PART II

E-text prepared by Al Haines

WHERE THE SUN SWINGS NORTH

by

BARRETT WILLOUGHBY

A. L. Burt Company

Publishers ------ New York

Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons

Printed in U. S. A.

Copyright, 1922

by

Florance Willoughby

This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York And London

TO

MY MOTHER

WHO CAN MAKE A TENT IN THE WILDERNESS

SEEM LIKE HOME

In this book I write of my own country and its people as I know

them--not artfully, perhaps, but truthfully.

BARRETT WILLOUGHBY.

Katalla, Alaska.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER

I.--THE WHITE CHIEF OF KATLEEAN

II.--THE CHEECHACO

III.--THE LITTLE SQUAW WITH WHITE FEET

IV.--BAIT

V.--THE FUNERAL CANOES

VI.--THE WHITE CHIEF MAKES MEDICINE

VII.--THE POTLATCH DANCE

VIII.--THE OUTFIT

IX.--HARLAN WAKES UP

X.--THE PIGEON

PART II

XI.--THE ISLAND OF THE RUBY SANDS

XII.--THE LANDING

XIII.--THE CABIN

XIV.--THE CASTAWAY

XV.--THE GIANT BALLS OF STONE

XVI.--THE STORM

XVII.--THE MYSTERIOUS PRESENCE

XVIII.--THE PERIL OF THE SURF

XIX.--HOME MAKING

XX.--GOLD

XXI.--KOBUK

XXII.--AT THE LONE TREE

XXIII.--ELLEN

XXIV.--MAROONED

PART III

XXV.--ON RATIONS

XXVI.--WINTER DAYS

XXVII.--SPRING

XXVIII.--THE CLEFT

XXIX.--THE SECRET OF THE CLIFFS

XXX.--THE PIGEON'S FLIGHT

XXXI.--THE JUSTICE OF THE SEA

XXXII.--BENEATH THE BLOOD-RED SUN

XXXIII.--ANCHORS WEIGHED

WHERE THE SUN SWINGS NORTH

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE WHITE CHIEF OF KATLEEAN

It was quiet in the great store room of the Alaska Fur and Trading

Company's post at Kat-lee-an. The westering sun streaming in through a

side window lighted up shelves of brightly labeled canned goods and a

long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough

clothing. Back of the big, pot-bellied stove--cold now--that stood

near the center of the room, lidless boxes of hard-tack and crackers

yawned in open defiance of germs. An amber, mote-filled ray slanted

toward the moss-chinked log wall where a row of dusty fox and wolverine

skins hung--pelts discarded when the spring shipment of furs had been

made, because of flaws visible only to expert eyes.

At the far end of the room the possessor of those expert eyes sat

before a rough home-made desk. There was a rustle of papers and he

closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped

his hands smartly. Almost on the instant the curtain hanging in the

doorway at the side of the desk was drawn aside and a small, brown

feminine hand materialized.

"My cigarettes, Decitan."

The man's voice was low, with that particular vibrant quality often

found in the voices of men accustomed to command inferior peoples on

the far outposts of civilization.

The curtain wavered again and from behind the folds a brown arm, bare

and softly rounded, accompanied the hand that set down a tray of

smoking materials.

With a careless nod toward his invisible servitor, the man picked up a

cigarette and lighted it. He took one long, deep pull. Tossing it

aside he swung his chair about and faced the open doorway that gave on

a courtyard and the bay beyond.

He readjusted the scarlet band about his narrow hips. Flannel-shirted,

high-booted, he stretched his six-foot length in the tilting chair and

clasped his hands behind his head. The movement loosened a lock of

black hair which fell heavily across his forehead. His eyes, long,

narrow and the color of pale smoke, drowsed beneath brows that met

above his nose. Thin, sharply defined nostrils quivered under the

slightest emotion, and startling against the whiteness of his face, was

a short, pointed beard, black and silky as a woman's hair. When Paul

Kilbuck, the white trader of Katleean, smiled, his thin, red lips

parted over teeth white and perfect, but there was that in the long,

pointed incisors that brought to mind the clean fangs of a wolf-dog.

He closed his pale eyes now and smiled to himself. His work on the

Company's books was finished for the present. He hated the petty

details of account keeping, but since the death of old Add-'em-up Sam,

his helper and accountant, who had departed this world six months

before during a spell of delirium tremens, the trader had been obliged

to do his own.

Queer and clever things had Add-'em-up done to the books. Down in San

Francisco the directors of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company had long

suspected it no doubt, but it was not for nothing that Paul Kilbuck was

known up and down the coast of Alaska as the White Chief. No other man

in the North had such power and influence among the Thlinget tribes.

No other man sent in such quantities of prime pelts; hence the White

Chief of Katleean had never been obliged to give too strict an

accounting of his stewardship. Taking what belongs to a company is

not, in the elastic code of the North, considered stealing. "God is

high above and the Czar is far away," said the plundering, roistering

old Russians of Baranoff's day, and the spirit in the isolated posts

had not changed, though Russian adventurers come no more to rape Alaska

of her riches, and the Stars and Stripes now floats over the old-time

Russian stronghold at Sitka.

For eighteen years Kilbuck had been the agent of the Company. In

trading-posts up and down the coast where the trappers and prospectors

gather to outfit, many tales of the White Chief were afloat: his trips

to the Outside[1]; his lavish spending of money; his hiring of private

cars to take him from Seattle to New York; his princely entertainment

of beautiful women. In every story told of Paul Kilbuck there were

women. Sometimes they were white, but more often they were dusky

beauties of the North.

Among the several dark-eyed Thlinget women who occupied the mysterious

quarters back of the log store, there was always rejoicing when the

White Chief returned from his visits to the States. He was a generous

master, bringing back with him many presents from the land of the white

people--rings, beads, trinkets, and yards of bright colored silks. The

favorites of his household fondled these gifts for a time with soft,

guttural cries of delight and gentle strokings of their slim, brown

hands, and then laid them away in fantastically carved Indian chests of

yellow cedar.

Perhaps the strangest of these gifts had been a pair of homing pigeons,

which had thrived and multiplied under the care of Add-'em-up Sam. A

fluttering of wings now outside the doorway bespoke the presence of

some of them, and Kilbuck stirred in his chair and opened his eyes.

He had been many hours alone in the store, but he had been prepared for

that today. The entire post of Katleean was getting ready for the

Potlatch, an Indian festival scheduled for the near future. For this

occasion Kayak Bill, in his carefully secreted still across the lagoon,

had completed a particularly potent batch of moonshine, known locally

as hootch. The arrival, earlier in the afternoon, of the jocose old

hootch-maker with a canoe-load of his fiery beverage, had been a signal

for a gathering at his cabin across the courtyard. From the sounds

that now floated out on the late afternoon air, he must already have

distributed generous samples of his brew.

The White Chief rose from his chair and reached for another cigarette.

As usual, he tossed it away after one long, deep inhalation. Before

the smoke cleared from his head, he was crossing the store room with

his easy panther tread--the result of former years of moccasin-wearing.

In the open doorway he paused, leaned against the portal and hooked one

thumb beneath his scarlet belt. His narrow eyes swept the scene before

him. Across the bay, between purple hills, a valley lay dreaming in

rose-lavender mist. Blue above the August haze was a glimpse of a

glacier, and farther back, peaks rose tier upon tier in the vague,

amethystine distance.

Suddenly the quiet beauty was shot through with the sound of loud

voices and snatches of song issuing from the cabin of Kayak Bill. The

trader listened with a smile that was half a sneer. He himself never

drank while at the post, deeming that it lessened his influence with

the Indians. But among the secrets of his own experience were memories

of wild days and nights aboard visiting schooners, at the end of which

prone in the captain's bunk, he had lain for hours in alcoholic

oblivion.

The voices from the cabin ceased abruptly. Then like the bellow of a

fog horn on a lonely northern sea came Kayak Bill's deep bass:

"Take me north of old Point Barrow

Where there ain't no East or West;

Where man has a thirst that lingers

And where moonshine tastes the best;

Where the Arctic ice-pack hovers

'Twixt Alaska and the Pole,

And there ain't no bloomin' fashions

To perplex a good man's soul."

There was a momentary pause followed by a hubbub of masculine voices

apparently in a dispute as to how the song should run. High above the

others rose a squeaky Scandinavian protest:

"By yingo, ven ay ban cook on _Soofie Suderlant_ ve sing it so _dis_

vay----"

"Close yore mouth, Silvertip." As a whale would swallow a minnow so

Kayak Bill's drawling tones engulfed the thin, high accents of the

one-time cook of the _Sophie Sutherland_. "I ain't no nature for

Swedes a-devilin' o' me. I been singin' that song for nigh on to ten

yars, and by the roarin' Jasus, I reckon I know how to sing it. Come

on boys--now all together!"

Joining the again raised bass of Kayak Bill, several voices took up the

rollicking strain, among them the high, easily recognizable tenor of

Silvertip, and the voice of another, a baritone of startling mellowness

and purity, having in it a timbre of youth and recklessness:

"Up into the Polar Seas,

Where the Innuit maidens be,

There's a fat, bright-eyed va-hee-ney

A-waitin' there for me.

She's sittin' in her igloo cold,

Chewing on a muckluck sole,

And the sun comes up at midnight

From an ice-pack round the Pole."

At the sound of the baritone, the White Chief hitched his shoulders

with a movement of satisfaction. Add-'em-up Sam's successor, the

bookkeeper, was bidding fair to follow in the sodden footsteps of his

predecessor. Given a little more time and this baritone-singing

_cheechako_[2] would be where the White Chief need have no anxiety as

to the accounts rendered the Company's new president, whom Kilbuck had

never seen. A little more time, a little more hootch, and he would

also have settled the case of Na-lee-nah.

The thought of the Thlinget girl's soft brown eyes brought a momentary

pang. The white plague permitted few native women to become old.

Twice now Naleenah had lost her voice, and only last night he had

noticed behind her soft, her singularly beautiful little ears, the

peculiar drawn look that to his practiced eye spelled tuberculosis.

She would last two years more, perhaps, but in the meantime he must

protect himself--he stirred uneasily. The bookkeeper must be made to

take her off his hands.

His musing was broken into by another burst of song:

"Oh-o-o-o! I am a jolly rover

And I lead a jolly life!

I have my hootch and salmon

And a little squaw to wife."

Simultaneously the door of Kayak Bill's cabin opened and the owner, a

tatterdemalion figure, stood for a moment on the doorstep. Stretching

his arms above his head, he yawned prodigiously, and then, espying

Kilbuck, sauntered across the courtyard toward him.

An old sombrero curved jauntily on red-grey hair that was overly long.

A wavy beard of auburn-grey spread over the front of his blue flannel

shirt. Hanging loosely from his shoulders a hair-seal waistcoat,

brightly trimmed with red flannel, served as a coat above faded blue

overalls, and from the knees down Kayak Bill was finished off with hip

rubber boots, the turned-down tops of which flapped with every step,

lending a swashbuckling air to his rolling gait.

He seated himself leisurely on the steps below the platform in front of

the trading-post door.

"By hell, Chief," he drawled, drawing a huge clasp-knife from his

pocket, "I been grazin' on this here Alasky range nigh on to twenty

yars, and so help me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a

bunch o' hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts

a-singin' o' the female sect." With a movement of his thumb Kayak Bill

released the formidable blade of the knife, and nonchalantly,

dexterously, began using it as a toothpick.

"Yas," he said slowly, in answer to the other's silence, "a-talkin' and

a-singin' o' women and love. . . . Now, I hearn tell a heap about love

and women in my time, but neither o' them things has affected my heart

ever, though one time a spell back, tobaccy did. Still, Chief, with

all respects to yore sentiments regardin' them Chocolate Drops what

inhabits yore harem, . . . still, it sort o' roils me up to hear a

white man a-talkin' and a-singin' o' takin' a squaw to wife."

There was an involuntary contraction of the hand that was hooked under

Paul Kilbuck's belt. Not another man from Dixon's Entrance to Point

Barrow would have dared to hint at the White Chief's domestic

arrangements in that gentleman's hearing, but there was something in

the soft twinkle of Kayak Bill's hazel eye, something in the crude,

whimsical philosophy distilled in the old hootch-maker's heart, that

amused, while it piqued the trader at Katleean. He sat down now on the

steps beside his visitor.

"Kayak," he said, almost gently, "when an old fellow like you begins to

talk about squaws I have to smile. A man past sixty--! But how about

twenty-five years ago? . . . What's a man going to do when he finds

himself on the edge of the wilderness and--he wants a woman?"

Kilbuck's voice rose slightly, his black brows drew together over the

pale, unseeing eyes that sought the distant peaks, his thin nostrils

quivered. "It's a wild country up here, Kayak. Makes a man hunger for

something soft and feminine--and where's the pale-faced woman who would

follow a man into this--" He finished his sentence with a wave of his

hand. "That is a woman one would marry," he amended. "The average

female of that country down south has no spirit of adventure in her

make-up."

Kayak Bill closed his clasp-knife, restored it to his pocket and slowly

drew forth an ancient corn-cob pipe.

"Wall, Chief," he drawled presently between puffs, "I ain't a-sayin'

yore not right, seein' as you've had consid'able more experience with

petticoats than me; but one time I hearn a couple o' scientific dudes

a-talkin' about females and they was of the notion that sons gets their

brains and their natures from their mammies." Disregarding the

contemptuous sound uttered by the White Chief, Kayak's slow tones

flowed on: "And I'm purty nigh pursuaded them fellows is right. . . .

Take it down in Texas now, where I was drug up. I'm noticin' a heap o'

times how the meechinest, quietest little old ladies has the rarin'est,

terrin'-est sons, hell-bent on fightin' and adventure. . . . Kinder

seems to me, Chief, that our women has been bottled up so long by us

men folks they just ain't had no chance to strike out that way, except

by givin' o' their natures to their sons. You take any little gal,

Chief, a-fore they get her taken with the notion that it ain't

lady-like to fight, and by hell, she can lick tar outen any boy her

size in the neighborhood. Same way with she-bears, or a huskie bitch.

Durned if they don't beat all get-out when it comes to fightin'

courage!"

Kayak Bill drew once or twice on his pipe with apparently

unsatisfactory results, for he slowly removed his sombrero, drew a

broom-straw from inside the band, extracted the stem of the corn-cob

and ran the straw through it. The immediate vicinity became

impregnated with a violent odor of nicotine. The White Chief, however,

musing close by on the steps, seemed not to notice it. His eyes were

fixed on three Indian canoes being paddled in from the lagoon across

the bay which was now taking on the opalescent tints of the late Alaska

sunset.

"What I been a-sayin' goes for the white women, Chief. As for them

Chocolate Drops--wall, I ain't made up my mind exactly. 'Pears to me

if I ever went a-courtin' though, it would be just like goin'

a-huntin': no fun in it if the end was certain and easy-like. Barrin'

the case of Silvertip and Senott, his squaw, it's like this: you say

'Come,' and they come. You say 'Go,' and they go. Now, a white woman

ain't that way. By the roarin' Jasus, you never can tell which way

she's goin' to jump!" Kayak Bill held the stem of his pipe up to the

light and squinted through it, fitted it again into the bowl and gave

an experimental draw. "But everybody to his own cemetery, says I."

"Bill, you old reprobate, you have an uncanny way of picking the weak

spots in everything. There's some truth in that last. . . . Gad, I'd

like to get into a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in

the wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean.

It would be great sport to see one up against it here, eh, Kayak?" The

White Chief turned, smiling, and the light in his pale, narrow eyes

matched the wolfish gleam of his sharp teeth.

The face of the old hootch-maker was hidden in a smoke cloud, but his

voice drawled on as calmly as ever: "Wall, from what I hearn tell when

I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a

white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named

Boreland a-cruisin' up the coast in his own schooner, the _Hoonah_, and

from what I can make out he's got his wife and little boy with him."

The trader turned sharply. Like a hungry wolf scenting quarry he

raised his head. There was a keener look in his eye. His thin

nostrils twitched.

"A _white_ woman, Kayak? Are you sure?"

Before Kayak Bill could answer there came an extra loud burst of song

from the cabin across the courtyard. The door had been flung wide and

in the opening swayed the arresting figure of the leader of the wild

chorus.

[1] Name by which the States is designated in the North.

[2] Newcomer.

CHAPTER II

THE CHEECHAKO

He was young and tall and slight, with a touch of recklessness in his

bearing that was somehow at variance with the clean-cut lines of his

face. He stood unsteadily on the threshold, hands thrust deep in the

pockets of his grey tweed trousers, chin up-tilted from a strong, bare

throat that rose out of his open shirt. As the singing inside the

cabin ceased, he shook back the tumbled mass of his brown hair and

alone his mellow baritone continued the whaler's song:

"Up into the Polar Seas,

Where the greasy whalers be,

There's a strip of open water

Reaching north to eighty-three----"

The White Chief, with his eyes on the singer, spoke to Kayak Bill.

