler always dreaming about
+the past? Not a bit of it! Tom Kennedy is young, young as a boy. Keen as
+any youngster, too.”
+
+“And clean,” Mrs. Bowman put in. “Never drinks a drop. I don’t think he
+even smokes.
+
+“Just now,” her voice dropped to conversational tone, “he’s doing a truly
+wonderful thing. He’s got the notion that our young people are growing
+soft.”
+
+“They are, too,” Mr. Bowman grumbled.
+
+“Tom Kennedy’s trying to bring back some of our glorious past, dog-teams,
+long, moonlit trails, the search for gold. He’s trying to interest the
+young people in all that,” added Mrs. Bowman.
+
+“He’s doing it, too,” Bowman nodded his head. “Look at the dog race. They
+really think they’ll win,” he laughed good-naturedly. “Of course they
+won’t. Smitty Valentine’s going to beat ’em, by an hour or two. Good
+thing to have them try, though.”
+
+“You see,” Mrs. Bowman explained, “we have an annual dog race. It ends
+with a big feast in honor of the winner. Your grandfather has gotten the
+young people interested in that race, made them think they can win.
+They’ve put their best dogs together into a team. A boy named Jodie
+Joleson is going to drive it. I surely wish they could win. But this man,
+Smitty Valentine, who is backed by all the pool halls and men’s clubs in
+town, has won so many years hand running, that we’ve lost track.”
+
+“Belongs to the Sourdough Club,” Bowman explained. “Sort of old timers’
+club.”
+
+“And now these young people have what they call the ‘Fresh Dough Club’ of
+young timers,” Mrs. Bowman laughed.
+
+“And now I think you may all come in and sit down at the table.” It was
+their hostess who brought to an end this—to Florence—amazing revelation.
+
+“So that is what he’s like,” she whispered to herself. “How strange! How
+wonderful! And yet—”
+
+It was a sober Florence who, after sending word to her cousins regarding
+this, her proposed journey, climbed aboard the large gray monoplane.
+“This,” she was thinking, “is to be my most exciting adventure. I wonder
+how it will end?” How indeed? Seldom does a girl go in search of her
+grandfather. And how her ideas of that grandfather had changed! She had
+always known, in a sketchy manner, the story of her grandfather’s life. A
+big, boisterous, fun-loving youth, little more than a boy, he had loved
+and married a beautiful, frail girl from a proud well-to-do family. That
+girl became Florence’s grandmother.
+
+Tom Kennedy was not loved by his wife’s parents. They made life hard for
+him. When at last life under his own roof became unbearable, he had found
+escape by joining the gold rush to Alaska.
+
+Alaska brought more hardships, cold, hunger, and disappointment. And
+after that, months on the way, a letter reached him, saying that his wife
+was dead and that, without his consent, her parents had adopted his only
+child, a girl. That girl had been Florence’s mother.
+
+From that day, Tom Kennedy was lost to the outside world. “But Alaska,”
+Florence thought, with a tightening at the throat, “Alaska, it would
+seem, came to know and love him. And now—”
+
+Ah, yes—and now. She had always thought of Tom Kennedy as a typical
+prospector, like Malcomb Dale, who had lured Bill from his ranch. And now
+here he was, not rich, but loved and respected. She was going to him. The
+large gray plane, drumming steadily onward, carried her over broad
+stretches of timber, frozen lakes, arms of the sea, on and on and on,
+toward Tom Kennedy, her grandfather. And how would he receive her?
+
+The answer to this question came when, four days later, a little
+breathless, but quite determined, she stood at the door of a
+weather-beaten cabin, on the outskirts of Nome.
+
+“Come in!” a large, hearty voice roared.
+
+It was with uncertain movements that she lifted the iron latch, pushed
+the door open and stepped inside.
+
+“I—I beg your pardon, Miss.” A tall man, with keen gray eyes that matched
+his well-trimmed beard, rose hastily to his feet. “I thought it was one
+of the boys. And it’s you, a stranger and a girl.”
+
+“Not a stranger,” the girl’s voice was low with emotion. “I—I am Florence
+Huyler, your granddaughter.”
+
+The effect on the old man was strange. Taking a step backward, he drew a
+hand across his face, then spoke as in a dream:
+
+“My granddaughter? No! It cannot be. And yet, it could be so. I had a
+wife. She was beautiful.... I loved her.... She died.... All this was
+long ago. I could not go back. The call of gold got me, and—
+
+“So you are my granddaughter,” his voice changed. The notion seemed
+unreal but pleasing to him. “My granddaughter! How strange!”
+
+“They say,” Florence tried to smile, “that we look alike.”
+
+“That so?” Tom Kennedy looked at her long and earnestly. “Big for a
+girl,” he murmured. “You look strong as a man.”
+
+“I am,” Florence admitted frankly.
+
+At that, Tom Kennedy looked at himself in a glass by the window. “Yes,”
+his eyes brightened, “yes, we do look alike. Welcome, child! Welcome to
+your grandfather’s cabin.” Seizing her hand, he held it for a moment with
+a grip that hurt.
+
+“One more member for that gang of young pirates that haunt this cabin of
+mine,” he laughed. “You must meet them all, meet them and get to know
+them. They’re a fine lot, my gang. First thing I know you’ll be their
+leader, I’m bound. You’re a Kennedy and that means a lot.”
+
+“Yes,” Florence replied with a smile, “I am sure it means a very great
+deal.”
+
+And so it was that Florence found her grandfather, and at once a whole
+new wonderful life opened up for her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+                          THE FRESH-DOUGH CLUB
+
+
+“Such a delicious odor!” Florence exclaimed. With the prompt reactions of
+buoyant youth, she made herself at home in her grandfather’s cabin. Now,
+being hungry, she began sniffing the air.
+
+“Mulligan stew,” the old man explained. “It’s done to a turn. Never a
+better one made. Prime young reindeer meat, bacon, evaporated potatoes,
+fresh onions, a spoonful of dried eggs, a pound of red beans, pepper,
+salt, fresh seal oil. Guess that’s about all there is in it. Hungry?” he
+smiled down at her.
+
+“I’m always hungry,” Florence smiled.
+
+Taking a huge bowl from the cupboard in the corner, Tom Kennedy filled it
+to the brim. Into an equally huge cup was poured steaming black coffee.
+“We’re healthy up here,” he explained. “We can take it straight.”
+
+“So can I,” Florence gulped down a burning draught.
+
+“Um—um,” she breathed a moment later as she tasted the stew. “I can cook
+a little, but not like that.”
+
+“It comes,” said the old man, his words slow and melodious, “comes with
+time. I’ve been in the North thirty-five years.” The expression on his
+face changed. His thoughts, Florence told herself, must be far away.
+
+She tried to read those thoughts, to discover whether they had to do with
+his boyhood days and his frail, child-wife who had died long ago, or with
+gray mountains, long trails, whirling snow and the lost mine.
+
+Her thoughts were suddenly broken in upon by a breezy figure who appeared
+to have been blown through the door by a gust of wind.
+
+A ruddy-faced youth, he was, garbed in a blue drill parka that looked
+like a slip-over dress, corduroy trousers and sealskin boots.
+
+“Hi, Pop!” he exclaimed, not seeing the girl. “Great stuff today. Did
+fifty miles an’ cut twenty minutes off the time. I—
+
+“Hey, you! Stay out!” he shouted suddenly as a half dozen great
+gray-brown beasts came tumbling into the room. They struck the young man
+with such force that he was suddenly thrown into the corner where
+Florence sat.
+
+“I—I beg pardon,” he stammered. “I didn’t know—”
+
+“Jodie, meet my granddaughter, Florence Huyler.” Wrinkles of amusement
+appeared about Tom Kennedy’s eyes.
+
+“Your—your granddaughter!” the young man’s eyes opened wide. “Why, Pop,
+we didn’t know you had a living relative!”
+
+“Neither did I, son. Not until just now. She dropped down from the sky.
+
+“Jodie, here,” Tom Kennedy turned to Florence, “is the uncrowned king of
+Alaskan dog-mushers.”
+
+“Yeah,” Jodie drawled, “crown’s likely to get a trifle tarnished before I
+get to wear it.”
+
+“Jodie Joleson,” there was a ring of enthusiasm in the girl’s voice.
+“I’ve heard of you.”
+
+“Where?” he stared.
+
+“Anchorage.”
+
+“Way down there! How fame does travel,” he replied in mock seriousness.
+
+“Tell me, Grandfather,” Florence faced about. “Did a girl ever win your
+dog race?”
+
+“What? A girl?” the old man stared.
+
+“Of course not,” Jodie answered for him.
+
+“Why so certain?” Florence gave the young man a look.
+
+“Well, you see—see,” he hesitated, “it’s a long race, hundred miles and
+back. How could she?”
+
+“I—I was just wondering. You see, I’m new to the country,” Florence half
+apologized. There remained in her eyes, quite unobserved by her
+companions, a peculiar gleam that might mean almost anything.
+
+The days that followed were the strangest, most thrilling of Florence
+Huyler’s young life. Because she was Tom Kennedy’s granddaughter, she was
+taken at once into the very heart of the young set of Nome. A bright,
+jolly, carefree, healthy crowd she found them to be. She might, had she
+so chosen, have risen at once to a place of leadership among them. She
+did not choose. A natural, friendly girl, she loved being a member of
+some jolly gang, but being their leader, ah! that was quite another
+matter. She was not ambitious in this way.
+
+She might, had she wished it, have been wined and dined from morning to
+night, for, of all the sociable, good-time-loving people, the dwellers of
+Alaska belong at the top. This she did not choose. From time to time she
+joined in some quiet evening affair. For the most part, two subjects held
+the center of her every waking thought, her grandfather and the coming
+annual dog race.
+
+On stormy days she enjoyed lying stretched out on a couch before the
+glowing fire, while Tom Kennedy in his low, musical voice that rumbled
+like a drum, told of his days on Arctic trails. Always and always she
+listened for the story that would, she knew, hold her spellbound, the
+story of his lost mine. Day after day passed and he made no mention of
+it. More than once she bit her lips to keep from suggesting it. Always
+her question remained unasked. She could wait.
+
+On bright days she might have been seen trotting along after Jodie
+Joleson’s dog sled. At first the boy appeared to resent that. She could
+almost hear him say, “A girl! Sooner or later she’ll go too far, play
+out, then I’ll have to haul her home.”
+
+To his vast astonishment and final utter admiration, he found that she
+did not tire.
+
+Florence, as you will know if you have read about her, was far from a
+weakling. From a small child she had gloried in strength and health. No
+slender waist line acquired on a diet of pickles and nut sundaes for her.
+She gloried in all of life, good things to eat, long nights of sleep, and
+now, most of all, long, long trails.
+
+One day, when a storm was coming in from the northwest, Jodie
+deliberately took the trail that leads up the coast, then over the bitter
+wind-blown flats of Tissue River.
+
+By the time they reached those flats, the whole narrow valley was a mad
+whirl of snow. Without a word to the girl, Jodie headed his dogs straight
+into the storm and shouted one word:
+
+“Mush!”
+
+Magnificent beasts that they were, they sprang into the harness. Their
+speed redoubled, they leaped forward.
+
+Plop-plop-plop, went Jodie’s skin boots on the hard-packed snow. Fainter,
+yet unmistakable, came the girl’s trotting footsteps behind him.
+
+The storm grew wilder. The team, striking a stretch of glare-ice, was
+blown straight across it to pile up in a heap on the other side. Without
+a word Jodie disentangled them. Then, turning to the girl, he said,
+“Cheek’s froze. Take off your mitten and thaw it out with your hand.”
+
+“Thanks,” Florence smiled as best she could. “Yours too are frozen. If
+you don’t mind, I’ll do yours first.”
+
+His hand went hastily to his cheek, then he chuckled, “O. K. You win.”
+
+Five minutes more and they were again battling the storm.
+
+For two full hours, with the wind tearing at their parkas and the frost
+biting their cheeks, they battled onward. Then, of a sudden, the dogs
+took a sharp turn, climbed a ridge, dropped down into a valley, and they
+were out of the storm.
+
+“You—you’re a better man than I am, Gungadin!” Jodie panted.
+
+“Do you really think I’m good?” there was a note of suppressed eagerness
+in the girl’s voice.
+
+“Sure you are!” the boy exclaimed. “Of course you are. Why?”
+
+“Oh! I was just thinking,” she evaded. “You—you know, everybody wants to
+be good at things,” she added rather lamely. “But look!” she exclaimed,
+“your face is frozen again!”
+
+“So is yours. My turn for thawing out.” His mitten was off, his warm hand
+on her cheek.
+
+And thus Florence won Jodie’s complete approval.
+
+That night the girl learned the joyous comfort of a long-haired deer skin
+sleeping-bag in a road house bunk. She slept the sleep of the just while
+the storm roared on.
+
+Next day, with the wind down and the sun creeping low above the jagged
+outline of snow-topped mountains, they journeyed slowly homeward,
+Florence, Jodie, and the racing team.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII
+                          HER GREAT DISCOVERY
+
+
+Of all the girls in the Fresh-Dough Club, Florence liked Alene Bowman
+best. Alene was quiet and, for a girl of the North, very modest. She was
+greatly interested in the social events of the season and especially in
+the annual dog race.
+
+“There’s one thing I’d like to ask you,” Florence said to her, the day
+after her return from that trip up the coast. “What do you think would
+happen if a girl entered the race?”
+
+“What?” Alene stared for a space of ten seconds. “Why, nothing, I guess.
+This is the North, you know. You thinking of going in?”
+
+“No-o,” Florence spoke slowly. “Of course, I wouldn’t go in against
+Jodie, unless—”
+
+“Unless you felt sure he couldn’t win and that perhaps you could,” Alene
+suggested.
+
+“Yes—yes, that’s just it!” the large girl exclaimed. “It means a great
+deal to you young folks, that race.”
+
+“A terrible lot.”
+
+“And if I should go in and win—”
+
+“You’d be the girl of the hour. Then, why, we’d ride you in triumph on
+our shoulders.”
+
+“Good, broad shoulders,” Florence smiled. “And you don’t think of me as
+an outsider?”
+
+“Certainly not. Anyone related to Pop Kennedy just couldn’t be an
+outsider. Besides, you’re a member of the club, aren’t you?”
+
+“Thanks—I—I just sort of wanted to know. I’ll be going.” Florence turned
+away.
+
+“No. Wait. There’s something father told me last night. You pass it on to
+Jodie if I don’t see him first. Tell him to keep a good watch on his
+dogs. There are things they do, you know, dope them or something, that
+slows them up.”
+
+“But that old-timer rival of his, Smitty, wouldn’t do that?” Florence was
+shocked.
