“And yet,” she told herself, “there are bad women in Alaska just as there are everywhere. She might be bad, but somehow she didn’t look bad. She looked educated and sort of refined and—and—she looked a bit lonely as she stood there gazing at the stars. I wanted to walk right up to her and say ‘Hello!’ just like that, nice and chummy. Perhaps I will, too, some day.
“And perhaps I won’t,” she thoughtfully added a moment later. Something of the old dread of the purple flame still haunted her mind. Then, too, there were two puzzling questions: Why were these people here at all; and how did they live, if not off Marian’s deer?
Not many days later Patsy was to make a startling discovery that, to all appearances, was an answer to this last question.
CHAPTER XII
ANCIENT TREASURE
With a hand that trembled slightly, Marian held the candle that was to light their way in the exploration of the mysterious mountain cavern. As if drawn by a magnet, she led the way straight to the spot where but a few hours before she had been so frightened by finding herself standing in the burned out ashes and bones of an old camp-fire.
She laughed now as she bent over to examine the spot. There could be no question that there had once been a camp-fire here. There were a number of bones strewn about, too.
“That fire,” she said slowly, “must have burned itself out years ago; perhaps fifty years. Those bones are from the legs of a reindeer or caribou. They’re old, too. How gray and dry they are! They are about to fall into dust.”
She studied the spot for some time. At last she straightened up.
“Not much to it, after all,” she sighed. “It’s interesting enough to know that some storm blown traveler who attempted the pass, as we did, once spent the night here. But he left no relic of interest behind, unless—why—what have you there?” She turned suddenly to her companion.
Attatak was holding a slim, dull brown object in her hand.
“Only the broken handle of an old cow-drill,” she said slowly, still studying the thing by the candle light.
“It’s ivory.”
“Eh-eh.”
“And quite old?”
“Mebbe twenty, mebbe fifty years. Who knows?”
“Why are you looking at it so sharply?”
“Trying to read.”
“Read what?”
“Well,” smiled Attatak, as she placed the bit of ivory in Marian’s hand, “long ago, before the white man came, my people told stories by drawing little pictures on ivory. They scratched the pictures on the ivory, then rubbed smoke black in them so they would see them well. This cow-drill handle is square. It has four sides. Each side tells a story. Three are of hunting—walrus, polar bear and caribou. But the other side is something else. I can’t quite tell what it says.”
Marian studied it for a time in silence.
“Mr. Cole would love that,” she said at last, and her thoughts were far away. For the moment her mind had carried her back to those thrilling days aboard the pleasure yacht, The O Moo. Since you have doubtless read our other book, The Cruise of The O Moo, I need scarcely remind you that Mr. Cole was the curator of a great museum, and knew all about strange and ancient things. He had done much to aid Marian and her friends in unraveling the mystery of the strange blue face.
“Bring it along,” Marian said, handing the piece back to Attatak. “It tells us one thing—that the man who built that fire was an Eskimo. It is worth keeping. I should like to take it with me to the Museum when I go back.
“Now,” she said briskly, “let’s go all over the cave. There may be things that we have not yet discovered.”
And indeed there were. It was with the delicious sensation of research and adventure that the girls wandered back and forth from wall to wall of the gloomy cavern.
Not until they had passed the spot where they had spent the night, and were far back in the cave, did they make a discovery of any importance. Then it was that Marian, with a little cry of joy, put out her hand and took from a ledge of rock a strange looking little dish no larger than a finger bowl. It was so incrusted with dirt and dust that she could not tell whether it was really a rare find of some ancient pottery, or an ordinary china dish left here by some white adventurer. However, something within her seemed to whisper: “Here is wealth untold; here is a prize that will cause your friend, the museum curator, to turn green with envy.”
“Sulee!” (another), said Attatak, as she took down a larger object of the same general shape.