"Our gentleman-bookkeeper takes to your liquid dynamite like an Eskimo

to seal oil, Kayak. He's been at Katleean three months now, and I'll

be damned if he's been sober three times since he landed. Seems to be

hitting it up extra strong now that the Potlatch is due--" Kilbuck

lowered his voice--"I want nothing said to him of the prospector and

his white wife, _understand_?"

At the dictatorial tone flung into the last sentence there came a

narrowing of the old hootch-maker's eyes. It was seldom that Paul

Kilbuck spoke thus to Kayak Bill.

The singer was crossing the courtyard now with steps of exaggerated

carefulness. Suddenly he paused. His dark eyes, in vague, alcoholic

meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of

sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery.

Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint

answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach where the

canoes were landing.

Kayak Bill moved over on the step, indicating the space beside him.

"Come along side o' me, son, and get yore bearin's!" he called.

"Yes, Harlan, stop your mooning and come here. I want to talk to you."

Gregg Harlan turned, and the smile that parted his lips, though born in

a liquor-fogged brain, was singularly winning.

"Chief," his words came distinctly but with careful deliberation, "an

outsider would think--that I am--a--fellow of rare--judgment and

s-sound phil-os-ophy from the way--you're always--wanting to

talk--to--me."

He advanced and seated himself on the steps near the base of the

flag-pole, leaning heavily against it. The gay recklessness that is

the immediate effect of the fiery native brew of the North was

evidently wearing away, and preceding the oblivion that was fast coming

upon him, stray glimpses of his past, bits of things he had read or

heard, and snatches of poetry flashed on the screen of his mind.

"It doesn't go with me--Chief. Don't--bring on--your--little

forest--maiden--Naleenah--again. Tired--hearing about--her.

Know--what you say: Up here--my people--never know. _Me_--a squaw man!

Lord! What do I want--with--a squaw?" He laughed as at some blurred

vision of his brain. "It's not that--I'm so damned virtuous, Chief.

But I'm--fas-fas-tid-ious. That's it--fastidious----"

Paul Kilbuck's eyes flashed a cold steel grey. "We'll see how

fastidious you'll be a year from now." His lip lifted on one side

exposing a long, pointed tooth. "That'll be enough, now, Harlan."

"Sure, 's enough--for me, Chief," admitted the young man with drowsy

good nature, as his tousled head sought a more comfortable place

against the flagpole. "Pardon--casting aspersions--on your--taste in

women, Chief. Wouldn't do--it--if sober. Hate to be sober. Makes me

feel--re-responsible for so--many things. . . . Hence flowing bowl.

'Member old Omar--unborn Tomorrow and dead--Yesterday. . . . Why fret

'bout it--if--if--today--be--sweet." His voice trailed off in a murmur

and his boyish chin with its look of firmness despite his dejection,

sank slowly on his breast.

The canoes had made a landing. A dozen or more Thlinget women came

straggling up the beach laden with the fruits of their afternoon

labors: gay-colored baskets of wild strawberries, red and fragrant from

the sand-dunes along the lagoon. From the Indian Village, a short

distance down the curve of the beach where the smokes of evening fires

were rising, a welcoming buck or two came to accompany the softly

laughing squaws.

Slightly in advance of the shawled figures moving toward the group on

the steps walked one whose slenderness and grace marked her from the

rest. A scarlet shawl splashed the cream of her garments. Unlike the

other women, she wore no disfiguring handkerchief on her head. Her

face, oval and creamy-brown, was framed by two thick braids that fell

over her shoulders. In the crook of her arm rested a basket of

berries. At her side, rubbing against her now and then, came a

powerful huskie, beautiful with the lean grace of the wolf and

paw-playing as a kitten.

"Mush on,[1] Kobuk! Mush--you!" She laughed, pushing him aside as she

advanced.

When she smiled up at the white men her face was lighted by long-lashed

childish eyes, warm and brown as a sun-shot pool in the forest.

The White Chief rose. With an imperious gesture he motioned the other

Indians back.

"_Ah cgoo_, Naleenah! Come here!" In rapid, guttural Thlinget he

spoke to the girl, pointing from time to time to the now unconscious

Harlan.

As she listened the smile faded from her face. Her smooth brow

puckered. . . . She turned troubled eyes to Kayak Bill, sitting

silent, imperturbable, in a cloud of tobacco smoke, his interest

apparently fixed where the slight breeze was ruffling the evening

radiance of the water.

Still mutely questioning, Naleenah glanced at the figure of the young

white man, slumped in stupor against the flag-pole. . . . A look of

unutterable scorn distorted her face. Then she looked up at the White

Chief shaking her head in quick negation.

At her rebellion Kilbuck's voice shot out stingingly like the lash of a

whip. With a hurt, stunned expression the girl shrank back. Her shawl

shivered into a vivid heap about her feet. The basket of berries

slipped unheeded to the sand, their wild fragrance scenting the air

about her.

While he was still speaking she started forward, her wide, idolatrous

eyes raised to his, her little berry-stained hands held out

beseechingly.

"No--no, Paul!" Anguish and pleading were in her broken English. "No,

no! I can not do! Too mooch, too mooch I loof you, Paul!" Brimming

tears overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks.

Kayak Bill rose hastily and stalked across the platform into the store.

The White Chief turned away with tightening lips, but there was no

softening in his smoke-colored eyes. It would be to his interest to

have his bookkeeper a squaw-man. The old Hudson Bay Company factors

had proved the advantage of having their employees take Indian women.

For his own health's sake he must get rid of Naleenah. The tubercular

girl would live longer in the house of a white man than with her own

people, where he would soon be forced to send her. He was, therefore,

doing her a kindness in turning her over to Harlan.

He lighted a cigarette, inhaled a deep draught, and tossing the

scarcely burned weed away, crossed deliberately to the huddled figure

of Gregg Harlan. He shook him by the shoulder.

"Wake up!" he ordered, "and go to your bunk."

From Kayak Bill's cabin doorway several men drifted curiously toward

the store steps. The natives gathered closer.

The bookkeeper raised his head and passed a slow hand over bewildered

eyes.

"Beg--pardon, Chief," he said quickly, as he rose on unsteady legs,

"making sleeping porch--of your--steps. . . . Awf-lly tired. . ."

Wavering, he clung for support to the flag-pole.

With a peremptory gesture Kilbuck motioned to Naleenah.

"Take this man to his cabin," he snapped, "and--" he paused

significantly, "remember what I have told you."

The girl came forward with drooping head and listless arms. She paused

dully beside the flag-pole. The trader placed the arm of the stupefied

young man across her slim shoulders. Obediently she led her charge

away in the direction of the small cabins across the courtyard.

Though the eyes of the spectators had been intent on the drama of the

steps, only Kayak Bill, perhaps, knew its real significance. The old

man now stood in the doorway of the store, his sombrero pushed to the

back of his head, a pair of binoculars held against his eyes.

From around the point beyond the Indian Village and into the bay, a

white-sailed schooner had drifted. As it advanced there was wafted

across the water a faint and silvery fragment of melody which endured

but a moment and was gone.

The White Chief turned his back on the courtyard and for the first time

noted Kayak Bill's attitude. He followed the direction of the old

man's gaze and beheld the incoming vessel just as the white men and

Indians behind him broke out in a babble of interest and curiosity.

There floated inshore the rattle of the windlass letting go the anchor

chain. On the deck of the schooner men ran about as the sails were

lowered. The vessel swung gently until the bow headed into the current

of the incoming tide.

"Get out the canoe, Silvertip," ordered the trader, turning to his

henchman, "and take Swimming Wolf with you. Find out who's----"

He broke off, wondering, incredulous, for at that moment across the

water came the golden singing of a violin. Wonderfully low and tender

it began. Swelling, it rose and soared and trembled, then with

lingering, chorded sweetness died away like the exquisite music of a

dream.

The listeners on the shore stood spellbound. Gregg Harlan, swaying in

the doorway of his cabin, steadied himself while the silvery harmony

stole into his clouded senses.

"Strange--strange," he muttered, "a violin--playing like that--in

Katleean. Dreams--more--dreams--" He stumbled into the room and the

weeping Indian girl guided his footsteps to the narrow bunk in the

corner.

In the after-sunset light that precedes the long Alaskan twilight there

is some rare quality that seems to bring nearer objects on the water.

Kayak Bill in the doorway, took another long look through the glasses,

then stepped down to the White Chief's side. His voice was the first

to break the enchanted silence that followed the strains of the violin.

"That wind-jammer's the _Hoonah_ I been a-tellin' you of, Chief," he

drawled, holding out the binoculars. "There's two women aboard o' her,

instead o' one. 'Pears to me like one o' them's purty young, and it's

her that's standin' in the stern a-playin' o' the fiddle."

[1] Corruption of the French _marchez_, _marche_, which the Canadian

_coureurs du bois_ used to shout to their dogs, meaning to go forward,

advance.

CHAPTER III

THE LITTLE SQUAW WITH WHITE FEET

The morning after the arrival of the schooner, Gregg Harlan woke with

an aching head and trembling limbs. As he sat on the edge of his bunk

holding his fingers against his throbbing temples, he made a mental vow

that he would drink no more of Kayak Bill's liquor; that _today_ he

would settle down to the business that had brought him to Katleean. He

had made the same vow every morning since his landing--made it

earnestly, intending to keep it, but there was something in the air of

the trading-post that made irresistible the reckless camaraderie

engendered by the hootch-cup; something that emphasized that very

quality of gay irresponsibility he had come North to lose.

The stale, close air of his little cabin sent waves of nausea through

him. Hatless and coatless he sought the open air. He turned his steps

instinctively toward the point beyond the Indian Village. On the other

side, screened from sight of the post, he was accustomed to take the

daily plunge in the bay that enabled him to throw off the immediate

effects of his hard drinking.

As he stumbled along, his lack-lustre eyes rested but a moment on the

schooner in the bay. He had not been long enough away from the world

to be other than faintly interested in the arrival, and his

recollections of the night before were nil.

The tide was low. The fresh, keen scent of seaweed came up from the

Point refreshing his sickened senses. Noisy gulls wheeled and tilted

over the brown, kelp-covered rocks and on the ridge back of the Indian

graveyard, ravens answered the gull cries with raucous soliloquies.

He was nearing the Point when his eye was attracted by a splash of

white among the boulders. Something peculiar in its outline drew his

inquiring steps. At the sound of crunching gravel under his feet a

great huskie dog rose almost from under him. The young man sprang

aside with a startled exclamation. Against the wet sand the dog's dark

coat had been practically invisible.

"Heavens, Kobuk, old boy! I thought I was seeing things!"

He passed a damp hand over his brow. The dog, strangely

undemonstrative, advanced and placed a sleek head against Gregg's knee,

its pointed muzzle down, its tail hanging dispiritedly. Vaguely

wondering what the trader's favorite lead-dog was doing among the

boulders on the Point, Harlan patted the animal's broad back and turned

to the object that had attracted his attention.

What he had at first taken to be seaweed was a mass of long dark hair.

Beneath it a damp, clinging cream-colored garment outlined the dead

body of an Indian girl.

"God!" came Gregg's awed whisper, as he bent above the pitiful little

heap. "The White Chief's Naleenah! . . . Poor little devil!"

Steadied by the tragedy he did not understand, he stooped and gathered

up the still form. He started back to the trader's quarters, little

dreaming that the last earthly act performed by those small hands now

so still, had been for himself. But if Kobuk, following close at his

heels, could have spoken, he would have told of the manner of her

going, the night before.

The trading-post of Katleean had lain wrapped in moonlight and slumber

when Naleenah, after obeying her master's instructions to the extent of

making the drunken young white man comfortable, crept from the doorway

of Harlan's cabin. Kobuk, waiting outside for the mistress who had fed

him since puppy days, pressed closely to her side as she crossed the

courtyard.

At the beachline, where silvered rice-grass grew tall among the piles

of whitened driftwood, she paused, looking with wistful eyes toward the

Indian Village cuddled in the crescent curve of the beach. The weird,

ghostly totems of her people rose above the roofs, catching the

moonbeams fearfully on their mystic carvings. Stern and forbidding

they seemed, as if guarding the quiet shelters at their feet against

one who had forsaken them for the more luxurious cabins of the white

man. . . . Slowly she turned from the tribal emblems of her clan to

look back at the log trading-post, dim and softly grey and splashed

with shadows. . . . So still she stood and so long, that the dog grew

restless and rubbed his cold nose against her hand. She sighed, a

tired, quivering sigh like that of a child who has been hurt, and with

bowed head, stumbled along the trail that led down to the water.

Over a dark line of hills glowed the glorious red-gold orb of

_Sha-hee-yi_, The-Moon-When-All-Things-Make-Their-Winter-Homes.

Unbelievably large and round and clear it stood out against the

night-blue, throwing a path of shimmering gold across the bay to her

little feet. With eyes raised to its splendor, she waded out slowly,

steadily, into the moonlit, whispering waves. . . .

At the edge of the beach Kobuk settled on his haunches, watching her

with questioning, side-turned head. He whined uneasily.

The scarlet shawl slipped from her shoulders and floated off behind

her. . . . The water crept above her waist . . . her shoulders. Her

wide-eyed, frightened face caught the light. . . . Then the ripples

closed above her head. A moment later her long hair, loosed from its

braids, swayed on the amber-lighted surface like seaweed, then the

moonpath lay quiet as before.

On the shore Kobuk waited, his slant eyes blinking at the moon.

Occasionally he raised his pointed nose and uttered a muffled whine

that ended in a short, querulous yelp. . . . Hours passed. . . . The

tide began to ebb, leaving a dark line of sand at the edge of the

water. . . . After a long while Kobuk went in search of his mistress,

and having found her, watched beside her until Harlan came and bore her

away.

As the young man ascended the steps to the store platform he was dimly

aware of encountering a tall, dark stranger, who afterward proved to be

the owner of the schooner that had come in the evening before. Shane

Boreland, whose figure was blocking the doorway, stepped aside to let

Gregg pass into the building with his burden.

From about the stove, where several men were already gathered, came low

exclamations, and the White Chief, who had been following Boreland to

the door, stopped suddenly at the sight of Harlan. His face went as

cold and emotionless as that of the dead girl.

"Take her in to Decitan," he said shortly, with a gesture toward his

quarters back of the store. Turning on his heel, he walked out to the

platform where Boreland stood waiting.

"A damned sad ending to their little domestic difficulty," he murmured

softly, as befitted one with a large heart and a kindly understanding

of the follies of youth. "But young Harlan, my bookkeeper, hasn't been

long enough in the North to appreciate the intensity of these little

hot-blooded savages. I told him, when he took Naleenah, . . ." The

Chief, as if he had said too much, let his sentence trail off into

silence. He shook his head in apparent sorrow, but his eyes were fixed

on the schooner that rode at anchor in the bay.

"But don't let this incident mar your arrival, Boreland," Paul Kilbuck

went on, and then, with the frontier heartiness he knew so well how to

assume, he set about tendering Boreland the hospitality of the post,

urging the prospector to bring his family ashore for a visit during the

time of the coming Potlatch. This was a festival, he assured the

master of the _Hoonah_, which could not fail to interest Mrs. Boreland

and her younger sister.

Even as the trader planned for the reception of the white women, the

squaws who had borne him children were preparing the body of little

Naleenah for its resting place below the ridge where the grave-houses

and totems of the Thlinget dead huddled among the wild celery bushes.

Quietly that night, just before moon-set she was laid away so that her

funeral might cast no sadness on the coming visitors. On the grave,

the silent women of the household placed the treasures that had been

dear to the heart of the White Chief's favorite: a string of cheap

beads, a scarlet shawl, gaudy painted cup and two dead pigeons,

progenitors of the flock that now cooed and fluttered in and out of the

high wire enclosure back of the store.

A week later on the ridge above the new-made grave of Naleenah, a white

girl stood talking to a small boy by her side. Above the

amber-freckled nose of the youngster wide grey eyes were raised in

eager coaxing to her face. From the crown of his bare head, a lock of

dark red hair trembling with absurd earnestness stood up from the mass

of its fellows.

"Oh, Je-an! _Don't_ put on your shoes and stockings just yet! Let's

have one more story before we go back to the post. P-l-e-a-s-e, Auntie

Jean!"

Jean Wiley dropped to the ground a bundle made of her discarded

footwear. Earlier in the afternoon her nephew's barefoot enjoyment of

the beach sand had enticed her to remove her own shoes and stockings,

and delighting in the feel of the cool earth against her pink soles,

she had not replaced them when they decided to follow the trail to the

ridge. She tossed her head, and even in the sunless afternoon, the

dark mass of hair that tumbled down her back seemed shot through with

glints of copper.

"_I_ wouldn't mind going without them always, Loll," she said, holding

out a slim foot and contemplating the freedom of her five, wriggling,

perfect toes. "But--" the foot took its place beside its stationary

twin, "you see, little man, it isn't done at my age, even in Katleean."