+
+“No. Not Smitty. He’s a real sport. Win fair or not at all. So are the
+others going in, Scot Jordan and Sinrock Charlie. They’ll play fair.”
+
+“Then what—?”
+
+“There are some foreigners, quite a lot of them, all through the North,
+Syrians, Russians, and Japs. They are gamblers by trade. They’re getting
+up books on the race. They’re gambling heavily on Smitty to win. And
+father says there’s nothing they won’t do.”
+
+“All right, I’ll tell Jodie.”
+
+“That,” Florence thought, as she made her way home, “is all the more
+reason why we should have another team in the field. But where is it to
+come from?” Where indeed? In these days when both passengers and freight
+are carried by airplanes, really fine dog teams are becoming all too rare
+in the North. This Florence had learned from Tom Kennedy’s own lips.
+
+Strangely enough, as if an answer to a prayer, in the van of a storm, the
+very team blew into town that same afternoon. Florence first saw them as
+they came tumbling over a high snow bank at the outskirts of the city.
+The sled as well as its driver piled up with the dogs. When Florence had
+helped them to right themselves, she found herself staring in admiration
+at a beautiful Eskimo girl, garbed in a handsome fawn skin parka, and at
+the grandest team of gray Siberian wolfhounds she had ever seen.
+
+“Your dogs?” she managed to ask.
+
+“No—me,” the girl showed all her fine teeth in a smile. “My brother’s
+dogs. Il-ay-ok my brother.”
+
+“You mean Mr. Il-ay-ok is your brother?” Like a flash Florence saw the
+little man dressed in white man’s clothes on the dock at Anchorage.
+
+“Il-ay-ok my brother,” the girl nodded.
+
+“And these are his dogs?”
+
+“Yes! Sure! Sure! His dogs. You wan-to ride?”
+
+“Yes—yes, I’d love to.”
+
+When Florence had found what she wanted she was a fast worker. This girl
+At-a-tak, she learned, had driven in from Cape Prince of Wales. She would
+stay in Nome with friends until her brother returned by airplane from his
+journey. Yes, she would be pleased to loan her brother’s dog team to the
+big white girl until they were needed. How long would that be? She did
+not know.
+
+Florence had learned from her friends at Nome that Il-ay-ok had gone on
+an important commission in the interest of his people. She knew, too,
+that it had to do with reindeer. The Bowmans had told her this much. They
+had assured her also that, though they were large herders of reindeer,
+they were entirely in sympathy with Il-ay-ok and his purposes.
+
+“Those men who are trying to edge in on the reindeer business,” Mr.
+Bowman had said with a gesture of disgust, “are rank outsiders. They know
+nothing of native problems and care less. They will rob the people of
+their last reindeer if they can.”
+
+Knowing all this, Florence, whose sympathy went out freely to all simple,
+kindly people, wished Mr. Il-ay-ok a successful conclusion of his mission
+and a speedy journey home. For all that, she could not help hoping that
+he might not arrive until after the race was over, for now, with this
+wonderful team at her command, she was resolved to spend many hours each
+day on the trail and, if occasion seemed to warrant it, to venture in
+where no girl had dared venture before.
+
+Two hours later she was again at Alene Bowman’s door. “Don’t tell a
+soul!” she implored, after she had told how she had come into possession
+of the gray team. “Not a single soul.”
+
+“Not a single soul,” Alene echoed. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” And
+Alene could keep a secret.
+
+Every day after that Florence, behind her superb team, went for a “ride.”
+Each time she purposely drove through a well-populated section of the
+city. Always she wore a heavy deer skin parka and remained as far as eyes
+could see her seated on her sled with her team trotting along at a
+leisurely pace.
+
+All was changed when at last a hill had hidden her from view. Leaping
+from her sled, she threw off the heavy parka, drew on a thin calico one
+and a squirrel skin cap and, seizing the handles of the sled, screamed:
+
+“Mush! You mush!” This shout acted on the dog team like an electric
+shock. They shot away with the speed of the wind.
+
+They were wise, were these dogs. Not four days had passed when her shout
+was no longer needed. Once the last house had disappeared from sight,
+Gray Chief, her dog leader, began cocking his ears. The instant her
+costume change was complete, without a word from the young driver, he was
+away.
+
+“We’ll win,” she hissed more than once through tight-shut teeth. “Win it
+we must.”
+
+At times she found Jodie looking at her in a strange way. Did he suspect
+her purpose? Did he imagine she would enter the race against him if his
+chances were good? She was very fond of Jodie. Not for all the world
+would she offend him. But she would not tell him of her plans, at least
+not for the present.
+
+“Grandfather,” she said once when the two were alone, “is there a time
+limit for entering the race?”
+
+“Entries must be in at noon of the day before the race,” he replied.
+
+“Good!” the word escaped unbidden from her lips. He gave her a strange
+look, but said never a word.
+
+That same day he told her the story of his lost mine, told how he and his
+partner had worked their way back, back, back into the mountains, how,
+having found traces of gold, they had built a cabin and how they had
+worked day after day until the strike came, when they found nuggets as
+large as marbles, a very few nuggets but promise of many more.
+
+“That very night,” his voice dropped, “Joe was taken sick. It was
+serious. I made a sled and hauled him out. That was a battle. I froze,
+starved, and fought my way and,” his voice dropped, “and lost. Partner
+died. Never found the mine again.”
+
+“Perhaps someone else found it,” she suggested.
+
+“Nope,” there was a suggestion of mystery in his voice. “We hid it. Joe
+and I hid that mine.”
+
+After that day, more than ever before, the girl wanted to go in search of
+that mine. Go where? Ah! that was the question.
+
+The answer came two days later and in a rather strange manner. A young
+scientist, a member of the Geological Survey, showed her a series of
+enlarged photographs taken from the air.
+
+“They cover hundreds of square miles back there in the great unknown,” he
+explained. “See! Rivers, lakes, tundra, mountains, everything.”
+
+“Everything!” the girl had been struck with an idea. “Loan them to me for
+an hour.”
+
+“Right,” the young man agreed. “Two hours if you like.”
+
+Fifteen minutes later she tore into Tom Kennedy’s cabin acting like a mad
+person. Pushing a table into the kitchen, throwing chairs on the bed in
+the small back room, she at last cleared the living room floor. Then,
+while her grandfather stared she thumb-tacked sheet after sheet of paper
+to the floor until there was no longer room to stand.
+
+“There,” she panted. “There it all is, mountains, lakes, rivers, tundra,
+everything. Here is Nome,” she pointed. “There is Sawtooth Mountain. Now,
+where was your mine?”
+
+For a full quarter hour, as the tin clock in the corner ticked the
+minutes away, the gray-haired prospector’s eyes moved back and forth
+across that map, then, with a sudden gasp, he exclaimed:
+
+“There it is! Right there. Well up on the middle fork of that river. I’d
+swear to it if it was the last word I ever said. Girl, you’re a wonder!”
+Suddenly he threw his long arms about her and kissed her on the cheek.
+
+“Soon as that race is over we’re off,” he shouted, fairly beside himself
+with joy.
+
+“Yes,” she agreed, “the race and then the long, long trail. Mountains,
+rivers, sunshine, storms, camp beneath a rocky ledge or in the midst of
+dark spruce trees. On and on, and then—”
+
+“The mine,” he murmured. There was new fire in his fine old eyes.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+                           A BRIGHT NEW DREAM
+
+
+In the meantime, life was not dull on “Rainbow Farm,” as Mary had
+lovingly named their little claim in the happy Matamuska valley. As
+winter came blowing in from the north, some settlers, discouraged by the
+too frank breezes that swept through their green log cabins, sold out and
+sailed for home. From these Mark purchased two fine flocks of chickens.
+These called for a snug log cabin chicken house, more work, and added
+hopes for the future.
+
+Every one settled down to the routine of winter’s work, all but Madam
+Chicaski. She did the most unusual things and obtained the most
+astonishing results. Having polished and oiled her large pile of rusty
+traps, she one day threw them, a full hundred pounds, over her ample
+back, then disappeared over the nearest hill. She remained away until
+long after dark. Mary was beginning to worry about her when, all bent
+over with fatigue, but smiling as ever, she appeared empty-handed at the
+door.
+
+After consuming a prodigious amount of cornmeal mush, she sat dreaming by
+the fire.
+
+“Renewing her youth,” Mary whispered.
+
+Mark nodded and smiled.
+
+What was their surprise when three days later she appeared with five
+foxes, four minks and a dozen muskrats, all prime furs.
+
+“For you a good long coat,” she held the muskrat skins before Mary’s
+eyes. “Bye and bye many more.
+
+“And for you perhaps a cape,” she held up the mink skins as she nodded to
+Mrs. Hughes. “Who knows? The minks, they are harder to catch.”
+
+“And the fox skins?” Mark asked.
+
+“To buy more traps, always more traps,” was the big woman’s enthusiastic
+response.
+
+“There is money in it,” Mark said to Dave McQueen next day.
+
+“Yes, if she’ll show us the tricks,” Dave agreed.
+
+“She will,” Mark declared. And she did. As Mark followed her about he saw
+how she cut snow thin as cardboard for concealing the traps, how she
+scattered drops of oil about to supply a scent leading to the traps, how
+she discovered a mink’s run at a river’s brink, and many other little
+secrets of the trapping world.
+
+Soon both Mark and Dave were full-fledged trappers with trap lines
+running away and away into the hills.
+
+Mary too was contributing her bit to the family’s wealth. The number of
+Speed Samson’s hunting trips with his airplane increased. He had come to
+relish the food served at Rainbow Farm. Knowing that his clients would
+enjoy it as well, and at the same time be charmed by the life there, he
+made a practice of dropping down upon their small lake. More often than
+not he brought his own supply of meat. A hunk of venison, a loin of a
+young moose, a leg of wild sheep, even brown bear steak went into pot or
+roasting pan to reappear as the delicious _piece de resistance_ of a
+bountiful meal. His clients got in the way of leaving a folded bank note
+beneath each plate. In this way Mary began to accumulate quite a
+considerable little hoard.
+
+At last, in a spending mood, she took the train at Palmer and rode all
+the way to Anchorage. There she made a surprising and, to her, rather
+disturbing discovery.
+
+Having mailed a letter, she stood looking over the low railing into the
+rear of the postoffice when her eye was caught by a pile of second-class
+mail. It was in sacks, but the half-open sacks presented a strange
+picture. Out of one a beautiful doll appeared to be struggling. From a
+second a toy train, apparently at full speed, had been arrested in
+midtrack, while from another cautiously peeped a woolly teddybear.
+
+Leaning forward, Mary read the address on one sack. “Wales, Alaska. Where
+is that?”
+
+“Cape Prince of Wales, on Bering Straits above Nome,” said the
+postmaster.
+
+“Way up there!” Mary was surprised. “Christmas presents. Will they get
+there in time?”
+
+“In time for the 4th of July,” was the reply. “Some teacher up there
+asked friends to contribute to his tree for Eskimo children. These sacks
+arrived too late for the last boat. Cost a small fortune to send them by
+air mail, so here they stay.”
+
+“Oh, that—” Mary exclaimed, “that’s too bad. Think what all those
+presents would mean to the cute little Eskimo children!”
+
+“Oh, sure, but that’s what you get in the North.” The postmaster
+dismissed the matter at that. But for Mary, forgetting the appealing
+doll, the rushing train that did not rush, and the peeping bear, was not
+so easy.
+
+“If only Florence had known they were here!” she thought as she turned
+away. “Perhaps they had not yet arrived. Anyway—”
+
+Anyway what? She did not exactly know. She wished that she might own an
+airplane all her own and go where she chose in this great white world of
+the North. This, she knew, was only a mad dream, so taking the train for
+home, she settled down to the business of feeding chickens, gathering
+eggs, and assisting in the preparation of delicious meals.
+
+And then one bright, clear day something very strange happened. In a
+cutter drawn by two prancing horses, Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, appeared
+at their door.
+
+“Excuse, please,” the little man bowed low. “Mr. Speed Samson, he comes
+to this place very soon. Is it not so?”
+
+“I—I don’t know,” replied Mary.
+
+“It is so. I am convinced. With your kindness I shall wait. It is
+important, so important to my people.” The little man bowed once more.
+
+“You are welcome to stay as long as you like,” was Mary’s welcome.
+
+The driver was dismissed. Mr. Il-ay-ok entered. Mary experienced a cold
+shudder as she thought, “Peter Loome may follow on his trail.” But she
+introduced the little man to her mother and did all in her power to make
+him feel at home.
+
+When, true to Il-ay-ok’s prophecy, Speed came zooming in from the sky,
+the little Eskimo, nearly bursting out the door in his haste, went racing
+down to the landing.
+
+“Excuse, please,” he exclaimed as Speed stepped from the plane. “You must
+take me to Nome. I must go soon, perhaps at once. You shall take me to
+Nome.”
+
+“Who says that?” the aviator grinned.
+
+“I say it. I, Mr. Il-ay-ok.”
+
+“Well,” Speed drawled, “can’t do it.”
+
+“You must!” sudden distress and rigid determination shone in the little
+man’s eyes.
+
+“I must not,” replied Speed. There was a note of finality in his voice.
+“This is the hunting season. I have customers coming. I cannot wire them
+not to come then go zooming off on some wild goose chase to Nome. This is
+my harvest. How much money you got?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“Unfortunately, no money,” Mr. Il-ay-ok’s face fell. “But you shall be
+paid,” he was up and at it again. “My people they have fox skins, very
+fine fox skins, red, white, cross fox, silver gray fox. You shall have
+many fox skins. You shall sell them for much money.”
+
+“I’m afraid that won’t do.” Speed’s face sobered. In the little man’s
+face he had read sincere distress. Speed was a kindly soul. “It is truly
+impossible for me to give up my work now. Perhaps in three or four
+weeks—”
+
+“Ah, yes!” the little man’s voice rose shrill and eager. “Before January
+the first?”
+
+“Yes, I guess so.”
+
+“Oh!” Mary breathed, suddenly enchanted with a bright idea. “Before
+Christmas, you must!”
+
+“What? You must go too?” Speed cried, banteringly.
+
+“I—I might,” the girl could scarcely believe her voice, it was the first
+time she had ever thought of it. “Anyway,” she added hurriedly to conceal
+her embarrassment, “you are to be Santa Claus to a hundred Eskimo
+children.”
+
+“If I am Santa Claus,” said Speed, seizing her hand, “you shall be little
+Miss Santa Claus. I don’t know what it is all about, but here, shake on
+it.” He gave her hand a hearty squeeze.
