_Adventure Stories for Girls_
The Purple Flame
_By_
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
_Printed in the United States of America_
_Copyright, 1924_
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
_All Rights Reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Mystery of the Old Dredge 7
II Patsy From Kentucky 21
III Marian Faces a Problem 35
IV The Range Robber 46
V Planning a Perilous Journey 55
VI A Journey Well Begun 60
VII The Enchanted Mountain 65
VIII Trouble for Patsy 71
IX Patsy Solves a Problem 81
X A Startling Discovery 87
XI The Girl of the Purple Flame 95
XII Ancient Treasure 104
XIII The Long Trail 112
XIV Mysterious Music 117
XV An Old Man of the North 125
XVI The Barrier 131
XVII Age Serves Youth 139
XVIII The Trail of Blood 146
XIX Passing the Rapids 153
XX A Message From the Air 165
XXI Fading Hopes 172
XXII A Fruitless Journey 177
XXIII Planning the Long Drive 186
XXIV Camp Followers 196
XXV The Mirage 209
XXVI The Mysterious Deliverer 223
XXVII The End of the Trail 237
The Purple Flame
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTERY OF THE OLD DREDGE
Marian Norton started, took one step backward, then stood staring.
Startled by this sudden action, the spotted reindeer behind her lunged
backward to blunder into the brown one that followed him, and this one
was in turn thrown against a white one that followed the two. This set
all three of them into such a general mix-up that it was a full minute
before the girl could get them quieted and could again allow her eyes to
seek the object of her alarm.
As she stood there her pulse quickened, her cheeks flushed and she felt
an all but irresistible desire to turn and flee. Yet she held her ground.
Had she seen a flash of purple flame? She had thought so. It had appeared
to shoot out from the side of the dark bulk that lay just before her.
“Might have been my nerves,” she told herself. “Perhaps my eyes are
seeing things. T’wouldn’t be strange. I came a long way to-day.”
She _had_ come a long way over the Arctic tundra that day. Starting but
two mornings before from her reindeer herd, close to a hundred miles from
Nome, Alaska, she had covered fully two-thirds of that distance in two
days.
Her way had lead over low hills, across streams whose waters ran clear
and cold toward the sea, down broad stretches of tundra whose soft mosses
had oozed moisture at her every step. Here a young widgeon duck, ready to
begin his southward flight—for this was the Arctic’s autumn time—had
stretched his long neck to stare at her. Here a mother white fox had
yap-yaped at her, insolently and unafraid. Here she had paused to pick a
handful of pink salmon berries or to admire a particularly brilliant
array of wild flowers, which, but for her passing, might have been “Born
to blush unseen and waste their fragrance on the desert air.” Yet always
with the three reindeers at her heels, she had pressed onward toward
Nome, the port and metropolis of all that vast north country.
The black bulk that loomed out of the darkness before her was a deserted
dredging scow, grounded on a sand bar of the Sinrock River. At least she
had thought the scow deserted. Until now she had believed and hoped that
here she might spend the night, completing her journey on the morrow.
“But now,” she breathed. “Yes! Yes! There can be no mistake. There it is
again.”
Sinking wearily down upon the damp grass, she buried her face in her
hands. She was so tired she could cry, yet she must “mush” on through the
dark, over the soft, oozing tundra, for fifteen more weary miles. Fifteen
miles further down the river was the Sinrock Mission. Here she might hope
to find a corral for her deer, and food and rest for herself.
Marian did not cry. Born and bred in the Arctic, she was made of such
stern stuff as the Arctic wilderness and the Arctic blizzard alone can
mould.
She did not mean to take chances with the occupants of the old dredge.
There was something mysterious and uncanny about that purple flame which
she now saw shoot straight out, a full two feet, to instantly disappear.
She had seen nothing like it before in the Arctic. As she studied the
outlines of the dredge, she realized that the light was within it; that
it flashed across a small square window in the side of the old scow.
“No,” she reasoned, “I can’t afford to take chances with them. I must go
on down the river. I can make Sinrock.”
Speaking to her reindeer, she tugged at their lead straps. One at a time
they started forward until at last they again took up the weary
swish-swish across the tundra.
