CHAPTER I

[Illustration: He worked tirelessly, as though he was determined to

infuse her numb veins with his own vigor. FRONTISPIECE.]

THE RIM OF THE DESERT

BY

ADA WOODRUFF ANDERSON

AUTHOR OF "THE STRAIN OF WHITE," "THE HEART OF THE RED FIRS," ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY MONTE CREWS

1915

_To the Memory of_

MY MOTHER

A gentle and appreciative critic, the only one, perhaps, who re-read my

previous books with pleasure and found no flaw in them, and who would have

had a greater interest than any other in this publication.

FOREWORD

The desert of this story is that semi-arid region east of the upper

Columbia. It is cut off from the moisture laden winds of the Pacific by

the lofty summits of the Cascade Mountains which form its western rim, and

for many miles the great river crowds the barrier, winding, breaking in

rapids, seeking a way through. To one approaching this rim from the dense

forests of the westward slopes, the sage grown levels seem to stretch

limitless into the far horizon, but they are broken by hidden coulees; in

propitious seasons reclaimed areas have yielded phenominal crops of wheat,

and under irrigation the valley of one of the two tributaries from the

west, wherein lies Hesperides Vale, has become a garden spot of the world.

To the initiated I wish to say if in the chapters touching on the Alaska

coal cases I have followed too literally the statements of prominent men,

it was not in an effort to portray them but merely to represent as clearly

as possible the Alaska situation.

ADA WOODRUFF ANDERSON.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK

II THE QUESTION

III FOSTER TOO

IV SNOQUALMIE PASS AND A BROKEN AXLE

V APPLES OF EDEN

VI NIP AND TUCK

VII A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD

VIII THE BRAVEST WOMAN HE EVER KNEW

IX THE DUNES OF THE COLUMBIA

X A WOMAN'S HEART-STRINGS

XI THE LOOPHOLE

XII "WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY"

XIII "A LITTLE STREAK OF LUCK"

XIV ON BOARD THE AQUILA

XV THE STORY OF THE TENAS PAPOOSE

XVI THE ALTERNATIVE

XVII "ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE"

XVIII THE OPTION

XIX LUCKY BANKS AND THE PINK CHIFFON

XX KERNEL AND PEACH

XXI FOSTER'S HOUR

XXII AS MAN TO MAN

XXIII THE DAY OF PUBLICATION

XXIV SNOWBOUND IN THE ROCKIES AND "FIT AS A MOOSE"

XXV THE IDES OF MARCH

XXVI THE EVERLASTING DOOR

XXVII KISMET, AN ACT OF GOD

XXVIII SURRENDER

XXIX BACK TO HESPERIDES VALE

XXX THE JUNIOR DEFENDANT

XXXI TISDALE OF ALASKA--AND WASHINGTON, D.C.

XXXII THE OTHER DOCUMENT

XXXIII THE CALF-BOUND NOTEBOOK

THE RIM OF THE DESERT

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK

It is in October, when the trails over the wet tundra harden, and before

the ice locks Bering Sea, that the Alaska exodus sets towards Seattle; but

there were a few members of the Arctic Circle in town that first evening

in September to open the clubhouse on the Lake Boulevard with an informal

little supper for special delegate Feversham, who had arrived on the

steamer from the north, on his way to Washington.

The clubhouse, which was built of great, hewn logs, with gabled eaves,

stood in a fringe of firs, and an upper rear balcony afforded a broad

outlook of lake and forest, with the glaciered heights of the Cascade

Mountains breaking a far horizon. The day had been warm, but a soft

breeze, drawing across this veranda through the open door, cooled the

assembly room, and, lifting one of the lighter hangings of Indian-wrought

elk leather, found the stairs and raced with a gentle rustle through the

lower front entrance back into the night. It had caressed many familiar

things on its way, for the walls were embellished with trophies from the

big spaces where winds are born. There were skins of polar and Kodiak

bear; of silver and black fox; there were antlered heads set above the

fireplace and on the rough, bark-seamed pillars that supported the

unceiled roof. A frieze of pressed and framed Alaska flora finished the

low gallery which extended around three sides of the hall, and the massive

chairs, like the polished banquet board, were of crocus-yellow Alaska

cedar.