+
+Il-ay-ok rode back to Anchorage in Speed’s plane and there, for a time,
+the matter rested.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+                             “THEY ARE OFF”
+
+
+In Nome each twenty-four hours that passed saw the great race just one
+day nearer. Each day the excitement over this event increased. The prize
+this year was large. Men of means had contributed generously. Though
+thought of winning for the honor of the “Fresh-Dough Club” was ever
+uppermost in Jodie’s mind, and in Florence’s when she indulged in strange
+day-dreams, the prize was not entirely forgotten. Jodie had been let in
+on the secret of the lost mine. Once the race was won, or lost, it was
+planned that they should be away at once on their search for that mine.
+And the prize money would go far toward providing them with the very
+necessary grub-stake.
+
+Little wonder then that, while keeping one eye on her own gray team—just
+in case something happened—Florence always had the other turned upon
+Jodie’s fine dogs.
+
+The crack of the starter’s gun was only three days away when, as Jodie
+came in from his daily practice run, Florence met him on the street.
+“What’s the matter with old Sparks?” she asked, nodding at the right hand
+wheel dog. “He doesn’t seem quite up to himself.”
+
+“Been lagging all day,” Jodie’s brow wrinkled. “Off his feed a little, I
+guess. I’ll cut him out tomorrow. He’ll be O. K. after that.”
+
+“Jodie,” the girl’s tone was low, serious, “do you watch your dogs?”
+
+“Sure thing I do.” He stared at her.
+
+“Jodie, there’s talk of gambling going on among those foreigners, you
+know. They might—”
+
+“I know,” Jodie replied wearily. “They’ll not get to my dogs. The kennel
+is right against my bunk. Besides, from now on, Az-az-ruk, a half-breed,
+is going to watch them at night.”
+
+“I’m glad. Good-bye, Jodie.” The girl was away.
+
+That night Florence sat a long time by the fire. She was thinking hard.
+What Jodie had told her had not entirely reassured her. One of his dogs
+did not appear to be right for the race. What if another and perhaps
+another began to wear down under the strain.
+
+“We’d lose,” she whispered.
+
+“But suppose I enter the race with the grays?” A thrill ran up her spine.
+How she’d love it. Always her sturdy body had cried out for action. She
+had swum a swift flowing mile-wide river on a dare. She had climbed
+mountains alone. She had done all manner of wild things on trapeze and
+ropes, just for the thrill of it. And now this race! All else seemed to
+pale into insignificance.
+
+“And yet,” she thought, “would it be fair to Jodie?”
+
+One more day passed, then another. It was the forenoon of the day before
+the coming of the great event. Only a few hours were left for entering
+the race. Yesterday she had driven her gray streaks over fifty miles of
+tough trails. How magnificently they had performed! With such a team, who
+could stay out? And yet—
+
+Fifteen minutes later her mind was made up. Jodie passed her. He was off
+for a short spin. Short as had been her experience at driving and judging
+dogs, she knew at a glance that all was not well. Four of his dogs were
+now imitating the actions of a very weary rag doll. Their heads hung low.
+Their tails drooped. Each forward sprint called for a great effort.
+
+“That half-breed must have slept on his watch,” her eyes narrowed.
+
+When Jodie came trotting back two hours later, she met him in the street.
+
+“Whoa! Whoa, there!” he shouted at his dogs. “What’s on your mind?” The
+smile that he gave the girl was an uncertain one.
+
+Florence’s heart was in her throat. Would he hate her now? “Jodie,” she
+replied soberly, “I’m in the race with the grays. I—I just had to do it!”
+
+“Good!” seizing her hand, he gripped it until it hurt. “I hoped you’d
+enter. It’s a tough grind all that way and back, so I didn’t want to urge
+you. But you—you’ll make it, and you’ll win.”
+
+“No, Jodie,” her voice was deep and low, “I’ll only win if I see you
+can’t.”
+
+“That,” he swallowed hard, “that’s sporting of you, but you—you can’t do
+that. You go in to win. Forget me. Forget everything. Go after those gray
+wolves and make them do their best, start to finish. And here—here’s luck
+to the best man!
+
+“All right, Ginger,” his voice dropped. “Mush along you!” He trotted away
+behind his team.
+
+“And this,” Florence murmured, “this is the North. No wonder they call it
+‘God’s country.’”
+
+
+“You go to sleep, girl,” Tom Kennedy said to her at nine that night.
+“I’ll stay up till morning. You never can tell what’s going to happen in
+the wee small hours.
+
+“God made a mistake,” his keen gray eyes took her in—squirrel skin cap,
+bright orange mackinaw, corduroy knickers and all, “you should have been
+a boy.”
+
+“A girl can do what any boy can, if she’s strong and keeps herself fit,”
+she flashed back at him.
+
+“No girl’s ever run in the great race before,” he reminded her.
+
+“That’s what makes it so fascinating. Who wants to be forever doing what
+others do?”
+
+“You’ll be an honor to your old granddad. I—I’m glad you came,” his voice
+was husky.
+
+“I hoped you would be,” she replied simply.
+
+All that night, with lights out and with the inner door ajar, Tom Kennedy
+sat by the window that overlooked the distant, moonlit hills and the dog
+kennels close at hand. Once Florence stirred in her sleep, then suddenly
+sat up. What was it? Had she heard a shot? She did hear the door softly
+closed, she was sure of that.
+
+“What was it, grandfather?” she asked sleepily.
+
+“Thought I saw a skunk. Can’t be sure. He’s gone now, went mighty fast.”
+
+“Skunks,” she thought dreamily, “do they have skunks in Alaska?” What did
+it matter? Once more she was asleep.
+
+And then the great day dawned.
+
+All the little city’s population was out to see them start. A picturesque
+throng it was. Indians, Eskimos, trappers, traders, gold hunters, shop
+keepers, adventurers, they were all there.
+
+The five contestants drew for places. The teams would start one hour
+apart. Many hours would pass before their return. When they began
+straggling back, the throng would be there again. Meanwhile, snug and
+warm in their cabins, they would with shouts of joy or howls of
+disappointment listen to shortwave radio accounts of the race.
+
+Jodie drew first place. Smitty Valentine, hero of many another race and
+favorite of old-timers, drew second, Florence was third, and the two
+other sourdough contenders drew up the rear.
+
+With a wild round of applause, Jodie was away in a cloud of fine driving
+snow.
+
+For an hour the crowd lingered. Then, at the crack of a pistol, with a
+shout and a flourish of the whip, Smitty was away. Then such a shout!
+“Smitty! Smitty! Go, Smitty! Go!”
+
+Florence swallowed hard. The popularity of this man had been honestly
+won. Tom Kennedy had said he was a real old-timer, and Tom knew. And yet,
+“Time marches on. Youth must be served. Unless youth is given a place in
+the sun, there can be no progress.” These words of a truly great man rang
+in her ears. They must win. It was Jodie or she. Which should it be?
+
+The crowd did not linger to see her off. Oh, yes, the younger crowd, her
+gang, the tried and true, would stick. As for the others, who could blame
+them? There was a bitter cold wind from the west. And who was she? Only a
+girl from somewhere or other. What place had a girl in such a race?
+Hundred miles! What, indeed! Probably lose her team in some wild storm,
+they may have been thinking. At thought of this, she set her teeth and
+clenched her fists. She would show them. Girl or no girl, they should
+see.
+
+A thin cheer arose from the faithful few when at last the pistol sounded
+out the hour and with a quiet “All right,” to her leader, she headed
+straight out over the long, long trail.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+                           THE PHANTOM LEADER
+
+
+For nine long hours, save for three brief pauses to rest her dogs and
+catch some light refreshments for herself, Florence followed the long,
+winding trail that led away and away one hundred miles into the great
+beyond. Now and then a thrill coursed through her being. Other than this
+there was no sign that this was a race, and not just one more joy ride.
+True, as she mounted the crest of a steep ridge, she did catch a fleeting
+glimpse of a speeding dog team. Was it her nearest opponent, Smitty
+Valentine? There was no way to tell. He had left an hour before her.
+Should she reach the finish just fifty-nine minutes behind him, the race
+was hers. If not—well, Jodie was still further ahead, perhaps the race
+was to be his. Who could tell?
+
+Plop-plop-plop went her feet on the snow. Her light basket sled was
+empty, yet she never rode—her fleet gray hounds must have every
+advantage. Plop-plop-plop on the hard-packed snow. Here a covey of white
+ptarmigan rose fluttering from the trail, there a sly white wolf mounted
+a ridge to stare after her, here a column of smoke rose above the tree
+tops and there two little brown men, their dog-team drawn off the trail,
+watched in silence as she passed. What a weird, wild world was this!
+
+Strangely enough, as she reached the last trail-house prepared for the
+required twenty minute rest before starting back over the trail, she
+learned that three racers—Jodie, Smitty, and herself—were running neck
+and neck.
+
+“Not a half mile between them,” the radio announcer droned. “The two last
+teams driven by Scot Jordan and Sinrock Charlie now lag behind.
+
+“Surprise has been expressed in many quarters,” he droned on. “Surprise
+at the endurance of the girl racer, Florence Huyler.”
+
+So she had them surprised? Florence smiled grimly as she gulped down a
+large mug of steaming coffee. “Surprised! Huh!” she said aloud. Then to
+the trail-house keeper’s wife, “Call me, please, when the time is up. I’m
+going to sleep.” She threw herself down upon a couch and was at once fast
+asleep.
+
+In her sleep she dreamed—odd dream it was, too. In it she saw the huge
+Madam Chicaski placing seven candlesticks on the mantel at Rainbow Farm.
+Gold they must have been, for they shone like the sun. Then she saw the
+woman pouring something out of a huge copper kettle.
+
+“Gold,” she whispered in her dream. “Gold coins, hundreds and hundreds of
+them.”
+
+These were all poured on the table, some rolling on the floor. Then a
+little, dark man, Mr. Il-ay-ok, approached the table and began gathering
+them up. “I need them for my people,” was all he said.
+
+Florence awoke with a start. The dream was at an end. The trail-house
+matron was shaking her.
+
+“Time is up.”
+
+One minute more and the girl was on her way back. But that dream, it
+lingered in the back of her mind. What did it mean? Probably nothing.
+Perhaps this, that life’s adventures are never at an end, that if she won
+this race, it was to be not an end but a beginning of other things. There
+was Madam Chicaski and her supposed treasure, Mr. Il-ay-ok and his
+people, and her grandfather’s mine. “Life,” she thought, “goes on and on
+and, like one’s shadow, adventure goes before it.”
+
+But now once again she thought only of the race. Once again, as in a
+dream, the long, white trail glided on beneath her weary feet.
+
+The next stop, twenty miles along the homeward trek, brought bad
+news—Jodie was falling behind, already he had lost twenty minutes.
+
+“It’s his dogs,” Florence explained to the sympathizing trail-house
+keeper. “They’re not right.”
+
+“Anything happens in dis race,” encouraged her host, “yust anyting at
+all. You yust keep pushin’ dem sled handles.”
+
+“I’ll keep pushing,” she smiled. She was thinking not of herself but of
+Jodie. How was it all to end?
+
+Hours later she found herself approaching “Twenty-Mile House,” the last
+stop before the home stretch. Jodie was now quite definitely out of the
+race. But—she squared her shoulders at the thought—Smitty Valentine, her
+closest opponent, was twenty minutes behind her. A slim lead this, but if
+only she could hold it. If—
+
+Of a sudden, Gray Chief, her leader, gave a yelp of pain, then began
+hopping along on three feet. Time after time the brave fellow put that
+foot to the snow, only to lift it again.
+
+In consternation she stopped the dogs to race ahead and examine that
+foot.
+
+“Not a scratch,” she murmured. “Just one of those things that happen to a
+dog in a race.” Drawing her sheath knife, she cut the leader’s draw rope,
+then, lifting him in her arms, carried him back to deposit him on the
+sled. He whined piteously, but, with almost human wisdom, appeared to
+know that for the time at least, he was through.
+
+“Must bring you all in,” the girl spoke to the dogs, there were tears in
+her voice. “Who could be cruel enough to leave you behind on the frozen
+trail?”
+
+At Twenty-Mile House, with sinking heart, she learned that already her
+slim lead was lost.
+
+“Smitty Valentine and Florence Huyler running neck and neck,” the
+announcer droned. “Betting is four to one on Smitty.”
+
+“Oh, it is!” the girl’s face flushed. Gladly she would have plunged at
+once into the race, but rules forbade—twenty minutes for every racer at
+every rest spot, those were the orders. Refusing an offer of
+refreshments, she threw herself on a cot in the corner and was at once
+lost to the world.
+
+This time she did not dream. And yet, when she was awakened, she imagined
+she was dreaming, for there above her was a familiar face, At-a-tak, the
+Eskimo girl.
+
+“I go with you last mile. Say I could, those men. I not touch you, not
+touch sled, not touch dog, just go, say that, those men.”
+
+Florence found herself strangely cheered by this news. If this last long
+mile were to be run in misery, she would at least have company.
+
+Scarcely were they on their way than the Eskimo girl began shouting
+strange guttural commands to the team. This appeared to help. Florence
+was cheered. The next thing At-a-tak did was strange. Dragging Gray Chief
+from the sled, she said, “All right, you go. I come. I bring him.”
+Reluctantly Florence drove on.
+
+But now new trouble appeared on the horizon. A storm was coming. Sifting
+fine snow at her feet, it rose to her knees, her waist, her shoulders,
+then began cutting at her cheeks.
+
+To her vast surprise, out of this murk of snow-fog from behind her came a
+girl and a dog—At-a-tak and Gray Chief. And, wonder of wonders, Gray
+Chief was trotting on all fours. What had the native girl done to him? No
+time to ask. Some native trick of magic. She saw the leader take his
+place at the front, then felt the sled lurch forward.
+
+The grim battle went on. The storm increased. Eyes half blinded by snow,
+the brave dogs forged forward into a day that was all but night.
+
+Would they win? Could they? No more reports now. The end of the trail lay
+straight ahead. The advantage was all with Smitty. He would be through
+when she was still an hour from the goal. How dared she hope? And yet she
+did dare.
+
+“Much depends on this race,” she murmured.
+
+“Much,” At-a-tak echoed hoarsely at her side.
+
+And then came one more surprising burst of speed. “Good old Gray Chief!”
+she murmured. “Go! Go! Go! Go, Gray Chief!”
+
+“Look!” In spite of rules, At-a-tak gripped her arm as they ran. “Look!
+It is the Phantom Leader. Now you win! It is good! Nagoo-va-ruk-tuk.”
+
+Straining her eyes, Florence caught a glimpse of something white before
+her on the trail. Was it wolf, dog, or phantom? She could not tell, nor
+did she care, enough that, for the moment at least, her speed had been
+increased.