A few feet farther on was a ledge fairly covered with curious objects; strange shaped dishes; bits of ivory, black as coal; pieces of copper, dulled with age. Such were the treasures of the past that lay before them.
“Someone’s pantry of long ago,” mused Marian.
“Very, very old,” said Attatak, holding up a bit of black ivory. “Mebbe two hundred, mebbe five hundred years. Ivory turn black slow; very, very slow. By and by, after long, long time, look like that.”
As Attatak uttered these words Marian could have hugged her for sheer joy. She knew now that they had made a very rare find. The objects had not been left there by a white man, but by some native. Broken bits of ancient Eskimo pottery had been found in mounds on the Arctic coast. Those had been treasured. But here were perfect specimens, such as any museum in the world would covet.
And yet, had she but known it, the rareness and value of some of these were to exceed her fondest dreams. But this discovery was to come later.
Drawing off her calico parka, Marian tied it at the top, and using it as a sack, carefully packed all the articles.
“Let’s go back,” she said in an awed whisper.
“Eh-eh,” Attatak answered.
There was a strange spookiness about the place that made them half afraid to remain any longer.
They had turned to go, when Marian, chancing to glance down, saw the bit of ivory they had found by the outer camp-fire. At first she was tempted to let it remain where it lay. It seemed an insignificant thing after the discovery of these rarer treasures. But finally she picked it up and thrust it into her bag.
Well for her that she did. Later it was to prove the key to a mystery, an entirely new mystery which had as yet not appeared above their horizon, but was, in a way, associated with the mystery of the purple flame.
“Listen!” said Marian, as they came nearer to the mouth of the cave, “I do believe the storm is passing. Perhaps we can get off the mountain today. Oh, Attatak! We’ll win yet! Won’t that be glorious?”
It was true; the storm was passing. Attatak was dispatched to investigate, and soon came hurrying back with the report that they could be on their way as soon as they had eaten breakfast and packed.
Marian was possessed with a wild desire to inspect her newly discovered treasure—to wash, scrub and scrape it and try to discover how it was made and what it was made of. Yet she realized that any delay for such a cause would be all but criminal folly. So, after a hasty breakfast, she rubbed as much dust as she could from the strange treasures and packed them carefully in the folds of the sleeping bags.
Soon the girls found themselves beside their deer, picking their way cautiously forward over the remaining distance to the divide; then quite as cautiously they started down the other side.
During the day they halted for a cold lunch while their reindeer fed on a broad plateau, a protected place where they were safe from the wild blizzards of the peaks that loomed far above them.
“From now on,” said Marian, “there will be little rest for us. Our bold stroke has saved us nothing. It is now a question of whether reindeer are trustworthy steeds in the Arctic; also whether girls are capable of solving problems, and of enduring many hardships. As for me,” she shook her fist in the general direction of Scarberry’s herd, “I’ll say they are. We’ll win! See if we don’t!”
To this declaration Attatak uttered an “Eh-eh,” which to Marian sounded like a fervent “Amen!”
CHAPTER XIII
&nbs
p; THE LONG TRAIL
At nightfall of the following day, worn from the constant travel, and walking as if in their sleep, the two girls came to the junction of the two forks of a modest sized river. The frozen stream, coated as it was by a hard crust of snow, had given them a perfect trail over the last ten miles of travel. Before that they had crossed endless tiers of low-lying hills whose hard packed and treacherously slippery sides had brought grief to them and to their reindeer. Twice an overturned sled had dragged a reindeer off his feet, and reindeer, sled and driver had gone rolling and tumbling down the hill to be piled in a heap in the gully below.
Those had been trying hours; but now they were looking forward to many miles of smooth going between the banks of this river.
First, however, there must be rest and food for them and for their deer. They were watching the shelving bank for some likely place to camp, where there was shelter from the biting wind and driftwood lodged along the bank for a fire. Then, with a little cry of surprise, Marian pointed at a bend in the river.
“At this point,” she said, “the river runs southwest.”
