“Eh-eh,” (yes) answered Attatak. “Spirit of water angry at ice cut away far below. Want to shoot rapids; boats and man run beneath that ice. Soon smashed boat, killed man. That’s all.”
It was quite enough, Marian thought; but somehow they must pass these rapids whether they were frozen over or not.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “that’s still far away. First comes the fight with tundra, hills and sweeping winds.”
Patting her reindeer on the side, she sent him flying up the valley while she raced along beside him.
These reindeer were wonderful steeds. No food need be carried for them. They found their own food beneath the snow when day was done. A hundred miles in a day, over a smooth trail, was not too much for them. Soft snow—the wind-blown, blizzard-sifted snow that was like granulated sugar—did not trouble them. They trotted straight on. There was no need to search out a water hole that they might slake their thirst; they scooped up mouthfuls of snow as they raced along.
“Wonderful old friends,” murmured Marian as she reached out a hand to touch her spotted leader. “There are those who say a dog team is better. Bill Scarberry, they say, never drives reindeer; always drives dogs. But on a long journey, a great marathon race, reindeer would win, I do believe they would. I—”
She was suddenly startled from her reflections by the appearance of a brown-hooded head not twenty rods away. Their course had led them closer to Scarberry’s camp than she thought. As she came out upon the ridge she saw an Eskimo scout disappearing into the willows from which a camp smoke was rising.
Marian was greatly disturbed by the thought that Scarberry’s camp would soon know of her departure. She had hoped that they might not learn of her errand, that they might not miss her from the camp. For Patsy’s sake she was tempted to turn back, but after a moment’s indecision, she determined to push forward. There was no other way to win, and win she must!
An hour later she halted the deer at a fork in the trail. Directly before her stood a bold range of mountains, and their peaks seemed to be smoking with drifting snow. Blizzards were there, the perpetual blizzards of Arctic peaks. She had never crossed those mountains, perhaps no person ever had. She had intended skirting them to the north. This would require at least one added day of travel. As she thought of the perils that awaited Patsy while alone with the herd, and as she thought of the great necessity of making every hour count, she was tempted to try the mountain pass. Here was a time for decision; when all might be gained by a bold stroke.
Rising suddenly on tip-toe, as if thus to emphasize a great resolve, she pointed away to the mountains and said with all the dignity of a Jean d’Arc:
“Attatak, we go that way.”
Wide-eyed with amazement, Attatak stared at Marian for a full minute; then with the cheerful smile of a born explorer—which any member of her race always is—she said:
“Na-goo-va-ruk-tuck.” (That will be very good.)
CHAPTER VII
THE ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN
Since the time she had been able to remember anything, these mountains of the far north, standing away in bleak triangles of lights and shadows, smoking with the eternally drifting snows, had always held an all but irresistible lure for Marian. Even as a child of six, listening to the weird folk-stories of the Eskimo, she had peopled those treeless, wind swept mountains with all manner of strange folks. Now they were fairies, white and drifting as the snow itself; now they were strange black goblins with round faces and red noses; and now an Eskimo people who lived in enchanted caves that never were cold, no matter how bitterly the wind and cold assailed the fortresses of rocks that offered them protection.
“All my life,” she murmured as she tightened the rawhide thong that served as a belt to bind her parka close about her waist, “I have wanted to go to the crest of that range, and now I am to attempt it.”
She shivered a little at thought of the perils that awaited her. Many were the strange, wild tales she had heard told round the glowing stove at the back of her father’s store; tales of privation, freezing, starvation and death; tales told by grizzled old prospectors who had lost their pals in a bold struggle with the elements. She thought of these stories and again she shivered, but she did not turn back.
Once only, after an hour of travel up steep ravines and steeper foothills, she paused to unstrap her field glasses and look back over the way they had come. Then she threw back her head and laughed. It was the wild, free laugh of a daring soul that defies failure.
Attatak showed all her splendid white teeth in a grin.
