Stampede had started with one of the two saddle-deer left at the range,
but to ride deer-back successfully and with any degree of speed and
specific direction was an accomplishment which he had neglected, and
within the first half-dozen miles he had abandoned the adventure to
continue his journey on foot. As Tatpan had no saddle-deer in his herd,
and the swiftest messenger would require many hours in which to reach
Amuk Toolik, Alan set out for his range within half an hour after his
arrival at Tatpan’s camp. Stampede, declaring himself a new man after
his brief rest and the meal which followed it, would not listen to
Alan’s advice that he follow later, when he was more refreshed.
A fierce and reminiscent gleam smoldered in the little gun-fighter’s
eyes as he watched Alan during the first half-hour leg of their race
through the foothills to the tundras. Alan did not observe it, or the
grimness that had settled in the face behind him. His own mind was
undergoing an upheaval of conjecture and wild questioning. That
Rossland had discovered Mary Standish was not dead was the least
astonishing factor in the new development. The information might easily
have reached him through Sandy McCormick or his wife Ellen. The
astonishing thing was that he had in some mysterious way picked up the
trail of her flight a thousand miles northward, and the still more
amazing fact that he had dared to follow her and reveal himself openly
at his range. His heart pumped hard, for he knew Rossland must be
directly under Graham’s orders.
Then came the resolution to take Stampede into his confidence and to
reveal all that had happened on the day of his departure for the
mountains. He proceeded to do this without equivocation or hesitancy,
for there now pressed upon him a grim anticipation of impending events
ahead of them.
Stampede betrayed no astonishment at the other’s disclosures. The
smoldering fire remained in his eyes, the immobility of his face
unchanged. Only when Alan repeated, in his own words, Mary Standish’s
confession of love at Nawadlook’s door did the fighting lines soften
about his comrade’s eyes and mouth.
Stampede’s lips responded with an oddly quizzical smile. “I knew that a
long time ago,” he said. “I guessed it that first night of storm in the
coach up to Chitina. I knew it for certain before we left Tanana. She
didn’t tell me, but I wasn’t blind. It was the note that puzzled and
frightened me—the note she stuffed in her slipper. And Rossland told
me, before I left, that going for you was a wild-goose chase, as he
intended to take Mrs. John Graham back with him immediately.”
“And you left her alone after _that_?”
Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan’s
suddenly quickened pace.
“She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it.
White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides—”
“What?”
“Sokwenna won’t sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he’s
watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage. I saw him pick off a
duck the other day at two hundred yards.”
They hurried on. After a little Alan said, with the fear which he could
not name clutching at his heart, “Why did you say Graham might not be
far away?”
“In my bones,” replied Stampede, his face hard as rock again. “In my
bones!”
“Is that all?”
“Not quite. I think Rossland told her. She was so white. And her hand
cold as a lump of clay when she put it on mine. It was in her eyes,
too. Besides, Rossland has taken possession of your cabin as though he
owns it. I take it that means somebody behind him, a force, something
big to reckon with. He asked me how many men we had. I told him,
stretching it a little. He grinned. He couldn’t keep back that grin. It
was as if a devil in him slipped out from hiding for an instant.”
Suddenly he caught Alan’s arm and stopped him. His chin shot out. The
sweat ran from his face. For a full quarter of a minute the two men
stared at each other.
“Alan, we’re short-sighted. I’m damned if I don’t think we ought to
call the herdsmen in, and every man with a loaded gun!”
“You think it’s that bad?”
“Might be. If Graham’s behind Rossland and has men with him—”
“We’re two and a half hours from Tatpan,” said Alan, in a cold,
unemotional voice. “He has only half a dozen men with him, and it will
take at least four to make quick work in finding Tautuk and Amuk
Toolik. There are eighteen men with the southward herd, and twenty-two
with the upper. I mean, counting the boys. Use your own judgment. All
are armed. It may be foolish, but I’m following your hunch.”
They gripped hands.
“It’s more than a hunch, Alan,” breathed Stampede softly. “And for
God’s sake keep off the music as long as you can!”
