When Patsy had imparted the exciting news to her, Marian sat long in silent thought. Fort Jarvis, as she well knew, lay some five hundred miles away over hills and tundra. She had just returned from one such wearisome journey. Should she start again? And would this second great endeavor prove more successful than the first? Of all the herds in Alaska, two were closest to Fort Jarvis; Scarberry’s and her own. She had not the slightest doubt that Scarberry would start driving a section of his herd toward that goal. It would be a race; a race that would be won by the bravest, strongest and most skillful. Marian believed in her herders. She believed in herself and Patsy. She believed as strongly in her herd, her sled-deer and her dogs. It was the grand opportunity; the way out of all troubles. That the band of begging natives would not follow, she knew right well. Nor would the mysterious persons of the purple flame camp; at least, she hoped not. As for their little herd range, if they sold their deer, Scarberry might have it, and welcome; if they did not sell, they could doubtless find pasture in some far away Canadian valley.
“Yes,” she said in a tone of decision, “we will go. We will waken the herders at once. Come on, let’s go.”
As they burst breathlessly into the cabin of their Eskimo herders, they received something of a shock. Since all the work of the day had long since been done, they had expected to find the entire group of four assembled in the cabin, or asleep in their bunks. But here was only old Terogloona and Attatak.
“Where’s Oatinna? Where’s Azazruk?” demanded Marian.
“Gone,” said Terogloona solemnly.
“Where? Go call them, quick!”
Terogloona did not move. He merely shrugged his shoulders and mumbled:
“No good. Gone long way. Bill Scarberry’s camp. No come back, say that one.”
“What!” exclaimed Marian in consternation. “Gone? Deserted us?”
“Eh-eh,” Terogloona nodded his head. “Say Bill Scarberry pay more money; more deer; say that one Oatinna, that one Azazruk. No good, that one Bill Scarberry, me think.” He shook his head solemnly. “Not listen that one Oatinna, that one Azazruk. Say wanna go. Go, that’s all.”
“Then we can’t start the herd,” murmured Marian, sinking down upon a rolled up sleeping-bag. “Yes, we will!” she exclaimed resolutely. “Terogloona, where are the rifles?”
“Gone,” he repeated like a parrot. “Mebbe you forget. That one rifle b’long herder boys.”
“And your rifle?” questioned Marian, “where is your rifle?”
“Broke-tuk. Hammer not want come down hard. Not want shoot, that one rifle, mine.”
Marian was stunned with surprise and chagrin. She and Patsy returned silently to their igloo.
“Oh, that treacherous Bill Scarberry!” she exploded. “He has known this was coming. He knew our herders were energetic and capable. He thought if they remained with us, we might beat him to the prize; so he sent some spy over here to buy them away from us with promises of more pay.”
“And now?” asked Patsy.
“Now he will drive his herd to Fort Jarvis and sell it, and our grand chance is gone forever.”
“No!” exclaimed Patsy, “He won’t! He shall not! We will beat him yet. We are strong. Terogloona and Attatak are faithful. We have our three collies. We can do it. We will beat him yet. Our herd is better than his. It will travel faster. Oh, Marian! Somehow, somehow we must do it. It’s your chance! Your one big, wonderful opportunity.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Marian, suddenly fired by her cousin’s hot blooded southern enthusiasm, “we will do it or perish in the attempt. It’s to be a race,” she exclaimed, “a race for a wonderful prize, a race between two large herds of reindeer over five hundred miles of hills, tundra and forest. There may be wolves in the forests. In Alaska dangers lurk at every turn; rivers too rapid to freeze over and blizzards and wild beasts. We will be terribly handicapped from the very start. But for father’s sake we must try it.”
“For your father’s and for your own sake,” murmured Patsy. “And, Marian, I have always believed that our great Creator was on the side of those who are kind and just. Bill Scarberry played us a mean trick. Perhaps God will somehow even the score.”