+
+“It can’t last,” she murmured to herself. “It will disappear, that beast,
+or phantom of the storm. Or, perhaps he will lead us astray.”
+
+To her surprise and great joy, it did last. Ever and anon, as the wild
+drive of the snow faded, she caught sight of that drifting spot of white.
+Now it was there and now gone, but for Gray Chief and his band it was
+always there and always, in some superhuman way, it inspired them to
+fresh endeavor.
+
+Only at the crest of the last ridge did the “phantom” vanish. And then it
+was but a short mile, all down hill, to the last stake, to defeat or
+victory.
+
+“Than—thank God for the Phantom Leader,” she exclaimed as, leaping on her
+sled and using one foot for a brake, she went gliding down, down, down—to
+what? She would soon know.
+
+As she came into view, she heard their wild scream from half a mile away.
+“Our gang,” her throat tightened. They would be loyal. Win or lose, she
+would receive a round of cheers. Good old Arctic gang! How good they had
+been to take her in!
+
+Three minutes more and she caught the refrain of their wild chant:
+
+“You win! You win! We win! We win! Sourdough? No! No! No! Fresh-Dough!
+Fresh-Dough! We win! We win!”
+
+There could be no doubting the truth of this chant. She read it in their
+faces when, as she shot across the line, they seized her, tossed her upon
+a broad expanse of dry walrus skin, then lifting her high, began bearing
+her away in triumph.
+
+At the clubroom door they paused. Then, in a spirit of fun, they allowed
+the skin to sag. Two score hands gave a quick yank and the heroine of the
+hour rose in air.
+
+This was not new to Florence. “Yea!” she shouted. “Come on! Let’s go!”
+Balancing herself in the center of this strange blanket, she stood erect
+and, with the next lusty pull, shot skyward like a rocket.
+
+Three times she sought the stars. Three times she scanned that throng for
+a face. She was looking for Jodie. He was not there.
+
+“Come on in,” they shouted in a chorus. “We’ll celebrate!”
+
+“No,” she shook her head. “Please. Not tonight. I’m dead. Tomorrow night
+we’ll whoop it up.”
+
+“All right! All right!” they screamed. “Big brass band and all. Tomorrow
+night.”
+
+At that, seizing proud Tom Kennedy’s arm, she marched away.
+
+“Grandfather,” she whispered, “where’s Jodie? Didn’t he get in?”
+
+“Sure! Oh, sure!” the old man replied. “Of course, he lost. Three dogs
+went wrong, but he came in, all the way.
+
+“When he got to the cabin,” he laughed, “he just tumbled on the cot and
+fell asleep. Before that, though, he said, ‘Be sure to wake me up when
+she comes in,’ meaning you. But, you know, I didn’t have the heart to
+wake him. He’s still fast asleep.”
+
+This last was not quite true, at least they found Jodie standing just
+inside the door when they arrived.
+
+“Congratulations!” he held out a hand.
+
+“Jodie, I’m sorry you couldn’t win,” the girl’s voice was low.
+
+“I know,” he stood silent for an instant, then a mischievous look stole
+into his eyes.
+
+“Well, anyway,” he said, “_we_ won the race. Just the way a man and his
+wife killed the bear. Ever hear of that?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Sit down and I’ll tell you.” Florence sat down. “You see,” said Jodie,
+“there was a man, his wife and two children in a shack when a great big
+bear entered. The man went to the rafters. The woman, being hampered by
+children clinging to her skirts, stayed on the floor. Seizing an axe, she
+killed the bear. Whereupon the man climbed down shouting, ‘Mary! Mary! We
+killed the bear!’
+
+“And now,” he added soberly, “now we’ve won the race, what are we to do
+about it?”
+
+“Put half the prize money in the bank for Mr. Il-ay-ok, spend the rest
+for grub, a new rifle or two and some ammunition, then go in search of
+Grandfather’s lost mine,” she panted all in one breath.
+
+“Sounds great!” the boy exclaimed. “Do I go along?”
+
+“Certainly. We’ll be generous,” the girl laughed. “We’ll let you do
+nearly all the digging.”
+
+“Mulligan’s on,” said Tom Kennedy, dragging up a chair. “What do you
+say?”
+
+“Grand!” Florence was ready for just that. Never before had she been so
+hungry and so sleepy all in one.
+
+“Jodie,” she said with the sudden start of one who had recalled something
+very unusual. “What about this Phantom Leader?”
+
+“Why, have you seen him?” Jodie grinned.
+
+“Sure—sure I’ve seen him, at least that’s what At-a-tak called him. ‘The
+Phantom Leader.’ And Jodie,” her tone was serious, “that’s why I won the
+race. He ran before us, miles and miles.”
+
+“Never heard of such a thing,” Jodie stared. “Probably a white wolf
+daring your dogs to get him, or perhaps a wandering dog.
+
+“But the Phantom Leader, h-m-m—that’s a grand little Eskimo legend. This
+Phantom is a real ghost hound who appears to help people out of trouble.
+An Eskimo woman is lost in a storm, he appears to lead her home. A hunter
+lost in the drifting floes, starving and freezing, sees the Phantom
+Leader, follows him and finds land. You know, regular thing, stuff dreams
+are made of.”
+
+“All the same,” said Florence, resuming her meal, “I hope to meet the
+Phantom again. He brought us rare good luck.”
+
+Giving herself over to the business of eating, she consumed a vast amount
+of mulligan stew and a great heap of hot biscuits. After that she dragged
+her reluctant feet to her cubby-hole of a bedroom and, creeping between
+blankets, slept the clock around.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+                            THE GOLDEN QUEST
+
+
+Florence was seated at the table the next day doing justice to a late
+afternoon breakfast of hot cakes and coffee when Jodie arrived.
+
+“Plans have been changed,” he gave her a rare smile. “No whoopee, but a
+grand ball. That’s what it’s going to be. Full dress affair.”
+
+“Full dress?” the girl’s lips parted in a gasp of surprise. Then with a
+sigh, “Oh, well,” she opened the draft in the small cook stove and set
+the flatirons on.
+
+A half hour later she stood before Jodie garbed in the only silk dress
+she had with her, a full-length affair of midnight blue, trimmed in
+ermine.
+
+“Keen!” was the boy’s comment. “Needs just one northern touch. You wait,”
+he burst through the door and was gone.
+
+Fifteen minutes later he reappeared with a soft, bulky package under his
+arm.
+
+“Here you are.” With one swift movement he cast away the paper wrapping
+and threw a gorgeous white fox fur about her neck. “And there you are,”
+he stood back admiringly. “Queen of the ball!”
+
+“Jodie! Is it mine?” her eyes shone.
+
+“Sure ’nuff. Present from the gang. Great stuff, I’d say—dog-musher one
+day, queen of the ball the next. Nothing like contrast in this jolly old
+world of ours.”
+
+Jodie was not wrong. The winter nights are long in Alaska, but not too
+long for a jolly good time. A waxed floor, a peppy ten-piece orchestra,
+including two Eskimo drummers, a joyous company and sixteen hours of
+darkness, who could ask for more? Florence did not ask. She made the most
+of every fleeting hour. For, she thought in one sober moment, before
+another forty-eight hours have flown, we’ll be on the trail once more.
+
+And so they were, off on the long trek that, they hoped, would bring them
+to the lost gold mine and to the end of good old Tom Kennedy’s lifelong
+dream.
+
+They trailed away into the cold, gray dawn, two teams and four people—Tom
+Kennedy, Florence, Jodie, and At-a-tak. Not only had the Eskimo girl
+gladly loaned the gray team for the occasion, but she had offered to
+accompany them as seamstress for their native clothing.
+
+Not a word was said as the city faded into the distance and blue-gray
+hills loomed ahead. They were off on the great quest, man’s age-long
+search for gold.
+
+They had been trotting along behind their sleds for some ten miles when,
+as it will on Arctic trails, the wind began pelting them with hard
+particles of snow. This time, however, that wind was with them.
+
+“Ah,” Jodie breathed joyously, “twenty below zero and the wind at our
+backs! What time we shall make!”
+
+“But look at the whirl of that snow!” Florence was alarmed. “We’ll lose
+the trail.”
+
+“No fear,” Tom Kennedy assured her. “The first few days of trail are like
+a paved road to an oldtimer. It’s the end that counts. We—”
+
+“Look!” Florence broke in, pointing away before them. “The Phantom
+Leader.”
+
+“Yes! Yes!” At-a-tak echoed. “The Phantom Leader.”
+
+“There _is_ something,” Jodie agreed. “Something white. It moves. Now it
+is gone.”
+
+“No! No! There it is,” Florence’s voice was eager. “Jodie! Grandfather!
+The Phantom Leader! That means good luck.”
+
+“I hope so,” Jodie was straining his eyes for a better look. “There! See!
+He has stopped.”
+
+“Or—or fallen,” Florence was ready to go racing on ahead of the team.
+Jodie held her back.
+
+“You never can tell,” he counselled.
+
+“There! There! He _is_ gone!” the girl cried a moment later.
+
+“Over a ridge. We’ll see him again,” Tom Kennedy explained.
+
+Indeed they did see him again and so close that Florence imagined herself
+looking at a pair of eyes burning their way out of a field of white.
+
+“Oh! Ah!” she breathed.
+
+“If that’s a dog,” Jodie exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, “he’s the whitest
+one I’ve ever seen.”
+
+“There! He’s down!” Florence’s voice was tense with emotion. “Poor
+fellow! He must be hurt!”
+
+“Who ever heard of a ghost being hurt?” Jodie laughed.
+
+“There—there he goes!”
+
+“This can’t last forever,” Jodie cracked a whip. His team sped on.
+
+For a full half mile they burned up the trail, then with a suddenness
+that was startling, they all piled up in a heap at the back side of a
+snow bank. And there lying at Florence’s feet was one of the most piteous
+sights the girl’s eyes had rested upon: a collie dog, white as snow and
+so emaciated with hunger that every bone could be counted. He was whining
+piteously.
+
+“Poor thing,” she murmured as she dug into her pack for cooked reindeer
+meat. “Poor old Phantom Leader!”
+
+“Well, I’m dumbed!” was all Jodie could say. Tom Kennedy said nothing at
+all. At-a-tak stared as one must stare when, for the first time, he sees
+a ghost within his reach.
+
+“Where did he come from?” Florence asked as the dog voiced thanks for the
+food offered him.
+
+“Not from Nome,” said Kennedy. “No such dog there.”
+
+“Some reindeer herder’s dog, or a miner’s, like Jack London’s Buck in the
+_Call of the Wild_,” said Jodie. “Find his story and you may learn of
+tragedy.”
+
+No time now for such musings. The long trail lay ahead.
+
+“We’ll take him along for luck,” said Florence. What luck? How could she
+know now?
+
+“We’ll have to, of course,” they all agreed. “No true Alaskan ever leaves
+a starving dog on the trail.”
+
+So the “Phantom Leader” was stowed away on top of the canvas packing on
+Jodie’s sled, and the little caravan once more moved on into the great
+unknown.
+
+
+Long days followed, days of pushing forward along untracked rivers and
+over low mountains where no man lived, and no living creature moved save
+the fox, the wolf, and the snowshoe rabbit. Nights there were when the
+sky was like a blue sea filled with the lights of a thousand ships. An
+Arctic gale came sweeping down upon them. Blotting out the landscape, it
+drove them into camp. For two days and nights with their little
+sheet-iron stove beating back the frost, they lay on their sleeping bags
+listening to the beat of snow against their tent.
+
+Their food supply dwindled. No wild caribou had been seen, but joy
+suddenly filled their hearts when at last they came to the spot where the
+river they followed forked.
+
+“That,” Tom Kennedy exulted, “is the fork. Up this stream we must go.”
+
+Did they have faith in his judgment? How could they doubt it? Yet
+Florence thought of their meager food supply and shuddered.
+
+“Jodie and I will go out to look for game,” said Tom Kennedy.
+
+“Sure. We’ll have some great luck,” Jodie agreed.
+
+“I’ll set up camp and cut some wood.” Florence was no weakling. She could
+play a man’s part.
+
+As for At-a-tak, she wandered away in search of snowshoe rabbits’ tracks.
+More than once her cunningly set snares had provided their pot with a
+delicious stew.
+
+It was after Florence had set up camp and while the others were still
+away that she began hearing puzzling sounds. Coming from the distance,
+they sounded like the crackle of a wood fire. But there was no fire.
+
+“What is it?” she asked of the white collie, the “Phantom Leader,” who
+lay on the snow close beside her. Well fed and cared for now, the dog had
+regained his strength. He had become a prime favorite with all. But oh!
+how he could eat! And in the harness he was just no good at all. Neither
+his nature nor his training fitted him for this.
+
+“Come on, Phantom,” the girl murmured. “Earn your dinner. Tell me what
+those sounds are.”
+
+For answer the dog rose to his haunches and growled. His sharp nose
+pointed straight down the trail over which they had come. Each moment the
+faint clatter increased in volume. At the same time a burst of wind swept
+up the valley and a swirl of fine particles cut at the girl’s cheek.
+
+“Oh, dear! Another storm!” Still she waited and listened.
+
+“Phantom! What is it, you—” Suddenly she broke short off. As her whisper
+ceased, her lips parted, her eyes bulged in astonishment, for at that
+instant from behind a clump of low spruce trees a head appeared. The
+head, long and white with small mottled brown spots, carried a pair of
+massive antlers. The creature stood staring at them, apparently quite
+unafraid.
+
+“A—a caribou!” she whispered. “Food, plenty of food for dogs and men. All
+the rifles gone, too. And yet—”
+
+The creature was beautiful. If a rifle were in her hands could she have
+killed it? She did not know.
+
+Then like a flash the truth came to her, this was not a caribou but a
+reindeer, a domestic reindeer. Caribou are brown. Only reindeer are
+white.
+
+“And there are others,” she said to the dog, “many more. Listen!” As she
+stood there in silence there came again that confused crack-cracking.
+That, she realized, was many reindeer crack-cracking their hoofs as they
+trotted over the snow.
+
+“Reindeer,” she whispered in awed excitement, “many reindeer here, two
+hundred miles from the nearest range. Something wrong somewhere, that’s
+sure!”
+
+Truly here was a situation. Her companions were gone. Here was a problem
+to be solved.
+
+“They might be back any time,” she told herself, “but they may not come
+before the storm breaks.” Something seemed to tell her that here was a
+matter that needed looking into. Had this herd wandered away, been
+stampeded by wolves, or—her heart skipped a beat—had some northern
+outlaws driven the reindeer into the wilds that they might live upon them
+and perhaps later sell the unmarked yearlings?
