ELLEN
The days passed. They were growing noticeably shorter now and provisions
were getting low. The trail up the steep hillside behind the cabin
became hardened by the feet of the watchers alert for the hourly expected
arrival of the _Hoonah_. At the top which they all had come to call the
Lookout, every hour of the day found some one of the party anxiously
scanning the ocean toward Katleean.
Many cannery steamers and whalers on their way south were sighted, but
all gave the Island a wide berth. The hundred reefs of Kon Klayu had no
lure for sailors of the North Pacific.
Boreland, who never failed to patrol the beach daily, found one more
patch of ruby sand, which the three men rocked out. He weighed the gold
after the clean-up.
"This sand is richer than the other batch, El!" he exclaimed
enthusiastically.
For a moment Ellen eyed the yellow gleam of the dust without interest,
then she leaned over and dipped her fingers into the golden flakes,
letting them fall slowly back into the scales.
"Shane, Shane"--she turned away and patted his arm maternally--"you are
like a little boy playing with wooden money." What value had gold on the
Island of Kon Klayu, she thought, where it could not buy an ounce of food?
To Ellen Boreland these were days of anguished conjecture, of harassed
indecision. As they passed with no sign of the _Hoonah_ she began to
recall her last week at Katleean. On the screen of her mind appeared
over and over again the White Chief's dark face, in her ears the voice of
memory repeated his softly-spoken, enigmatic words: "Remember . . .
you'll want me. . . . The pigeon loose, comes back . . . I will
understand."
The _Hoonah_ was overdue. . . . Was this then what he had meant? Was he
now holding the schooner believing that in her anxiety for the safety of
her loved ones she would release the bird? Was he trying to force her,
at such a cost, to buy from him the lives of those dear to her? . . .
Had he planned this thing from the beginning? Was he even now at the
post waiting--certain that eventually she must release the pigeon? The
picture unnerved her to the point of panic. And yet she tried to
reassure herself. No man, however cruel and pitiless, could deliberately
plan so monstrous a thing. She tried to find excuses for the non-arrival
of the _Hoonah_. . . . Perhaps the fall steamer had not come in on
time. . . . Perhaps some accident had happened and the White Chief was
having the schooner repaired. Surely he would come, if only to ascertain
the fate of his bookkeeper for whose safety Silvertip must account. But
Silvertip--had the Swede told the truth? Might he not have said that
young Harlan had preferred to stay behind and had been safely landed with
the party? Then it occurred to her with a fearful knowledge that to the
White Chief of Katleean the life of a man meant nothing.
While she went about her household duties there came to her again and
again the sound of the white trader's sardonic: "I have presented your
_son_ with a pigeon." Not to her, nor to Jean had he given the bird, but
deliberately he had made a present of it to her little boy that Loll
might innocently love and care for the thing designed to be the symbol of
his mother's shame!
To her harassed mind the bird came to have a hideous vitality. There was
something uncanny in the way it thrived in its captivity--as though it
fed on her distress. And almost like a conspiracy was the determination
of her loved ones to preserve it. Loll was devoted to it, especially now
since the death of Kobuk; it was his only playmate. Shane was
particularly zealous in his care of it, exercising the bird by means of a
long string, since Loll would permit no one to clip its wings. Even
Kayak Bill was always bringing it green stuff to supplement its diet of
rolled oats. Only Jean appeared indifferent to the bird--Jean, always
tender of dumb things. She had remarked, once, that it's smoke-grey
color reminded her unpleasantly of the eyes of the White Chief.
Sometimes, in a kind of fury, Ellen wondered if the pigeon bore a charmed
life--if it _could_ not die! Dead, her problem would be solved for
her. . . . Yet she dared not let it die. . . not while there was a
chance--! Standing before the cage day after day, Ellen would torment
herself with a thought. If she should leave the door unlatched, so that
it would jar open . . . if, of its own accord, the bird should fly away!
Then, when the White Chief came she could disclaim all knowledge of its
going. . . . But there was the lock of her hair, about which she had
lied to her husband. It was still in possession of the trader who,
secure in his power over everyone in his wilderness kingdom, was capable
of any melodramatic folly, of any false tale. And Shane, hot-headed,
protective--she shuddered. In her overwrought imagination she saw her
husband's hands stained with another man's blood. . . . No, the bird was
a kind of _thing_ fastened upon her which she could not, must not in all
conscience lose.
Torn by these conflicting emotions and sick with foreboding, she would
turn away from the cage. Tomorrow--she would wait until tomorrow.