An hour was spent in consultation with old Terogloona. His face became very sober at the situation, but in the end, with the blood of youth coursing eternally in his veins, he sprang to his feet and exclaimed:
“Eh-eh!” (Yes-yes) “We will go. Before it is day we will be away. You go sleep. You must be very strong. In the morning Terogloona will have reindeer and sleds ready. We will call to the dogs. We will be away before the sun. We will shout ‘Kul-le-a-muck, Kul-le-a-muck’ (Hurry! Hurry!) to dogs and reindeer. We will beat that one Bill yet.
“You know what?” he exclaimed, his face darkening like a thundercloud, “You know that mean man, that one Bill Scarberry. Want my boy, So-queena, work for him. Want pay him reindeer. Give him bad rifle, very bad rifle. Want shoot, my boy So-queena. Shot at caribou, So-queena. Rifle go flash. Crooch! Just like that. Shoot back powder, that rifle. Came in So-queena’s eyes, that powder. Can’t see, that one. Almost lost to freeze, that one, So-queena. Bye’m bye find camp. Stay camp mebbe five days. Can see, not very good. Bill, he say: ‘Go herd reindeer,’ So-queena, he say: ‘Can’t see. Mebbe get lost. Mebbe freeze’.
“He say Bill very mad. ‘Get out! No good, you! Go freeze. Who cares?’
“So-queena come my house—long way. Plenty starve. Plenty freeze. No give reindeer that one So-queena, that one Bill. Bad one, that Bill. So me think; beat Bill. Sell reindeer herd white man. Think very good. Work hard. Mebbe beat that one Bill Scarberry.”
There came a look of determination to Patsy’s face such as Marian had never seen there.
“If that’s the kind of man he is; if he would send an Eskimo boy, half-blinded by his own worthless rifle, out into the snow and the cold, then we must beat him. We must! We must!” said Patsy vehemently.
“That’s exactly the kind of man he is,” said Marian soberly. “We must beat him if we can. But it will be a long, hard journey.”
They had hardly crept between their deerskins when Patsy was fast asleep. Not so Marian. The full responsibility of this perilous journey rested upon her shoulders. She knew too well the hardships and dangers they must face. They must pass through broad stretches of forest where food for the deer was scarce, and where lurking wolves, worn down to mere skeletons by the scarcity of food, might attack and scatter their herd beyond recovery.
They must cross high hills, from whose summits the snow at times poured like smoke from volcanoes in circling sweeps hundreds of feet in extent. Here there would be danger of losing their deer in some wild blizzard, or having them buried beneath the snows of some thundering avalanche.
“It’s not for myself alone that I’m afraid,” she told herself. “It’s for Patsy, Patsy from Kentucky. Who would have thought a girl from the sunny south could be so brave, such a good sport.”
As she thought of the courageous, carefree manner in which Patsy had insisted on the journey, a lump rose in her throat, and she brushed a hand hastily over her eyes.
“And yet,” she asked herself, “ought I to allow her to do it? She’s younger than I, and not so strong. Can she stand the strain?”
Again her mind took up the thought of the perils they must face.
There were wandering tribes of Indians in the territory they must cross; the skulking and oft-times treacherous Indians of the Little Sticks. What if they were to cross the path of these? What if a great band of caribou should come pouring down some mountain pass and, having swallowed up their little herd, go sweeping on, leaving them in the midst of a great wilderness with only their sled-deer to stand between them and starvation.
As if dreaming of Marian’s thoughts, Patsy suddenly turned over with a little sobbing cry, and wound her arms about Marian.
“What is it?” Marian whispered.
Patsy did not answer. She was still asleep. The dream soon pass
ed, her muscles relaxed, and with a deep sigh she sank back into her place.
This little drama left Marian in an exceedingly troubled state of mind.
“We ought not to go,” she told herself. “We will not.” Then, from sheer exhaustion, she too, fell asleep.
Three hours before the tardy Arctic sunrise, she heard Terogloona pounding at their door. She found that sleep had banished fear, and that every muscle in her body and every cell of her brain was ready for action, eager to be away.
As for Patsy, she could not dress half fast enough, so great was her desire for the wonderful adventure.