+
+“It might be Eskimo,” she thought. Her grandfather had told how the deer
+had at one time belonged to the Government and to the Eskimo, and how
+white men had gained control of great herds, how some of the Eskimo,
+feeling themselves defeated, had turned bitter and at one time or another
+killed deer that did not belong to them.
+
+“It might be dangerous to go and see what it’s all about,” she told
+herself. “Might—”
+
+A flash of light had caught her eye, a gleam from the white reindeer’s
+ear. “A marker,” she exclaimed. “John Bowman’s marker! Ah, that’s
+different!” She had seen Bowman’s deer at Nome. “Come on, Phantom!” she
+called to the dog. “We’ll have to look into this.”
+
+Inspired by this call to service, Florence climbed up the slope. Then,
+crouching low that she might not startle the reindeer, she followed back
+along the trail.
+
+Behind her, sticking close to her heels, was the “Phantom Leader.”
+
+“Good old Phantom,” she murmured. The dog let out an all but inaudible
+yap-yap.
+
+A biting breath of air struck her cheek. Snow rattled against her parka.
+The storm was on its way.
+
+Creeping down the slope, she peered through the branches. “Reindeer,” she
+muttered, “still more reindeer. There must be hundreds! Must be—”
+
+Suddenly she drew back among the dark boughs. Had she caught a glimpse of
+a skulking figure? She could not be sure. The dog crowded close to her,
+trembling. Why did he tremble? Could he sense danger?
+
+Creeping back up the ridge, she once more turned her back upon her camp.
+She must make some fresh discoveries. But the storm was beginning in
+earnest now. All about her were swirls of blinding snow. Now she could
+see for a distance of forty yards, and now but a few feet.
+
+“Wild spot this,” she said to the dog. “Reindeer will be stampeded by the
+storm. They may rush over the ridge and perish.”
+
+Slowly a plan was forming in her mind. She would get behind the herd,
+then drive it forward to the narrow sheltered valley at the edge of which
+their camp was made.
+
+“They’ll be safe there,” she told herself. But if there were outlaws,
+marauders behind this herd? She shuddered. Ah, well, she must risk it.
+She owed that to her friend and her grandfather’s friend, John Bowman.
+
+For a quarter of an hour she battled her way against the storm. Then,
+seized with sudden fear lest she lose contact with the herd, she hurried
+down the slope.
+
+She had just reached the bed of the frozen stream when, for a space of
+seconds, the air cleared. Through that half-light she saw two dark
+figures. They were moving up the slope. Were they a man and a sled, or
+two men? She could not be sure. A second more and all was blotted out in
+one wild whirl of snow.
+
+Looking down, she saw what appeared to be an answer to her question—a
+sled track in the snow. Bending down, she examined it carefully. “Eskimo
+sled,” was her verdict. The tracks were too close together for a white
+man’s sled, and the runners too broad. They were wooden runners, made of
+driftwood.
+
+Already she was out of touch with the herd. Whatever happened, she must
+hasten on.
+
+“Phantom, where are you?” she exclaimed in sudden consternation. Where
+indeed was the collie? He was gone, had vanished into the ever-increasing
+storm. A feeling of loneliness, almost of despair, swept over her. Why
+had she taken such chances? In a strange land one must exercise caution.
+
+“Got to get going.” As she hurled herself forward before the storm, she
+was fairly lifted from her feet by the violence of the wind. Now spinning
+like a top and now sailing along like a kite over the snow, she missed a
+spruce tree by inches, went hurtling over some young firs, then tripped
+over tangled branches to at last land sprawling on all fours over a snow
+bank.
+
+“Whew! What a—” she broke short off to listen. What was that? A dog
+barking?
+
+“Yes! Yes!” She was on her feet. “It’s Phantom and I know the meaning of
+that bark. He hasn’t started a rabbit, nor is he afraid. He’s driving
+cattle, reindeer! And why not? He’s a collie.”
+
+Once again, more cautiously, she took up the trail. Her course was clear
+enough now. All she had to do was to follow on, perhaps give the dog a
+word of encouragement now and then. She would herd the reindeer up the
+ravine. Soon they would be at camp. From that point the deer could spread
+out in the narrow protected valley.
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” she said aloud. “There’s Phantom now.”
+
+She caught fleeting glimpses of the dog. Now he was here, now there, and
+there. What a fast worker he was! The moment a deer lagged, he was at its
+heels.
+
+And the reindeer? She saw them indistinctly, like a picture out of focus.
+But there must be hundreds of them. How had they been driven all this
+way? And why?
+
+She cast apprehensive glances to right, left, then back. There had been
+something secretive about the way that man back there on the trail had
+acted. She saw no one now. The snow fog was closing in.
+
+“Go, Phantom! Go after them!” she cried. “Good old Phantom!” How glad she
+was that they had responded to the Phantom’s appeal and had saved him.
+
+Just then she caught the gleam of a light, and heard a shout. It was her
+grandfather’s voice. She was nearing the camp. It was all right now. The
+deer were safe from the storm and from—from what else? She could not be
+sure. Only one thing she knew, they were John Bowman’s reindeer and John
+Bowman was her friend.
+
+An hour later, with the wind tearing and cracking about their tent, the
+four of them, grandfather, Jodie, Florence, and At-a-tak, sat on their
+sleeping bags in awed silence listening to the rush and roar of the
+storm. At their feet, dreaming day-dreams, lay the collie who on that day
+had covered himself with glory. That splendid herd was safe from the
+storm. Tomorrow when the storm had gone roaring on towards the north,
+they would begin unraveling the mystery that had to do with the presence
+of these reindeer in this wild, uninhabited region.
+
+“Wandered away,” said grandfather.
+
+“Somebody stole,” said At-a-tak.
+
+“Perhaps the regular herders are taking them somewhere,” said Jodie.
+
+But who could surely know? They must wait and see.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+                         THE BLACK SEAL’S TOOTH
+
+
+Florence stopped short in her tracks. It was early next morning. She had
+wandered some distance from camp. Bending over, she picked something from
+the snow. That something was brightly colored orange and green. It had
+shone out of the solid white of snow at her feet.
+
+“Tracks,” she thought, “Eskimo tracks, and now this.” The thing she held
+in her hand was strange. A small leather packet, it was decorated with
+masses of bright beads. As she examined it she saw that it had been sewn
+up tight, but she could feel some small hard objects within.
+
+“Gold nuggets, perhaps,” her imagination soared. Two bits of leather
+thong led out from the bag. That they had been one piece she knew at
+once. “Worn about the neck,” she concluded, “and the thong broke.”
+
+Next instant she was calling, “At-a-tak!”
+
+“Let’s see.” The Eskimo girl burst through a clump of evergreens.
+“Ah-ne-ca!” she exclaimed at sight of the little sack. “Came from Russia,
+this one. Not Eskimo, no! no! _Chuckches_ from Russia. What you call it?
+Charm! Keep bad spirits away, think that, this _Chuckche_ man.”
+
+“Well,” said Florence, “it might keep bad spirits away, but it didn’t
+keep bad ideas out of his mind. He and his friends tried to steal five
+hundred of John Bowman’s reindeer, that’s plain.
+
+“Now—” her tone changed, “looks as if these natives had become
+frightened, leaving us with the reindeer on our hands. Two hundred miles
+from anywhere. What are we going to do about it?”
+
+“Yes,” said At-a-tak. What she meant was, ‘Yes, here’s a situation for
+you!’ And Florence agreed with her. Here they were on a golden quest,
+marching with dog teams and supplies into the uncharted North in search
+of a lost and hidden mine, and now of a sudden they found themselves
+encamped with a whole herd of reindeer belonging to a friend.
+
+“Anyway, we won’t starve,” the girl laughed. “Plenty of reindeer steak.”
+
+“Yes,” said At-a-tak.
+
+“We won’t go back,” Florence decided suddenly.
+
+“No,” agreed the Eskimo girl.
+
+“We’ll go on north,” said Florence. “We’ll take the deer with us. We’ve
+just got to!”
+
+“Yes,” said At-a-tak.
+
+It was the day after the storm. All was white and quiet now. Florence and
+the Eskimo girl had gone in search of a clue that would give them a
+reason for the presence of this valuable herd of reindeer in such a
+place. Apparently they had found the answer. Here and there were
+snow-blown tracks of dogs, sleds and natives. These led away from the
+narrow valley. Without question, these natives, overcome by a desire to
+live easily off that which belonged to another, had driven these deer
+into the hills. At sight of white men they had fled. Would they return?
+Florence shuddered. “Have to be on the watch,” she told herself. To
+At-a-tak she said:
+
+“Come! Let’s go back to camp.”
+
+When their report had been made, Tom Kennedy agreed that they should take
+the deer with them. “We’ll camp here until tomorrow morning, give the
+deer a chance to feed, then we’ll press on up the fork to the mine.
+
+“The mine,” his voice rose, “it’s still there. Bound to be! Joe and me,
+we hid it, hid it good and plenty.”
+
+“Hid it?” Florence wanted to ask. “How can you hide a gold mine?” She did
+not ask. She would wait and see for herself. Long ago she had learned the
+uselessness of asking questions when a little patient waiting would
+permit one to answer them for oneself.
+
+A short time later, in the shadow of a fir tree, she cut the threads that
+closed that small beaded bag, then shook into her hand three bits of
+ivory. Two were white, the long, sharp teeth of a fox, and one was black
+as night, the tooth of a seal. This black one had been buried perhaps for
+hundreds of years beneath the sands of the sea.
+
+“Good luck charm,” she murmured. “Wonder if it will bring good luck to
+us.”
+
+Hours later, in a dreamy sort of way she was wondering this all over
+again. There was need at this moment for luck.
+
+She was seated beside the coals of a campfire. The moon in all its glory
+hung above her. Stretching across the sky the Milky Way seemed a scarf of
+finest lace.
+
+Her eyes, however, were not much upon the sky. They roved the snowy
+slopes. They took in every clump of fir and spruce. They rested with
+pleasure upon the brown spots that were, she knew, sleeping reindeer. She
+was guarding camp. They had decided that it was best to keep a watch.
+Jodie had all but insisted upon keeping her watch, but to this she would
+not listen.
+
+“I’m as good a man as you are, even if I am a girl,” was her laughing
+challenge.
+
+“_Chuckches_,” she was thinking, “how would natives of Siberia come so
+far?” And yet, the charm in her pocket had come from Russia—Siberia—the
+Arctic coast of Asia. At-a-tak had assured her of that. How strange!
+
+Then she thought of the hidden mine. They would be there tomorrow. A
+feeling of pleased excitement, like the day before Christmas, ran through
+her being. Be there tomorrow. Would they? Perhaps there was no mine
+worthy of the name—only an old man’s dream. Well, even this had to be
+proved tomorrow. Tomorrow—
+
+She started from this reverie, then listened sharply. Had there come an
+unaccustomed sound, like someone talking low in the distance?
+
+A sound did reach her ears, a short, sharp barking. White foxes barking
+in the night. But this other sound—could it be some wild creature,
+perhaps a wolf, grumbling to his mate?
+
+After that the night was still. She thought there had never before been
+such silence—the great white silence of the North. She imagined one might
+hear the rush of stars in their orbits.
+
+Then again that silence was broken. The sound this time was very near,
+like the low mush-mush of footsteps on the snow, it seemed to come from
+the ridge above. Three clumps of spruce trees were there. Anyone passing
+from one to the other would be hidden. The nearest was not twenty yards
+from the camp. Her hands moved nervously as she sat watching those low
+spruce trees.
+
+A moment passed, another, and yet another. The silence appeared to
+deepen. Blue-gray shadows of trees seemed to creep toward her. Absurd!
+She shook herself free of the illusion.
+
+Then of a sudden she saw it—a face. One instant it was there among the
+spruce boughs. The next it was gone.
+
+“A native?” A prickly sensation raced up her spine. It was night. She was
+alone, was awake. Should she waken the others?
+
+“It’s my watch,” she told herself resolutely. “The face is gone. The
+reindeer are safe. So-o—” with a sigh she settled back in her place.
+
+When she awoke next morning she was tempted to believe that her seeming
+to see that face among the trees was the result of an overworked
+imagination.
+
+It was At-a-tak who soon changed her mind about this. The native girl had
+stood a short watch in the early morning. The face among the trees had
+reappeared. The man had spoken to her in his native tongue. The story she
+had to tell was strange.
+
+This man she said was indeed a native of Russia. He and his people had
+visited America in a big skin boat. When they started on the homeward
+journey, ice drove them back. In America, they had no food. They must
+hunt. Finding this herd, and knowing little of American laws, they had
+driven it into the hills.
+
+“But now,” At-a-tak concluded, “no more drive reindeer, those Russian
+natives. I say, ‘Go away quick. White man will catch you, put in jail,
+maybe shoot you.’ He say, ‘Go away quick.’ That one go away far. So,” she
+sighed, “not bother reindeer more.”
+
+“And so,” Jodie laughed, “we have one fine reindeer herd on our hands.
+What shall we do with it?”
+
+“Take them along; eat them one by one if we must,” was Tom Kennedy’s
+reply. “But now the cry is ‘On to the mine!’
+
+“On to the gold mine!” he shouted.
+
+“On to the mine! On! On to the mine!” came echoing back.
+
+Not so fast. There was the herd of reindeer, they must be driven on
+before. In spite of the fact that this herd in an emergency would save
+them from starvation, Florence felt inclined to bewail the fact that this
+extra responsibility had been thrust upon them.
+
+“Friends,” she said to her grandfather as they ate a hurriedly prepared
+breakfast of sourdough pancakes, “friends are fine, but sometimes they
+are a lot of trouble. If John Bowman hadn’t been our friend, we might
+have left those deer to shift for themselves.”
+
+“N-no,” the old man spoke slowly, “no, girl, that’s where you’re wrong.
+It does give us an added responsibility, our friendship with John. But
+reindeer are property, valuable property. Many a man in this cold white
+world would have starved had it not been for the reindeer. So we’ll have
+to look after ’em the best we can.”
+
+“Grandfather,” the girl thought with increased admiration, “surely is a
+fine old man! If everyone was like him, what a world this would be!”
+
+“We’ll get there all the same!” exclaimed Tom. “You watch and see.”
+
+“Come on, Phantom, old boy!” Florence shouted to the collie dog a few
+moments later. “We’ve got to get this Arctic caravan on the move.”
+
+The dog let out a joyous yelp and they were on their way.
+
+It was growing dusk on that short day of the Northland when, on crossing
+a low ridge, they sighted a large oval spot that seemed jet black against
+the surrounding white.
+
+“A frozen lake,” said Jodie.