Her long-lashed hazel eyes, full of the dreams of eighteen happy years,

laughed down at the boy, and her slender fingers, that could coax such

tender harmonies from the strings of a violin, busied themselves with

the ribbon that bound the hair at the back of her neck.

It was one of the lavender dream-days peculiar to the late summer of

the North. Faint wisps of colorful mist clung to the pickets of the

small fences in the Indian burial-place below them. The totems and the

windows of the tiny grave-houses were filmed with it, and through the

dim glass appeared vague glimpses of the kettles, blankets and

provision inside the houses of the dead--material comforts which the

Thlinget Indians provide for the departed soul's journey over the

Spirit Trail to the Ghost's Home. On the quiet bay below, the

_Hoonah_, blurred in mist, tugged gently at her anchor. Some hundred

yards to the left smoke from the trading-post rose above the alder

trees.

"This is a dandy place for story-telling, Jean. See!" Little Laurence

Boreland pointed to the dim-limned schooner. "The _Hoonah_ looks like

a ghost-ship out there. Listen! I'll tell you the story Kayak Bill

scared me most to death with last night. Ugh! It's spooky, Jean!"

The boy's eyes were round and his voice had lowered at the remembered

thrills of terror. He tugged at the girl's short skirt, until she sat

down beside him, tucking her slim bare feet beneath her as she prepared

to listen.

A raven, weird epitome of Thlinget myth and legend, croaked

spasmodically from the white branch of a dead spruce behind them. The

damp air had in it the freshness of new-cut hemlock boughs, a wild,

vigorous fragrance that stirs the imagination with strange, illusive

promises of the wilderness.

"And the door of the dead-house slowly opened," Loll ended his tale,

pointing to the graveyard below for local color, "and the door

s-l-o-w-l-y opened and a long, white finger--a _bony_ finger,

beckoned----"

He broke off with a gasp of astonishment and terror, for above the rank

growth of Indian celery in front of the lonely grave-house door, there

was a sudden, unmistakable flutter of white. So thoroughly had the

little fellow lost himself in the weird mysteries of his own creating

that panic took possession of him, and communicated itself to the girl

beside him. They sprang to their feet, and with one accord raced

toward the trading-post.

Near the courtyard their footsteps slackened, and Jean began to recover

herself, reminded of her shoes and stockings left behind on the knoll.

She became suddenly ashamed of her headlong flight, precipitated, as

she now saw, by the first breath of afternoon breeze as it came in from

the sea and fluttered a piece of weather-bleached canvas nailed over

the grave-house door.

"Goodness, Loll, you frightened me nearly to death with your wild

imaginings!" She laughed. "Let's run back now and get our shoes and

stockings."

The youngster laid a detaining hand on her arm. "But, Jean," his

shrill voice trembled, "didn't you see it--the long, white skeleton

finger?"

"Nonsense!" She stood a moment pointing out the reason for the flutter

of white, and as she did so a group of Indians landing from canoes on

the beach, came up the trail toward the post. Curiously and quickly

they gathered about the strangers. Many of them had never before seen

a white girl or boy, specimens of the strange Letquoan, the Snow People

from that far-away land of the White Chief. Solemn, black-eyed little

toddlers peered cautiously out from under their mother's shawls.

Pretty young squaws with dark handkerchiefs over their heavy hair,

jostled one another to get a better view, and at the sight of the white

girl, the young buck gallants of the tribe straightened their shoulders

and shifted their rifles to a jauntier angle.

In low, throaty tones, punctuated with long-drawn "Ah-a-a's" and

occasional explosions of laughter, they talked among themselves,

pressing closer each moment. From time to time a brown finger pointing

at Jean's bare feet evoked a general shaking of dark heads and more

"Ah-a-a's" of wonderment.

Perhaps because of the apprehension in her heart, Jean held her head

high and looked fearlessly into the brown, apparently menacing faces

about her. She glanced out over the dark heads hoping to see some

member of her own race; but the post, for the moment, seemed deserted

by the whites. She reached for her nephew's small hand and held it

tightly.

Among the Indians the talking ceased suddenly. A sense of expectation

emanated from the group. There was a shifting of positions as a tall

Thlinget, whom Jean had heard the White Chief call Swimming Wolf,

stepped toward her, his red-bordered snowy blanket trailing

majestically from his shoulders. He stopped, bent his stately form,

and looked long and earnestly at her bare feet. Before the girl knew

what he was about he had wetted his finger in his mouth, rubbed it

along her foot, and scrutinized it gravely. He glanced up, his teeth

flashing at her in a pleased smile.

"Ugh! Ugh!" he marveled in his best English. "Little squaw with white

feet!"

The smile ended in an involuntary grunt, for Loll with the fire of

wrath in his eye had leaped at the investigator and with all the

strength of his eight years had planted both fists in the stomach of

the unprepared Indian.

"_She's_ not a squaw!" shouted the outraged little fellow, making ready

for another attack.

At the same moment Jean, her face burning and her hazel eyes two points

of fire, landed a stinging blow on the surprised Swimming Wolf's ear.

Straightening himself, he side-stepped, flinging his white blanket over

his shoulder with a sheepish grin.

"Fierce little squaw with white feet!" he chuckled, admiringly.

With loud laughs of amusement the others backed away. The circle

broken, the indignant Jean caught at the hand of her small protector

and fled away in the direction of the store.

Angry with herself and thoroughly mortified by what she considered the

insulting familiarity of the Indian, she ran heedlessly. She rounded

the corner of one of the little courtyard cabins with reckless haste

and before she could check herself, had collided smartly with the

dejected figure of a young man. The impact sent her staggering

backward, but at the stammered words of apology which accompanied the

steadying hands he reached toward her, she looked at him with angry

scorn.

"It's a pity you white men are never around when you're needed!" she

stormed at his surprised face. "But squaw-men, I suppose, are always

busy--driving their wives to suicide!" She flung the last words at him

and fled across the courtyard. At the moment she was out of patience

with the entire population of Katleean. As she disappeared into the

store with Loll, she left Gregg Harlan gazing after her perplexedly,

wondering at her last sentence. It was his first actual meeting with

either of the white women from the _Hoonah_. Because of their advent

in Katleean he had remained sober for several days, but for some reason

he did not understand he had not yet been given an opportunity to meet

these women from his own world. He turned from his contemplation of

the empty doorway and walked back to his own cabin, his head bowed in

thought.

CHAPTER IV

BAIT

While Jean and Loll were pursuing their adventures about the post the

White Chief was entertaining his other two guests in his low-ceilinged

living-room, dusky and pleasantly scented from logs of yellow cedar

burning in the fireplace. He was posed in his favorite attitude,

half-sitting, half-reclining among the cushions on a low couch of red

fox skins. But while he told tales of the country to the interested

Boreland, his narrow eyes watched the play of the firelight on the

softly-massed golden-brown hair of Ellen, Boreland's wife, who sat

knitting in the glow.

Life, for the trader, had taken on a new zest this past week. Long

years of acting a part--the part of a great white chief, mysterious,

all knowing, all powerful in the eyes of the simple natives of the

North, had made him fully alive to the dramatic possibilities of

playing host at Katleean, and he was not unaware of his own

semi-barbaric attractiveness in these surroundings.

It had been easy to induce Shane Boreland, for the sake of his wife and

young sister-in-law, to spend a few weeks in the quarters back of the

store, where they were ministered to by the silent, dark-eyed women

whose status they did not understand.

The trader's heart was stirred with interest and expectancy. Here at

last was an auditor worthy of his best efforts--a white woman, not too

young, fair-faced and gentle, yet with the courage to follow her man

into the wilds of a new country. A woman, who, he had learned, could

unfailingly put a shot in a bull's eye at twenty paces and handle an

oar in a small boat, yet a woman who could look sweetly domestic as she

knitted on a garment for her small son. To Paul Kilbuck, as to all

domineering men who scoff at matrimony, there was something

irresistibly appealing in the "sweetly domestic" woman, something

suggestive of that oldest occupation of woman--the business of

ministering to man's physical and temperamental needs, the duty of

making his body and his egotism comfortable. He watched her in covert

approval.

How soft and white her throat appeared above the open neck of her

blouse--soft and white with a tiny hollow at the base where a man might

leave kisses--or the print of his teeth. What little hands she had,

white with nails of rosy pink. Little white hands! The words kept

singing through his consciousness. So long had brown hands done his

bidding up here in the North that he had nearly forgotten that a

woman's skin could be so white! To have those little white hands just

once, softly feeling, caressing, losing themselves in the blackness of

his beard----

The White Chief sat bolt upright to shake off the mad-sweet pang that

had thrilled him. The voice of Boreland brought him back from the land

of forbidden thought.

"You say this Lost Island is nothing but a myth, Kilbuck?" The

prospector had evidently been thinking of the White Chief's last story

as he sat rubbing the head of Kobuk, the huskie, who had placed his

muzzle on Boreland's knee.

The trader lighted and tossed away a cigarette before he answered.

"Just how much truth there is in the tale of the Lost Island I can't

say, Boreland," he said slowly, with a care to his English. He shifted

his position until his eyes could no longer rest on the white woman in

the fireglow. "It has come down from the days of the Russian

occupation of the Aleutian Islands far to the west'ard. Our Thlingets,

you know, got it from the natives of that section and the story runs

that an Aleut and his wife were banished from their village for some

crime, set adrift in a bidarka, a skin boat. Instead of perishing, as

their kinsmen intended, the pair turned up a year later with a tale of

a marvelous island many days' paddling to the eastward. On this

island, they said, the sun shone warmer and the flowers grew larger and

the snowfall was lighter than anywhere else in their world; and there

was some queer story, I don't remember the details exactly, about an

underground passage and sands flecked with shining metal, the stuff

that trimmed up the holy pictures the Russian priests brought over from

Russia."

"Gold!" interrupted Boreland. "It must have been gold!" His brown

eyes glowed and the White Chief noted that an eager alertness lighted

his lean tanned face.

"The exiles decided to let a few of their friends in on the island

proposition and set out at the head of several bidarkas. According to

the story they knocked about up and down the North Pacific from Kodiak

to Sitka for several months--but they never found their island.

Neither did the natives of later years who went in search of it from

time to time."

"But the Russians, Kilbuck, didn't they ever try to find the place?"

The trader, pleased at the interest his story had aroused, lay back

once more against his cushions. "Possibly they did," he went on

easily. "But it's likely they were satisfied with the wealth of furs

their Aleut hunters brought them. Those were great old days for

traffic in furs. The early Russians were, for the most part a lazy,

rum-drinking lot, you know. To them riches meant sea-otter skins, and

they managed by various devilish methods--I can't say more about them

in your presence, Mrs. Boreland--to enslave the entire Aleut nation to

do their hunting. They gave them a little--and a mighty little--trade

goods in return." By the inflections of his voice the agent of the

Alaska Fur and Trading Company sought to convey to his listeners the

impression that the policy of those early companies was against _his_

principles, though the books, so carefully kept by Add-'em-up Sam might

have told a different story.

"And it's possible the Russians thought the yarn to be merely another

native fairy tale," continued Kilbuck, waving a careless hand. "As I

said there may be no other foundation for it. It has come down now for

over two hundred years, and you may be sure when an Indian tells a

story it loses nothing in the telling."

The drowsy crackle of the flaming logs filled a short interval.

Shane Boreland sat lost in meditation, his hand resting quietly on the

dog's head, his eyes adream as with visions of the golden sands of the

Lost Island.

His wife glanced up at him, uneasily, almost apprehensively it seemed

to Kilbuck who was again watching her. Never in all his varied amorous

experiences had a woman's eyes held such a look for the White Chief--a

look in which there was a protecting tenderness, comradeship and

something more.

He settled farther back in his cushions, his eyes narrowing. Love had

yet some new delight to offer him. . . . His virile years were

slipping by--he was surprised and disturbed how often this thought had

been with him of late. Should he grasp the opportunity offered? There

might be a way--up here in Katleean where his word was law. . . .

Perhaps----

Kilbuck brought himself up with a start. Ellen Boreland had dropped

her knitting and had crossed to her husband's chair. Her hand rested

on his broad shoulder and there was a wistful little twist to her smile

as she shook him gently to rouse him.

"He's forever dreaming of the gold that lies beyond the skyline--this

man of mine--and always going to find it," she said fondly. "So

please, Mr. Kilbuck, don't get him interested in any mythical island.

We've been gone from the States six months now, and I want him to go

back for the winter." There was a half-playful, half-earnest note of

pleading in her voice, but the White Chief noticed that her eyes did

not fully meet his.

During all her thirty years, doubtless, Ellen Boreland had looked a

friendly world in the eye. She was that sort. He saw that she was

troubled now at not being able to do this in the case of the trader of

Katleean. Probably he himself was not attractive to her--perhaps he

was even fascinatingly repellant with that electric and disturbing and

promising quality that drew almost irresistibly. There were women who,

under that impulsion, had been moved to come close and gaze into his

pale, black-lashed eyes. It was an impulse akin to that which urges

people to fling themselves from great heights; to peer into abandoned,

stagnant wells. . . . He had an idea that she knew he saw this, for he

had watched her face flush under his glance as though at the thought of

having dishonored herself by sharing with him some guilty secret. He

saw that she was uncomfortable in accepting his hospitality. Twice

during their stay she had entreated her husband to leave Katleean, or

at least go back aboard the schooner for the remainder of their visit.

But Shane Boreland, clean-hearted adventurer, to whom the vagaries of a

woman's mind were a closed book, had only laughed at her request,

retorting that life aboard the _Hoonah_ had made her into a little

sea-dog and a few weeks ashore with such a host as the White Chief

would do her a world of good.

The host now lighted one of his short-lived cigarettes. In his mind

was forming a plan suggested by Ellen Foreland's words. He might

develop it later, and again he might not, but it would not be amiss to

prepare the way.

He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace, slipping without effort

into the part he had assigned himself.

"Dreams are the things that make life worth living, Mrs. Boreland."

His low, vibrant tones sounded pleasantly in the dusky room. "Boreland

here has his dreams of a mine of gold, but I--" he hesitated, his voice

taking on a whimsical softness, "but I, in my Northern solitude, have

my dreams of a heart of gold." His look was designed to leave no doubt

in Ellen Boreland's mind that it was a feminine heart of gold that he

sought.

There was a pause during which the charred logs in the fireplace

dropped down sending up a brighter flame.

"But you mustn't be too sure that the Lost Island is a myth." He spoke

briskly now as it putting aside deliberately his own longings. "In

this part of the country some say that the Lost Island is that of Kon

Klayu."

As Boreland looked up questioningly the White Chief went on:

"Of course, it does in some ways answer the description. It is ninety

miles off the coast here. Cape Katleean is the nearest land. The

Japan current gives it a milder climate and we know that the beach sand

carries gold--a little gold."

"Anyone living there?" interrupted Boreland eagerly.

"Not a soul. The Alaska Fur and Trading Company did send a party out

there some years ago, to start a fox-farm. That's how I got my

information. They were a hootch-drinking, lazy lot and the farm wasn't

a success. But Add-'em-up Sam, a bookkeeper I used to have, spent a

winter there. He told me many things about the place." The White

Chief paused a moment. A new idea had just come to him. "Silvertip,

who used to be on the whaler _Sophie Sutherland_, has stopped there for

water, too."

Boreland, rising from his chair thrust both hands into his pockets and

began to pace up and down the room.

"By thunder, Kilbuck, I'm interested in that island, whether it's the

Lost Island or not! Kon Klayu . . . Kon Klayu . . ." He repeated the

name thoughtfully. "Seems to me that's the Thlinget for ruby sand,

which in itself suggests possibilities. Ruby sand is a gold carrier!"

There was a note of enthusiasm in Boreland's voice, but as he noticed

the look on his wife's face he crossed to her side and put an arm over

her slender shoulders. "But we'll talk that over some other time,

Chief. I don't want to bore Ellen with too much mining----"

A flinging open of the door that led to the store cut short his speech

as an indignant little boy burst in on them.

"Mother! Mother!" he shouted. "That big old Indian, Swimming Wolf,

called my Auntie Jean a squaw!"

"And the wretch put his hand on my foot, Ellen!" Jean following close

on the heels of her nephew, stopped before her sister, her slim hands

clenched at her sides, each outraged shake of her head loosening the

ribbon that bound her hair. "I hate this place, Shane!" she cried,

turning swiftly to her brother-in-law. "I wish we were all back aboard

the _Hoonah_!" Her voice trembled with unshed tears of mortification,

and both her sister and Shane started toward her with exclamations of

sympathy and alarm.

The White Chief regarded the attractively disheveled little figure with

appreciation, but he realized that something had happened which

endangered the stay of his visitors. He rose to place a chair for her.

When he spoke his voice, the voice that had charmed many women, soothed

while it promised.

