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The Alaskan: A Novel of The North, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 15 |
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_ CHAPTER XV Half an hour more of the tundra and they came to what Alan had named Ghost Kloof, a deep and jagged scar in the face of the earth, running down from the foothills of the mountains. It was a sinister thing, and in the depths lay abysmal darkness as they descended a rocky path worn smooth by reindeer and caribou hoofs. At the bottom, a hundred feet below the twilight of the plains, Alan dropped on his knees beside a little spring that he groped for among the stones, and as he drank he could hear the weird whispering and gurgling of water up and down the kloof, choked and smothered in the moss of the rock walls and eternally dripping from the crevices. Then he saw Stampede's face in the glow of another match, and the little man's eyes were staring into the black chasm that reached for miles up into the mountains. "Alan, you've been up this gorge?" "It's a favorite runway for the lynx and big brown bears that kill our fawns," replied Alan. "I hunt alone, Stampede. The place is supposed to be haunted, you know. Ghost Kloof, I call it, and no Eskimo will enter it. The bones of dead men lie up there." "Never prospected it?" persisted Stampede. "Never." Alan heard the other's grunt of disgust. "You're reindeer-crazy," he grumbled. "There's gold in this canyon. Twice I've found it where there were dead men's bones. They bring me good luck." "But these were Eskimos. They didn't come for gold." "I know it. The Boss settled that for me. When she heard what was the matter with this place, she made me take her into it. Nerve? Say, I'm telling you there wasn't any of it left out of her when she was born!" He was silent for a moment, and then added: "When we came to that dripping, slimy rock with the big yellow skull layin' there like a poison toadstool, she didn't screech and pull back, but just gave a little gasp and stared at it hard, and her fingers pinched my arm until it hurt. It was a devilish-looking thing, yellow as a sick orange and soppy with the drip of the wet moss over it. I wanted to blow it to pieces, and I guess I would if she hadn't put a hand on my gun. An' with a funny little smile she says: 'Don't do it, Stampede. It makes me think of someone I know--and I wouldn't want you to shoot him.' Darned funny thing to say, wasn't it? Made her think of someone she knew! Now, who the devil could look like a rotten skull?" Alan made no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge they looked out into a vast sweep of tundra which ran in among the out-guarding billows and hills of the Endicott Mountains in the form of a wide, semicircular bay. Beyond the next swell in the tundra lay the range, and scarcely had they reached this when Stampede drew his big gun from its holster. Twice he blazed in the air. "Orders," he said a little sheepishly. "Orders, Alan!" Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when a yell came to them from beyond the light-mists that hovered like floating lace over the tundra. It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it very soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under their feet. "Bums!" growled Stampede. "She's got Chink lanterns hanging up all about, too. You should have seen her face, Alan, when she found there was sunlight all night up here on July Fourth!" From the range a pale streak went sizzling into the air, mounting until it seemed to pause for a moment to look down upon the gray world, then burst into innumerable little balls of puffy smoke. Stampede blazed away with his forty-five, and Alan felt the thrill of it and emptied the magazine of his gun, the detonations of revolver and rifle drowning the chorus of sound that came from the range. A second rocket answered them. Two columns of flame leaped up from the earth as huge fires gained headway, and Alan could hear the shrill chorus of children's voices mingling with the vocal tumult of men. All the people of his range were there. They had come in from the timber-naked plateaux and high ranges where the herds were feeding, and from the outlying shacks of the tundras to greet him. Never had there been such a concentration of effort on the part of his people. And Mary Standish was behind it all! He knew he was fighting against odds when he tried to keep that fact from choking up his heart a little. He had not heard what Stampede was saying--that he and Amuk Toolik and forty kids had labored a week gathering dry moss and timber fuel for the big fires. There were three of these fires now, and the tom-toms were booming their hollow notes over the tundra as Alan quickened his steps. Over a little knoll, and he was looking at the buildings of the range, wildly excited figures running about, women and children flinging moss on the fires, the tom-tom beaters squatted in a half-circle facing the direction from which he would come, and fifty Chinese lanterns swinging in the soft night-breeze. He knew what they were expecting of him, for they were children, all of them. Even Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, his chief herdsmen, were children. Nawadlook and Keok were children. Strong and loyal and ready to die for him in any fight or stress, they were still children. He gave Stampede his rifle and hastened on, determined to keep his eyes from questing for Mary Standish in these first minutes of his return. He sounded the tundra call, and men, women, and little children came running to meet him. The drumming of the tom-toms ceased, and the beaters leaped to their feet. He was inundated. There was a shrill crackling of voice, laughter, children's squeals, a babel of delight. He gripped hands with both his own--hard, thick, brown hands of men; little, softer, brown hands of women; he lifted children up in his arms, slapped his palm affectionately against the men's shoulders, and talked, talked, talked, calling each by name without a slip of memory, though there were fifty around him counting the children. First, last, and always these were _his people_. The old pride swept over him, a compelling sense of power and possession. They loved him, crowding in about him like a great family, and he shook hands twice and three times with the same men and women, and lifted the same children from the arms of delighted mothers, and cried out greetings and familiarities with an abandon which a few minutes ago knowledge of Mary Standish's presence would have tempered. Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch, stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna's head disappeared, and there came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off. Dancers assembled. Rockets hissed through the air. Roman candles popped. From the open door of his cabin came the sound of a phonograph. It was aimed directly at him, the one thing intended for his understanding alone. It was playing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Mary Standish had not moved. He saw her laughing at him, and she was alone. She was not the Mary Standish he had known aboard ship. Fear, the quiet pallor of her face, and the strain and repression which had seemed to be a part of her were gone. She was aflame with life, yet it was not with voice or action that she revealed herself. It was in her eyes, the flush of her cheeks and lips, the poise of her slim body as she waited for him. A thought flashed upon him that for a space she had forgotten herself and the shadow which had driven her to leap into the sea. "It is splendid!" she said when he came up to her, and her voice trembled a little. "I didn't guess how badly they wanted you back. It must be a great happiness to have people think of you like that." "And I thank you for your part," he replied. "Stampede has told me. It was quite a bit of trouble, wasn't it, with nothing more than the hope of Americanizing a pagan to inspire you?" He nodded at the half-dozen flags over his cabin. "They're rather pretty." "It was no trouble. And I hope you don't mind. It has been great fun." He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her. It seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion. "Yes, I do mind," he said. "I mind so much that I wouldn't trade what has happened for all the gold in these mountains. I'm sorry because of what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn't trade that, either. I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad you're here. But something is missing. You know what it is. You must tell me about yourself. It is the only fair thing for you to do now." She touched his arm with her hand. "Let us wait for tomorrow. Please--let us wait." "And then--tomorrow--" "It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome. But not tonight. All this is too fine--just you--and your people--and their happiness." He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers. She nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin. "I am with Keok and Nawadlook. They have given me a home." And then swiftly she added, "I don't think you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!" Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on his arm she drew away from him. His face did not show his disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him. "Your people are expecting things of you," she said. "A little later, if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms." He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook. She looked back at him and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart beating faster. She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not afraid of tomorrow. Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away from himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood. It was as if something in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had dreamed through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and that possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him. Surely he would never quite be able to tell her. And what she said to him tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference. She was alive, and he could not let her go away from him again. He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers. It rather amazed him to discover himself doing things which he had never done before. His nature was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less detached. At his people's dances it was his habit to stand on the side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part. His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a new sense of freedom and a new desire to give physical expression to something within him. Stampede was dancing. He was kicking his feet and howling with the men, while the women dancers went through the muscular movements of arms and bodies. A chorus of voices invited Alan. They had always invited him. And tonight he accepted, and took his place between Stampede and Amuk Toolik and the tom-tom beaters almost burst their instruments in their excitement. Not until he dropped out, half breathless, did he see Mary Standish and Keok in the outer circle. Keok was frankly amazed. Mary Standish's eyes were shining, and she clapped her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking, shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic matters, Alan went to his cabin. He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor--and then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags. They recalled Alan's mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an American. Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the little flags. There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them there. She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers. He went into his bedroom and found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair of red morocco slippers that he had never seen before. He took them up in his hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size of his feet. In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that Keok's phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was gone. Outside, the noise of the celebration died away, and the growing stillness drew him to the window from which he could see the cabin where lived Keok and Nawadlook with their foster-father, the old and shriveled Sokwenna. It was there Mary Standish had said she was staying. For a long time Alan watched it while the final sounds of the night drifted away into utter silence. It was a knock at his door that turned him about at last, and in answer to his invitation Stampede came in. He nodded and sat down. Shiftingly his eyes traveled about the room. "Been a fine night, Alan. Everybody glad to see you." "They seemed to be. I'm happy to be home again." "Mary Standish did a lot. She fixed up this room." "I guessed as much," replied Alan. "Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped her." "Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an' thoughtful, hasn't she?" "And somewhat unusual," added Alan. "And she is pretty." "Most decidedly so." There was a puzzling look in Stampede's eyes. He twisted nervously in his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him. "What's on your mind, Stampede?" "Hell, mostly," shot back Stampede with sudden desperation. "I've come loaded down with a dirty job, and I've kept it back this long because I didn't want to spoil your fun tonight. I guess a man ought to keep to himself what he knows about a woman, but I'm thinking this is a little different. I hate to do it. I'd rather take the chance of a snake-bite. But you'd shoot me if you knew I was keeping it to myself." "Keeping what to yourself?" "The truth, Alan. It's up to me to tell you what I know about this young woman who calls herself Mary Standish." _ |
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