CHAPTER XXIV
CAMP FOLLOWERS
It was just as Marian was tightening the ropes to the pack on her sled that, happening to glance away at a distant hill, she was reminded of Patsy’s latest story of the purple flame. From the crest of that hill there came a purple flare of light. Quickly as it had come, just so quickly it vanished, leaving the hill a faint outline against the sky.
“The purple flame,” she breathed. “I wonder if we can leave those mysterious camp-followers of ours behind?”
On the instant a disturbing thought flashed through her mind. It caused an indignant flash of color to rise to her cheek.
“I wonder,” she said slowly, “if those mysterious people are spies set by Bill Scarberry to dog our tracks?”
“They may start with us,” she smiled to herself, as she at last dismissed the subject from her mind, “but unless they really are Bill Scarberry’s spies and set to watch us, they’ll never finish with us. Camp-followers don’t follow over five hundred miles of wild trail. They’re not that fond of hard marching.”
In this conclusion she was partly wrong.
Just as the sun was painting the distant mountain peaks with a gleam of gold, the collies began to bark and the broad herd of reindeer moved slowly forward. Marian and Patsy touched their deer gently with the reins, and they were away.
It was with a distinct feeling of homesickness that Marian turned to look back at the campsite. She had spent many happy hours there. Now she was leaving it, perhaps forever. What was more, she was leaving the tundra; the broad-stretching deer pastures of the Arctics. Should their enterprise succeed, she would pass over one of the Canadian trails, southward to the States and back to the University. Should they fail, she might indeed return to the tundra, but she knew it could never be the same to her.
“We must not fail,” she told herself, clenching her hands tight and staring away at the magnificent panorama which lay before her. “We must not! Must not fail!”
As she saw the reindeer, a mass of brown and white moving down the slope, a feeling of sadness swept over her. She had come to love these gentle and half-wild creatures of the North. She was especially fond of the sled-deer, her three; the spotted one, the brown one, and the white. Many hundred miles had she driven them. Nowhere in the world, she was sure, could there be deer who covered more miles in a day, who were quicker to recognize the pull of rein, more willing to stomp the tiresome nights away at the ends of their tethers.
Dearest of all were the three collie dogs; Gold, Copper and Bronze, she whimsically named them, for their coats were just what their names indicated. Copper and Bronze were young dogs. Gold was the pick of the three; an old, well-trained sheep dog. Accustomed to the sunny pastures of California, he had been brought to this cold and barren land to herd reindeer. With the sturdy devotion of his kind, he had endured the biting cold without a whimper, and had gnawed his toes, cut by the crusted snow, in silence. He had done the work assigned to him with a zeal and thoroughness that might have shamed many a human master.
“These, too, I must leave,” she told herself. “Worse than that, I am leading them out into wild desert. Within a week that beautiful herd may be hopelessly scattered; our sled-deers killed by wolves; our dogs—well, anyway, they will never desert us. Together we will fight it out to the bitter end.”
A lump came into her throat. Then, realizing that she was the commander of this expedition and that it was unbecoming of commanders to betray emotion, she quickly conquered her feelings and gave herself over to the work of assisting in keeping the herd moving steadily forward in a compact mass.
Five days later, with their herd still moving steadily on before them, and with hopes rising high because of the continued success of their march, they found themselves crossing a succession of low-lying, grass-covered hills. As they reached the crest of the highest of these, and arrived at a place where they could get an unrestricted view of the tundra that lay beyond, an exclamation escaped Marian’s lips.
“A forest!” she exclaimed.
“A real Arctic forest,” echoed Patsy. “Won’t it be wonderful!”
“Wonderful and dangerous,” Marian replied. “Unless I miss my guess, here is where our troubles begin. It may not be so bad, though,” she quickly amended, as she saw the look of fear that came over her cousin’s face. “That forest is fully ten miles away. The sun is about to set. We’ll drive our herd down into the tundra where there is plenty of moss. We’ll camp there, and get up for an early start in the morning. The forest may be only a narrow belt along a river.”
Marian did not feel very sure that her predictions would prove true, but she was the sort of person who measures all perils carefully, then hopes for the best.
Two hours later they were eating a meal of reindeer stew and hot biscuits, which had been cooked over a willow-wood fire in their Yukon stove. Then as they chatted of the future, Marian held up a finger for silence.