"There now, Miss Wiley, things may not be so bad as you think. Sit

down and tell me all about it and I'll see what can be done."

Disregarding the proffered chair, the girl launched forth with the

story of her encounter with Swimming Wolf. Her slim hands gestured.

Above her flushed cheeks her eyes flashed and the unruly cloud of hair,

freed at last from its ribbon, fell about her shoulders.

As she told of the slap on Swimming Wolf's ear, the pale eyes of the

White Chief glowed. Truly, as Kayak Bill had said, one could never

tell about a white woman. Here was a situation he would have to handle

with care. Here was a time when his knowledge of Indian nature, gained

during years of association with them, stood him in good stead.

"Miss Jean," he said. "Just a moment. I think I can explain Swimming

Wolf's extraordinary action." The White Chief measured her with an air

of understanding that, he could see, made an impression on the girl in

spite of herself. "An Indian, you know, never really grows up. Even

though he has the body of a man, he still keeps the heart of a child.

Now when you were little, Miss Jean, don't you remember the time you

saw your first negro--a black, strange creature? Didn't you wonder,

while you looked at his face and his hands if he could possibly be

black all over? Be honest now, didn't you?"

Loll who had settled himself on the floor with an arm about Kobuk's

neck, sprang up and stood beside his aunt.

"Yes, _I_ did, Chief," he interrupted, with eager, nodding head, "and I

asked him about it, too. I did!"

Jean's face was clearing. She inclined her head in faint affirmation.

"Just so," the trader went on. "When Swimming Wolf saw his first white

woman no doubt in his simple heart he wondered, too, and so did the

other natives who gathered about you,--children, all of them. Swimming

Wolf, the clumsy siwash, had no English words to ask you about it, so

he took the simplest way to find out whether or not the white came off!"

A shadowy smile began to twitch at the corners of Jean's mouth. Seeing

it, the White Chief was encouraged to go on:

"The inquisitive rascal is really one of our bravest hunters, and a man

of tall totems and many blankets. He would feel astonished and

_kusk-i-a-tu_--very sad--if he knew he had offended you. As a matter

of fact,"--the trader laughed--"the Wolf admires you and in his

primitive way has paid you a great compliment. I wasn't going to

mention it, but since this has come up perhaps it will help explain."

Jean looked up inquiringly.

"Up here in the North, Miss Jean, it is the custom of the young bucks

to buy any little girl who takes his fancy. He pays for her while he

is strong and a good hunter, you see. When the girl grows up he takes

her for his wife."

There was a gasp of astonishment from Ellen and her sister, but Kilbuck

went on:

"One hundred dollars is a mighty good price to pay for a wife,

but Swimming Wolf, my little lady, came to me yesterday with

four black fox skins, which are worth perhaps three thousand

dollars. He wanted to know if I would arrange with the Big White

Man--your brother-in-law--to take them in payment for the _shawut

clate_, the White-Girl-Who-Makes-Singing-Birds-in-the-Little-Brown-Box."

Jean lifted her chin with a laugh in which amusement and embarrassment

were equally mingled. "How quaintly ridiculous, Ellen, to describe my

violin playing in such a way! But mercy," she added, after they had

all laughed over the incident, "I must run away upstairs and put on

some footwear. If I had kept on my shoes and stockings, as I should

have done, Swimming Wolf might not have called me 'little squaw with

white feet'!"

Kilbuck, satisfied with himself, had settled back once more against his

cushions and as she turned to say a parting word to him, was regarding

her with half-closed eyes. The firelight played on her slim, white

ankles and soft little feet. He surveyed her with a look that slowly,

appraisingly, stripped her body of its garments and swept her from her

bare feet to her face and back again. The girl caught it. Conscious,

for the first time of him--his savage reality as other than a

middle-aged man--of her own womanhood, she flushed violently.

Shrinking back she reached for Loll's hand, and stammering an

incoherent excuse, ran from the room.

Ellen, unconscious of what had happened, measured off a row of stitches

in the knitting she had again taken up. "Jean certainly seems to be

tumbling in and out of adventures," she remarked. "Sometimes, Shane, I

wonder if we did right in bringing her with us."

"Nonsense, Ellen. A year up here will make a different girl of

her--help her break away from the cut and dried sameness of school

life. Darned if it doesn't make me tired to see all the young women

turned out of the same mould."

As Boreland spoke the door leading into the store opened slowly, and

into the room sauntered Kayak Bill. He seated himself in silence,

tilting his sombrero to the back of his head--the only concession to

convention he ever made, since Kayak had never been known to remove

that article of apparel until he sought his bunk at night.

"I just been mouchin' round down in the Village, Chief," he drawled,

"seein' if there was anything a-doin' in the way o' local sin, and they

tells me that the funeral canoes is a-comin' in tonight."

CHAPTER V

THE FUNERAL CANOES

Ellen glanced up at the old hootch-maker sitting serenely on the other

side of the fireplace. Some time during the day he had put on high

leather boots but having neglected to lace them, the bellows-tongued

tops stood away from his sturdy legs and the raw-hide laces squirmed

about his feet like live things.

"The funeral canoes?" she echoed, wonderingly.

Kayak Bill turned to her with a sort of slow eagerness, as if he had

been awaiting an excuse to look at her.

"Yas, Lady. They're a-bringin' in the ashes o' their dead kin from up

in the Valley of the Kag-wan-tan."

Ellen's mind reverted to the many strange things she had heard during

her short stay in Katleean, concerning the coming Potlatch of the

Indians. This land and its people were new and mysterious to her.

These primitive Thlingets, descendants of the fiercest and most

intelligent of all the northern tribes were, withal, a fearful people

living in a world of powerful and malignant spirits who frowned from

the rocks, glittered from the cold, white mountains and glaciers,

whispered in the trees and cackled derisively from the campfires; a

world of hostile eyes spying upon them in the hope that some of their

weird and mystic tabus might be broken, and of sly ears listening to

avenge some careless remark. A childlike people they were, who spoke

kindly to the winds and offered bits of fish for its favor; who begged

the capricious sea to give them food, and who spent most of their lives

working for the comfort of the dead--the Restless Ones--who sweep the

winter skies when the day is done, beckoning, whispering. The Northern

Lights the white man calls them, as they leap and play above the frozen

peaks, but the Thlinget knows them to be the spirits of the dead,

homeless in space but hovering confidently overhead until their

relatives on earth can give a Potlatch for their repose.

Running like a black thread through the woof of the spirit tales was

the mention of witch-craft--witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now

preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free

them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in

the black art, the Indians of Katleean were not bringing in the amount

of furs expected, and this meant a loss of money to the Alaska Fur and

Trading Company.

Ellen recalled the superior air of amusement with which the White Chief

had told of the dominating belief in demons.

"When one of the beggars wants to cast a spell," he had said, his lip

curling in a sardonic smile, "he takes a bit of cloth from some garment

his enemy has worn and at the hour of midnight slinks into a graveyard

and digs down until he finds a body. If he wants to cripple his

enemy's hand, he puts the cloth in the fingers of the corpse. If he

wishes his enemy to lose his mind he puts it over the skull, and if he

wants him dead, he places the cloth over the heart in the coffin. Oh,

they are a sweet outfit, I tell you!" The Chief had laughed as if

these things were merely amusing. Then he had gone on to explain that

across the Bay of Katleean in the shadow of the great blue glacier

which was discernible on sunny days, there had been a lonely Thlinget

graveyard. Because of its isolation this burial place had been so

riddled with re-opened graves and so much killing, torturing and

fighting had ensued among the Indians in their efforts to detect and

punish so-called witches that he, their White Chief, had been obliged

to interfere. He had put an end to the reign of sorcery in that

particular graveyard rather cleverly, Ellen was forced to admit, by

having all the bodies exhumed and cremated on the spot.

"They'll bring the ashes over here where I can keep an eye on them and

prevent further 'witching,'" the trader had finished. "And after the

Potlatch we'll have a little peace in the country, I hope. I never

interfere with the Potlatches. They make good business for the

Company, for the brown heathens believe the spirits are really feasting

and rejoicing with them." Kilbuck laughed as at some recollection.

"The Company sends in hundreds of blankets every year for dead Indians.

Whenever a Potlatch blanket is given away the name of a dead man is

called and he receives it in the spirit world. Whenever a little food

is put on the Potlatch fire, a dead man's name is mentioned and he gets

a square meal up there in Ghost's Home. Altogether the Alaska Fur and

Trading Company does a lively business with the dead!"

As Ellen thought on these things there crept into her mother-heart a

feeling of pity for these simple, trusting people seeking the

protection and guidance of this white man only to have their beliefs

and superstitions laughed at and exploited for the benefit of his

company. She was beginning to feel, dimly, what every reader of the

history of exploration knows, that drunkenness, fraud and trickery are

among the first teachings the white man's civilization brings to the

tribes of a new country.

A tinge of sadness and foreboding darkened her thoughts.

Kayak Bill, who had been drawing contentedly on his corn-cob pipe, rose

suddenly through a low-hung cloud of tobacco smoke, and taking up an

old almanac from the table, began fanning the air clumsily. His slow

drawl with a suspicion of haste in it, broke in on her meditations:

"By hell, Lady," he apologized earnestly, "excuse me for creatin' of

such a blamed smudge!"

Ellen looked up from her knitting.

"Oh, I don't mind a little smoke, Kayak Bill." She smiled at the

concern in the old man's voice. "You see Shane smokes a good deal,

too." She nodded toward the couch where her husband puffed on his pipe

as he plied Kilbuck with questions about the Island of Kon Klayu. "I

was just thinking about the funeral canoes and the Potlatch."

"The beginnin's of the Potlatch will be pulled off tomorrow, Lady, but

tonight--" Kayak stopped fanning and leaned closer to her. Then with

a glance in the direction of the White Chief he lowered his voice.

"Tonight, when the funeral canoes comes in, I'd aim to gather in the

young sprout, Loll, and that little gal sister o' yourn. . . . We're

purty civilized here in Katleean, but--wall, there ain't no tellin'

what an Injine will do after he's taken on a couple o' snorts o' white

mule,--or a squaw-man, either, for that matter. O' course, I make the

stuff myself, and a mighty hard time I have, too, to keep shut o' these

pesky dudes o' revenue officers that's all the time a-devilin' o' me.

But I don't recommend it none a-tall."

Kayak Bill, with his boot-laces snaking along behind him, shuffled over

to his chair once more and settled himself for conversation, which

Ellen had learned meant a monologue. The edge of his sombrero backed

his busy head and kindly face like a soiled grey halo. His low voice,

never rising, never falling, droned on:

"Yas, I don't drink none myself, bein' weaned, as you might say, when

I'm but a yearlin'. But I make it for those as likes it, and I makes

it good, for it's everybody to his own cemetery, I say. . . . No, I

don't join no Y. W. C. T. U. or nothin,' but one time, when I'm a real

young feller, I'm off on the range for a spell down in Texas, and I

ain't no nature for shavin' or none o' them doo-dads and besides I'd

don't have no razor or no lookin' glass. Wall, six months or so goes

millin' by and finally I comes down into San Antonio one Sataday night.

And right away, havin' at that time what you might call an eddycated

taste for whisky, I makes a charge for the nearest bar and takes on a

dozen or so good snifters, likewise some beverages they calls mint

julips. And durn me, Lady, if in no time everything in that place

ain't a-whizzin' past me like the mill-tails o' hell!

"But I gets my bearin's after while and lays my course for a door to

get some fresh air. Just as I reaches this here door, Lady, a big,

swaggerin' rough-lookin' hombre with a red beard starts to come in.

Wall, I looks him over careful. He likewise gives me a nasty look.

Then polite-like, I steps aside waitin' for him to come through. But

he don't come none, havin' stepped aside too. . . . Wall, by this time

I'm feelin' purty groggy and I makes a bolt for the door again, aimin'

to get through quick; but blamed if that durned son-of-a-gun don't do

identical! Then back I sashays once more and my dander sort o' riz up

in me. 'By the roarin' Jasus,' I yells, 'you lay offen that monkey

business, you consarned whiskery cuss, or I'll fill you so full o'

holes yore own mammy won't know you from a hunk o' cheese. Just one

more crack like that out o' you,' I says, 'and down comes yore

meat-house,' I says. . . . Wall, I got started through the door again,

and by hell, Lady, in spite o' my warnin' o' him, he comes at me again.

So, . . ." Kayak Bill paused the fraction of a second; then his voice

went on with its accustomed languor: "So I just whipped out my little

old .45 and shot him."

Ellen gasped, her big blue eyes opening in horror as she looked into

the serene face of the self-confessed murderer. Kayak Bill, apparently

unconscious of her regard, droned on:

"Yas, I charged full tilt into him shootin' as I went, but instead o'

him a-fallin dead, I finds myself in a shower o' glass, and all the

boys is a-dancin' round me and likin' to die o' laughin' at me. . . .

You see, Lady, that door happens to be one o' them long mirro's saloons

has, and not havin' no acquaintance with myself in a beard a-tall, I

pots my image! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Kayak Bill's laugh gurgled out slowly

like mellow liquor from a wide-mouthed bottle. "Wall, after I got done

a-payin' for the mirro' and a-settin' 'em up for the boys, and a-payin'

for a saw bones to fix me up--me bein' conside-ble carved by glass, I

don't have no more money than a jack-rabbit. So I says to myself:

'Bill, you ol' jackass, you got to reform, that's all there are to it.

We can't have the whole durned world laughin' at you when yore in yore

liquor!', I says. . . . And I did reform, Lady! So help me Hannah, I

did!" Kayak Bill, with an air of conscious virtue, was filling his

pipe again.

While Ellen gathered up her knitting, the corners of her mouth were

twitching with amusement.

"Kayak Bill," she said as she shook her finger at him playfully, "you

surely have an effective way of making a confession. I don't really

know whether to praise you for your sobriety or scold you for

horrifying me a moment ago."

Ellen heard the old man's chuckle as she arose. Her face went sober,

however, the moment her eyes sought the couch where her husband sat

still engrossed with the White Chief. Though she lingered Shane did

not turn her way, and she finally moved toward the door through which

her sister had gone an hour earlier.

"Thank you for telling me about tonight, Kayak," she said as she passed

him. "I'm going up now to warn Jean and Loll, but--" she hesitated, "I

wish more of the men in Katleean had been 'weaned' as you were."

She saw approval in the slow softening of his hazel eyes, and as the

door closed behind her she caught a remark the old hootch-maker

addressed to the dog at his feet.

"By hell, Kobuk," he pronounced earnestly, "that little lady's husband

has sure fell into a bed of four leaf clovers!"

She stored this quaint tribute away in her mind and told it to Jean

that evening after she had repeated for the second time Kayak's warning

regarding the arrival of the funeral canoes. But Jean, determined not

to miss any detail of the strange Thlinget festival, watched till an

opportunity presented itself, and then, disregarding Ellen's advice,

slipped away to the beach to a pile of silvery drift-logs that lay at

the edge of the rice-grass, where she knew she could not be seen except

from the sea. The girl settled herself comfortably among the logs just

as the long day was waning.

She noted that here, as everywhere else in this northern land of

exquisite, fleeting summers, the sunset colors came on gradually,

increasing in richness of tone and fading through several hours. The

mist of the afternoon had scattered before a faint sea-wind, and

settled wraithlike in the hollows of the hills across the bay. Violet

now in the gloaming it melted into the lilac shadows at the base of the

range that needled the sunset sky.

There was something like promise in the wild beauty of the

evening-time; something in the clean night-scent of the sea and the

grass and the trampled beach-weed that awakened in Jean a sense of

expectancy. She breathed deeply, conscious of a keen delight in doing

so. As she waited, the rose and amber tints died on the white peaks at

the head of the valley, . . . the flaming orange behind them turned

from clear gold to vermilion, . . . from rose madder to an unearthly

red that glowed behind a veil of amethyst while the twilight deepened.

. . .

Suddenly she caught her breath. Out of the powdery, purple gloom

across the bay floated a long line--the funeral canoes. In the blurred

distance they took shape one by one, the paddles dipping in solemn

rhythm. . . . Nearer they came, . . . and nearer. Then over the

darkening water drifted the plaintive rise and fall of the funeral

lament, faint and eerie as voices from the spirit land.

Jean, thinking to linger but a moment before returning to the store,

was spellbound by the mystery and loneliness of the scene. All at

once, as she watched, a line of silent, blanketed figures from

somewhere behind, began to slip down past her hiding place. Looming

weird and tall in the dusk they halted at the water's edge. Softly,

almost imperceptibly these waiting ones took up the mournful plaint,

sending it floating out thin and high in answer to the approaching

bearers of the dead.

While she listened awe and wonder began to give way to something that

tantalized her with a fleeting familiarity--a near understanding.