“Who is afraid?” Marian laughed. “Snow, cold, wind—who cares?”
Marian spoke to her reindeer, and again they were away.
As they left the foothills and began to circle one of the lesser peaks—a slow, gradually rising spiral circle that brought them higher and higher—Marian felt the old charm of the mountains come back to her. Again they were peopled by strange fairies and goblins. So real was the illusion that at times it seemed to her that if worst came to worst and they found themselves lost in a storm at the mountain top, they might call upon these phantom people for shelter.
The mountain was not exactly as she had expected to find it. She had supposed that it was one vast cone of gleaming snow. In the main this was true, yet here and there some rocky promontory, towering higher than its fellows, reared itself above the surface, a pier of granite standing out black against the whiteness about it, mute monument to all those daring climbers who have lost their lives on mountain peaks.
Once, too, off some distance to her right and farther up, she fancied she saw the yawning mouth of a cavern.
“Doesn’t seem possible,” she told herself. And yet, it did seem so real that she found herself expecting some strange Rip Van Winkle-like people to come swarming out of the cavern.
She shook herself as a rude blast of wind swept up from below, all but freezing her cheek at a single wild whirl.
“I must stop dreaming,” she told herself stoutly. “Night is falling. We are on the mountain, nearing the crest. A storm is rising. It is colder here than in any place I have ever been. Perhaps we have been foolhardy, but now we must go on!”
Even as she thought this through, Attatak pointed to her cheek and exclaimed:
“Froze-tuck.”
“My cheek frozen!” Marian cried in consternation.
“Eh-eh” (yes.)
“And we have an hour’s climb to reach the top. Perhaps more. Somehow we must have shelter. Attatak, can you build a snow house?”
“Not very good. Not build them any more, my people.”
“Then—then,” said Marian slowly, as she rubbed snow on the white, frozen spots of her cheek, “then we must go on.”
Five times in the next twenty minutes Attatak told her her cheeks were frozen. Twice Attatak had been obliged to rub the frost from her own cheeks. Each time the intervals between freezings were shorter.
“Attatak,” Marian asked, “can we make it?”
“Canok-ti-ma-na” (I don’t know.) The Eskimo girl’s face was very grave.
As Marian turned about she realized that the storm from below was increasing. Snow, stopping nowhere, raced past them to go smoking out over the mountain peak.
She was about to start forward when again she caught sight of a dark spot on the mountain side above. It looked like the mouth of a cavern.
“If only it were,” she said wistfully, “we would camp there for the night and wait for the worst of the storm to pass.”
“Attatak,” she said suddenly, “you wait here. I am going to try to climb up there.” She pointed to the dark spot on the hillside.
“All right,” said Attatak. “Be careful. Foot slip, start to slide; never stop.” She looked first up the hill, then down the dizzy white slope that extended for a half mile to unknown depths below.
As Marian’s gaze followed Attatak’s she saw herself gliding down the slope, gaining speed, shooting down faster and faster to some awful, unknow
n end; a dash against a projecting rock; a burial beneath a hundred feet of snow. Little wonder that her knees trembled as she turned to go. Yet she did not falter.
With a cheerful “All right, I’ll be careful,” she gripped her staff and began to climb.
CHAPTER VIII
TROUBLE FOR PATSY
Hardly had Marian left camp when troubles began to pile up for Patsy. Dawn had not yet come when she heard a strange ki-yi-ing that certainly did not come from the herd collies, and she looked out and saw approaching the most disreputable group of Eskimos she had ever seen. Dressed in ragged parkas of rabbit skins, and driving the gauntest, most vicious looking pack of wolf dogs, these people appeared to come from a new and more savage world than hers. A rapid count told her there were seven adults and five children.
“Enough of them to eat us out of everything, even to skin boots and rawhide harness,” she groaned. “If they are determined to camp here, who’s to prevent them?”