Perhaps the Hoonah would come tomorrow. Perhaps it was even in sight
now! With hope and longing so intense that it bordered on despair she
would leave the cabin and climb to the Lookout to scan the empty sea.
One sunny afternoon she was standing there alone watching a dark streak
of steamer-smoke move slowly southward. Below her, stretching away to
the wide horizon lay the sea, its great, smooth swells heaving jade-green
in the sunlight. Autumn color lay over the tundra moss, the rice-grass,
the short alder bushes. Autumn, a soothing autumn was in the air,
promising the northern world of growing things a long, snow-enfolded
peace; but herself and her little family--what?
For some time she had half-consciously been aware of a strange encircling
hush. She looked about her and realized that nowhere was a seabird of
any kind. Then far out, a dark mass like a fallen cloud, challenged her
attention. Even as she wondered it rose into the air and began to
advance swiftly toward her, . . . it resolved itself into thousands of
small black birds.
"The sea-parrots!" Ellen spoke aloud in her surprise. "They must be
going south." She had not known that this would happen. She felt a dull
regret that it should be so.
With crimson beaks pointed south they came nearer and nearer, until,
flying directly overhead, they cast a shadow as if a cloud had passed
over the sun. The sky was black with them. Noiseless on the wing, there
was something ominous in the sea-parrot's silence during the quarter of
an hour in which they flew steadfastly over the island on their course.
Ellen watched them with an interest divided between wonder and awe.
Before they had passed an increasing wild chorus came to her ears. She
turned to face the north again where another cloud--grey-white--was
coming. She knew it to be composed of her noisiest neighbors, the gulls,
bound also for southern shores.
Over the island these birds sailed with gay squawkings, their wide wings
seeming to wave a contemptuous good-bye. It was as if they scorned, yet
pitied the human creature below who must stay behind because she had no
wings to bear her away.
The last call dimmed and died. Despite the lazy swash of the swells on
the beach below the sunny afternoon was heavy with silence. Ellen's eyes
swept the vast circle of the distance. The smoke of the south-bound
steamer was no more. Far down the tundra toward the cliffs stood the one
lone tree of Kon Klayu facing the sea like a waiting woman with long,
wind-blown hair. . . . An appalling sense of loneliness flooded Ellen.
A sudden, overwhelming need for human companionship swept her. . . . She
turned hastily into the trail that led down to the cabin--then checked
herself, as the sound of some one whistling came to her. She glanced
back.
Walking briskly toward her along the tundra trail that led from his Hut
to the Lookout came Gregg Harlan. He must recently have borrowed Shane's
razor, for the soft, dark beard that had shadowed his face was gone.
Bareheaded, he advanced swingingly, vigorously, his chin up, his whole
figure the personification of youth, confidence, and a new strength. For
the first time Ellen was glad to see him.
As she waited for him to approach she studied him with interest. He had
changed much since his landing on Kon Klayu. Under the rigors of
hardship, of physical labor, of abstinence, he had developed a clean-cut
masculinity that was strangely reassuring. She remembered how
unconsciously, during these past weeks, she had turned to him for the
steadiness which others had lacked; how instinctively she had counted on
him for a perception of the little things, the smaller needs, which are
so often the greater ones. After all, she reminded herself, in the day
by day stresses of life, it was this gift of understanding, of sympathy
with the innate needs, that counted so tremendously.
She pictured Jean, with her warm emotions, her love of the finer beauties
of life, thrown into the rough and changing currents of existence as the
wife of a man older, sturdier, perhaps, than Gregg, but without his
steadier gentleness. Ellen shrank instinctively from the thought. And
Gregg had changed--of that there was no doubt. There was no longer a
sign of his old subservience to the poisonous brew of Katleean; instead
there was every evidence that he was not another man, but in a greater,
stronger way, the man he had once been.
After all, Ellen thought, who was she to determine for Jean the sort of
man the girl should choose--she who had permitted herself compromising
entanglements with such a one as the White Chief! With Gregg Jean was
safer at that moment than was she in her own tragic situation--safer and
cleaner in her motives! . . . With something of appeal for the steadying
power of his friendship in her need, whose eventualities would be as
vital to Jean as to herself, Ellen turned with a new warmth in her manner
to greet the young man. Discussing the phenomenon of the bird migration,
she went with him down the trail to the cabin.
As they approached the house Lollie came rushing up from the beach,
holding something tightly in his little hand. He was shouting excitedly
and at his urging the family gathered curiously around him to find
themselves electrified at the disclosure of what the youngster held. It
was a nugget, fully an ounce in weight! He had found it, he explained,
on the bedrock below Bear Paw Lake.