Long-lost memories of primeval things that eluded her when she strove

to vision them mocked her with an indefinable yearning to pierce the

ages of oblivion that separated her from other nights, other scenes,

other chants like these. . . . She longed for her violin. If she

could but feel the loved instrument beneath her chin, her fingers

drawing from its vibrant lower strings the mystery-music to supplement

the weird dirge, these primitive things hidden in the dust of the past

might be revealed to her! Suddenly she became aware that one of the

tall figures had stopped in the trail beside her pile of driftwood. In

a tone singularly pleasing he was humming the air of the funeral

lament, fitfully, experimentally at first, then as the haunting

monotony of the strain became familiar, with a certain easy confidence.

Jean forgot to be afraid. Almost unconsciously she found herself

humming in unison with the motionless figure. Even when the man faced

her and she saw in the dim light, not an Indian, but the young white

man, Gregg Harlan, she did not cease. She was conscious of a feeling

of companionship. Night had gilded the wilderness with a primordial

beauty and made her kin to all earth's creatures. She moved slowly

from her pile of driftwood and stood beside him for a moment in the

trail watching the incoming canoes. It was a moment of simplicity and

unconsciousness of self such as might have been in the dawn of

civilization when conventions were unknown. She hummed, cradling in

her heart impressions of the night so that later she might awaken them

through the music of her violin. The man in the trail continued his

wordless song. . . .

The crunching of leather soles on the gravel behind them startled Jean.

She and her companion turned simultaneously to find themselves face to

face with the trader of Katleean.

"Well, well!" The sarcastic voice of the White Chief shattered the

sweet, wild moment like an invidious thing. "You two seem to be

getting uncommonly friendly!" His red lip lifted on one side into a

cynical smile that suddenly infuriated Jean, implying, as it did, that

he had caught the two young people in a compromising situation. She

took a hasty step toward him, looking with fearless eyes into his face.

"How dare you slip up behind us this way!" she flashed, stamping her

foot and flinging out her hands in a short, angry gesture. A moment

longer she looked at him as if he were an object of scorn, then turning

to the young man, said quietly: "Good night, Mr. Harlan."

The next instant she was walking up the dusky trail to the post.

Kilbuck watched her go. Accustomed to commanding all situations at

Katleean, he was for the moment nonplused by the quickness and

vehemence of the girl's retort, rather than by what she had said. He

had expected to place the two at a disadvantage. Finding the tables

turned, a momentary and unreasoning desire to cover his own

discomfiture by hurting some one took possession of him.

"I say, Gregg, I'm rather surprised to find you at this time of night,

alone with Miss Wiley. I don't think her sister would approve,

exactly. Since your affair with Naleenah, you know--" he finished the

sentence with a depreciatory shrug.

"_My_ affair with Naleenah! What do you mean?" The young man took a

quick step toward him.

"Oh, now, don't get excited, Gregg. You were drunk, of course, but you

must remember she took you home and spent the last night of her life

with you. The whole post saw you two go off together the night the

_Hoonah_ came in. Boreland has heard the talk, of course. Too bad, my

boy," the Chief put his hand on the astonished young fellow's shoulder,

"too bad, I say, that after all your fastidious virtue you have the

reputation of being a squaw-man." Kilbuck laughed his short, sardonic

laugh.

"_She_ thinks I'm a squaw-man?" Gregg indicated the disappearing

figure of Jean. His voice was sharp with hurt amazement, indignation,

and the grasp of his hand on the Chief's arm made that gentleman wince.

"All of them do, my boy. _All_ of them. But----"

"Now I begin to understand," Harlan broke in bitterly. With a muttered

imprecation he flung himself into the trail and walked toward the

courtyard where a light shone palely from Kayak Bill's window. The

White Chief looked after him until he vanished. Gregg had been sober

for a week now, but if Kilbuck was any judge of indications, the

bookkeeper's sobriety was at an end. As the trader turned toward the

beach and walked to the canoes now landing in the dusk, he smiled to

think how neatly he had nipped in the bud any possible romance between

Gregg and Jean.

Two hours later in the loft above Kilbuck's living quarters Jean was

kneeling at a tiny window looking up at the ridge where dark spruce

trees peaked a line against the night sky. It was a strange guest

chamber pungent with a faint, unforgetable odor from fox pelts dangling

from the rafters, bear hides tacked to the slanting roof, and rows of

smoked salmon and dried cod hanging from lines along the sides. Loll

lay fast asleep on his small floor-pallet, his face half-buried in his

pillow, his mouth reverted to the pout of babyhood. The door leading

to Ellen's room--the only real room in the loft, was partly open. Jean

rose and closed it, took up her violin from her own floor bed, and went

back to the window.

Softly fingering the strings she picked out the notes of the Indian

lament that kept repeating itself in her mind. She was possessed by a

desire to express in music the mystery of the wilderness afterglow, the

wild, illusive feeling that had touched her. She longed to use her bow

freely on the strings of her violin until, at one with the instrument,

she could lose herself in the ecstasy of creation. . . . She reached

for the bow that lay on the floor beside her. Perhaps, if she played

very softly she might disturb no one----

Up from the courtyard, as if a door had been suddenly opened, came

startling sounds--short yells, Indian war-whoops and the maudlin

singing of white men. The mournful, prolonged howl of a dog drifted in

from somewhere. Down in the direction of the Indian village half a

dozen shots were fired in rapid succession. Jean's heart beat oddly.

Katleean was beginning to celebrate the Potlatch in the singular way of

the male, who, since time immemorial has made a holiday an occasion for

a carousal. The girl sighed, and placed her violin gently on the

floor. With her chin in her hands she took her former position at the

window and listened.

Somewhere near the store a trio began. The blended harmony of men's

voices as they sang in the dusk had in it a peculiar stir. Jean found

herself, head up and shoulders swaying, responding to the lilt and

swing of the air:

"Hear the rattle of our windlass

As the anchor comes away;

For we're bound for Old Point Barrow

And we make our start today."

Rollicking, devil-may-care, the whaling song went on through long

verses. Many of the words she could not distinguish, but throughout

the singing she was aware of a feeling that these singers were men who

had cast aside the restraint of conventions, even in a way,

responsibility for conduct, and were exulting in their freedom.

Thinking the song finished she turned away at last, but the movement

was arrested by the sound of a lone baritone taking up the chorus

again. She leaned over the sill to catch the words, for in the voice

she recognized her companion of the drift logs.

"Up into the Polar Seas

Where the greasy whalers be,

There's a strip of open water

Leading north to eighty-three,

Where the frisky seal and walrus

On the ice floes bask and roll.

And the sun comes up at midnight

From an ice-pack round the Pole."

Apprehension in the girl's heart vanished. She drew a deep breath of

the night air and turned reluctantly from the window. "There's a strip

of open water leading north to eighty-three--" she hummed. The words

stirred in her dim, venturesome imaginings. She felt suddenly on the

threshold of adventure beyond which might lie the fierce, wild things

of romance that only men have known. It alarmed, even while it

exhilarated her. She felt afraid, yet daring. She was beginning to

feel the lure of Alaska--the vast, the untamed, the inscrutable, the

promising.

As she slipped between her blankets she thought of the young white man.

Squaw-man he might be, and a drunkard, but he had the heart of an

adventurer . . . he was young . . . and he could sing . . .

CHAPTER VI

THE WHITE CHIEF MAKES MEDICINE

Sunless and softly grey morning came to Katleean. The water, smooth as

satin, stretched away to the mist-shrouded hills. Owing to some odd,

mirage-like condition of the atmosphere trees bordering the lagoon

across the bay stood high and clear above a bank of fog. The liquid

music of the surf was hushed as if to give place to a new sound that

pulsed unceasingly on the quiet air: the strange and thrilling boom of

Thlinget drums. Up from the great Potlatch-house in the Village

floated the savage resonance adding a barbaric note of announcement to

the placid beauty of the scene. Above the roofs of the native houses

and straight between the totems of the Thunder-bird and the Bear, rose

the black smoke of the Potlatch fire.

Though it was early, the double doors of the trading-post stood open

for the White Chief had been abroad several hours. After a night of

revelry in Katleean there were always knife-wounds to dress, battered

heads to bind up, bullets to extract, and even broken bones to set.

The nearest doctor was five hundred miles away and Kilbuck, often the

only sober man at the post, with the exception of Kayak Bill, performed

these services.

Some said that he had learned all he knew of medical science from the

row of gold-lettered volumes tucked away in one corner of his dusky

living-room; others claimed that a great eastern medical college had

known him as a student in the far-off days before Alaska took him for

her own. Whatever was the source of his knowledge he did his work with

a degree of rough skill, and humanely, using as an antidote for the

pain he inflicted during these operations, stupendous quantities of the

very liquor which had brought about his patients' troubles.

Among the Kagwantans of the Thlinget people he had been given the rank

of Shaman, or medicine man. To further his own ends and to keep his

hold on the natives, he had always donned the robes that went with this

conferred honor and had taken an active part in the Potlatch

ceremonies. As the years went by, with but four steamers a

twelve-month to disturb his voluntary exile and but a waning interest

in anything south of Dixon's Entrance, he had grown to have a real

enjoyment in these affairs. They served to banish any lingering

inhibitions imposed by civilization.

As he walked across the courtyard toward the little cabin of Silvertip

and his squaw, Senott, there were thoughtful lines in the White Chief's

brow. Today he would have an opportunity to impress the white women

with his importance among the wild people of the North. Today Ellen

Boreland should see him as the great chief and Shaman, banisher of

Thlinget sorcery. But--how far might he go in this character without

running the risk of becoming ridiculous? Never before had such an

audience taxed his powers of discrimination. True, by subtle speeches,

he had prepared his visitors for anything that might happen, and he

knew they would excuse much that was bizarre on his own part because of

his explanation that such ways were necessary in handling a primitive

people. But he also knew that there is but a thin dividing line

between savage pomp and ludicrous ostentation.

As he neared Silvertip's door he raised his head decisively and

mounting the steps entered without knocking.

His glance swept the small room with its snowy sand-scoured floor, its

rectangular box-stove of sheet-iron, and two corner bunks, one above

the other.

"Well, Silvertip, you and Harlan are the last ones on my list. I can't

find _him_ any place, but I see you've come to anchor all right.

What's the matter with you?" He addressed the wan-looking Silvertip in

the lower bunk.

A long-drawn sigh quivered up from the blankets, and with a shaking

hand the Swede indicated his head.

"My ol' ooman (groan) . . . lick hal outen me . . . (groan)!"

Kilbuck bent down and parted the fair, blood-matted hair on the side of

his patient's head.

"Oh, you're not much hurt, man. You and Senott ought to learn to take

a little drink together without beating each other up this way." He

laughed as he made ready to cleanse the cut. "May I inquire where the

lady is this morning?"

Between groans the injured husband profanely unburdened himself:

"She go down de tarn Injune house vit dat tarn Injune hunter,

Hoots-noo!"

"Trouble with you, Silver, you're too good to women. Now, instead of

using the iron hand on them you show the yellow streak----"

"Me--jallow streak?" The indignant Swede raised his battered head to

glare into the eyes of his satiric physician. "Vy, tammit, Chief, ven

ay ban cook on _Soofie Suderlant_ ay----"

"That reminds me, Silvertip," interrupted the White Chief. "You

remember telling me about stopping for water on the Island of Kon Klayu

when you were whaling? Yes? . . . Well, while you are lying here

sobering up, I want you to think about that island, Silver. I want you

to remember every little thing about it that you can, and after the

Potlatch I'll be in to talk to you--perhaps. I'll go and hunt up

Harlan now. Damned fool! He raised hell last night--something started

him off. No doubt he's down around the Point swimming it off now.

Queer how that fellow loves water--on the outside of his skin."

The trader left the cabin and started across the courtyard. It had

gradually filled up with multi-colored, grotesque figures that might

have stepped from the pages of some weird, fantastic fairy-tale. The

never-ceasing beat of the Potlatch drums made a throbbing, low

accompaniment to their guttural tones and laughter. They stalked about

wrapped in heavy broadcloth blankets adorned with designs and borders

made of white pearl buttons--thousands of buttons--a style which had

come in when the white traders came to Alaska. Many wore the native

Chilcat blanket of ceremony made of the hair of the mountain goat.

These were marvels of savage embroidery done in conventionalized

designs that might have startled a Cubist painter had they not been

woven with the softest-toned native dyes--yellow, pale-blue and green

and rust. Huge, fierce detached eyes, the Thlinget symbol of

intelligence glared from some. Mouths with queer, squared lips and

large teeth grinned from others. A school of killer-whales with dorsal

fins aloft, disported themselves in rectangles of black on the back of

another. From the bottom a two-foot fog-colored fringe dangled about

the wearer's legs.

Above the fantastic robes black eyes looked out from painted faces

rendered fearsome by red and blue and green designs representing

mythical gods of the clouds, waves, and beasts, fish and birds. Heads

were crowned with the skulls of grizzly bears and small whales. A few

figures were disguised by pelts of animals, but instead of paws, huge

wooden hands with fingers more than a foot long, dangled from the

forearms.

Swimming Wolf, brave in a dance-blanket which bore the wolf emblem of

the Kagwantans, held his head proudly under the sacred hat of Kahanuk,

the Wolf, and on his face in red and blue was the Kia-sa-i-da, the red

mouth of the wolf when the lips are retracted.

As the White Chief made his way through the throng he noted with

satisfaction that Ellen Boreland and her sister were standing

spellbound in the doorway of the trading-post watching the primitive

masquerade. Even as he looked a creature broke suddenly from the crowd

and rushed toward them, half-running, half-flopping like a wounded

bird. To one side of its face half a moustache was attached. The

other cheek was adorned with red and blue paint. The hair was twisted

into a high peak and further decorated with the wings of a seagull. A

man's hair-seal waistcoat trimmed with red flannel hung from the

shoulders and from this streamed yards of brilliant colored calico

strips an inch wide.

As the figure reached the platform, the two white women shrank back in

the doorway. The half-portion of the moustache was raised in a

delighted grin.

"Heavens, Ellen!" gasped Jean, clutching her sister's arm. "It's that

jolly little Senott, Silvertip's squaw. The one that brought us the

strawberries the other day!"

Senott, proud in her Potlatch finery, came close and gazed with

friendly eyes at the white visitors.

"Ha! Ha!" she laughed. "You not know Senott? Senott all same

_kate-le-te_--all same seagull!" She threw out her arms raising them

up and down and lifting high her feet to represent a seagull alighting

at the edge of breaking surf.

"Bime-by you white 'oomans come along Senott--" she pointed in the

direction of Kilbuck's living-room windows under which he had caused a

great grave to be dug. "You come. Senott show you t'ings."

With a wide smile and a wave of her hand the gay Senott, apparently

forgetful of the white spouse at home nursing the broken head

she had given him, flapped away to join her Indian lover,

Hoots-noo, Heart-of-a-Grizzly, the handsome young husband of

Old-Woman-Who-Would-Not-Die.

At noon every soul in Katleean had assembled in front of the

trading-post. The boom of drums was louder. There was a feeling of

expectancy in the air. The few whites, with the exception of Kilbuck,

sat on the platform in front of the store. The natives formed a

shifting, motley crowd in the courtyard. Kayak Bill, sitting next to

Ellen, smoked his pipe as he contemplated the scene.

"Wall, Lady," he drawled, leaning toward her, "I seen a heap o' this

sort o' jaberwocky doin's in my time up here, and it used to make me

feel like as if them Injines had a tank full o' doodle-bugs under their

hair--but I don't know-- Take us white folks down in the States now,

when we're a-celebratin' o' Decoration day without our speeches and our

peerades and our offerin's o' posies and such. It's the same principle

exact----"

The old man ceased speaking abruptly. Out of the door behind them and

down the platform steps walked the White Chief of Katleean and the

little Thlinget woman, Decitan. About her shoulders was draped a

fringed black and yellow blanket of wondrous design. On her dark,

thick hair she wore the crest of the Eagle clan--a privilege accorded

only to a chiefess.

The waiting Indians stood back from about these two principal figures

in the courtyard, and Paul Kilbuck, with the Indian woman beside him,

turned to face the white woman on the platform whose favors he hoped to

win.

He felt himself splendidly barbaric in the costume of a Shaman. The

greens and blues and yellows of his royal Chilcat blanket and dancing

shirt set off his dark beard and dead-white skin. Carved wooden

eagle-wings on each side of a tall hat crowned his hair. Below this

emblem of the Shaman spirit, the Unseeable, his eyes, narrow, pale and

dangerous sent straight into those of Ellen a look that might have come

down through the red pages of history.

She turned her face away with a frightened quickening of the pulses.

The White Chief and Decitan took their places at the head of the Indian

procession which had been forming, and the long, fantastic line wound

about the courtyard and down the trail that led to the Village. Before

the graveyard, with its totems and curious architecture of the dead,

they stopped and began a mournful ululation.

The wailing gradually gave way to the Potlatch songs in honor of the

deceased--songs of curious rhythm and halting cadences; songs with a

haunting plaintiveness that floated high above the throbbing of the

drums.