He was gone, and as his agile, boyish figure started in a half-run
toward the foothills, Alan set his face southward, so that in a quarter
of an hour they were lost to each other in the undulating distances of
the tundra.
Never had Alan traveled as on the last of this sixth day of his absence
from the range. He was comparatively fresh, as his trail to Tatpan’s
camp had not been an exhausting one, and his more intimate knowledge of
the country gave him a decided advantage over Stampede. He believed he
could make the distance in ten hours, but to this he would be compelled
to add a rest of at least three or four hours during the night. It was
now eight o’clock. By nine or ten the next morning he would be facing
Rossland, and at about that same hour Tatpan’s swift messengers would
be closing in about Tautuk and Amuk Toolik. He knew the speed with
which his herdsmen would sweep out of the mountains and over the
tundras. Two years ago Amuk Toolik and a dozen of his Eskimo people had
traveled fifty-two hours without rest or food, covering a hundred and
nineteen miles in that time. His blood flushed hot with pride. He
couldn’t do that. But his people could—and _would_. He could see them
sweeping in from the telescoping segments of the herds as the word went
among them; he could see them streaking out of the foothills; and then,
like wolves scattering for freer air and leg-room, he saw them dotting
the tundra in their race for home—and war, if it was war that lay ahead
of them.
Twilight began to creep in upon him, like veils of cool, dry mist out
of the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of
pemmican when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coulées when
he came to them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a
telltale cramp began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the
rest which he knew he must take. It was one o’clock. Counting his
journey to Tatpan’s camp, he had been traveling almost steadily for
seventeen hours.
Not until he stretched himself out on his back in a grassy hollow where
a little stream a foot wide rippled close to his ears did he realize
how tired he had become. At first he tried not to sleep. Rest was all
he wanted; he dared not close his eyes. But exhaustion overcame him at
last, and he slept. When he awoke, bird-song and the sun were taunting
him. He sat up with a jerk, then leaped to his feet in alarm. His watch
told the story. He had slept soundly for six hours, instead of resting
three or four with his eyes open.
After a little, as he hurried on his way, he did not altogether regret
what had happened. He felt like a fighting man. He breathed deeply, ate
a breakfast of pemmican as he walked, and proceeded to make up lost
time. The interval between fifteen minutes of twelve and twelve he
almost ran. That quarter of an hour brought him to the crest of the
ridge from which he could look upon the buildings of the range. Nothing
had happened that he could see. He gave a great gasp of relief, and in
his joy he laughed. The strangeness of the laugh told him more than
anything else the tension he had been under.
Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna’s
cabin and tried the door. It was locked. A voice answered his knock,
and he called out his name. The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he
stepped in. Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.
Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them,
staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish. She came
forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw
Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.
Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the
tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle
she was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at
his coming. It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart,
even when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it. He held her
hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them
widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden
quick breath, and her fingers clung to him. It was as if the hope that
had deserted her came in an instant into her face again. He was not
excited. He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her
eyes and knew she was safe. But his love was there. She saw it and felt
the force of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at
her. She gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken
breath; a little cry that came of wonder—understanding—and unspeakable
faith in this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of
the tragedy that had come to destroy her.
“Rossland is in your cabin,” she whispered. “And John Graham is back
there—somewhere—coming this way. Rossland says that if I don’t go to
him of my own free will—”
He felt the shudder that ran through her.
“I understand the rest,” he said. They stood silent for a moment. The
gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof. Then, as if she had been a
child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a
little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that
he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.
“You didn’t make a mistake the day I went away?” he asked. “You—love
me?”
“Yes.”
For a moment longer he looked into her eyes. Then he stood back from
her. Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they
thought—Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun—for the bird
was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very
still.
Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little
window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across
his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and
something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another
day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and
the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the
heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the farther
north.
Then he saw Alan go into the cabin where Rossland was, and softly his
fingers drummed upon the ancient tom-tom which lay at his side. His
eyes fixed themselves upon the distant mountains, and under his breath
he mumbled the old chant of battle, dead and forgotten except in
Sokwenna’s brain, and after that his eyes closed, and again the vision
grew out of darkness like a picture for him, a vision of twisting
trails and of fighting men gathering with their faces set for war.