Once Marian turned to look back. Again she caught the flash of a purple
flame.
Had she known how this purple flame was to be mixed up with her own
destiny, she might have paused to look longer. As it was, she gave
herself over to wondering what sort of people would take up their
habitation in that half tumbled-down dredge, and what their weird light
might signify.
She had heard of the strange rites performed by those interesting
child-people, the Eskimos, in the worship of the spirits of dead animals.
For one of these, the “Bladder Festival,” they saved all the bladders of
polar bears, walrus and seals which they had killed, and at last, after
four days of ceremony, committed them again to the waters of the ocean.
“They burn wild parsnip stalks in that festival,” Marian mused, “but that
purple flame was not made by burning weeds. It was the brilliant flame of
a blue-hot furnace flaring up, or something like that. Probably wasn’t
Eskimo at all. Probably—well, it may be some Orientals who have stolen
away up here to worship their idols by burning strange fires.”
She thought of all the foreign people who had crossed the Pacific to take
up their homes in the far north city of Nome, which was just forty miles
away.
“Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Russians, and members of nameless tribes,”
she whispered to herself, as if half afraid they might hear her. “Might
be any of these. Might—”
Suddenly she broke off her thinking and stopped short. Just before her a
form loomed out of the dark. Another and yet another appeared.
For a moment she stood there rigid, scarcely breathing. Then she threw
back her head and laughed.
“Reindeer,” she exclaimed. “I was frightened by some reindeer. Oh, well,”
she said, after a moment’s reflection, “I might excuse myself for that.
I’m tired out with marching over this soggy tundra. Besides, I guess that
purple flame got on my nerves. All the same,” she avowed stoutly, “I’ll
solve that mystery yet. See if I don’t.”
There for the time the subject was dismissed. The presence of these few
reindeer before her told of more not far away, a whole herd of them.
Where there were reindeer there would be herders, and herders lived in
tents. Here there would be a warm, dry place to rest and sleep.
“Must be the Sinrock herd,” she concluded.
In this she was right. Soon, off in the distance, she caught the yellow
glow of candlelight shining through a tent wall. Fifteen minutes later
she was seated upon a rolled-up sleeping bag, chatting gayly with two
black-eyed Eskimo girls who were keeping their brothers’ tents while
those worthies were out looking for some stray fauns.
After her three reindeers had been relieved of their packs and set free
to graze, Marian had dined on hardtack and juicy reindeer chops. Then she
crawled deep down into her soft reindeer skin sleeping bag, to snatch a
few hours of rest before resuming her journey to Nome.
Before her eyelids closed in sleep her tireless brain went over the
problem before her and the purpose of her fatiguing journey. She had come
all this way to meet a relative whom she had never seen—a cousin, Patsy
Martin, from Louisville, Kentucky.
“Kentucky,” she whispered the word for the hundredth time. “Way down
south. Imagine a girl who was brought up down there coming here for a
winter to endure our cold, snow, and blizzards. She’s probably slim,
willowy, and tender as a baby; dresses in thin silks, and all that. Why
did father send her up here? Looks like it was bad enough to have four
hundred reindeer to herd, without having a sixteen year old cousin from
Ken-tuck-ie to look after.”
She yawned sleepily, yet her mind went on thinking of her reindeer herd
and her problems. Though she had lived all but one year of her life in
the far north, she had never, until two months before, spent a single
night in a reindeer herder’s camp. But it was no longer a novel
experience.
Until recently her father had been a prosperous merchant in Nome.
Financial reverses had come and he had been obliged to sell his store.
The reindeer herd, which he had taken as payment for a debt, was the only
wealth he had saved from the crash. Following this, his doctor had
ordered him to leave the rigorous climate of the North and to seek
renewed health in the States. Much as he regretted it, he had been
obliged to ask his daughter to give up her studies and to take charge of
the herd until a favorable opportunity came for selling it.
“And that won’t be soon, I guess,” Marian sighed. “Reindeer herds are a
drug on the market. Trouble is, it’s too hard to dispose of the meat. And
if you can’t sell reindeer meat you can’t make any money. Now, added to
this, comes this cousin, Patsy Martin.”