+
+For one full moment they stood there in silence. The scene that lay
+before them was beautiful beyond compare. The sun setting behind white
+and purple mountains, the frozen oval of water that in summer must seem a
+mirror, the graceful reindeer wandering down over the sloping field of
+white—all this beauty would remain with Florence as long as she lived.
+Yet the words of her grandfather would linger longer. What he said was:
+
+“Yes, girl, that’s the lake. In fact, it’s _the_ lake! And yonder—” his
+voice broke with emotion, “yonder is the cabin Joe and I put up so long
+ago.”
+
+Sure enough, as the girl looked closely, she did see a small cabin, half
+buried in snow, nestling among the trees.
+
+“The cabin!” she exclaimed. “The cabin! And now, where’s the mine?”
+
+“Time enough for that, girl.” With eager stride the old man started down
+the hill. “Time enough. The cabin comes first.” At that they all went
+racing away.
+
+“It’s strange,” the old man murmured a half hour later, “fifteen years
+have gone. And yet here is our cabin, just as we left it. Even the flour
+in that big can is good. No one has been here since we left. Surely this
+is a strange, mysterious, empty land.”
+
+“But the gold mine?” The words slipped unbidden from Florence’s lips.
+
+At that her grandfather did a curious thing. With one long bony finger
+that trembled slightly, he pointed straight down at the center of the
+floor:
+
+“We hid it. Hid it good.”
+
+“But wh—where is it?” the girl stammered.
+
+“The two middle planks we hewed out of a spruce log,” was the answer.
+“Lift ’em up and you’ll see.”
+
+Florence and Jodie did lift the planks. They did see. Beneath the cabin
+floor was a dark cavity.
+
+“Not very deep,” the old man laughed happily. “Not far down to the bed
+rock. Flash your light down there, son.”
+
+Jodie threw the gleam of his electric torch to the bottom of the cavity.
+Then an exclamation escaped his lips. Casting back the gleam of his
+torch, some tiny objects appeared to turn the place into an inverted sky,
+all full of stars.
+
+“Gold!” the old man murmured. “It’s gold, son. Gold!”
+
+After Florence had crept into her sleeping bag that night, she found her
+mind filled with many questions. Would they truly find gold, much gold,
+down there in that dark hole? For her grandfather’s sake, she hoped so.
+What of the reindeer? They were feeding and sleeping now in that narrow
+valley. Would they be able to drive these all the way to Nome? Would
+those Russian natives truly remain away, or would hunger drive them back?
+
+“There’ll be trouble if they come back,” she thought. “Trouble. Troub—”
+At that she fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+                           TO BE OR NOT TO BE
+
+
+In the meantime life did not lack for excitement back in the Matamuska
+valley. Strange tales had come to Mary both by mail and by air. Brought
+by air-mail, two letters from Florence had reached her. They told of the
+lost mine, of the dog race that was to be run and of the all too exciting
+life the big girl was living in the far North.
+
+“Miss Santa Claus,” Mary whispered when she had read those letters twice.
+“Speed Samson said I should be little Miss Santa Claus.” She was thinking
+of those delayed Christmas presents to the Eskimo children still lying
+there in the postoffice in Anchorage. As she closed her eyes she tried to
+picture the miles and miles of timber, tundra, and endless snow she must
+fly over to reach that strange land.
+
+“Speed Samson will take Mr. Il-ay-ok up there,” she whispered. “I could
+go too and take all those presents. I wonder—”
+
+Yes, it did seem probable that when the hunting season was over, Speed
+would, taking a chance of being paid in fox skins, fly the little Eskimo
+to his home. Truth is, he was growing very fond of the little man. Having
+taken him along on a hunting trip he discovered that he was a capital
+cook and that he could prepare meat in a manner that delighted his
+guest-hunters. After that he took him often.
+
+It was on one of these occasions that something happened which made
+Mary’s dreams of becoming “little Miss Santa Claus” lighter and brighter.
+Speed carried a short-wave radio in his plane. It was on this evening,
+after he had landed on the little lake at Rainbow Farm, planning to stay
+all night, that the thing happened. Mary, Mark, and Mr. Il-ay-ok were in
+the cabin of the plane taking turns at listening to the radio. Speed
+himself had the head-set clamped over his head when suddenly he
+exclaimed:
+
+“It’s some cute kids way up at Cape Prince of Wales. School teacher’s
+children or something. Big brother’s rigged up a short-wave outfit. They
+think they’re talking only to some people on a small island seventy miles
+away, but it’s going out over the air. Something about a Christmas tree
+made of willow branches and a driftwood log. Seems there was to have been
+quite a Christmas up there, dolls, toys, candy, everything. The
+presents—”
+
+“Yes! Yes! I know!” Mary broke in. “The presents didn’t come. Too late
+for the boat. They’re in Anchorage now.”
+
+“Is that a fact?” Speed stared at her in surprise.
+
+“Say-ee!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Guess they got on to my listening in on
+the air. They’re talking in some new lingo. Guess it’s Eskimo. Here, Mr.
+Il-ay-ok, give me your ears.” He clamped the head-set over the Eskimo’s
+head.
+
+“Oh! Ah-ne-ca!” the little man smiled broadly. “Yes. Talking Eskimo.”
+
+“What do they say?” Mary exclaimed.
+
+“Can’t tell now. Bye-and-bye.” The Eskimo waved her away.
+
+“Let him alone,” Mark scolded. “It may be important, a shipwreck, or—or
+something.”
+
+It was important, very important to at least three young people quite far
+away. It was not a shipwreck. An Eskimo girl was talking. Eskimo people
+are born story tellers, and Kud-lucy was telling a story to No-wad-luk,
+her little friend at Shishmaref Island. The story was long, but in her
+excitement she forgot all else.
+
+As Mr. Il-ay-ok listened to the tiny Eskimo’s story, Mary waited in
+breathless silence. What will this story mean to me, she was asking
+herself. Perhaps much. Perhaps nothing at all.
+
+Of a sudden Mr. Il-ay-ok dragged the head-set from his ears. “Gone!” he
+smiled broadly. “All over now.”
+
+“Tell us!” Mary’s eyes shone. “What did they say?”
+
+“Long story. Must tell all,” Mr. Il-ay-ok spoke slowly.
+
+He did tell all and a most interesting narrative it proved to be. The
+little Eskimo girl’s story as he told it was this:
+
+There was to have been a Christmas tree at the Cape. What was a Christmas
+tree? Oh, something quite wonderful! So bright it was that it shone like
+the sun. And on this bright tree there grew all manner of strange things.
+Little people? Yes, little people, no longer than a man’s foot, but all
+dressed in bright clothes. Could they talk? To be sure. Yes, and cry and
+close their eyes, and go for a walk. Someone apparently had done her best
+to give Kud-lucy a real notion of what a Christmas tree was like. Had she
+succeeded? You be the judge.
+
+Yes, and there were to have been more things, Kud-lucy hurried on. Small
+seals that were not truly seals, and walrus and polar bears. Yes, and
+many things no Eskimo had ever seen before.
+
+“But now—” little Kud-lucy’s voice had faltered, “now there is to be no
+Christmas tree, not any at all!” Why? Because the big boat had come too
+soon. All the wonderful things apparently were left behind.
+
+At this instant apparently little Kud-lucy suddenly realized that she was
+talking in some strange, mysterious manner to her friend far away. The
+discovery frightened her and she had gone off the air.
+
+As the story ended, Mary jumped to her feet exclaiming:
+
+“Just think! To be Miss Santa Claus to a hundred Eskimo children! But
+then—” She sat down quite suddenly to stare out into the dark, cold
+night.
+
+“Why not?” said Speed.
+
+“It’s a long, long way.”
+
+“No way is long any more, with an airplane,” he replied quietly.
+
+“Well, perhaps. Who knows?” Mary looked at Mark. He said never a word.
+There was no need. She could read his thoughts. He was thinking, “I love
+those Eskimo children, but I love Mary more. I want her always to be
+safe. And yet—I wonder.”
+
+That night beside the huge, barrel stove in the Hughes’ cabin, Mr.
+Il-ay-ok talked long of his people who lived on the rim of a frozen sea.
+He spoke of the children, of their play and their simple toys, of their
+cheerful natures and happy smiles. With every word Mary’s interest grew.
+Her cheeks burned as she dreamed on of that suggested flight into the
+North.
+
+“Christmas in Eskimo-land, dog-teams, reindeer and everything,” she
+whispered to herself. “Then perhaps Florence will be ready to return and
+we shall fly home together.” How she missed Florence! Then and there
+something like a resolve was formed in her mind. Would she go? There
+would be solemn family conferences, but in the end, would she go? To this
+question, for the moment, there came no answer.
+
+Now Mr. Il-ay-ok was talking of other things, he was telling why that man
+Loome hated him. Somehow government officials had been persuaded that the
+Eskimo should drive their reindeer into the hills where feed was more
+plentiful. This they would never do; first they would sell their deer for
+very little. Loome and his companions were planning to profit by their
+misfortune.
+
+“Now,” the little man’s eyes shone, “now, I have the papers. Here,” he
+patted his pocket. “Reindeer may stay as they are. The so wonderful
+government has said that. My people, they will be happy. But first I must
+show them the paper. First day of next year it will be too late. So-o, I
+must go. I must fly.”
+
+“And you shall fly,” said Speed Samson. “Here. Shake on it.” They shook
+hands in silence. Mary’s heart burned with hope.
+
+“Miss Santa Claus in Eskimo land,” she whispered.
+
+Next day Madam Chicaski, who had of late been acting rather strangely,
+did the oddest thing of all. When in the summer Bill had returned from
+his fruitless search for gold, he had left his pick and shovel in the
+Hughes woodshed. They were still there. On this morning Mary saw the
+large Russian woman take the pick from the shed and march resolutely
+toward the giant stump that stood in the back yard. It was an innocent
+appearing thing, that stump. All weather-beaten and festooned with
+rustling morning-glory vines, it seemed a thing destined to stand there
+for years. And yet, as Mary watched, she felt sure that this woman meant
+to attack its roots, if possible to tear it from the earth.
+
+“I wonder why?” she asked herself. At that moment her mind was filled
+with mingled emotion, surprise, consternation and something of alarm.
+This last she could not even have explained to herself.
+
+There was, it seemed, no immediate cause for anxiety. The big woman did
+not swing the pick, at least, not that day. Instead as she came near to
+the stump, using the pick for a cane, she stood there leaning on it
+looking for all the world like a picture called “The Man with the Hoe.”
+On her face at that moment was a look Mary had seen there before, it was
+the gaze of one who worships at a shrine.
+
+
+In the far away valley, work on the lost mine progressed famously. Since
+the greater part of the digging had been done long ago by Tom Kennedy and
+his partner, there remained little to be done save to pick away at the
+gold-laden gravel, to hoist it through the floor, then to wash it out in
+water brought up from the lake. Even with so much of the work done, it
+was a slow process. Days passed. Each day saw Tom Kennedy’s moose-hide
+sack a little heavier, but each day brought their small supply of flour,
+sugar, bacon and beans dwindling lower and lower.
+
+“We’ll kill a fat reindeer and pay Bowman for it when we get back,” said
+Tom Kennedy.
+
+“Grandfather, if we are to drive those reindeer all the way back it will
+take days and days,” Florence was worried. “There will be nothing left to
+eat but reindeer meat. Can we live on that?”
+
+“We can try. Eskimo do.”
+
+“We’re not Eskimo.”
+
+“No-o. But something will turn up. We’ll manage.” The old man was too
+absorbed in his golden quest to think overmuch of things to eat.
+
+Then came the great day. “The mother-lode.” Tom Kennedy spoke to
+Florence. She was at his side in the mine. “See!” The light of his torch
+was cast back by a yellow gleam. “See! Nuggets big as bird’s eggs.”
+
+“And—and will this be the end?” she asked.
+
+“The end, yes,” his tone was impressive. “But enough. Who could ask for
+more? Only look there’ll be—” He broke short off to listen intently.
+
+“An airplane!” the girl’s voice was low and tense.
+
+“They’ve found us,” the old man muttered.
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Who knows?” was his strange answer. “No good ever comes from spying.”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+                            COASTING UP HILL
+
+
+At very nearly that same hour a blue and gray airplane rose from the
+frozen sea near Anchorage. Its passengers were only two, a dark-eyed,
+animated girl, and a stolid little Eskimo man. At the controls was Speed
+Samson. You will not need a second guess as to who the passengers were,
+nor the nature of the cargo they carried. Little Miss Santa Claus, who in
+real life was Mary Hughes, had her pack securely stowed away in the
+baggage compartment of the plane. She was on her way.
+
+Two hours later she found herself drawing her mackinaw closely about her.
+It was cold in the small cabin of their airplane, stinging cold. How high
+were they in air? She did not know. How far north were they? She did not
+know. She was not thinking of that so much, but of the whole strange
+adventure.
+
+It had taken courage to say “yes” at last. The postmaster in Anchorage
+had listened to their story with interest, but he hesitated to give his
+consent to their airplane delivery of the packages of Christmas presents
+to Cape Prince of Wales. “It is quite irregular,” he had said, “and you
+might never get there. It’s a great white world you are going into. There
+are few landing fields.”
+
+“That is true,” Speed had agreed. “However, I’ve never yet taken off for
+any destination and failed to arrive.”
+
+“And besides,” Mary had put in, “if we don’t take their presents, they
+won’t arrive until Fourth of July, when the boats come. And what’s the
+good of Christmas presents on the Fourth of July?”
+
+“What indeed?” the gray-haired postmaster had smiled. Finally he
+surrendered and gave his consent.
+
+“And now—” Mary’s brow wrinkled as her eyes took in the gathering gray
+around them. “Now it is going to snow and we—” She did not finish.
+
+Yes, they must land. But how? Where? Suddenly, seeming close enough to be
+touched, a mountain loomed before them.
+
+With a wild whirl that took her breath, the airplane swung about to go
+speeding along the side of that jagged ridge.
+
+“It—it’s beautiful—and terrible!” she whispered as she sat up to stare
+out of the window.
+
+Ah, yes, it was all of that. Here was a wall towering and smooth like the
+side of a sky-scraper, and there a black shaft of rock rising like a
+church spire, and here a shining river that, as their eyes became
+accustomed to it, turned into a broad glacier.
+
+“The snow is falling faster. Where can we land? And if we can’t land?”
+Terror gripped the girl’s heart.
+
+Of a sudden the plane once again swooped downward. She caught her breath.
+What had happened? Was their supply of gas running low? Were they to make
+a forced landing? Or had Speed’s keen eye discovered some hidden valley
+offering a safe landing? She was soon enough to know.
+
+Directly beneath them there appeared a broad stretch of white.