The delegate, who had come out to tide-water over the Fairbanks-Valdez

trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors of the journey.

The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed to increase

his prominence of front and intensified the color in his face to a sort of

florid ripeness.

"Yes, gentlemen," he continued, thumping the table with a stout hand and

repeating the gesture slowly, while the glasses trembled, "Alaska's crying

need is a railroad; a single finished line from the most northern harbor

open to navigation the whole year--and that is Prince William Sound--

straight through to the Tanana Valley and the upper Yukon. Already the

first problem has been solved; we have pierced the icy barrier of the

Coast Range. All we are waiting for is further right of way; the right to

the forests, that timber may be secured for construction work; the right

to mine coal for immediate use. But, gentlemen, we may grow gray waiting.

What do men four thousand miles away, men who never saw Alaska, care about

our needs?" He leaned back in his chair, while his glance moved from face

to face and rested, half in challenge, on the member at the foot of the

board. "These commissioners appointed off there in Washington," he added.

"These carpet-baggers from the little States beyond the Mississippi!"

Hollis Tisdale, who had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska

career in the service of the Government, met the delegate's look with a

quiet humor in his eyes.

"It seems to me," he said, and his deep, expressive voice instantly held

the attention of every one, "that such a man, with intelligence and

insight, of course, stands the surest chance of giving general

satisfaction in the end. He is at least disinterested, while the best of

us, no matter how big he is, how clear-visioned, is bound to take his own

district specially to heart. Prince William Sound alone has hundreds of

miles of coast-line and includes more than one fine harbor with an

ambitious seaport."

At this a smile rippled around the table, and Miles Feversham, who was the

attorney for one of the most ambitious syndicates of promoters in the

north, gave his attention to the menu. But Tisdale, having spoken, turned

his face to the open balcony door. His parka was thrown back, showing an

incongruous breadth of stiff white bosom, yet he was the only man present

who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the column of throat

rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening pose of the fine head,

in relief against the bearskin on the wall behind his chair, suggested a

Greek medallion. His brown hair, close-cut, waved at the temples; lines

were chiseled at the corners of his eyes and, with a lighter touch, about

his mouth; yet his face, his whole compact, muscular body, gave an

impression of youth--youth and power and the capacity for great endurance.

His friends said the north never had left a mark of its grip on Tisdale.

The life up there that had scarred, crippled, wrecked most of them seemed

only to have mellowed him.

"But," resumed Feversham quickly, "I shall make a stiff fight at

Washington; I shall force attention to our suspended land laws; demand the

rights the United States allows her western territories; I shall ask for

the same concessions that were the making of the Oregon country; and first

and last I shall do all I can to loosen the strangling clutch of

Conservation." He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the

table, and the glasses jingled anew. "And, gentlemen, the day of the

floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities,

our cities; we are ready for a legislative body of our own; the time has

come for Home Rule. But the men who make our laws must be familiar with

the country, have allied interests. Gentlemen,"--his voice, dropping its

aggressive tone, took a honeyed insistence,--"we want in our first

executive a man who knows us intimately, who has covered our vast

distances, whose vision has broadened; a man big enough to hold the

welfare of all Alaska at heart."

The delegate finished this period with an all-embracing smile and, nodding

gently, leaned back again in his chair. But in the brief silence that

followed, he experienced a kind of shock. Foster, the best known mining

engineer from Prince William Sound to the Tanana, had turned his eyes on

Tisdale; and Banks, Lucky Banks, who had made the rich strike in the

Iditarod wilderness, also looked that way. Then instantly their thought

was telegraphed from face to face. When Feversham allowed his glance to

follow the rest, it struck him as a second shock that Tisdale was the only

one on whom the significance of the moment was lost.

The interval passed. Tisdale stirred, and his glance, coming back from the

door, rested on a dish that had been placed before him. "Japanese

pheasant!" he exclaimed. The mellowness glowed in his face. He lifted his

eyes, and the delegate, meeting that clear, direct gaze, dropped his own

to his plate. "Think of it! Game from the other side of the Pacific. They

look all right, but--do you know?"--the lines deepened humorously at the

corners of his mouth--"nothing with wings ever seems quite as fine to me

as ptarmigan."