Her father had written that Patsy was given to over-study, and that Mr.
Martin, her uncle, thinking that a year in the northern wilds would do
her good, had asked permission to send her up to be with Marian. Marian’s
father had consented, and Patsy was due on the next boat.
“She’ll be company for you,” her father had written.
“I do wonder if she will?” Marian sighed again. “Oh, well, no use to be a
pessimist,” and at that she turned over and fell asleep.
It was a surprised Marian who three days later found herself caught in
the firm embrace of her cousin, Patsy. Patsy was two years younger than
Marian. There could be no missing the fact that she was much slimmer and
more graceful, and that there was strength in her slender arms was
testified to by her warm embrace.
When at last Marian got a look at Patsy’s face, she found it almost as
brown as her own. And as for freckles, there could scarcely have been a
greater number on one person’s face. Her mouth, too, had lines that
Marian liked. It was a firm, determined little mouth that said: “When I
have a hill to climb I _run_ up it.”
Never had Marian beheld such a wealth of color as was displayed in
Patsy’s winter wardrobe. Orange and red sweaters; great, broad scarfs of
mixed grays; gay tams; short plaid skirts; heavy brown corduroy knickers;
these and many other garments of exquisite workmanship and design were
spread out before her.
“And the fun of it all is,” giggled Patsy, “we’re going to play we’re
twins and wear one another’s clothes. You’ve got a spotted fawnskin
parka, I know you have. I’m going to wear that, right away—this
afternoon. Going to have my picture taken in it and send it back to my
school friends.”
“All right,” agreed Marian. “You can have anything I own. I’m heavier
than you are, but arctic clothing doesn’t fit very tight, so I guess it
will be all right.”
As if to clinch the bargain, she wound an orange colored scarf about her
neck and went strutting across the room.
A half hour later, while Patsy was out having her picture taken, Marian
walked slowly up and down the room. She was thinking, and her thoughts
were long, long thoughts.
“I like her,” she said at last. “I’m going to like her more and more. But
it’s going to be hard for her sometimes, fearfully hard. When the
blizzards sweep in from the north and we’re all shut in; when no one
comes and no one goes, and the nights are twenty hours long; when the
dogs howl their lonesome song—it’s going to be hard for her then. But
I’ll do the best I can for her. Her father was right—it will do her a
world of good. It will teach her the slow and steady patience of those
who live in the North, and that’s a good thing to know.”
Three weeks later the two girls, toiling wearily along after two reindeer
sleds, approached the black bulk of the old scow in the river, the one in
which Marian had seen the mysterious purple flame. Again it was night.
They were on their way north to the reindeer herd. Traveling over the
first soft snow of winter, they had made twenty miles that day. For the
last hour Patsy had not uttered a single word. She had tramped doggedly
after the sled. Only her drooping shoulders told how weary she was.
Marian had hoped against hope that they would this time find the old
dredge deserted.
“It would make a nice dry place to camp,” she said to herself, as she
brought her reindeer to a halt and stood studying the dark bulk. Patsy
dropped wearily down upon a loaded sled.
Just as Marian was about to give the word to go forward, there flashed
across the square window a jet of purple flame.
“Oh!” exclaimed Marian.
“What is it?” asked Patsy.
“The purple flame!”
“The purple flame? What’s that?”
“You know as much as I do; only I know it’s there in that old dredge. And
since it’s there, we can’t stop here for the night. We must go on.”
“Oh, but—but I can’t!” Patsy half sobbed. “You don’t know, you can’t know
how tired I am.”
“Yes, I know,” said Marian softly. “I’ve been just that way; but we dare
not stop here. The people in the old scow might have dogs and they would
attack our reindeer. We must go on; five miles more.”
“And then—”
“Camp beneath the stars.”
“All right,” said Patsy, with a burst of determination. “Let’s get it
over quick.”
Again they moved slowly forward, but neither of them forgot the purple
flame. Three times they saw it flash across the window.
“That place must be haunted,” Marian sighed as she turned to give her
full attention to the lagging reindeer.