+
+“A valley!” The girl heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+The plane circled. She was glad they were to land now, for in the last
+two hours they had made good progress. She was hungry. Soon they would be
+brewing hot cocoa on the little gas stove, heating canned meat and
+searching out big round crackers. They—
+
+Once again her thoughts broke off. The plane had bumped. There was
+something strange about that bump, too solid or something.
+Bump-bump-bump, each bump was stranger than the last.
+
+But now she sighed with relief, for the plane was coming to a standstill.
+Slow—slow, slower, stop.
+
+She was preparing to open the door, when with a little cry of dismay she
+fell back among the blankets. A terrible thing was happening, the plane
+was gliding backward!
+
+“What—what is it?” cried Mr. Il-ay-ok.
+
+“We—we’re on a sloping ledge. We’re gliding down—down! We—” Mary’s voice
+ended in a gasp. Her heart stood still, then went racing on. The plane
+was gliding faster, faster, ever faster, and back of them, not thirty
+seconds’ glide, was a deep, dark abyss! They had landed half way up the
+sloping mountainside.
+
+“Dear God—”
+
+Her prayer was answered before it was said. The motor thundered. Their
+backward gliding slowed. Slow, slower, stop. Then the reverse, the motor
+picked up speed, and they glided forward faster, faster, faster. Then,
+with a startling lurch the plane swung to the right. Next instant they
+were once more floating on God’s good free air.
+
+Then, perhaps because they had seen perils enough, the sun quite suddenly
+broke from behind the clouds, the snowfall ceased, and they found
+themselves sailing high over a long, winding valley.
+
+Two hours later, having sailed on through a clear sky for many miles, and
+feeling the need for rest and food, they circled low over the frozen
+surface of a broad stream.
+
+“Good!” said the Eskimo. “Now we eat.”
+
+“See!” Mary exclaimed, pointing off to the left, “there are three columns
+of smoke rising up from the edge of the forest. People living around
+here. Wonder what they are? White men, Eskimo, or Indians?”
+
+“No Eskimo,” said Mr. Il-ay-ok, “Too far, this place.”
+
+So they came down. Three times, like some lone wild duck searching a
+water hole, the plane circled low. The third time it dropped a little
+lower. Bump-bump-bump, glide-glide-glide on their broad skis, and—a
+perfect landing? Almost. But what was this? The ship tilted sharply to
+one side. Mary, whose hand was on the door, was thrown out to fall flat
+on the snow-encrusted ice. For ten long seconds it seemed the airplane
+would roll on over and crush her. But no, still tilted to a rakish angle,
+it came at last to rest.
+
+What had happened? They were not long in finding the answer. Early in the
+winter the river had frozen over, perhaps two feet thick. This ice had
+cracked. Water had flowed through and flooded the ice. Once again it
+froze over, but not thick enough. One ski of the plane had broken through
+to settle down on the solid ice a foot below.
+
+“Here we are, and here we stay.” Speed’s tone had a sad finality about
+it.
+
+“But, Speed, can’t we pry it out?” Mary asked hopefully.
+
+“Impossible,” the pilot shook his head. “Ten or twenty men might do it,
+but not you and I.”
+
+“Then it shall be ten or twenty men!” Mary exclaimed. “Christmas bells
+must ring.”
+
+“Wha—what do you mean?” the pilot stared at her.
+
+“We saw smoke, didn’t we?” she turned to the Eskimo.
+
+“Yes,” he nodded. “Three columns smoke.”
+
+“Whites or Indians?”
+
+“Who knows?” said Mary. “And who cares? We must find them. They must help
+us.” She was ready for the trail.
+
+And indeed there was need for haste, the airplane was freezing in. So,
+forgetting their hunger and their need for rest, they hurried away in the
+direction of the three columns of smoke.
+
+Soon they came upon a trail leading into the forest. In silence they
+followed that trail. How still it was there in the forest! As a
+snow-bunting flew from twig to twig, Mary caught the flutter of his tiny
+wings. A snowshoe rabbit, leaping from the trail, brought an unuttered
+cry to her lips. Then of a sudden a deep voice shattered that silence. It
+said:
+
+“How!”
+
+Seeming to appear from nowhere, a six-foot Indian stood before them. He
+was not dressed in skins and feathers, but his dark face, straight black
+hair, and large hawk-like nose told the story.
+
+“How!” said Speed.
+
+“Airplane come?” the Indian said.
+
+“Yes, and we are in trouble. You must help us.”
+
+“Where you go?”
+
+“Eskimo-land.”
+
+“Eskimo bad.” The Indian’s voice dropped, his dark face formed itself
+into a scowl. “Very bad, Eskimo. Long time ’go kill Indians—much
+Indians.”
+
+“Yes, a long time ago,” Speed agreed quietly. “Then came good white men.
+They told the Eskimo no kill. Now all the Eskimos are good. Tomorrow
+night is Christmas Eve. We are bringing them presents, these good
+Eskimos. We are in trouble. You must help us.”
+
+“Oh! Christmas?” The Indian’s face lighted.
+
+“We have twenty pounds of candy for your children,” Mary encouraged.
+
+“Oh, candy?” The Indian’s face grew radiant. “Indian like candy, like
+much. I bring help, bring everyone. Come quick!” He trotted away.
+
+Scarcely had they returned to the plane than the edge of the forest
+swarmed with Indians, little Indians, big Indians, men, women, and
+children, and all eager to help.
+
+It was no time at all until that airplane ski was back on the top surface
+of the ice. Then, after presenting the gifts of candy and receiving a
+friendly farewell, the little party began taxiing down the river two
+miles to a spot where there was a supply of gasoline, and where they
+might pile into their cabin for a few winks of sleep.
+
+Supper over, they tucked their blankets about them.
+
+“In four hours,” said Speed, “if the moon is out, we shall sail away.
+Tomorrow evening will be Christmas Eve, and we still have seven hundred
+miles to go.”
+
+“Seven—seven hundred!” Mary exclaimed. “Can we make it?”
+
+“If the sun and moon smile on us,” Speed replied cheerfully.
+
+Little wonder that Mary whispered a prayer for clear skies before she
+fell asleep.
+
+Meanwhile three cute children, Margaret, Nellie, and Tom, the only white
+children at far-off Cape Prince of Wales, were doing their best to make
+up for the loss of their presents. The Christmas tree of willow branches
+and a driftwood log had been set up. Behind closely drawn blinds, they
+had done their best to decorate it. Rustling willow leaves had been
+brightened by many feet of colored popcorn strings. Here and there a red,
+green or orange box hung. Safely shielded from dry leaves, twenty candles
+shone. Common white candles they were, but who cared for that?
+
+“It’s grand!” exclaimed Margaret.
+
+“Not half bad,” Tom agreed.
+
+“But just think what it might have been!” Nellie struggled to hold back a
+tear.
+
+Outside in the frosty night, little Kud-lucy and No-wad-luk, two little
+Eskimo children, were peeking through a crack not quite covered by a
+shade.
+
+“Oh, good!” Kud-lucy danced up and down. “It’s the Christmas tree after
+all! And it’s almost as bright as the sun!”
+
+“But where are the little people who walk, talk, and go to sleep?” asked
+No-wad-luk.
+
+“Oh, they—” said Kud-lucy with a superior air, “they are walking. They
+are coming a long, long way. They will be here tomorrow night. You’ll
+see.”
+
+Would they? Would the moon look down and smile?
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XX
+                       BLACK WATERS AND GRAY DOGS
+
+
+When the airplane came roaring in from nowhere to circle for a landing
+close to the lost mine, Jodie and At-a-tak were away bringing in the
+reindeer herd lest it stray too far. Before Florence and her grandfather
+could make their way up from the mine, the plane had landed on the ice of
+the lake and had taxied to a spot quite hidden from view.
+
+“Who can they be?” Florence asked in sudden alarm.
+
+“Some smart fellows who’ve heard about our lost mine. Come to help us dig
+gold, jump our claim, perhaps,” was her grandfather’s reply. “Little good
+it’ll do ’em. Three hours more and we’ll have the place about cleaned
+out. They’ll be welcome to the rest.
+
+“Of course,” he added, “there may be other pockets. They’re welcome to
+them, too. One strike’s enough for us.
+
+“Just think, girl,” his voice grew mellow, “thirty-five years in the
+North and now, success at last. Ah, girl, it’s good.”
+
+“Yes, grandfather, it is,” Florence was scarcely listening. She was
+thinking, “Suppose those men are looking for that reindeer herd? What if
+they think we stole the deer?” She was having a bad moment.
+
+Just then four men appeared at the foot of the ridge. “One white man,
+three natives,” was Tom Kennedy’s instant announcement.
+
+“That white man,” Florence was startled. “There’s something familiar
+about him, the way he walks. Grandfather!” her voice rose. “He’s my
+pilot, Dave Breen, the man who brought me to Nome!” She dashed madly down
+the hill.
+
+“Well! Well! Think of finding you here!” Dave Breen exclaimed at sight of
+her. “And you a reindeer rustler! Know what they do to ’em? Shoot ’em at
+sunrise,” he laughed a roaring laugh. “But tell me, how come you’ve got
+the herd of deer we’ve been looking for?”
+
+“There’s mulligan, reindeer mulligan on the stove,” said Florence. “And
+coffee’s steaming. Come on up and I’ll feed you and tell you our story,
+or at least part of it.”
+
+“You’d better come clean,” laughed Dave. “I’m sworn in as a deputy and
+I’ve been instructed to arrest any persons in possession of that herd.”
+
+Over coffee and mulligan, with her grandfather’s permission, Florence
+told the whole story.
+
+“So your work here’ll be done in a few hours?” said Dave Breen. “Know
+what day tomorrow is?”
+
+“No, I—”
+
+“So you forgot. Well, I’ll be jiggered!” Dave exclaimed. “It’s the day
+before Christmas. And do you know what?” he paused for proper emphasis.
+“Know what? We’re going to leave these Eskimos in charge of the reindeer;
+they can bring them in O. K. We’ll leave them At-a-tak to mend their
+boots and her gray team to haul their supplies. They’ll be more than all
+right.
+
+“And as for you and Jodie and that grandfather of yours, I’m going to
+pack you up in my plane and fly you back to Nome for the grandest
+Christmas you have ever known. And you can’t say no!”
+
+“Who would want to say no?” Florence was fairly overcome with joy. But
+there’s many a slip between a happy girl and a glorious Christmas of a
+particular sort, as you shall see.
+
+
+Some hours later, in another corner of this Arctic world, the day before
+Christmas dawned bright and clear. A blue and gray plane rose gracefully
+up from a frozen river to go sailing away toward the north. And little
+Miss Santa Claus was still on board. Mr. Il-ay-ok was still her traveling
+companion and Speed Samson was at the controls.
+
+Three hours they flew due north. Then they came down upon a white floor
+of shore-ice to rest and drink cups of steaming tea.
+
+As Mary stepped from the plane she felt her nose pucker. It seemed too
+that someone with sharp tweezers had pinched her cheek.
+
+“Cold! Boo!” she exclaimed.
+
+“This is the North,” Speed laughed. “Just over yonder is the Arctic
+Circle. Should be able to see it in an hour or two.” He laughed again,
+and Mary laughed with him. But that they were at last quite far north
+they knew all too well.
+
+Two hours later found them flying high over a vast black expanse, Bering
+Sea. As the girl looked down she shuddered. It seemed that this sea must
+be bottomless, for not a touch of light broke its deep, purple blackness.
+
+Across this expanse, like fairy fleets, ice floes drifted. Once she was
+sure she saw a group of moving objects.
+
+“Walrus!” Mr. Il-ay-ok shouted. “How you like landing among them?”
+
+“We would not land among them,” was her answer. “Our plane can land on
+ice—not on water. We won’t land unless—” her heart skipped a beat.
+
+A half hour later her heart stopped altogether for a second, then went
+racing. Their single motor was missing and they were still over the dark
+sea.
+
+“There—there it is again!” she breathed.
+
+She studied the look on Speed’s face, then shuddered anew.
+
+A glance before her showed a white line. Was it a shore line? And could
+they make it? She dared not think further.
+
+She settled back a moment later with relief. “Motor’s working better.”
+But this relief was not for long.
+
+Ten minutes passed. The white line grew wider. At one end was a high
+spot, perhaps a mountain. Then again that chilling sput-sput-sput of a
+missing motor.
+
+“We’ll make it!” she shouted bravely.
+
+And in the end they did. Just as the motor stopped dead, due to a clogged
+fuel pipe, they found themselves over a blanket of white.
+
+Circle low now. No chance for climbing. Take the landing that offers.
+
+They took it with many a shuddering bump. Mary was thrown down upon a
+pile of Christmas toys. A talking doll cried, “Ma-ma!” and a croaking
+frog went “Herouk!” Then all was still.
+
+“Well,” she said, gathering herself up, “we’re here!”
+
+They were. But where were they?
+
+“We’re lucky to be here at all,” was Speed’s comment. “And we’re here for
+some time! Require three days to smooth down these snow ridges for a
+take-off.”
+
+“Three—three days!” Mary cried in dismay. “Why, then we—”
+
+At that moment there arose a prodigious noise. Dogs, dozens of them, were
+making the air hideous with their barking. A moment more, and their plane
+was surrounded by great gray roaring beasts—Siberian wolfhounds, the
+fiercest, strangest, bravest dogs in all dog-land.
+
+“Could anything be more terrible!” Mary wailed. “We must be nearly there,
+and now—”
+
+“We can’t leave our plane, just now, that’s certain,” said Speed. “But
+wait! Luck may still be with us. Those dogs belong to someone. They came
+from somewhere.”
+
+“Came from the hole in that snow-bank,” said Il-ay-ok. “House there!”
+
+That “hole in a snow-bank” was indeed the entrance to a small low cabin
+quite buried in snow. Then from that hole came a huge man.
+
+“A perfect giant of a man!” Mary was all aquiver with excitement. “It’s
+like a fairy story.”
+
+The giant let out a great roar. The pack of wolfhounds stopped their
+barking, dropped their tails and one by one disappeared into the hole in
+the snow-bank. Then the giant approached the plane.
+
+“Hello! Who are you?” said Speed, popping his head out of the cabin door.
+
+“I’m Bill Sparks, a gold miner,” said the stranger.
+
+“Oh! Oh! Yes, of course!” exclaimed Mr. Il-ay-ok. “Excuse, please. I do
+not know at first where we are. Now I know. Yes. Yes. Very good man, Mr.
+Bill Sparks.”
+
+“What’s your business, stranger?” Bill Sparks looked at Speed.
+
+“Well, you see,” Speed explained. “This little man—” he nodded at Mr.