"Ptarmigan!" Feversham suspended his fork in astonishment. "Not

ptarmigan?"

"Yes," persisted Tisdale gently, "ptarmigan; and particularly the ones

that nest in Nunatak Arm."

There was a pause, while for the first time his eyes swept the Circle. He

still held the attention of every one, but with a difference; the

tenseness had given place to a pleased expectancy.

Then Foster said: "That must have been on some trip you made, while you

were doing geological work around St. Elias."

Tisdale shook his head. "No, it was before that; the year I gave up

Government work to have my little fling at prospecting. You were still in

college. Every one was looking for a quick route to the Klondike then, and

I believed if I could push through the Coast Range from Yakutat Bay to the

valley of the Alsek, it would be smooth going straight to the Yukon. An

old Indian I talked with at the mission told me he had made it once on a

hunting trip, and Weatherbee--you all remember David Weatherbee--was eager

to try it with me. The Tlinket helped us with the outfit, canoeing around

the bay and up into the Arm to his starting point across Nunatak glacier.

But it took all three of us seventy-two days to pack the year's supplies

over the ice. We tramped back and forth in stages, twelve hundred miles.

We hadn't been able to get dogs, and in the end, when winter overtook us

in the, mountains, we cached the outfit and came out."

"And never went back." Banks laughed, a shrill, mirthless laugh, and added

in a higher key: "Lost a whole year and--the outfit."

Tisdale nodded slowly. "All we gained was experience. We had plenty of

that to invest the next venture over the mountains from Prince William

Sound. But--do you know?--I always liked that little canoe trip around

from Yakutat. I can't tell you how fine it is in that upper fiord; big

peaks and ice walls growing all around. Yes."--he nodded again, while the

genial wrinkles deepened--"I've seen mountains grow. We had a shock once

that raised the coast-line forty-five feet. And another time, while we

were going back to the village for a load, a small glacier in a hanging

valley high up, perhaps two thousand feet, toppled right out of its cradle

into the sea. It stirred things some and noise"--he shook his head with an

expressive sound that ended in a hissing whistle. "But it missed the

canoe, and the wave it made lifted us and set us safe on top of a little

rocky island." He paused again, laughing softly. "I don't know how we kept

right side up, but we did. Weatherbee was great in an emergency."

A shadow crossed his face. He looked off to the end of the room.

"I guess you both understood a canoe," said Banks. His voice was still

high-pitched, like that of a man under continued stress, and his eyes

burned in his withered, weather-beaten face like the vents of buried

fires. "But likely it was then, while you was freighting the outfit around

to the glacier, you came across those ptarmigan."

Tisdale's glance returned, and the humor played again softly at the

corners of his eyes. "I had forgotten about those birds. It was this way.

I made the last trip in the canoe alone, for the mail and a small load,

principally ammunition and clothing, while Weatherbee and the Tlinket

pushed ahead on one of those interminable stages over the glacier. And on

the way back, I was caught in fog. It rolled in, layer on layer, while I

felt for the landing; but I managed to find the place and picked up the

trail we had worn packing over the ice. And I lost it; probably in a new

thaw that had opened and glazed over since I left. Anyhow, in a little

while I didn't know where I was. I had given my compass to Weatherbee, and

there was no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing

but fog and ice, and it all looked alike. The surface was too hard to take

my impressions, so I wasn't able to follow my own tracks back to the

landing. But I had to keep moving, it was so miserably cold; I hardly let

myself rest at night; and that fog hung on five days. The third evening I

found myself on the water-front, and pretty soon I stumbled on my canoe. I

was down to a mighty small allowance of crackers and cheese then, but I

parcelled it out in rations for three days and started once more along the

shore for Yakutat. The next night I was traveling by a sort of sedge when

I heard ptarmigan. It sounded good to me, and I brought my canoe up and

stepped out. I couldn't see, but I could hear those birds stirring and

cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first

that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote,

and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the

rafter above an electric lamp. "When it did, and I blazed, the whole flock

rose. I winged two. I had to grope for them in the reeds, but I found

them, and I made a little fire and cooked one of them in a tin pail I

carried in the canoe. But when I had finished that supper and pushed off--

do you know?"--his look returned, moving humorously from face to face--"I

was hungrier than I had been before. And I just paddled back and cooked

the other one."