On the platform the white inhabitants of Katleean waited in silence

until the procession came back once more to the courtyard. Then one by

one they attached themselves to the line.

About the excavation under the windows of the White Chief the funeral

party halted. Kilbuck, his handsome, barbaric head towering above all,

spoke to the natives in Thlinget a few moments. Then one by one the

small boxes containing ashes of the dead were handed to him. He

lowered them into the grave. As the last one settled on the bottom he

stepped back, flinging one corner of his fringed blanket from his

shoulder. He exulted in the sense of power such an occasion gave him.

He liked to feel that in the hollow of his hand he held every soul in

Katleean.

Perhaps in his heart there still lurked some faint respect for the

dead. Perhaps he merely intended to impress the white women in his

audience, as from under the bizarre robe of his heathen office he

produced a prayer-book, and in the voice he knew so well how to

modulate, read the service for the dead. At the close he swept the

gathering with an inclusive glance. First in Thlinget, then in English

he addressed his listeners:

"People of the Kagwantans, of the Wuckitans, of the Yakutats, and the

Ganahadi,"--His voice made music of the Indians names.--"Listen to the

talk I make and remember. Always, while I am the White Chief and

Medicine Man of the Kagwantans, I will watch over the ashes of my brown

brothers and sisters. Always, when the nights of the Big Snows come to

Katleean and the spirit-lights whisper in the North in the moon of

Kokwa-ha, I, the Unseeable, will watch. . . . Always, in the moons of

the Big Salmon run, the Hat-dee-se, when there is no darkness in the

nights of the North, I, the Unseeable, will watch. . . . I, who have

brought you the great white medicine of the Letquan, the Snow People, I

make the Big Medicine now--I make it with the sacred book of the White

Shamans." He held one corner of his Chilcat blanket tightly against

his breast with the prayer-book, and with the other out at arm's

length, swept the fringes slowly back and forth over the grave. "I

make the Big Medicine. . . . My brothers and sisters may rest in peace

at Katleean, for no witch can dig down into the grave below to work

evil spells. . . . I, the White Chief, the Unseeable, I am always

watching."

The solemn old Indians of the tribe nodded their masked heads

approvingly and gave grunts of satisfaction. Kilbuck turned away as if

a bit weary of his role and walked toward the trading-post. The white

members of his audience followed him.

After the departure of their foreign visitors the natives assumed an

alertness strangely at variance with their usual stolid demeanor.

Kilbuck, with his white guests, watched them from his living-room

windows.

Blanket after blanket was spread over the boxes of ashes in the grave.

Bolt after bolt of bright calico was torn into streamers and flung into

the open space. Cooking utensils and food came next; then trinkets of

every kind that might cheer the souls of the departed on their journey

over the Spirit Trail. At the very last, Swimming Wolf, who had

heretofore taken little part in the ceremonies, stepped forward with a

tiny phonograph, a rare possession since it was the only one in the

Village. The Indian carefully wound it up and lowered it into the

hole. There was a craning of masked heads, . . . a period of grunting

approval, . . . and then faintly from below came a whirring, a

sputtering and a high, cracked voice of announcement. The White

Chief's face wore its sardonic smile as the gravel was being shoveled

into the grave for the little tin phonograph was bravely playing:

_There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight_.

CHAPTER VII

THE POTLATCH DANCE

Evening found the Boreland family, attended by Kayak Bill, taking the

beach trail to the Village. It was well past nine o'clock and the

twilight had merged into the soft, luminous duskiness that would

continue until the sun came up at two-thirty in the morning.

In the gloom a hundred blanket-covered canoes lined the crescent beach

that sloped gently upward to a strip of gravel before the row of Indian

houses. The totems of the Thunder-bird and the Bear stood out high

against the sky. Before the Potlatch-house an Indian dog, small,

coyote-like, yelped shrilly as he tugged at the rope which fastened him

to a stake. The air throbbed to the incessant beat of drums and the

muffled chant that rose and fell inside the meeting-place.

The Potlatch-house, older than the oldest Indian at Katleean, had been

built before ever a white man had set foot on the beach of the Village.

The low building, over sixty feet square, was made of huge, hand-hewed

yellow cedar planks standing vertically. The gable ends faced the bay

and all across the triangular space above the eves was painted the

startling conventionalized head of a wolf. The ears rose weirdly from

the gable edge of the roof. Two monster eyes glared through the

twilight above a grinning, squared mouth twenty feet across. On either

side of the oval door stood a totem, hollow at the base and containing

the ashes of long-dead chiefs. The corner-posts were carved into

life-size grotesque figures of men.

Between Ellen and Jean sauntered Kayak Bill. Their half-fearful looks

at the Potlach-house were inspired by the stories he had told, with a

certain grim amusement, to these two fair women of the South. They

were stories told to him over the hootch-cup by the wicked

Old-Woman-Who-Would-Not-Die; tales of the long-ago heathen times when

the Potlatch-house was erected and dedicated with human sacrifices;

when for each of those carved corner-posts a slave had been murdered

and placed at the bottom of the hole that was to receive it; tales of

scores of slaves who had been slaughtered upon its completion; tales of

animal-like orgies those walls had seen--cannibal feasts, torture of

witches, fiendish carousals about the burning dead.

Tame, indeed, in comparison were the Potlatches of this day, even when

the savage spirit was stimulated by the white man's fire-water. And

tonight there could be none of that. In honor of the white women,

Kayak Bill was keeping drink from the Indians this one evening.

Ellen looked at Jean apprehensively as they pressed closely on the

heels of Shane Boreland and followed him through the low, oval door of

the Potlatch-house.

Inside the air was thick with the smoke of many pipes. Through the

haze the wall lights burned dimly. All about the sides of the great

room squatted natives in their Potlatch finery. At the farther end sat

the drummers beating in booming rhythm on war-drums made of hair-seal

stretched over rings from hollowed logs. Never during the three days

of the Potlatch did those drumbeats cease.

Near the doorway was a small slightly-raised platform. On this, in his

Shaman robes, sat the White Chief of Katleean. As they ascended the

step he rose ceremoniously to greet them and indicated some chairs near

him which had been placed in anticipation of their coming.

When the white visitors had seated themselves the drum-beats took on a

quicker staccato rhythm. There was a craning of necks toward the

doorway. Another moment and the chief dancer of the Potlatch entered

the oval.

Dancing in backwards so that the decorations on his blanket were

displayed to the best advantage he sang a halting Thlinget song and

scattered the down of eagles about him. In the middle of the room he

whirled and Ellen recognized Swimming Wolf.

"If the feathers fall on you," said the White Chief leaning toward her,

"you'll have good luck all the year."

Other dancers backed in and took their places about the drummers. As

Swimming Wolf stepped forward the drum-beats died to a muffled

softness. The dancing sticks beat the floor in a low, sensuous

syncopation that stirred the blood. The long-fringed blanket lent a

wild grace to the Indian's swaying, stamping figure. His crouched

steps seemed part of his faint, humming chant.

Curious at first, and a little apprehensive, Ellen looked on, her hand

clasping that of her husband. After a while, the steady pulsing of the

drums banished that something faintly like foreboding with which the

civilized woman looks for the first time on primitive ceremonies; it

even stirred in her something that she seemed once to have known and

forgotten.

By the time Swimming Wolf had finished his steps she had withdrawn her

hand from that of Shane and was anticipating with eager interest what

was coming next.

She had not long to wait for the oval door swung on its peg and into

the room lumbered a huge brown bear so true to life in form and gait

that both she and Jean gave a startled gasp. The White Chief smiled as

he leaned toward them.

"It's only Hoots-noo, Heart-of-a-Grizzly, dressed in a bear hide!"

The Indian must have spent many hours studying the actions and habits

of his ferocious namesake, for in the pantomime that followed he gave a

perfect imitation of the great bear of the North. Shambling down

toward the center of the floor he paused. Striking a pose he made a

motion as if jumping into a river to catch a salmon. With a

floundering of his ungainly body he brought the fish up on the bank of

the stream. He turned his uplifted muzzle from side to side as if

scenting danger and presently proceeded to tear the fish into pieces,

his head continually moving as though looking and listening for the

hunter's rifle.

Hoots-noo's performance was followed by other clever impersonations and

by more solo dances of blanketed Indians. All the dances, the White

Chief told Ellen, were taken from the movements of the wild things of

the North--the slinking of the fox across the tundra, the leaping of

the King salmon in the river, the flight of the eagle over the fishing

grounds.

When the general dance was announced every Thlinget buck sprang to his

feet and sought a partner of the opposite sex. About the room in a

circle the fantastic figures leaped with savage abandon. When the

tired couples sought the resting places against the walls again and

each buck gallantly presented his partner with a small bag of

raisins--a custom introduced by the enterprising white traders.

Faster and more softly came the boom and thud of drums and dancing

sticks, until the urge of them caused even Ellen's feet to beat time to

the primitive music. She glanced at her sister. Jean's eyes were

sparkling. Her lithe body was swaying and her hands moving in rhythm

with the Thlinget's dance.

"For two cents, Ellen, I'd dance with my admirer, Swimming Wolf!" She

laughed in her sister's ear. "I feel the stir of the blood of our

remote ancestors, who must have stepped it off in some such manner as

this. . . . Look at your son, El!"

Loll, by now regarding every Indian as his friend, was standing before

Senott. That dusky belle was resting after a mad, joyous whirl with

Hoots-noo, Heart-of-a-Grizzly. The boy's head was nodding with

earnestness as he talked to her, and he was playing with the dozen gold

and silver bracelets which adorned the gay one's shapely arms.

Suddenly, with a laugh, Senott rose from the floor and grasping the

boy's hands began to circle about the room with him. The drummers and

holders of the dancing sticks showed their white teeth in delighted

grins and quickened the rhythm of their music.

"By ginger," said Shane, his lean face alight with interest, "I'd like

to shake a leg myself. Ellen--" he turned to his wife--"what you say?"

Ellen shook her head, smiling. "Take Jean, dear. She's wild to dance."

Shane turned to his sister-in-law. Laughing, she gave him her hand and

the two stepped down and joined the bizarre throng. The smiling

natives paused a moment to watch as the white couple improvised steps

to suit the music, then the dance went on as before.

The drum-beats grew wilder, more stirring. The room grew warmer and

the lights burned dimmer. Kayak Bill sitting between Ellen and Paul

Kilbuck, attempted a monologue, but finding no listeners, gave it up to

puff contentedly.

The fumes of Kayak's pipe seemed overly strong to Ellen. She began to

feel the need of fresh air. She glanced at her sister and her husband

as they passed her, laughing over an intricate step they told her was

the "Bear Paw." Kayak Bill and the White Chief seemed buried in their

own thoughts. Ellen rose, looked about her a moment and then slipped

quietly out of the oval door into the cool, star-spangled night.

After the close air of the Potlatch-house, it was good to draw in the

freshness of the out-of-doors. The two tall totems framed a golden

naked moon that hung above the hills across the bay. The shimmering

path from its glow threw into silhouette the prows of the big canoes

drawn up on the beach. Ellen walked down the sandy path toward them.

Pausing she leaned against one and gazed idly out across the water.

For the moment the chanting of the natives had ceased, and the

drum-beats sounded muffled and soothing. Weird and lonely from a

distant ridge came the faint call of a wolf, presaging, though she did

not know it, an early winter. She became aware of the aromatic savors

of the wild--sea smells, the forest breath, the tang of camp-smokes.

She was beginning to like these things.

There was a sense of dream-like unreality about the night--about her

whole life at Katleean. Sometimes she caught herself marveling that

she was not more startled, more surprised at the new ways of life that

had come to her, for it is only the seasoned traveler in the little

known places of the world who ceases to marvel at the adaptability of

man to new and strange environment. Alaska, especially, Ellen thought,

seemed to work strange spells on those who came to dwell within her

borders. What would be considered melodramatic and foolish south of

53, became somehow, natural and fitting above the line.

Her drifting thoughts were suddenly checked by the sound of soft

footsteps in the sand behind her. She turned swiftly. Her dreamy,

contemplative mood changed to one closely akin to panic, as out of the

shadows tall and dominant in his Potlatch robes, the White Chief

stalked toward her.

She had no tangible reason for fearing to be alone with the trader of

Katleean, and she despised herself now for the impulse that urged her

to run as fast as she could from the man. Mentally upbraiding herself

for her foolishness she forced a smile of greeting and in her haste to

say something that would put the meeting on a commonplace basis, burst

out with the inane and obvious:

"Isn't it a beautiful night, Mr. Kilbuck?"

The White Chief stopped beside her and flung back the blanket from his

shoulder. There was a lawless gleam in the narrow eyes he turned on

her and she was not unaware of a certain savage, picturesque appeal in

him. She felt again a strange, undesired impulse that had troubled her

ever since her first meeting with the man--the urge to go close and

look deep into his pale, hypnotic eyes.

"On nights like this, Mrs. Boreland," he said, his tones low, almost

caressing, "I always think of those lines--perhaps you know them:

"'Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!

Night of the South Winds! Night of the few large stars!

Still, nodding Night. Mad, naked summer night!'" . . .

Despite herself, Ellen thrilled under the magic of his voice. He went

on: "It's the memory of such nights that bring me back to this country

year after year, and then . . . when I return . . . there is only the

mocking beauty of their loneliness."

Ellen knew but little of the "good, grey poet," but at the incongruity

of his quoting she gazed with a new curiosity at this tall figure in

the heathen splendor of a Thlinget witch-doctor.

"To be satisfying," he said softly, "beauty like this must be shared

with a loved woman. . . ." his sweeping gesture indicating the moonlit

bay of Katleean. "You are the first white woman to share it with me."

He stepped closer to her. Though there were three feet between them

she felt his presence as a tangible thing. She stirred uneasily. The

dull throb of the drums filled a moment's space.

"I have loved many women," his low voice went on, "women--of a

sort--but never anyone like. . . ." There was something tenderly

personal in the omitted word. "Sometimes . . . I wonder . . . if I

might not be a better man if I had someone like you to stand beside me

when winter nights come, and watch the Northern Lights. . . ."

Kilbuck looked dreamily away toward the peaks raising their subtle

loveliness to the stars. Doubtless he must have said the same things

slightly varied to many women in the States, but never before had

Nature provided such a setting for his posing. Doubtless it had always

made a favorable appeal, for Ellen knew that man, though doing exactly

as he pleases, is ever holding out his hand to woman to be uplifted,

and the mother instinct in the feminine heart seldom fails to respond.

Ellen felt suddenly that the situation was getting beyond her. As she

leaned against the canoe she tried in vain to think of some ordinary

thing which would change the current of the White Chief's thoughts and

enable her to get away to the Potlatch-house without his becoming aware

of her perturbation. Fumbling uneasily with the handkerchief in her

hand she dropped it. As she stooped to pick it up an exclamation

escaped her. She had been resting her head against the up-curving prow

of the canoe, and now, as she moved, she became aware, by a sharp

painful tug, that her hair had become entangled in some torn rivets

embedded in the tarpaulin.

Instantly Kilbuck was behind her reaching across her shoulders to

release the strands. They refused to come away.

After a moment of ineffectual tugging, Ellen removed a pin from the

soft, thick coil. Loosed by their efforts with the tangle, her hair

shook down and tumbled in a lustrous mass below her waist. She felt

Kilbuck's fingers working at the strands about the broken rivet.

Suddenly he was still, his hand grasping a long strand of the mass.

"Mrs. Boreland, there is a superstition among the Thlingets to the

effect that whenever a man carries a lock of a white woman's hair he is

protected from any kind of violence--no matter what he may have done to

deserve punishment. Your hair is of such a rare shade and texture,

there would be no mistaking a lock of it, would there?"

With a swift movement his hand slipped beneath the Chilcat blanket.

There was a glint of steel, and the next moment he had severed the lock

from the shining mass. Ellen started back, snatching up her hair to

wind it into its accustomed knot, but before she could utter the words

that sprang to her lips there was a sound of running footsteps.

"Ellen! Ellen!" came the voice of Jean, as the girl sped toward them

down the pathway. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

She glanced at the White Chief with surprise, suspicion and disapproval

succeeding each other in her eyes. She made no effort to conceal her

dislike of the trader of Katleean.

"Come, Ellen. Let's go back to Shane."

Jean took her sister's hand and the White Chief watched their

retreating figures for several moments. . . . From beneath his blanket

he drew the long lock of hair he had stolen. One hand passed gently,

caressingly along the length of it. It clung softly to his finger like

a live thing. . . . The hair of native women was long and thick, but

coarse, and even after long residence in the trader's quarters seemed

to hold the faint salmon tang of the smoke-house. But this. . . . His

lip lifted in his wolfish smile. It would be difficult, very difficult

indeed for a wife to explain his possession of such a trifle. . . . He

held it against his mouth. The faint perfume of the white woman

thrilled him. His nostrils twitched. He felt his eyes grow narrow as

when he sighted game on the trail. . . . Suddenly, as if in decision,

he turned and walked rapidly up the beach toward his quarters at the

trading-post.