Boreland went off immediately to prospect with Kayak Bill and Harlan.
Contrary to all previous experience, this gold had not been uncovered by
a storm--there had been no storm. Then there must be a place where the
yellow metal lay otherwise revealed. Somewhere on the Island must be a
mine of gold. Harlan, who had spent an inattentive year at a school of
mines before he was requested to leave, began to take an interest in the
situation.
Shane returned that night long after the others, without having found
another sign. Nor was he any more successful, when day after day he
continued to patrol the beaches, though his faith in the sands of Kon
Klayu remained unshaken.
Ellen and he were returning one afternoon, from Skeleton Rib where they
had gone to look for pay-sand. He had recovered the use of his sprained
wrist and had brought along the shotgun. Opposite the little lake in
this vicinity they turned in from the beach. A drizzling rain had begun
to fall. The dead yellow grass lay flat on the ground. The bare brown
branches of the alders were hung with globules of water which fell,
wetting Ellen as she brushed through them. Out on the lake she caught
glimpses of a flock of belated mallards, but since there was now no
upstanding vegetation it was difficult for the hunters to hide their
approach. Crouching low behind an alder Ellen watched Shane creep up
within shooting range. Since the gun was an old thing held together by
copper wire, and went off at the slightest jar it was impossible to carry
it loaded. Shane paused, inserted the shells, raised the piece and took
careful aim. There came a loud report, a whirr of wings, and the next
instant Shane fell backward, one hand flung upward to his head.
Ellen sprang to where he lay motionless, blood streaming down one side of
his face. Even in her anguish she noted that the gun barrels had burst
from the force of overloaded shells. Swiftly she plunged her
handkerchief into the water and uttering incoherent entreaties and
endearing names, began to bathe his face which already was beginning to
swell.
For what seemed a long time Shane did not move. Frantically she tore a
strip from her lawn chemise and bound up his head to stop the flow of
blood. Then with all her strength she sought to raise him from the
grass. His head fell limply back exposing his bare brown throat to the
falling rain.
"Shane . . . Shane . . . O, help me, dear! Please!" Cold fear gripped
her and made her voice tremble. She struggled once more to raise his
heavy body. She was unable to lift him. Calling him, imploring him, she
tried again and again, until at last he sat up slowly, groaning and
putting both hands to the bloody bandage about his head.
"Come, dear--" her voice broke as her shaking hands tried to assist him.
"We must go home, Shane. Come now." As if he were a child she coaxed
and encouraged the stunned man until he rose painfully, swayed, and
steadied himself against her. After a lurching step or two he managed to
keep his feet and in silence that struck to her heart, he suffered her to
lead him along through the soft, drizzling rain.
Ellen found only Harlan at the cabin. Without a question the young man
sprang to her assistance. He helped Shane into the house and to bed.
The last of the antiseptic had been used for Kobuk. Ellen ran for the
clear water from the hard-wood ashes--the Indian antiseptic which Kayak
Bill had induced her to make, and while she held the basin Harlan washed
the blood from her husband's face. The sight of the wound sickened her.
Just below Shane's right eye was a livid gash two inches long.
What could she do? In some way stitches must be taken to draw the edges
together, but how? She had nothing but ordinary needles and thread. She
blamed herself bitterly for leaving Katleean without a medicine chest. A
moment she thought of that one, ordered from the States, which was to
arrive on the _Hoonah_. Then again she set her mind to the solution of
the problem before her. . . . It came to her in a flash, one of Kayak
Bill's tales of an Eskimo woman's ingenuity!
"Gregg!" She spoke firmly. "Hand me the scissors." She took the
hairpins from her hair and it fell in a heavy coil to her waist. Harlan
eyed her as though he feared she had suddenly gone insane when she cut a
strand of hair and held it up to him.
"We'll boil this and some needles, Gregg," she continued quietly, "and
when they are sterilized you must help me put the stitches in this
wound." . . .
Half an hour later it was over. Shane lay back on his pillow. Ellen
watched beside him stroking his hand which lay twitching on the coverlet.
Something in the outline of her husband's long, still body under the
blankets chilled her with foreboding. Heretofore the thought of hunger
only had been with her. Now, should sickness or further accidents come
upon them . . . Should Shane develop blood-poisoning . . .
Like one doomed Ellen's eyes sought the wall calendar. NOVEMBER 1 met
her gaze with the force of a blow. The _Hoonah_ was already two weeks
overdue!
Suddenly she bent and rested her head against the blankets, pressing her
quivering lips fiercely, passionately against her husband's thin hand.
Tomorrow . . . Tomorrow she must--she _would_ release the pigeon!