There was a stir along the table; a sighing breath. Then some one laughed,

and Banks piped his strained note. "And," he said after a moment, "of

course you kept on to that missionary camp and waited for the fog to

lift."

Tisdale shook his head. "After that supper, there wasn't any need; I

turned back to the glacier. And before I reached the landing, I heard

Weatherbee's voice booming out on the thick silence like a siren at sea;

piloting me straight to that one dip in the ice-wall."

He looked off again to the end of the room, absently, with the far-sighted

gaze of one accustomed to travel great solitudes. It was as though he

heard again that singing voice. Then suddenly his expression changed. His

eyes had rested on a Kodiak bearskin that hung against a pillar at the top

of the gallery steps. The corner was unlighted, in heavy shadow, but a

hand reaching from behind had drawn the rug slightly aside, and its

whiteness on the brown fur, the flash of a jewelled ring, caught his

attention. The next moment the hand was withdrawn. He gave it no more

thought then, but a time came afterward when he remembered it.

"Weatherbee had noticed that fog-bank," he went on, "from high up the

glacier. It worried him so he finally turned back to meet me, and he had

waited so long he was down to his last biscuit. I was mighty reckless

about that second ptarmigan, but the water the birds were cooked in made a

fine soup. And the fog broke, and we overtook the Tlinket and supplies the

next morning."

There was another stir along the table, then Foster said: "That was a

great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean

trail, like the bugle and fife of a regiment."

"So have I." It was Lucky Banks who spoke. "So have I. And Weatherbee was

always ready to stand by a poor devil in a tight place. When the frost got

me"--he held up a crippled and withered hand--"it was Dave Weatherbee who

pulled me through. We were mushing it on the same stampede from Fairbanks

to Ruby Creek, and he never had seen me before. It had come to the last

day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard. You all know

what that means. In the end we just kept the trail, following the

hummocks. Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and

sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff. Then

it came my turn, and I lay down in my tracks. But Weatherbee stopped to

work over me. He wouldn't go on. He said if I was determined to stay in

that cemet'ry, I could count on his company. And when he got me on my

feet, he just started 'Dixie,' nice and lively, and the next I knew he had

me all wound up and set going again, good as new."

His laugh, like the treble notes of the Arctic wind, gave an edge to the

story.

Presently Foster said: "That was Weatherbee; I never knew another such

man. Always effacing himself when it came to a choice; always ready to

share a good thing. Why, he made some of his friends rich, and yet in the

end, after seven years of it, seven years of struggle of the worst kind,

what did he have to show?"

"Nothing, Foster; nothing but seven feet of earth up there on the edge of

the wilderness." Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the

surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face. "And a tract of unimproved

desert down here in eastern Washington," he added.

"And Mrs. Weatherbee," supplemented Feversham quickly. "You mustn't forget

her. Any man must have counted such a wife his most valuable asset. Here's

to her! Young, charming, clever; a typical American beauty!" He stopped to

drain his glass, then went on. "I remember the day Weatherbee sailed for

Alaska. I was taking the same steamer, and she was on the dock, with all

Seattle, to see the Argonauts away. It was a hazardous journey into the

Unknown in those days, and scenes were going on all around--my own wife

was weeping on my shoulder--but Mrs. Weatherbee, and she had just been

married then, bridged the parting like a little trump. 'Well, David,' she

said, with a smile to turn a priest's head, 'good-by and good luck. Come

back when you've made your fortune, and I'll help you to spend it.'"

The delegate, laughing deeply, reached for the port decanter to refill his

glass. No one else saw the humor of the story, though the man with the

maimed hand again gave an edge to the silence that followed with his

strained, mirthless laugh. Presently he said: "But he never came back."

"No." It was Foster who answered. "No, but he was on his way out to the

States at last, when the end came. I don't understand it. It seems

incredible that Weatherbee, who had won through so many times, handicapped

by the waifs and strays of the trail,--Weatherbee, to whom the Susitna

country was an open scroll,--should have perished as he did. But it was

you who found him, Hollis. Come, tell us all about it."