Attatak looked straight down the river and at the low sweeping banks beyond, then uttered a low: “Eh-eh,” in agreement.
“That means that we cannot follow the river,” said Marian. “Our course runs northwest. Every mile travelled on the river takes us off our course and lessens our chance of reaching our goal in time.”
“What shall we do?” asked Attatak, in perplexity.
“Let me think,” said Marian. “There is time enough to decide. We must camp here. The deer must have food and rest. So must we. There is not much danger of wolves. If any come prowling around, the deer will let us know soon enough. We will sleep on our sleds and if anything goes wrong, the deer, tethered to the sleds, will tumble us out of our beds. Anyway, they will waken us.”
Soon supper was over. The deer, having had their fill of moss dug from beneath the snow, had lain down to rest. The girls spread their sleeping bags out upon the sleds and prepared for a few hours of much needed rest. Attatak, with the carefree unconcern that is characteristic of her race, had scarcely buried her face in an improvised pillow when she was fast asleep.
Sleep did not come so quickly to Marian. Many matters of interest lingered in her mind. It was as if her mind were a room all littered up with the odds and ends of a day’s work. She must put it to rights before she could sleep.
She thought once more of the strange treasures they had brought from the cave. Tired as she was, she was tempted to get out those articles and look at them, and to brush them up a bit and see what they were like.
“I know it’s foolish,” she told herself, “but it’s exactly as if I had hung up my stocking on Christmas Eve, and then when Christmas morning came, had been obliged to seize my stocking without so much as a glance inside, and forced to start at once on a long journey which would offer me no opportunity to examine my stocking until the journey was at an end. But I won’t look; not now. It’s too cold. Brr-r,” she shivered.
As she drew herself farther down into the furry depths of her sleeping bag, she was reminded of the time she and Patsy had slept together beneath the stars. She could not help wishing that Patsy was with her now, sharing her sleeping bag, and looking up at the gleaming Milky Way.
She wondered vaguely how Patsy was getting on with the herd, but the thought did not greatly disturb her. She was about to drift off to the land of dreams, when a thought popped into her mind that brought her up wide awake again. Their morning’s course was not yet laid. What should it be?
She closed her eyes and tried to think. Then, like a flash, it came to her.
“It’s the hard way,” she whispered to herself. “Seems as if it were always the hard way that is safe and sure.”
The thought that had come to her was this: In order to reach their destination, they must still travel several miles north. The river they were following flowed southwest. To go south was to go out of their way. Were they to strike due north, across country, they might in the course of a day’s travel come to another stream which did not angle toward the south. That would mean infinitely hard travel over snow that was soft and yielding, and across tundra whose frozen caribou bogs were as rough as a cordwood road.
“It’s the long, hard way,” she sighed, “but we may win. If we follow this river we never can.”
Then, with all her problems put in order, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIV
MYSTERIOUS MUSIC
Two days later Marian and Attatak found themselves tramping slowly along behind their tired deer. It was night. Now and again the moon shot a golden beam of light across their trail. For the most part that trail was dark, overshadowed by great spruce and fir trees that stood out black against the whiteness of the snow, each tree seeming a gown clad monk—silent witnesses of their passing.
There was now a definitely marked trail. An ax cut here and there on a tree told them this trail had been made by men, and not by moose and caribou. They had seen no traces of man. No human habitation had sent its gleam of light across their trail to bid them welcome. Scarcely knowing whether she wished to see the light of a cabin, Marian tramped doggedly on. It was long past camping time, yet she feared to make camp. Several times she had caught the long drawn howl of a wolf, faint and indistinct in the distance.
With a burst of joy and hope she thought of the progress they had made. The tramp across open tundra had been fearfully hard. They had, however, reaped from it a rich reward; the river they had found was larger than the other and its surface had offered an almost perfect trail. It flowed north by west instead of southwest. It took them directly on their way. Even now Marian was wondering if this were not the very river at whose junction with the great Yukon was located the station they sought to reach before the Government Agent had passed.