For a moment she stood there staring; then with a sudden resolve that she must meet the situation, she exclaimed:
“I must send them on. Some way, I must. I can’t let them starve. They must have food, but they must be sent on to some spot where they have relatives who are able to feed them. The safety of the herd depends upon that. With food gone we cannot hold our herders. With no herders we cannot hold the deer. Marian explained that to me yesterday.”
Walking with all the dignity her sixteen years would permit, she approached the spot where the strangers had halted their dogs and were talking to old Terogloona. The dogs were acting strangely. Sawing at the strong rawhide bonds that held them to the sleds, they reared up on their haunches, ki-yi-ing for all they were worth.
“They smell our deer,” Patsy said to herself. “It’s a good thing our herd is at the upper end of the range!” She remembered hearing Marian tell how a whole herd of five thousand deer had been hopelessly stampeded by the lusty ki-yi-ing of one wolf dog.
“The reindeer is their natural food,” Marian had explained. “If even one of them gets loose when there is a reindeer about he will rush straight at him and leap for his throat.”
“That’s one more reason why I must get these people to move on at once,” Patsy whispered to herself.
To Terogloona she said: “What do they want?”
Terogloona turned to them with a simple: “Suna-go-pezuk-peet?” he asked, “What do you want?”
With many guttural expressions and much waving of hands, the leader explained their wishes.
“He say,” smiled Terogloona, “that in the hills about here are many foxes, black fox, red fox, white, blue and cross fox. He say, that one, want to camp here; want to set traps; want to catch foxes.”
“But what will they eat?” asked Patsy.
Terogloona, having interpreted the question, smiled again at their answer:
“They will eat foxes,” he answered quietly and modestly.
For a moment Patsy looked into their staring, hungry, questioning eyes. They were lying, and she knew it, but remembering a bit of advice of her father’s: “Never quarrel with a hungry person—feed him,” she smiled as she said to Terogloona:
“You tell them that this morning they shall eat breakfast with me; that we will have pancakes and reindeer steak, and tea with plenty of sugar in it.”
“Capseta! Ali-ne-ca! Capseta!” exclaimed one of the strangers who had understood the word sugar and was passing it on in the native word, Capseta, to his companions.
It was a busy morning for Patsy. There seemed no end to the appetites of these half starved natives. Even Terogloona grumbled at the amount they ate, but Patsy silenced him with the words:
“First they must be fed, then we will talk to them.”
Troubles seldom come singly. Hardly had the last pancake been devoured, than Terogloona, looking up from his labors, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A half mile up from the camp the tundra was brown with feeding reindeer.
“Scarberry’s herd,” he hissed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Patsy. “They dare to do that? They dare to drive their deer on our nearest and best pasture? And what can we do to stop them? Must Marian’s mission be in vain? Must she go all that way for nothing? If they remain, the range will be stripped long before she can return!”
Pressing her hands to her temples, she sat down unsteadily upon one of the sleds of the strangers.
She was struggling in a wild endeavor to think of some way out. Then, of a sudden, a wolf-dog jumped up at her very feet and began to ki-yi in a most distressing fashion.
Looking up, she saw that three of Scarberry’s deer, having strayed nearer the camp than the others, had attracted the dog’s attention. Like a flash, a possible solution to her problem popped into Patsy’s head.
With a cry of delight she sprang to her feet. The next instant she was her usual, calm self.
“Terogloona,” she said steadily, “come into the tent for a moment. I have something I wish to ask you.”
The task which Marian had set for herself, the scaling of the mountain to the dark spot in its side, was no easy one. Packed by the beating blast of a thousand gales, the snow was like white flint. It rang like steel to the touch of her iron shod staff. It was impossible to make an impression in its surface with the soft heel of her deerskin boots. The only way she could make progress was by the aid of her staff. One slip of that staff, one false step, and she would go gliding, faster, faster, ever faster, to a terrible death far below.
Yet to falter now meant that death of another sort waited her; death in the form of increasing cold and gathering storm.