Tisdale shook his head. "Some other time, Foster. It's a long story and

not the kind to tell here."

"Go on! Go on!" The urging came from many, and Banks added in his high,

tense key; "I guess we can stand it. Most of us saw the iron side of

Alaska before we saw the golden."

"Well, then," Tisdale began reluctantly, "I must take you back a year. I

was completing trail reconnaissance from the new Alaska Midway surveys in

the Susitna Valley, through Rainy Pass, to connect with the mail route

from the interior to Nome, and, to avoid returning another season, kept my

party late in the field. It was the close of September when we struck

Seward Peninsula and miserably cold, with gales sweeping in from Bering

Sea. The grass had frozen, and before we reached a cache of oats I had

relied on, most of our horses perished; we arrived at Nome too late for

the last steamer of the year. That is how I came to winter there, and why

a letter Weatherbee had written in October was so long finding me. It was

forwarded from Seattle with other mail I cabled for, back to Prince

William Sound, over the Fairbanks-Valdez trail, and out again by the

winter route three thousand miles to Nome. It was the middle of March when

I received it, and he had asked me to buy his half interest in the Aurora

mine. He needed the money to go out to the States."

Tisdale's voice broke a little; and for a moment he looked off through the

open door. "Perhaps some of you remember I grub-staked him for a half

share when he left the Tanana to prospect down along the Alaska Range.

After he located, I forwarded him small amounts several times to carry on

development work. I never had been on the ground, but he explained he was

handicapped by high water and was trying to divert the channel of a creek.

In that last letter he said he had carried the scheme nearly through; the

next season would pay my money back and more; the Aurora would pan out the

richest strike he had ever made. But that did not trouble me. I knew if

Weatherbee had spent two years on that placer, the gravels had something

to show. The point that weighed was that he was willing to go home at last

to the States. I had urged him before I put up the grub-stake, but he had

answered: 'Not until I have made good.' It was hardly probable that,

failing to hear from me, he had sold out to any one else. From his

description, the Aurora was isolated; hundreds of miles from the new

Iditarod camp; he hadn't a neighbor in fifty miles. So I forwarded his

price and arranged with the mail carrier to send a special messenger on

from the nearest post. In the letter I wrote to explain my delay, I

sketched a plan of my summer's work and told him how sorry I was I had

missed seeing him while the party was camped below Rainy Pass. Though I

couldn't have spared the time to go to the Aurora, he might have found me,

had I sent an Indian with word. It was the first time I had gone through

his orbit without letting him know.

"But after that carrier had gone, Weatherbee's letter kept worrying me. It

wasn't like him to complain, yet he had written he was tired of the

eternal winters; he couldn't stand those everlasting snow peaks sometimes,

they got to crowding him so; they kept him awake when he needed sleep,

threatening him. 'I've got to break away from them, Hollis,' he said, 'and

get where it's warm once more; and when my blood begins to thaw, I'll show

you I can make a go of things.' Then he reminded me of the land he owned

down here on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. The soil was the

finest volcanic ash; the kind that grew the vineyards on Vesuvius, and he

meant to plant it with grapes; with orchards, too, on the bench levels.

All the tract needed was water, but there was a natural reservoir and

spring on a certain high plateau that could be easily tapped with a

flume."

Tisdale paused while his glance moved slowly, singling out those who had

known Weatherbee. A great gentleness rested on his face, and when he went

on, it crept like a caress through his voice. "Most of you have heard him

talk about that irrigation scheme; some of you have seen those plans he

used to-work on, long Alaska nights. It was his dream for years. He went

north in the beginning just to accumulate capital enough to swing that

project. But the more I studied that letter, the more confident I was he

had stayed his limit; he was breaking, and he knew it. That was why he was

so anxious to turn the Aurora over to me and get to the States. Finally I

decided to go with the mail carrier and on to the mine. If Weatherbee was

still there, as I believed, we would travel to Fairbanks together and take

the Valdez trail out to the open harbor on Prince William Sound. I picked

up a team of eight good huskies--the weather was clear with a moon in her

second quarter--and I started light, cutting my stops short; but when I

left Nome I had lost four days."