+Il-ay-ok, “claimed he needed to get back to Cape Prince of Wales to save
+the Eskimos’ reindeer. So—”
+
+“Sure, I’ve heard about that,” Bill Sparks broke in. “Hope he wins.”
+
+“Yes! Yes! We win!” Mr. Il-ay-ok waved a paper excitedly. “Here is the
+paper. All my people shall know. They shall be told, keep reindeer O. K.
+Grand Christmas, mine.”
+
+“There’s one more thing,” Speed managed to break in. “Lot of Christmas
+presents and little Miss Santa Claus here. I brought them along.”
+
+“Why?” Bill Sparks stared. “I been hearin’ about them presents. Every
+Eskimo that drives by has been askin’ me if I thought they’d come.”
+
+“They—they what?” Mary hopped out of the plane in her excitement.
+
+“It’s a fact,” Bill Sparks insisted. “You see, Miss, this here’s Cape
+York. Cape Prince of Wales is only fifteen miles away. With them big dogs
+of mine, ’tain’t no drive at all!”
+
+“Then you—” Mary began hopping up and down. “You—”
+
+“Of course I’ll take you all over, Miss, and all them presents. Be glad
+to, Miss. Nothin’ I won’t do for the Eskimos. One of ’em brought me in
+when I’d went snow-blind once. I’d have died if it hadn’t a’ been for
+him! Wait—”
+
+Putting two fingers to his lips, he blew a shrill blast and, to Mary’s
+terror, out from the dark hole piled the great gray pack of hounds.
+
+“No need fer fear,” Bill Sparks laughed, as she started to climb back
+into the plane, “my friends are their friends.”
+
+And so it happened that, just after the short day had faded and the
+Eskimos had gone to their little log and sod homes,—with sleighbells
+muffled—the happy flyers with Bill Sparks in the lead, his sled piled
+high with Christmas joy, stole round Cape Prince of Wales and right up to
+the schoolhouse door.
+
+They managed to get there without being seen by a single Eskimo child.
+
+It was Margaret, child of the schoolmaster, who opened the door in
+response to their knock.
+
+“Merry Christmas!” Mary cried as the light came flooding out. “We’re
+here, and so’s Christmas!”
+
+At the first sound of her voice, Nellie and Tom came racing from the big
+room where they were still stringing colored popcorn. Then such low
+exclamations of joy! Such a rush as there was as they bundled all the
+packages inside, then paused to hug their benefactors, Mary, Speed, and
+even the startled Bill Sparks.
+
+“How did you get here?” Nellie cried at last. “All those presents! How
+could they?”
+
+“Santa never fails,” laughed Speed at last. “At least hardly ever, and
+surely he could not fail in Eskimo-land.”
+
+It was no time at all until Mary and the three children were busy
+trimming a more gorgeous tree than the children of Eskimo-land had ever
+known.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI
+                     THE SECRET OF THE GREAT STUMP
+
+
+It was two hours before the beginning of Christmas festivities, when the
+tree trimming came to an end.
+
+“Let’s take a walk,” Speed suggested to Mary. “This is enchanted land.
+Think of it, Christmas Eve in Eskimo-land.”
+
+“Yes, let’s walk,” Mary agreed.
+
+“Boo! Such a coldness!” she exclaimed as they stepped outside.
+
+“Snow fog’s drifted in too,” Speed surveyed the landscape. “Two hundred
+foot ceiling and growing less. Good thing we’re in.”
+
+They had walked over the half mile of ice-covered beach to the foot of
+the mountain and had turned back when Speed, stopping dead in his tracks,
+exclaimed:
+
+“Listen!”
+
+Mary, listening with all her ears, at last caught a faint drumming sound.
+
+“An airplane!” she looked at Speed.
+
+“Sure is! In such a place and such a time! Mountain there. Sea over
+there! All I can say is, I wish them a happy landing.”
+
+For a full quarter hour, all unmindful of the cold, of the dinner that
+awaited, and of the glowing Christmas tree, they stood there listening to
+the drone of the motor that now rose in volume and now faded away.
+
+“They’re lost,” was Speed’s decision. “Looking for a landing.” Once, when
+the echo of the motor’s roar was thrown back as from the mountain, he
+gripped the girl’s arm hard. What was he waiting for? A crash? It did not
+come. Instead, the motor sounded out a mad burst of speed, then began
+again that slow droning.
+
+“Well,” Speed shuddered, “they know where the mountain is now.”
+
+“Listen!” a moment later he gripped her arm once more. “They—they’re
+going to try for a landing. Who knows where? We’d better—”
+
+If he had any notion of flight, it was futile, for at that instant, far
+down the line, not twenty yards from the schoolhouse, a gray mass emerged
+from the snow-fog.
+
+“Good boy! He’ll make it!” Speed exclaimed.
+
+Calmly they awaited the coming of the plane as it bumped, bumped again,
+then taxied slowly forward.
+
+“Mary! Look at that plane!” Speed became greatly excited. “Did you ever
+see it before?”
+
+Mary made no answer. Perhaps she was too excited to hear. One thing was
+sure, her heart gave a great leap when, as the plane came to a
+standstill, a large girl dressed in a fur parka jumped from the plane.
+
+“Florence!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
+
+“Mary!” Florence stood staring at her as if she were a ghost.
+
+“To tell the truth,” Dave Breen, the pilot, who now climbed from his
+place, said, “we don’t quite know why we’re here. We don’t know where we
+are, but we’re mighty glad we have arrived.” At this they all laughed.
+
+The story of Florence and her party was soon told. After completing their
+work at the mine, they had packed their belongings, including three
+moose-hide sacks of gold, in the plane and had sailed away.
+
+“We got caught in a snow-fog,” Dave Breen concluded. “We flew for hours
+looking for a landing. At last, in desperation, we took a chance and here
+we are. But tell me, where are we?”
+
+“Cape Prince of Wales, the very heart of Eskimo-land,” was Mary’s happy
+reply. “And this is Christmas Eve. What could be finer?”
+
+At that moment Florence caught the sound of many Eskimo voices. Then the
+chorus ceased and she heard the familiar voice of Mr. Il-ay-ok. He
+continued alone. He was speaking slowly, earnestly. Florence saw a sober
+look come over each face. In the end, when Mr. Il-ay-ok had finished,
+they exclaimed in a low chorus: “Ke-ke! (go ahead) All right. All right.
+We bring ’em.”
+
+“What was he saying?” Florence asked the teacher, who arrived at that
+moment.
+
+“Il-ay-ok is telling of his airplane ride and how much it was going to
+cost,” he explained. “They are really quite business-like, these Eskimos.
+Il-ay-ok told them, since their reindeer had been saved, they must
+contribute one silver fox, three cross foxes or four white foxes each.”
+
+“And will they?” Florence was interested.
+
+“Sure. Didn’t you hear them say, ‘All right’?”
+
+“But truly there is no need.” Florence was struck with a sudden thought.
+“There is money in the bank at Nome, enough I am sure. It’s the part
+earned by Il-ay-ok’s team when I won the dog race. Tell them about it,
+will you?”
+
+There was little need of telling them in Eskimo, not a man of them but
+understood about money, even when told in English. But, like every other
+people, Eskimo love to be told in their own language. So the teacher told
+them.
+
+If Florence needed any reward for her honesty and fair dealing, it came
+to her from the change of looks and the sudden exclamations of the
+natives as they heard the rare news.
+
+“Mat-na! Ah-ne-ca!” they exulted. Then, “Na-goo-va-ruk Along-meet!” (Good
+for the white one) rose like a grandstand cheer.
+
+“It’s all right,” Florence laughed. “I had my share and a lot of fun
+besides. And Merry Christmas to you all.”
+
+“Il-a-can-a-muck! Il-a-can-a-muck!” (Thank you! Thank you!) they shouted
+in a chorus.
+
+It goes without saying that the entire party attended the Christmas tree
+festival and all enjoyed it to the full. Surely nothing could have been
+more delightful than the privilege of watching the eyes of a hundred
+Eskimo children as they saw the tree for the first time.
+
+“See!” Mary heard little No-wad-luk exclaim to her small friend. “See!
+There are all the little people who can walk and talk and go to sleep.”
+
+“Didn’t I tell you?” was Kud-lucy’s proud reply. “They _did_ come. They
+_did_ walk all the way miles and miles. And they _did_ get here just in
+time.”
+
+Florence and Mary were scarcely expecting presents. They got them all the
+same. They were long, slim socks made of fur taken from the legs of a
+spotted reindeer fawn and they were filled with gold nuggets. On
+Florence’s was a tag saying “From a long-lost grandfather,” and on Mary’s
+“To little Miss Santa Claus.” Never, I am sure, had there been a merrier
+Christmas Eve than this.
+
+Christmas morning broke bright and clear. After bidding their new-found
+friends good-bye and listening to the Eskimos’ “A-lin-a-muck” (Good-bye)
+and “Il-a-can-a-muck” (We thank you) the happy party sailed away for
+Nome, where they enjoyed a late evening feast of roast venison, wild
+cranberry sauce, plum pudding and all the trimmings.
+
+Three days later Mary and Florence were back in the rustic cabin on
+Rainbow Farm. Florence had urged her grandfather to accompany her to the
+valley. He had refused, one airplane ride had been quite enough, and
+then, when one has lived in the far north thirty-five years—ah, well,
+perhaps next spring he would come down on the boat and they would buy a
+claim in her happy valley, who could tell? So she had left him, happy in
+the realization that his dream of a lifetime had at last come true.
+
+And now since they had used up their tickets to adventure, a long winter
+in a peaceful valley lay before them.
+
+But there was still Madam Chicaski to wonder about.
+
+On a wintry morning, three days after her last happy landing, chancing to
+look out of the kitchen window, Florence, to her unbounded surprise, saw
+the powerful Madam Chicaski wielding Bill’s pick in a most surprising
+manner. What was more surprising still, she was executing a vigorous
+attack upon the great stump over which bright flowers had cascaded all
+summer long.
+
+“Stop! Stop! Don’t do that!” These words were on her lips. She did not
+say them. Something appeared to hold her back.
+
+A moment more and she was glad they had not been spoken, for after one
+powerful swing of the pick, a dark spot had appeared beneath the stump.
+
+“A cavity!” she whispered breathlessly. “A hollow place beneath the
+stump.”
+
+Then, like a flash it came to her. This tree had not grown there. The
+stump had been hauled there, probably on a stone-boat, for the purpose of
+concealing something. But what did it conceal?
+
+Fascinated, the girl continued to stare as the woman picked untiringly at
+the base of the great stump. When at last the Russian woman seized a
+stout pole, and using it as a pry, tipped the stump on its side to
+uncover a broad, deep cavity, the girl’s curiosity got the better of her
+and she ran into the yard to exclaim:
+
+“Madam! Madam! What _are_ you doing?”
+
+“See!” On the woman’s face was a glorious smile. “See! All my beautiful
+things! All safe after these long years.”
+
+Florence did see and her astonishment grew. The great copper kettle was
+there and the seven golden—well, perhaps they were only gold
+plated—candlesticks, and many other things as well. A curious old copper
+teakettle, a set of beautiful blue dishes which, by instinct, the girl
+knew were very old and valuable, and many other things were there.
+
+Slowly, carefully, they removed each piece. Then, quite overcome with
+emotion, the aged woman sat down upon the ground.
+
+“This,” she said after a long silence, pointing a thumb at the hole in
+the ground, “was our cellar. The ground is always frozen there. It keeps
+everything cool, everything. Ivan, my husband, hauled down the stump to
+make a place for my flowers. When we left we said, ‘We will hide
+everything in the cellar,’ it was a secret cellar, no one knew. ‘Then we
+will put on the stump. No one will guess.’”
+
+“And no one ever did.” Florence laughed gaily, happy for the other’s
+sake.
+
+The final chapter to this little mystery was, if anything, stranger, more
+happy than all the rest. Both Mary and her mother had always loved fine
+and truly rare china. Massive copper pots and pans had always fascinated
+them as well.
+
+That night, as supper time approached, Madam Chicaski insisted that
+candles should be put in the golden candlesticks and that they should be
+set, all flickering and alight, three upon the mantel and four upon the
+table.
+
+“Just as Ivan and I used to do,” she added with a happy sigh.
+
+Supper was to be cooked in her copper pots and pans and served upon the
+beautiful blue dishes that made Florence tremble every time she touched
+one of them, lest she drop it.
+
+It was a memorable meal. A little Indian girl had, that very afternoon,
+brought in a great salmon and had received for it a sack of potatoes. The
+baked salmon rested on a blue platter. It was surrounded by golden-brown
+potatoes, sweet butter and tall heaps of biscuits fresh from the oven.
+
+When this repast was over, the Russian woman sat for a long time staring
+at the flickering candles and the marvelous blue dishes.
+
+“No,” she murmured at last, “they shall not go. They have been here long.
+They shall remain forever, all these beautiful things. You all are good.
+You have been kind to an old woman whom you did not know. I am not a
+fairy godmother,” she laughed. “I am not God. I am only an old woman,
+Madam Chicaski. And this was my home. Yes, you shall have all these. They
+belong here. Even dishes and copper pots may be happy. They will be happy
+with you.”
+
+Mary heard her every word. Yet she could not believe in their great good
+fortune. All these beautiful dishes, those rare pieces of copper, the
+seven golden candlesticks to remain in their humble cabin? Impossible.
+
+Then came another wave of emotion that brought her to her feet.
+
+“But, Madam!” she protested. “You will need them!”
+
+“I need them?” Madam laughed again. “Did I not tell you? But no. I have
+not told. We are rich, Ivan and I. Ivan’s uncle died. He left all to
+Ivan. That is why we went away so fast. That is why we never came back.
+
+“Tomorrow,” her tone changed, “I shall go back to Ivan. He is not strong,
+Ivan. He could not come. But I—” she sighed. “It was necessary that I
+come to see once more. Now I have come. I have seen. And I am, oh, so
+very happy!” She heaved a great sigh of joy, then moving to her place
+beside the fire, took up, perhaps for the last time, her peaceful dreams
+of those days that had passed, never to return. Next day, after bidding
+them farewell, she was to go trudging away toward the railway station.
+
+“Well,” Florence whispered to herself as she crept beneath the covers in
+her loft-bed that night, “life can be strange and beautiful. It can be
+peaceful as well. Here in this happy valley one might find peace. But do
+I want peace? Mystery, adventure, the, long, long trail.” At that she
+fell asleep.
+
+Did she accept peace or did she again take up the long, long trail? You
+will find the answer to that in the book called _Third Warning_.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
+  is public domain in the country of publication.
+
+--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
+  dialect unchanged.
+
+--In the text versions, italic text is delimited by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Ticket to Adventure, by Roy J. Snell
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