“If it is,” she murmured, “what can hinder us from making the station in time?”
It seemed that there could be but one answer to this; yet in the Arctic there is no expression that is so invariably true as this one: “You never can tell.”
Then, suddenly, Marian’s thoughts were drawn to another subject. A peculiar gleam of moonlight among the trees reminded her of the purple flame. At once she began wondering what could be the source of that peculiar and powerful light; who possessed it, and what their purpose was in living on the tundra.
“And Patsy?” she questioned herself, “I wonder if they are troubling her. Wonder if they are really living off our deer. I wish I had not been obliged to leave our camp. Seems that there were problems enough without this. I wish—”
Suddenly she put out one hand and stopped her deer, while with the other she gave Attatak a mute signal for silence.
Breaking gently through the hushed stillness of the forest, like a spring zephyr over a meadow, there came to her ears a sound of wonderful sweetness.
“Music,” she breathed, “and such music! The very music of Heaven!”
Moments passed, and still with slightly bowed heads, as if listening to the Angelus, they stood there, still as statues, listening to the strange music.
“The woods were God’s first temples,” Marian whispered.
For the moment she lived as in a trance. A great lover of music, she felt the thrill of perfect melody breaking over her soul like bright waves upon golden sand. She fancied that this melody had no human origin, that it was a spontaneous outburst from the very heart of the forest; God himself speaking through the mute life of earth.
When this illusion had passed she still stood there wondering.
“Attatak, what day of the week is this?”
For a moment Attatak did not answer. She was counting on her fingers.
“Sunday,” she said at last.
“Sunday,” Marian repeated. “And that is a pipe organ. How wonderful! How perfectly beautiful! A pipe organ in the midst of the forest!”
“And yet,” she hesitated, scarcely daring to believe her sense
s, “how could a pipe organ be brought way up here?”
“But it is!” she affirmed a few seconds later. “Attatak, you watch the deer while I go ahead and find out what sort of place it is, and whether there are dangerous dogs about.”
Her wonder grew with every step that she took in the direction of the mysterious musician. As she came closer, and the tones became more distinct, she knew that she could not be mistaken.
“It’s a pipe organ,” she told herself with conviction, “and a splendid one at that! Who in all the world would bring such a wonderful instrument away up here? Strange I have never heard of this settlement. It must be a rather large village or they could not afford such an organ for their church.”
As she thought of these things, and as the rise and fall of the music still came sweeping through the trees, a strange spell fell upon her. It was as if she were resting upon the soft, cushioned seat of some splendid church. With the service appealing to her sense of the artistic and the beautiful, and to her instinct of reverence; with the soft lights pervading all, she was again in the chapel of her own university.
“Oh!” she cried, “I do hope it’s a real church and that we’re not too late for the service.”
One thought troubled her as she hurried forward. If this was a large village, where were the tracks of dog teams that must surely be travelling up the river; trappers going out over their lines of traps; hunters seeking caribou; prospectors starting away over the trail for a fresh search for the ever illusive yellow gold? Surely all these would have left a well beaten trail. Yet since the last snow there had not been a single team passing that way.
“It’s like a village of the dead,” she mused, and shivered at the thought.
When at last she rounded a turn and came within full sight of the place from which the enchanting tones issued, the sight that met her eyes caused her to start back and stare with surprise and amazement.
She had expected to find a cluster of log cabins; a store, a church and a school. Instead, she saw a yawning hole in a bank of snow; a hole that was doubtless an entrance to some sort of structure. Whether the structure was built of sod, logs, or merely of snow, she could not guess. Some thirty feet from this entrance, and higher, apparently perched on the crust of snow, were two such cupola affairs as Marian had seen on certain types of sailing vessels and gasoline schooners. From these there streamed a pale yellow light.
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