Hollis paused another interval, looking off again through the open door,

while the far-sighted expression gathered in his eyes. It was as though

his listeners also in that moment saw those white solitudes stretching

limitless under the Arctic night.

"I never caught up with that carrier," he went on, "and the messenger he

sent on broke trail for me all the way to the Aurora. I met him on his

return trip, thirty hours out from the mine. But he had found Weatherbee

there, and had a deed for me which David had asked him to see recorded and

forwarded to me at Nome. It was a relief to hear he had been able to

attend to these business matters, but I wondered why he had not brought

the deed himself, since he must come that way to strike the Fairbanks

trail, and why the man had not waited to travel with him. Then he told me

Weatherbee had decided to use the route I had sketched in my letter. The

messenger had tried to dissuade him; he had reminded him there were no

road-houses, and that the traces left by my party must have been wiped out

by the winter snows. But Weatherbee argued that the new route would

shorten the distance to open tide-water hundreds of miles; that his

nearest neighbors were in that direction, fifty miles to the south; and

they would let him have dogs. Then, when he struck the Susitna Valley, he

would have miles of railroad bed to ease the last stage. So, at the time

the messenger left the Aurora, Weatherbee started south on his long trek

to Rainy Pass. He was mushing afoot, with Tyee pulling the sled. Some of

you must remember that big husky with a strain of St. Bernard he used to

drive on the Tanana."

"My, yes," piped little Banks, and his eyes scintillated like chippings of

blue glacier ice. "Likely I do remember Tyee. Dave picked him up that same

trip he set me on my feet. He found him left to starve on the trail with a

broken leg. And he camped right there, pitched his tent for a hospital,

and went to whittling splints out of a piece of willow to set that bone.

'I am sorry to keep you waiting,' he says to me, 'but he is a mighty good

dog. He would have done his level best to see the man who deserted him

through.' And he would. I'd bank my money on old Tyee."

Tisdale nodded slowly. "But my chance to overtake David was before he

secured that team fifty miles on. And I pushed my dogs too hard. When I

reached the Aurora, they were nearly done for. I was forced to rest them a

day. That gave me time to look into Weatherbee's work. I found that the

creek where he had made his discovery ran through a deep and narrow

canyon, and it was clear to me that the boxed channel, which was frozen

solid then, was fed during the short summer by a small glacier at the top

of the gorge. To turn the high water from his placer, he had made a bore

of nearly one thousand feet and practically through rock. I followed a

bucket tramway he had rigged to lift the dump and found a primitive

lighting-plant underground. The whole tunnel was completed, with the

exception of a thin wall left to safeguard against an early thaw in the

stream, while the bore was being equipped with a five-foot flume. You all

know what that means, hundreds of miles from navigation or a main traveled

road. To get that necessary lumber, he felled trees in a spruce grove up

the ravine; every board was hewn by hand. And about two-thirds of those

sluice-boxes, the bottoms fitted with riffles, were finished. Afterwards,

at that camp where he stopped for dogs, I learned that aside from a few

days at long intervals, when the two miners had exchanged their labor for

some engineering, he had made his improvements alone, single-handed. And

most of that flume was constructed in those slow months he waited to hear

from me."

Tisdale paused, and again his glance sought the faces of those who had

known David Weatherbee. But all the Circle was strung responsive. Those

who never had known Weatherbee understood the terrible conditions he had

braved; the body-wracking toil underground; the soul-breaking solitude;

the crowding silence that months earlier he had felt the necessity to

escape. In that picked company, the latent force in each acknowledged the

iron courage of the man; but it was Tisdale's magnetic personality, the

unstudied play of expression in his rugged face, the undercurrent of

emotion quickening through infinite tones of his voice, that plumbed the

depths and in every listener struck the dominant chord. And, too, these

men had bridged subconsciously those vast distances between Tisdale's

start from Nome in clear weather, "with a moon in her second quarter," and

that stop at the deserted mine, when his dogs--powerful huskies, part

wolf, since they were bred in the Seward Peninsula--"were nearly done

for." Long and inevitable periods of dark there had been; perils of white

blizzard, of black frost. They had run familiarly the whole gamut of

hardship and danger he himself must have faced single-handed; and while

full measure was accorded Weatherbee, the greater tribute passed silently,

unsought, to the man who had traveled so far and so fast to rescue him.