“What was that?” she whispered. “A shot?”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, yes. There’s another!”
Marian was up and out of the tent in an instant.
As her eyes swept the horizon they caught a gleam of light from the hills above, the red and yellow light of a camp-fire.
With one sweeping glance she took in the position of her herd. She had just noted that a certain brown deer had strayed some distance up the hill. She was about to suggest to Terogloona, who had also been called from his tent by the shots, that he send a dog after the deer, when, to her great astonishment, she caught a flash of light, heard a sharp report, then saw the brown deer crumple up like an empty sack and drop to the snow.
For one instant she stood there as if in a trance, then with a quick turn she said:
“Patsy, you stay with Attatak. Terogloona, you come with me.”
Turning, she walked straight toward the spot where the reindeer had fallen. The faithful Terogloona, in spite of his fear of the Indians of the Little Sticks, followed at her heels.
When they arrived at the spot, they found a man bending over the dead deer. In his hand was the rifle that had sped the bullet. The soft-soled “muck-lucks” that Marian and Terogloona wore made no sound on the snow. The man’s back was toward them and they came upon him unobserved. The powerful Terogloona would have leaped upon his back and thrown him to the snow, but Marian held him back.
“Stranger,” said the girl, in as steady a voice as she could, “why did you kill our deer?”
Like a flash the man gripped his rifle as he wheeled about. Then, seeing it was a girl who spoke, he lowered his weapon.
Marian’s eyes took him in with one feeling glance. His face was haggard, emaciated. His hands were mere skin and bones. He was an Indian.
“Too hungry,” he murmured, “No come caribou. No come ptarmigan. No fish in the river; no rabbits on the tundra!” He spread out his bony hands in a gesture of despair.
“But you needn’t have killed him. Had you come to us we would have given you meat, all you could use.” The girl’s face was frank and fearless, yet there was a certain huskiness in her voice that to the sensitive ears of the Indian betokened kindness.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “maybe you would. Yesterday we saw other reindeer herd, north mebbe ten miles. Want deer; ask man, big man, much whiskers; say want food. Man said: ‘Get out!’ Wanna kill me if I not go quick.
Bad man, that one. We go way. Then see your herd. Say, take one deer. You want to fight, then fight. Better to die by bullet than by hunger.”
“The man you saw,” said Marian, her heart sinking as she realized that he must be a half day in the lead, “was Bill Scarberry. Yes, he is a mean man. But see! Have you a cache? Some place where you can keep meat from the wolves and wolverines?”
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the Indian eagerly. “Ten miles. Diesa River, a cabin.”
“How many deer must you have to keep you until game comes?”
“Mebbe—mebbe,” the Indian stared at her in astonishment, “Mebbe two, mebbe three.”
“All right,” said Marian, “you have killed a fine doe. That was bad, but I forgive you.” She held our her hand to grasp the native’s bony fingers.
“Now,” she said briskly, “since you have killed her, you may keep the meat. Terogloona,” she turned to the Eskimo, “point out two young bucks, the best we have. Tell him he may kill them and that he and his friends may take them to their cabin.”
“I—I—” the Indian attempted to speak. Failing utterly, he turned and walked a few steps away, then turning, struck straight away toward the spot where the red and yellow campfire gleamed.
“That is his camp?” asked Marian.
Terogloona nodded silently.
“They will come for the meat, and will give us no further trouble?”
“Eh-eh” smiled the Eskimo. “The daughter of my master has acted wisely. The man who starves, he is different. These reindeer,” he waved his arms toward the herd, “they belong to my master and his daughter. When men are not starving—yes. When men are starving—no. To the starving all things belong. Bill Scarberry, he remember yet. Indians of Little Sticks, they never forget.”
As Marian turned to retrace her steps to camp, she chanced to glance up at the other camp where, but an hour before, she had seen the flash of the purple flame. It was closer than she thought. The flash of flame was gone, but she was sure she caught the outlines of a tent; surer still that she saw a solitary figure atop a nearby knoll. Sitting as if on watch, this solitary man held a rifle across his knees.
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