In his living-room, dark now except for a few dull embers in the

fireplace, he lighted a candle and crossed to the corner beneath the

high shelf of books. He drew aside a large hair-seal wall-pocket of

Indian make, and fumbled a moment. A small door swung open revealing a

hollow in the log wall.

Very carefully the White Chief wrapped the lock of hair in a

handkerchief and laid it away in the hiding place. As carefully he

drew out a small moose-hide poke and putting the candle on a nearby

table, sat down before it. He removed the tag attached to the top and

read the inscription: "Eldorado Creek gold," then he loosened the

string.

On the wall behind the man, weird, gigantic shadows, born of the

flickering candle flame, leaped and danced. In the crude light and

shade his barbaric gorgeousness became doubly sinister, as he pushed

the strange shaman headdress farther back on his dark head.

He wiped an ash-tray carefully and poured the contents of the poke into

it. Beautifully yellow and gleaming it fell in a golden

stream--perhaps two ounces of gold dust. With a satisfied nod he put

the poke of dust into his pocket and a few minutes later stepped out

into the night.

The sound of drums and dancing came up from the Village as he crossed

the dim courtyard toward the light that shone palely from Silvertip's

window. As he entered the cabin the Swede, still nursing the broken

head that kept him from participating in the Potlatch festivities,

groaned dismally in greeting.

There were a few perfunctory words, then for half an hour Kilbuck

talked earnestly. Silvertip protested; he whined; but he listened.

There was mention of Boreland and beach sand; of gold dust and Kon

Klayu. After much persuasion Silvertip consented to do what the White

Chief outlined.

Kilbuck held out the small bag of gold and the pale-eyed Swede reached

for it and put it away under his pillow.

The trader rose to go. As he draped his robe about him, his eye caught

a movement among the blankets in the top bunk. He started.

"God, you fool!" he whispered hoarsely, leaning down and grasping

Silvertip's arm. "Why didn't you tell me you had some one here. Who

is it?"

The Swede groaned. "By yingo, Ay plumb forget about te tarn jung

yack-ass Harlan. He coom in har dis noon time drunk like hal, wit

t'ree bottle of hootch. He tal me he iss lonesome. He iss drunk now,

Chief. He can't har not'ing."

Kilbuck drew down the blankets from the head of the man in the upper

bunk. The boyish sleeping face was flushed. Dark matted hair clung to

the damp forehead and there was a sickening odor of vile liquor in the

air. A long moment the trader looked to see if Harlan would open his

eyes. Then with a contemptuous laugh he flung the blanket over the

lean young face.

"Nothing to fear from him if he drank three bottles of Kayak Bill's

brew."

He stepped out of the door into the courtyard, adjusted his headdress

and humming a dance-hall ballad, swung down the beach path toward the

Indian Village.

CHAPTER VIII

THE OUTFIT

A week later, in the snug little cabin of the _Hoonah_, Ellen Boreland

sat opposite a folding table, where her husband, humming contentedly,

was adjusting a gold-scale. Ellen's hands were busy with mending but

her brow puckered anxiously and her eyes had purple shadows beneath

them.

From the moment she had realized the loss of her lock of hair, her

conflicting impressions of the White Chief of Katleean had crystallized

into a certainty that he meant no good to herself or to her husband.

That he desired her she had now no doubt, and while she knew in her

heart that she was in no way responsible for this, she felt more keenly

than ever that baffling sense of guilt that had attached itself to her

since her first meeting with the man. It seemed some loathed feeling

shared with the man and more gripping because of words never spoken.

Another thing troubled her: Because of him she had told her husband a

lie--the first during her ten years of married life. Her mind went

back again and again to the scene. They had come back to their room at

the post the night of the Potlatch dance. Jean, full of enthusiasm

over the events of the evening came in from her loft-room to talk it

all over with her sister. Little Loll in a corner, was solemnly

practicing the bear-antics of Heart-of-a-Grizzly. Shane Boreland, as

was his custom, sat watching his wife comb out the long beautiful

tresses that were his pride.

Suddenly he rose from his chair. "By ginger, El!" he exclaimed. "What

have you done to your hair? Looks as if you had cut a chunk out of

it!" There was concern in his face as he picked up a handful and

pointed out the severed portion to his sister-in-law.

Ellen's blood seemed to turn to water. Her heart fluttered in her

throat. What explanation could she give this chivalrous, hot-heated

Irishman who loved her, and who, she knew from past experience, would

shoot a man for less than the Chief had done? She valued above all

things the trust and loving companionship that had blessed her married

life. She hesitated, desperately seeking some plausible explanation

that would approach the truth. . . . Shane, she imagined, was looking

at her keenly now and there was a curious light in Jean's frank eyes.

"I--I--cut it, dear," she stammered, hiding her face under the veil of

her hair. "I--I cut it to send to mother in the next mail."

The instant the lie was out she would have given a year of her life to

recall it. She realized, too late, that it but opened the way for

other lies. It placed her in the position of one obliged to carry

indefinitely an unexploded bomb, which the least jar might set off

causing--who could tell what destruction.

The next day she had insisted with more than her usual vigor on

returning to the schooner. Shane had consented reluctantly, but he

would not for the present accede to her wish to leave Katleean. He was

stubborn in his determination to learn all that was to be known about

the Island of Kon Klayu.

Ellen recalled the events of the week. Her husband's enthusiastic

reports of the Island gold. His talks with the carefully non-committal

trader and the thin-nosed, shifty-eye Silvertip; and finally his

decision to spend the winter on the Island in search of the precious

metal. Shane was sitting now at the table pouring some shining dust

into a saucer and studying the "colors" as they fell.

"The lure of raw gold, Ellen!" he mused looking up at her with glowing

dark eyes. "There's no greater magnet for a man in the world, little

fellow--except the love of a woman," he added softly with the smile

that had won his wife's heart ten years ago and made her happy in

sharing his shifting fortunes.

"But if I make a go of it this trip, Ellen, I give you my word that

I'll go back to the States and settle down somewhere,--any place you

wish. Look at it--just look at it, El!" He held the saucer so that it

caught the sunlight streaming in through the round cabin window. "By

Jove, it ought to go eighteen dollars to the ounce! It's clean as a

dog's tooth! Silvertip says he and some of his mates panned it one day

at Kon Klayu while the _Sophie Sutherland_ took on water. . . . Of

course the party sent over by Kilbuck's Company didn't find much, but

from what I hear they were a hootch-drinking lot who knew nothing of

mining, and thought only of drawing their pay and keeping drunk. You

can see for yourself, Ellen, what this northern hootch does to a

man--young Harlan is a good example. Gone to the dogs in three months,

though I can't help liking the fellow."

He shifted the gold dust again and bent his head to peer at it through

a small microscope. During the moment's silence came the lap of the

incoming tide against the hull of the schooner.

"That reminds me, Ellen," Boreland went on. "The Chief received word

yesterday from a trading-post down the coast that a revenue cutter is

bound this way on a tour of inspection. Kayak Bill's going to hide his

still and go into retirement until the cutter has finished

investigating. Seems they're always suspecting him of making hootch!"

Shane chuckled with amusement. "Funny old devil--Kayak Bill! I like

the old cuss. I've asked him to come over to the Island with me for a

couple of months until the Chief brings the _Hoonah_ with our winter

outfit."

At the mention of the _Hoonah_ Ellen glanced about the snug, cheerful

cabin that had been her home for many adventurous months. This staunch

little schooner had brought her and her loved ones safely over hundreds

of miles that separated her from her home port. Thoughts came to her

now of wild, stormy nights when she had awakened in her reeling bunk to

the scream of wind in the rigging, the roar of waves, the tramp of

hurried feet overhead and the shouting of voices. At those times she

knew Shane stood at the wheel in the drenching rain giving his orders

for the reefing of sails. During the first days of the voyage the

awakening in a gale had always filled her with a great fear--a fear not

for herself but for her family, her little son. She would clasp the

sleeping boy more closely in her arms and lie with straining muscles,

waiting listening, every sense painfully alert and her eyes

hypnotically watching the garments on the opposite wall swing out and

back with the roll of the ship. Gradually as the schooner righted

itself after every roll Ellen's nerves would relax. Unclasping her

arms, she would snuggle close to the back of the bunk,--the few inches

of the _Hoonah's_ hull that separated her and her loved ones from the

black, bull-throated billows that sought to swallow them. The feel of

the cool wood brought a sense of safety, a certainty that with Shane's

strong, thin hands on the wheel the _Hoonah_ would bring them all

safely through any danger of the sea. Then bit by bit approaching

sleep would dim the fury of the gale until at last it was but a lullaby

zephyr wafting her, like her little son, once more into the harbor of

dreams. . . .

She had not realized how dear the schooner had grown to her until she

had signed, against her better judgment, the bill-of-sale that

transferred the vessel to Paul Kilbuck. On the reef-sown coast of Kon

Klayu it appeared there was no harbor where a ship might find shelter,

and Shane needed money for his winter outfit. Half the purchase price

the trader had paid down--the other half was to be given Boreland when

Kilbuck took the remainder of the outfit to Kon Klayu later in the fall.

Ellen aroused herself from her reverie. Shane had been speaking some

minutes and his first words had been lost to her. He was quoting:

"One more trip for the golden treasure

That will last us all our lives!"

Life to Shane was a sweet and wonderful thing. Though there had been

years of hardship and struggle and often failure in the mining game, he

still retained an eager joy in existence, a faith in men and women and

something of the wonder of a boy. Perhaps it was because the place of

his questing had ever been the forests, the mountains, the clean,

unpeopled places.

His present life of a prospector, sailing his little schooner boldly

across dangerous reaches of ocean, through the intricate lovely

waterways of Alaska's Inland Sea, poking her prow into hidden crescent

coves, trying his luck with a gold-pan on unknown streams, always sure

that the next shift of the gravel in the pan would reveal a

fortune--all this made life fascinating for Shane Boreland. No matter

how far short realization fell, he was always ready with another dream,

always eager when a new adventure beckoned.

And now it was the mysterious Island of Kon Klayu.

Stripped of the golden glamour with which Shane had invested it, Ellen

knew it to be an island but five miles long and a mile and a half wide,

which lay out in the North Pacific ninety miles from the nearest land;

an island uninhabited and completely surrounded by dangerous reefs and

shoals; shunned by ships and spoken of as a death trap by sailors. But

one tree, other than alder and willow, grew upon it. Three hundred

feet above sea-level on the high, flat top, a lone and stunted spruce

rose from the tundra and breasted the heavy gales that swept the ocean.

For firewood there were but the drift logs of the beach. There were no

animals of any kind. The foxes and a pet cub bear taken there by the

Alaska Fur and Trading Company at the time of the fox-farm experiment

had been killed off by passing whalers who were sometimes forced ashore

for water.

Shane had entertained no idea of allowing his wife and family to

accompany him to the Island. All his powers of persuasion had been

used to induce Ellen to stay at Katleean with her sister and Loll as

guests of the White Chief until the tall steamer going south should

take them back to the States. The trader, Ellen knew, had taken this

arrangement for granted and she was certain she detected something of

baffled rage in him when she informed him on her last visit to the

shore, that since she could not dissuade her husband from going to the

Island of Kon Klayu she and her family would accompany him.

It was in vain the White Chief pointed out to her that there were not

provisions enough at the post to supply Shane with a complete winter

outfit. He must sail at once for Kon Klayu in order to prepare for the

winter's work, and the autumn steamer bringing more supplies was not

due for six weeks. It was in vain Kilbuck assured her that he,

himself, would take her to the Island later on when he went over with

the remainder of Shane's outfit after the arrival of the steamer.

Ellen was obdurate in her decision and once having committed herself

she became a different woman. Whatever misgivings she held in regard

to the enterprise she kept to herself. She plunged whole-heartedly

into the preparations for the journey, becoming at once the practical

director of the commissary. She looked carefully over the stock of

goods at the trading-post and obtained far more in the way of supplies

than the easy-going Shane, inclined to trust to the trader's judgment,

would have done. And Kilbuck, for some reason, seemed disinclined to

furnish even as much as his stock would allow.

For the past week Ellen eluded every effort made by the White Chief to

see her alone. Since the night of the Potlatch dance she had talked

with him only in the presence of a third person. Strange to say she

found now that she could look him squarely in the eyes, but when she

did so it was as if steel met steel. The feeling that she was playing

a game of wits against the autocrat of Katleean was not without its

interest for her. It was impossible entirely to conceal her growing

hostility toward the man, and she knew that her wordless antagonism was

felt by Kilbuck. To her anxiety she knew also that instead of

diminishing his appetite for her, it increased it. She was growing

eager to be away.

The outfitting went forward daily. Jean and Loll spent many hours

ashore exploring the vicinity with Senott or Kayak Bill. Sometimes the

visitors caught a glimpse of the tweed-clad young man who seemed so

quiet and aloof, and who, even when not drinking, avoided them all.

Ellen observed a certain interest in him growing in Jean. A tentative

question or two put to Kayak Bill revealed this, though it availed her

nothing. The old hootch-maker, muttering something about "everybody to

his own cemetery" had branched off to relate something he had "hearn

tell" when he was "a-punchin' o' cows down in Texas."

Ellen, as well as Jean, wondered at the presence in Katleean of such a

man as Harlan, and the reason for his connection with the dead

Naleenah. Understanding of another's lapses comes with years and Jean,

Ellen knew, was too young fully to realize what this young man's

dissipation portended.

Ellen kept a sharp eye on Harlan. Though she herself shared Jean's

mild curiosity and faint pity, she managed to keep her sister at a safe

distance from him. She intended very carefully to guard Jean.

Sometimes, in the evening, when the girl stood on the after-deck of the

_Hoonah_, her violin tucked beneath her chin, her eyes on the dreaming

radiance of the sunset, Ellen studied her as she played. She wondered,

if in her heart, the young girl played to him, and if he heard. And

once, to her anxiety, as she sat listening to the silvery music

floating out over the water, she had caught a shadow moving on the

shore--had seen a figure move stealthily down a hidden trail to the

Point beyond the Indian Village and lie behind a great boulder,

listening. . . .

The outfitting for the Island was nearly complete now. Each of the new

acquaintances at Katleean contributed, with friendly intent, to the

preparations of the departing travelers. In the cabin of young Harlan,

which had been the home of the deceased Add-'em-up Sam were shelves

laden with dusty books, old magazines and piles of ancient newspapers.

At Kayak Bill's suggestion the bookkeeper had packed the best of these

into a box and the old hootch-maker had borne the package to Jean,

remarking that "readin' matter might come in mighty handy on the

Island." The box was placed with Shane's outfit stacked in a corner of

the store.

Ellen and Jean were looking through the collection one afternoon,

judging the departed Sam by his taste in literature, which they found

to be surprisingly good. As Jean turned the pages of _Treasure

Island_, a paper fluttered to the floor. The girl picked it up,

reading aloud the caption over a crude, penciled map: "The Island of

Kon Klayu." She unfolded it and was smoothing out the creases that she

might better study the drawing when Loll came running in from the

platform in front of the store. His freckled face was puckered with

suppressed grief, his grey eyes abrim with the tears he was too proud

to shed.

"Mother--Jean--look at poor Kobuk," he faltered, with a gulp that

threatened to send the drops tumbling over his brown cheeks.

Kobuk, the big huskie, had wagged himself into the hearts of every

member of the Boreland family. Ellen knew that Shane had offered the

White Chief a good price for the animal, but the trader had refused to

part with his lead dog. Even when it was discovered that the huskie

had developed mange Kilbuck would not give him up, though he did

nothing to relieve him. Shane, busy with his outfitting, found time to

take care of Kobuk, rubbing him every day with a mixture of sulphur,

lard and carbolic acid until he was practically cured. Jean and Loll

had attended these treatments taking turns holding the bowl of sulphur

salve and encouraging the restive Kobuk to be a good dog and take his

medicine. Now it was with the utmost pity and concern that they beheld

him slinking to his corner in the store, for he had been out on a

porcupine hunt and his nose, his entire head was literally bristling

with needle-like quills.

Ellen had seen irate dog-owners spend hours with a pair of pinchers

removing quills from their animals, and she knew that even one of those

tiny needles, if overlooked, could work its way straight through

Kobuk's body. If it struck a vital organ, he would die.

The dog eased himself into his corner and tried to rest his head on his

paws. The quills under his muzzle stabbed him and he raised it with a

sharp yelp of pain. Jean and Buddie sprang toward him with expressions

of sympathy and endearment. The dog whimpered, raising his soft, dark

eyes to their faces as if begging for help in his trouble. Jean, on

the verge of tears, sank down beside him, but Ellen, thinking to

relieve him, ran to the living-quarters back of the store to get a pair

of pinchers from Decitan.

When she returned she stood a moment half-concealed by the curtain in

the doorway. Jean was soothingly stroking one of Kobuk's big paws.

