by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER VIII A SECRET IS TOLD
To Mary the days that followed were strange beyond belief. The beauty ofmountain sunshine on glistening snow, gray rocks, and black forests wasentrancing. The sudden up-rushing of a storm, threatening as it did todestroy their only means of escape, was terrifying beyond words.
Many and many were the times that she wished that it might have beenFlorence who had been whirled off on this wild adventure instead ofherself. "She is so much stronger than I," she said to Mark. "She hasseen so much more of life and seems so much older."
"You had your first-aid lessons in school," Mark said, a note ofencouragement in his tone. "This is one grand opportunity for puttingthem into practice."
"Sure," Bill agreed, overhearing the conversation. "I'm so tough youcouldn'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 sayit, but I wouldn't have got it so bad if that fellow Peter Loome had donehis part."
"Done his part?" Mary stared.
"Sure. Don't you know? He was with me. Had a powerful 30-40 rifle in hishands. Saw the bear come after me when I fired and what did he do butstand right still and laugh! Roared good and plenty as if it was allbeing done in the movies. When I yelled at him he did limber up and getin a shot or two. I never did make him out. Something loose in hismake-up, I guess."
"Something sure," Mark agreed solemnly. Right then and there he wishedLoome 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 wegive him an opportunity to help he bungles everything. I never saw such afellow."
"Big money," Mary thought to herself. "Wonder if that has anything to dowith Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, and that far north country?" She was toknow.
Daily, under her nursing, Bill improved. Nightly, but oh, so slowly, theice 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. Onceagain it purred sweetly or thundered wildly at man's will.
Slowly, painstakingly, the men hewed from solid logs, skis for thesmaller plane. Would these, cut from green wood, as they must be, standthe strain of taking off? They must wait and see.
To escape haunting, unnamed fears, Mary began exploring the mountainledges. First she sought out a wild animal trail leading down, down,down, over tumbled rocks, through aisles of trees, over the frozen bed ofa narrow stream to a spot where the land appeared to drop from beneathher. Creeping out on a flat rock, she gazed in awed silence down a sheerfour hundred feet or more to the treetops of one more forest. Was thetrail she found, made by wild sheep and goats, safe for men? She doubtedit, 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 tentbulged, flapped and cracked. All night she shuddered beneath herblankets, as she listened to the men shouting to one another down thereon the frozen lake. They were, she knew, battling the storm, straining atguy ropes to save the planes.
At dawn the wind died away. The temperature dropped. As she drew her feetfrom 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, afterracing to a rocky ledge, found to her consternation that, for a space ofseconds, she did not have the courage to look down at the lake. That onelook would be the answer to a question that meant great hope or neardespair.
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 hotcoffee and sourdough pancakes to the battlers of the night.
"Boo! How gloriously cold!" exclaimed the older of the two pilots. "A dayand a night of this and we shall be away."
There was still some work to be done on the plane. The storm had strainedat every strut and guy. It was necessary to test all these and to tightensome. That night, after a hasty supper, the men made their way back tothe frozen surface of the lake.
With Bill snugly tucked away in the tent at her back, Mary sat before aglowing 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 sprucetrees towering toward the sky, gray walls of rocks like grim fortressesof some mythical giant, the cold, still white of snow and above it all, agreat, golden moon.
"The North!" she murmured. "Ah, the North!"
And yet, as she thought of it now, they were not so very far north. Shelooked up and away at the north star and wondered vaguely aboutFlorence's grandfather, Tom Kennedy, way up there almost beneath thatstar. Tom Kennedy was not her grandfather, he was on the other side ofFlorence's family, yet, so intimate had the relations between herself andher big cousin become, she felt a sudden, burning desire to accompany heron her quest for her grandfather, if indeed the quest was ever begun.
Had she but known it, Florence was at that very moment in Anchoragemaking inquiries regarding transportation to Nome. Only a few daysbefore, Mark, having received his last payment for the summer's crop, hadpressed 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 thatnothing much could be done. Had there been a boat, it might have beenpossible to secure steerage passage. There was no boat, ice had closedsea transportation for nine long months.
"Your only chance is the air-mail plane," a kindly storekeeper assuredher, "and air travel costs money in the north. Nothing like what it wasin 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 cango by boat."
Wait until spring? Nine months? Spring? That was time for work on thelittle valley farm. "Winter is the time for adventure," she recalled theyoung 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-lostgrandfather and wondering vaguely about Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, when,catching a slight sound, she looked up to see Peter Loome sitting besideher.
This sudden discovery was startling. By the light of the fire this man'sface 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 andof 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, thestars, looking down upon them. Then, because she could endure the silenceno 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--thatis, he wants to be. He won't be long. I--" the man's voice rose, "I'llsmash 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. Itcut a circle and disappeared in the dark blue of night. A streak of lightreached for the milky way. Northern lights, the girl thought.
Suddenly the man spoke. "I don't mind tellin' you. You'll never be upthere," he pointed toward the north. "None of you dirt-diggers down herewill ever be up there where the north begins, where men and dogs fightfer what they git an' ask neither odds ner quarters."
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Mary caught her breath as he paused. He is sort of a rough poet shethought. 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 thegood 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 reindeerback--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 onreindeer. Reindeer!" Leaping to his feet, he started pacing like somewild beast before the fire.
"This Il-ay-ok," he went on after a time. "He thinks he can stop us. He'seducated. Think of it! Educated! An Eskimo educated!" he laughedhoarsely.
"He seemed such a nice, polite little man," Mary ventured.
"Well, maybe he is. Polite!" one more burst of laughter. "But he won'tget nowhere with politeness. He's outside now, down in Washington. Thelast boat's come from up yonder. No more for nine months. Reindeer got toget into the mountains before this old year dies. What can this politeIl-ay-ok do about that?"
"There are airplanes," Mary suggested.
"Yes. Like them down there!" the man exploded. "I wish to--they'd get thethings going. He might escape me, your polite, greasy little Es-ki-mo.
"'Dear little Es-ki-mo,'" he chanted hoarsely, "'Leave all your ice andsnow. Come play with me.' I used to sing that in school. Can youe-mag-ine!" His laugh rose louder than before. Then, of a sudden, itfaded. Footsteps were heard approaching.
"Well," Mark said cheerfully. "Everything is O. K. We'll be out of herein 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 heremight be prolonged, she was thinking of the polite little man who calledhimself "Mr. Il-ay-ok."