Yet she made progress in spite of the cold that numbed her hands and feet; in spite of her wildly beating heart; regardless of the terror that gripped her. Now she had covered half the distance; now two-thirds; now she could be scarcely a hundred yards away. And now she saw clearly. She had not been mistaken. That black spot in the wall of snow was a yawning hole in the side of the mountain, a refuge in the time of storm. Could she but reach it, all would be well.
Could she do it? From her position the way up appeared steeper. She thought of going back for the reindeer. Their knife-like hoofs, cutting into the flinty snow, would carry them safely upward. She now regretted that she had not driven one before her. Vain regret. To descend now was more perilous than to go forward.
So, gripping her staff firmly, pressing her breast to still the wild beating of her heart, and setting her eyes upon the goal lest they stray to the depths below, she again began to climb.
Now she began going first to right, then to left. This zigzag course, though longer, was less steep. Up—up—up she struggled, until at last, with an exultant cry of joy, she threw herself over a broad parapet of snow and the next instant found herself looking down at a world which but the moment before had appeared to be reaching up white menacing hands at her. Then she turned to peer into the dark depths of the cave. She shivered as she looked. Her old fancies of fairies and goblins, of strange, wild people inhabiting these mountains, came sweeping back and quite unnerved her.
The next moment she was herself again, and turning she called down to Attatak:
“Who-hoo! Who-hoo! Bring the reindeer up. Here is shelter for the night.”
An inaudible answer came floating back to her. Then she saw the reindeer turn about and begin the long, zigzag course that in time would bring them to the mouth of the newly discovered cave.
“And then,” Marian said softly to herself.
She was no longer afraid of the dark shadows behind her. In the place of fear had come a great curiosity. The same questions which have come to all people throughout all time upon discovering a strange cave in the mountains, had come to her. “Am I,” she asked herself, “the first person whose footsteps have echoed in those mysterious corridors of nature, or have there been others? If there have been others, who were they? What were they like? What did they leave behind that will tell the story of their visit here?”
Mar
ian tried to shake herself free from these questions. It was extremely unlikely that any one, in all the hurrying centuries, had ever passed this way. They were on the side of a mountain. She had never known of a person crossing the range before. So she reasoned, but in the end found herself hoping that this cave might yield to her adventure loving soul some new and hitherto inexperienced thrill.
In the meantime she heard the labored breathing of the reindeer as they toiled up the mountainside. They would soon be here. Then she and Attatak would make camp, and safe from the cold and storm, they would sleep in peace.
A great wave of thankfulness swept over her, and with the fervent reverence of a child, she lifted her eyes to the stars and uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.
When the wave of emotion had passed, curiosity again gripped her. She wished to enter the cave, yet shrank from it. Like a child afraid of the dark, she feared to go forward alone. So, drawing her parka hood close about her face to protect it from the cold, she waited for Attatak’s arrival.
Even as she waited there crept into her mind a disturbing question:
“I wonder,” she said aloud, “I do wonder how Patsy is getting along with the herd?”
CHAPTER IX
PATSY SOLVES A PROBLEM
Turning from the group of strange natives, Patsy lead Terogloona into the igloo and drawing his grandfatherly head down close to hers, she whispered:
“Terogloona, are reindeer much afraid of native wolf dogs?”
“Eh-eh!” Terogloona nodded his head.
“Very, very, very much afraid of them?” Patsy insisted.
Terogloona’s head nodded vigorously.
“Then,” said Patsy, with a twinkle in her eye, “if we let one wolf-dog loose, and he went toward Bill Scarberry’s herd, would they run away?”
“Eh-eh. Mebbe. Want kill reindeer, that dog. Mebbe kill one, two, three—many. Sometimes that way, wolf-dogs.”
Terogloona’s horror of the thing she had proposed, shone in his eyes. Many years he had been a herder of reindeer. Many a dog had he killed to save a reindeer. His love for dogs was strong. His love for reindeer was stronger. To deliberately turn a wolf-dog loose to prey upon a herd of reindeer, even an enemy’s herd, was unthinkable.
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