Near her stood the White Chief who evidently had just come in. Both

thumbs were hooked beneath his scarlet belt, and he was looking down at

the dog. Kobuk at that moment lowered his head and tried to work

himself farther back in his corner, but the effort brought out another

yelp of pain.

The man's eyes became mere slits.

"Ah, damn you, so you've done it again, have you?" he said with a

softness that in some indefinable way chilled the blood. "Well, this

time we'll let the quills work through your brainless skull--or--

Here, Hoots-noo--" he turned to the Indian who was entering the store.

"Take this cur out and shoot him. I'm tired of having quills yanked

out of him."

With a cry of protest Jean came to her feet.

"Oh, no, no! Please!" Apparently forgetful of all but the safety of

the dog, the girl clasped both her little hands about the man's arm.

Her hazel eyes pleaded. Loll, too, was clinging to the trader's other

hand, stroking it and looking up beseechingly into his bearded face.

"Oh, Chief, please, _please_ don't shoot Kobuk! We want him! We'll

take care of him!"

The White Chief paid no attention to the boy, but he looked down into

the face of the girl and laughed unpleasantly.

"The little squaw with white feet can be very nice to me when she wants

something," he said. "What are you willing to give me for Kobuk, my

little lady?"

At his tone the girl shrank back, but Loll, sturdily refusing to be

ignored, interrupted hastily:

"_She_ ain't got nothing you want, Chief!" He began tugging

desperately at a string about his waist which bound to him his most

cherished possession--an old broken revolver bestowed on him by Kayak

Bill. "Here, I'll give you my pistol for Kobuk!" The earnest little

fellow held out the weapon with an air of certainty which indicated

that there could be no refusal of such a treasure.

The White Chief sat down leisurely on a box of pilot bread as if to

better enjoy the situation.

"No, my boy," he said with another laugh. "Your disdainful aunt is

going to pay me for Kobuk in coin which you will learn more of bye and

bye." He turned to the girl. "I'm not such a bad fellow, Jean," he

continued with an attempt at an ingenuous smile. "Come, kiss me once

and the dogs is yours."

Over Jean's face swept conflicting emotions, disgust, contempt for the

man, pity for the moaning dog whose life depended on her decision. The

Indian, stolid and unseeing, had already laid a hand on Kobuk's collar.

Ellen, unable to remain silent longer, started forward unnoticed by the

others in the tenseness of the moment, but before she had taken two

steps Loll had taken charge of the situation.

Going close he rested a hand on either knee of the trader and looked up

earnestly into the man's pale eyes.

"Chief," he spoke half-apologetically as man to man, "you see Jean--"

he indicated his aunt with a tilt of his head--"Jean doesn't like to

kiss strange men--but I don't mind." And before anyone realized what

was happening, the boy had taken Kilbuck's face between two small hands

and pressed cool, childish lips to the man's forehead.

Jean caught her nephew in her arms impulsively. "You darling!" Half

laughing, half crying she buried her face in his neck. "You darling!"

"Well, that's settled!" said Loll in his matter of fact tones as he

wriggled to free himself. "Kobuk's ours now. Thank you, Chief. I'll

have--" He broke off with a shout to welcome Ellen, whom he had just

seen. "Hey, mothey! He's ours now. Gimme the pinchers!" He took

them from Ellen's hand and started toward the quill-filled Kobuk, who,

sensing perhaps a change in his fortunes, had risen expectantly to his

feet.

Shane, entering the doorway at that moment, was apprized of the

addition to the family. The next two hours were spent by the Borelands

in extracting quills from the repentant Kobuk. For the first time in

his life, perhaps, the pain-racked animal was soothed and cheered

during the hated operation by quaint old Irish terms of endearment,

punctuated with advice.

"But there'll be no more porky hunting for you, me lad," Shane assured

the dog as he pulled the last quill. "For the very first fine day we

have we're off for the Island of Kon Klayu and divil a thing you'll

find there to chase but sand fleas!"

CHAPTER IX

HARLAN WAKES UP

Gregg Harlan had watched with interest the Boreland's preparation for

departure to the island of Kon Klayu. For the first time in his life

he was doing some serious thinking; and ever since the Potlatch he had

been seeing himself in no complimentary light.

His chief source of self-disgust was his way of taking the information

that the Borelands, including Jean Wiley, thought him a squaw-man. In

his dejection his thoughts went back time and again to those few

moments of silent companionship when he had stood beside the girl in

the dusk and watched the funeral canoes come in. . . . Why hadn't he,

after the White Chief told him of his reputed connection with Naleenah,

why hadn't he followed Jean and explained? True, the shock and

surprise of the thing had momentarily swept him off his feet, but why

had he, in foolish reckless resentment against unjust circumstances,

rushed off instead to the cabin of Kayak Bill and taken glass after

glass of the stuff that had put him in such a state of oblivion that he

was unable to take any part in the Potlatch festivities? Since then he

had been too ashamed to approach either of the white women. He felt

that he must first do something to win their respect.

During his twenty-five years Harlan had been a drifter along the

pleasant ways of least resistance. This was, perhaps, because he had

never been called upon to shoulder responsibility. Six months before,

because of this tendency more than because he had been in love, he had

found himself involved in a foolish but unpleasant financial tangle

brought about by a plump, perfumed, pleasure-loving little blonde.

This small person from an eastern state had made his former knowledge

of the hectic night-life of San Francisco seem but a tuning up of the

orchestra before the overture. . . . After the inevitable parting of

the ways, he had found himself obliged to call upon his irate and

disgusted father for financial assistance. He had done this often

before--so often that this last episode, more scarlet than any of the

others, brought about a crisis. Later, penniless, but debtor to his

father only, he had departed under a cloud of paternal disapproval to

take the position of bookkeeper at faraway Katleean. It was then that

he decided he was through with women.

At the time he believed it, as all men do who make a similar decision,

but up here in the North he found that a white woman meant more to men

than in the States. After three months in Katleean a white woman had

come to stand for the cleanness and the decencies of life. He found

himself longing to be near and speak to these two visiting women of his

own kind. He had heard of the "woman hunger" of Alaska and recognized

in himself the symptoms of that state which causes even the most

hardened misogynist to travel a hundred perilous miles merely to look

on a white woman's face and hear her voice.

And music--the music of Jean's violin drew him like a magnet. Every

evening when she played on the afterdeck of the _Hoonah_ he slipped

down to the Point beyond the Indian Village and listened--listened

hungrily, with a longing to join her and explain his stupid innocence

in connection with the dead Naleenah. His youth called to hers, and he

wanted this clean-hearted girl to think well of him.

His drunkenness--but of course there was no excuse for that. He

despised weakness in a man, and he had thought a good deal about his

own of late. The episode of Naleenah had brought him face to face with

the grim realities attending his drifting.

Sometimes when he looked at Silvertip, lolling brutish and drunken on

the blankets of his bunk, Harlan had wondered what alcohol did for the

squaw-man. Once he had tried to outline to the one-time cook of the

_Sophie Sutherland_, the beauties, as _he_ saw them, of getting drunk.

He recalled now his sensations from the moment the alcohol began

creeping through his veins, softly, warmly, creating a glow about his

heart. Vistas then opened up before him. Romance and adventure

beckoned him. . . . Later, when the stimulant reached the centers of

his brain, like the sentient fingers of a musician touching the

keyboard of his soul, it produced golden harmonies from those keys

whose tones are love, rhythm, color, appreciation of the beautiful:

Inhibitions melted away in the amber light that enfolded him. Lovely

things he had read or seen or thought and kept to himself for lack of

expression formed themselves into words of exquisite simplicity that

were to his ear as pastel shades to the eye. He could sing then, as he

never sang at other times. Music that was felt, rather than heard,

swayed him, and his feet, his hands, his whole body longed to dance and

interpret this rhythm of the universe.

Afterward came oblivion, a sweet forgetting of all unpleasantness, a

divine sense of mingling without responsibility with the elements.

But lately, he admitted reluctantly to himself, even in his moments of

keenest alcoholic pleasure, he had been aware of an underthought that

his exalted mood must pass leaving him more colorless, more listless,

more inclined to drift than before. It took more of Kayak's whisky to

produce an effect now than it had in the beginning. Perhaps, in time,

he might even grow to be like Silvertip. . . . He shuddered. It

sickened and dismayed him to realize how the pale liquor had already

enslaved him--to what it might lead him.

Another thing troubled him also. Ever since the night of the Potlatch

dance which he had been too intoxicated to attend, something vague but

insistent at the back of his consciousness strove to make itself

remembered. Something he had heard in a half-drugged sleep. Something

about gold and Kon Klayu. An idea persisted that on him depended some

grave issue, but strive as he would he could not remember what it was.

Once, as he swam in the dawn below the Point in an effort to clear his

cloudy brain, he prolonged his course until he found himself close to

the hull of the _Hoonah_. It gave him satisfaction to find that

despite three months of heavy drinking at Katleean, his daily plunge in

the sea had kept him physically fit. He looked at the trim little

schooner cradling her sleeping crew. Green wavelets lapped against the

clean white side, and below the water-line the red of the bottom

glimmered. Her upcurving prow seemed to urge to sea adventures. He

wished he might go with Boreland to spend the winter on the Island of

Kon Klayu. But this, he knew, was not possible. He had work to do at

Katleean and it was time he was beginning it. And Ellen Boreland--he

was not unaware that she disapproved of him and did her best to keep

her sister from friendship with him. . . . But--he might make the trip

to the island and back to help Silvertip, whom Kilbuck had detailed to

pilot the _Hoonah_ to Kon Klayu. Silver was not fond of work. He

would welcome the extra help in bringing the vessel home again from Kon

Klayu. . . . Kon Klayu! The words tantalized him afresh with his

failure to remember the thing he should. Perhaps the sight of that

mysterious island, though he had never seen it, might bring back to him

the memory he sought. . . . He decided suddenly. When the _Hoonah_

sailed for the Island of Kon Klayu he would be aboard, even though he

had to go as a deck hand!

CHAPTER X

THE PIGEON

A morning came favorable for the departure of the _Hoonah_. Sunshine

flooded the peaks, the hills, the post of Katleean. A stiff easterly

breeze ruffled the bay into pale golden-green, and overhead long,

white, scarf-like clouds streaked the blue. "Mares' tails" Kayak Bill

called them, as he stood on the beach shifting his sombrero forward

over his eyes so that he might better engage himself in what is known

in Alaska as "taking a look at the weather," a proceeding which becomes

second nature to those who live in the North where travel depends on

wind, tide and atmospheric conditions.

The time of saying good-bye was at hand. Silvertip, with one of his

countrymen and Gregg Harlan were already aboard the schooner. The

White Chief stood on a driftlog watching Boreland load the last trifles

into a whale-boat some hundred yards below him. One hand was hooked

beneath the trader's scarlet belt; the other held an unlighted

cigarette. The wind ruffling the long dark hair on his bare head gave

him a lean and savage look.

Kayak Bill, who had been unusually silent all morning, left off

searching for weather signs, and sauntered over to him. His eyes

narrowed slightly as he looked keenly into Kilbuck's face.

"Chief," he said nonchalantly, as he drew his pipe from the pocket of

his mackinaw, "you and me's grazed conside'able on the same range. We

ain't never got in each other's way. . . . There's some things about

you I ain't no nature for a-tall--but you been purty square with

me. . . . Likewise I'm not goin' round tellin' all I know about you.

Everybody to his own cemetery, I say." The old man took his pipe from

his mouth and faced the trader again. "But before I go a-rampin' off

on this vacation o' mine, I want to say this, Chief: I'm not knowin'

nothin' but hearsay about this Island o' Kon Klayu--but--yars ago I

lost out in the matter o' family and I'm thinkin' a heap o' this

Boreland outfit now. I'm trustin' to you, Chief, not to ring in no

cold deck on 'em--or me. I'm figgerin' on seein' you at the Island o'

Kon Klayu in about six weeks with the balance o' the grub."

"You needn't be so all-fired serious about it, Kayak. I'll take care

of the grub all right. You say yourself that I've always played fair

with you."

"Yas, Chief," drawled the old man, "but they ain't never been no women

in the game before. Women and dogs is hell for startin' trouble. I

ain't blind, Chief. I can still see offen the end o' my nose."

The trader laughed abruptly.

"Well, old timer, you seem to be seeing off the wrong side this time.

Don't you worry, Kayak. I'll be along and get you about the middle of

October. Your revenue cutter friends will be gone by that time."

Kayak Bill was silent for a moment. Then with seeming irrelevance he

said slowly:

"One time . . . a long spell back . . . I knew a woman . . . and a

man. He cheated her, and--wall, I shot him dead . . ."

"Hey, there, Kayak!" came Boreland's shout from the whale-boat. "Come

lend a hand here a minute, will you?"

Kayak Bill waited a moment. Then shaking the ashes from his pipe he

restored it to his pocket and plodded down to the boat.

Farther along the beach a little group of Thlinget women had gathered

about Ellen and Jean to bid them good-bye. Senott, self-appointed

spokeswoman for her shyer sisters, was shoving forward a plump,

good-natured looking squaw, who handed Jean a pair of hair-seal

moccasins and a small Indian basket.

"She potlatch you," explained Senott, supplementing her

words with eloquent eyes and hands. "She like you,

Girl-Who-Make-Singing-Birds-In-Little-Brown-Box. She Add-'m-up Sam

'ooman. She go Kon Klayu long time ago. She sorry you go. No river

on dat island. No salmon, no tree, no mans. Only b-i-g wind! B-I-G

sea! She sorry you go." The plump widow stood by shaking her head and

making soft clucking sounds in her throat.

Leaving Jean to thank their Indian friends Ellen slipped through the

circle. Her conventional training evidently asserted itself, for she

turned now and went to say a few words of good-bye to their host.

She looked singularly small and attractive as she stood before him, her

blue eyes raised to his face, the sea-wind blowing her hair across the

pink of her cheeks. The trader stepped down from his log to greet her.

"I wondered if you would say good-bye to me without the presence of

your whole family," he said softly, bending his head. Many a squaw in

Katleean, after incurring his displeasure, had seen the same expression

in his eyes just before he struck her in the face with the flat of his

hand. "One might almost think you are afraid of me. But . . . though

you will not stay at Katleean, I'll always have something to remind me

of you." He slipped a hand into the pocket of his flannel shirt and

the sheen of Ellen's stolen lock of hair caught the light for a moment

before he buttoned the flap over it again.

Ellen, with a few stammered words, was backing away from him, her wide,

fearful gaze fixed on his face, when he reached out, and as if merely

to shake her hand in farewell, laid his iron fingers over hers in a

grasp that made her wince.

"Just a moment, my frigid little Lucretia." He spoke hurriedly: "I'm

letting you go now because the time is coming when you'll want me.

When you get aboard the schooner you'll find I have presented your son

with a pigeon. Take good care of it. It was hatched here--and it's

your only means of communicating with the mainland. And listen--" he

leaned down almost whispering the words--"When I want a squaw, I get

her. When I want a white woman, I get her. Remember the pigeon.

You'll want me. The pigeon, loose, comes back. I shall understand!"

He laughed, as if sharing with her the humor of some vile joke.

Ellen shrank back, her face flushing with outraged helplessness and

shame. She wrenched her hand free.

"All aboard! All aboard for Kon Klayu!" The cheery voice of her

husband rang out. She turned from the White Chief and ran.

The natives came forward in a crowd. Jean free-stepping, wind-ruffled,

met her halfway, and seizing her hand, the two hurried down to the

whale-boat. Friendly native hands shoved the boat off amid shouts of

good will and good-bye.

The rattle of the anchor-chain sounded as they boarded the _Hoonah_ and

made the tow-line of the whale-boat fast to the stern. The sails were

hoisted and a moment later the little craft listed slightly as she

caught the breeze. The entire population of Katleean waving farewell

followed along the beach past the Indian Village and down to the Point.

"Good-bye! Good luck!" shouted the few white men on the shore.

"_Tay-a-wah-cu-sha_! _Tay-a-wah-cu-sha_!" echoed the plaintive Indian

voices.

From the top of the cabin the Borelands waved back as the _Hoonah_

rounded the wooded point that shut out even the smoke from the

trading-post.

Sea-gulls white as the bellying sails, tilted against the wind in the

sunshine. A wedge of wild geese honked high on their way to southern

lands. Countless sea-parrots squattered away from the schooner's path,

dragging their fat, black bodies in splashing clumsiness across the

water. The wind freshened and the rigging strained and creaked as the

_Hoonah_ swung to the long, wrinkled swells of the open sea. Driven

ahead by the breeze she dipped and splashed sending showers of whitened

water away from her prow and leaving a wake of foam-laces behind her

like a veil.

Already the adventurers had left behind the creatures of their kind,

for Silvertip at the wheel was headed out into the lonely North

Pacific, laying his course for the Island of Kon Klayu.

PART II