"It ought to have been me," exclaimed Lucky Banks at last in his high

treble. "I was just down in the Iditarod country, less than three hundred

miles. I ought to have run up once in awhile to see how he was getting

along. But I never thought of Dave's needing help himself, and nobody told

me he was around. I'd ought to have kept track of him, though; it was up

to me. But go on, Hollis; go on. I bet you made up that day you lost at

the mine. My, yes, I bet you broke the record hitting that fifty-mile

camp."

Tisdale nodded, and for an instant the humor played lightly at the corners

of his eyes. "It took me just seven hours with an up-grade the last twenty

miles. You see, I had Weatherbee to break trail. He rested a night at the

camp and lost about three hours more, while they hunted a missing husky to

make up his team. Still he pushed out with nearly eighteen hours start and

four fresh dogs, with Tyee pulling a strong lead; while I wasn't able to

replace even one of mine that had gone lame. I had to leave him there, and

before I reached the summit of Rainy Pass, I was carrying his mate on my

sled. But I had a sun then,--the days were lengthening fast into May,--and

by cutting my stops short I managed to hold my own to the divide. After

that I gained. Finally, one morning, I came to a rough place where his

outfit had upset, and I saw his dogs were giving him trouble. There were

blood stains all around on the snow. It looked like the pack had broken

open, and the huskies had tried to get at the dried salmon. Tyee must have

fought them off until Weatherbee was able to master them. At the end of

the next day I reached a miners' cabin where he had spent the night, and

the man who had helped him unhitch told me he had had to remind him to

feed his dogs. He had seemed all right, only dead tired; but he had gone

to bed early and, neglecting to leave a call, had slept fifteen hours. I

rested my team five, and late the next morning I came upon his camp-fire

burning."

Tisdale paused to draw his hand across his eyes and met Foster's look over

the table. "It was there I blundered. There was a plain traveled trail

from that mine down through the lowlands to Susitna, and I failed to see

that his tracks left it: they were partly blotted out in a fresh fall of

snow. I lost six hours there, and when I picked up his trail again, I saw

he was avoiding the few way houses; he passed the settlement by; then I

missed his camp-fire. It was plain he was afraid to sleep any more. But he

knew the Susitna country; he kept a true course, and sometimes, in swampy

places, turned back to the main thoroughfare. At last, near the crossing

of the Matanuska, I was caught in the first spring thaw. It was heavy

going. All the streams were out of banks; the valley became a network of

small sloughs undermining the snowfields, creating innumerable ponds and

lakes. The earth, bared in patches, gave and oozed like a sponge. It was

impossible to follow Weatherbee's trail, but I picked it up once more,

where it came into the other, along the Chugach foot-hills. Slides began

to block the way; ice glazed the overflows at night; and at last a cold

wave struck down from the summits; the track stiffened in an hour and it

was hard as steel underfoot. The wind cut like swords. Then came snow."

Tisdale looked off with his far-sighted gaze through the open door. Every

face was turned to him, but no one hurried him. It was a time when silence

spoke.

"I came on Weatherbee's dogs in a small ravine," he said. "They had

broken through thin ice in an overflow, and the sled had mired in muck.

The cold wave set them tight; their legs were planted like posts, and I

had to cut them out. Two were done for."

"You mean," exclaimed Banks, "Dave hadn't cut the traces to give his

huskies a chance."

Tisdale nodded slowly. "But the instant I cut Tyee loose, he went limping

off, picking up his master's trail. It was a zigzag course up the face of

a ridge into a grove of spruce. Weatherbee took a course like a husky;

location was a sixth sense to him; yet I found his tracks up there,

winding aimlessly. It had stopped snowing then, but the first impressions

were nearly filled. In a little while I noticed the spaces were shorter

between the prints of the left shoe; they made a dip and blur. Then I came

into a parallel trail, and these tracks were clear, made since the

snowstorm, but there was the same favoring of the left foot. He was

traveling in a circle. Sometimes in unsheltered places, where the wind

swept through an avenue of trees, small drifts covered the impressions,

but the dog found them again, still doubling that broad circle. Finally I

saw a great dark blotch ahead where the ground sloped up to a narrow

plateau. And in a moment I saw it was caused by a great many fresh twigs

of spruce, all stuck upright in the snow and set carefully in rows, like a

child's make-believe garden."

Tisdale's voice broke. He was looking off again into the night, and his

face hardened; two vertical lines like clefts divided his brows. It was as

though the iron in the man cropped through. The pause was breathless. Here

and there a grim face worked.

"When the dog reached the spot," Hollis went on, "he gave a quick bark and

ran with short yelps towards a clump of young trees a few yards off. The

rim of a drift formed a partial windbreak, but he had only a low bough to

cover him,--and the temperature,--along those ice-peaks--"

His voice failed. There was another speaking silence. It was as though

these men, having followed all those hundreds of miles over tundra and

mountains, through thaw and frost, felt with him in that moment the

heart-breaking futility of his pursuit. "I tried my best," he added. "I

guess you all know that, but--I was too late."

The warning blast of an automobile cut the stillness, and the machine

stopped in front of the clubhouse, but no one at the table noticed the

interruption.

Then Banks said, in his high key: "But you hitched his dogs up with yours,

the ones that were fit, and brought him through to Seward. You saw him

buried. Thank you for that."

Feversham cleared his throat and reached for the decanter, "Think of it!"

he exclaimed. "A man like that, lost on a main traveled thoroughfare! But

the toll will go on every year until we have a railroad. Here's to that

road, gentlemen. Here's to the Alaska Midway and Home Rule."

The toast was responded to, and it was followed by others. But Tisdale had

left his place to step through the open door to the balcony. Presently

Foster joined him. They stood for an interval smoking and taking in those

small night sounds for which long intimacy with Nature teaches a man to

listen; the distant voice of running water; the teasing note of the

breeze; the complaint of a balsam-laden bough; the restless stir of unseen

wings; the patter of diminutive feet. A wooded point that formed the horn

of a bay was etched in black on the silver lake; then suddenly the moon

illumined the horizon and, rising over a stencilled crest of the Cascades,

stretched her golden path to the shore below them. Both these men,

watching it, saw that other trail reaching white, limitless, hard as steel

through the Alaska solitudes.

"At Seward," said Foster at last, "you received orders by cable detailing

you to a season in the Matanuska fields; but before you took your party

in, you sent a force of men back to the Aurora to finish Weatherbee's work

and begin operations. And the diverting of that stream exposed gravels

that are going to make you rich. You deserve it. I grant that. It's your

compensation; but just the same it gives a sharper edge to poor

Weatherbee's luck."

Tisdale swung around. "See here, Foster, I want you to know I should have

considered that money as a loan if David had lived. If he had lived--and

recovered--I should have made him take back that half interest in the

Aurora. You've got to believe that; and I would be ready to do as much for

his wife, if she had treated him differently. But she wrecked his life. I

hold her responsible."

Foster was silent.

"Think of it!" Hollis went on. "The shame of it! All those years while he

faced privation, the worst kind, tramping Alaska trails, panning in icy

streams, sluicing, digging sometimes like any common laborer, wintering in

shacks, she was living in luxury down here. He never made a promising

discovery that he wasn't forced to sell. She spent his money faster than

he made it; kept him handicapped. And all she ever gave him was a friendly

letter now and then, full of herself and the gay life she led, and showing

clearly how happy she could be without him. Think of it, Foster!" His

voice deepened and caught its vibrant quality. "A fine fellow like

Weatherbee; so reliable, so great in a hard place. How could she have

treated him as she did? Damn it! How could he have thrown himself away

like that, for a feather-headed woman?"

Foster knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. "You don't know her," he

answered. "If you did, you wouldn't put it in that way." He smiled a

little and looked off at the golden path on the lake. "So," he said after

a moment, and his glance returned to meet Tisdale's squarely, "she has

absolutely nothing now but that tract of unimproved desert on the other

side of the Cascades."