_A Mystery Story for Girls_
A TICKET TO
ADVENTURE
_By_
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
COPYRIGHT 1937
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Little Man in Black 11
II The Indian Girl’s Warning 19
III Seven Golden Candlesticks 37
IV The Great Stump 59
V Happy Landing 68
VI A Wanderer Returns 76
VII And Then Came Adventure 87
VIII A Secret Is Told 101
IX Help from the Sky 112
X In Search of a Grandfather 121
XI The Fresh-Dough Club 131
XII Her Great Discovery 139
XIII A Bright New Dream 149
XIV “They Are Off” 157
XV The Phantom Leader 165
XVI The Golden Quest 178
XVII The Black Seal’s Tooth 194
XVIII To Be or Not to Be 206
XIX Coasting Up Hill 216
XX Black Waters and Gray Dogs 227
XXI The Secret of the Great Stump 237
A TICKET TO ADVENTURE
CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK
Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage,
Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors,
groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite
suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in
her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than
she.
“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting
black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look
like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she
had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.
Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought
of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic
morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane
from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to
Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could
do about that. So—
“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”
To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.
“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about
this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.
“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”
“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home
is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.
“Then you—”
Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke
in upon them. “Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That’s good!” The
man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of
merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been
hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was
surprised and startled would not express it at all.
She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man
with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it
touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight.
There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap
him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was
little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those
slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and
her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.
Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just
now she stood quite still and waited.
“So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?” The stranger stopped
laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his
appearance.
“Shouldn’t want to meet him in the dark!” the girl thought with another
shudder.
“Want to know what he is, Miss?” the white man turned to Mary. “He’s an
Eskimo.”
“Oh, an—” Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.
“Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo.” The man filled his voice with suggestions of
loathing and utmost contempt. “Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating,
greasy Eskimo that lives in a hole in the ground. That’s what he is to
me. But to you he’s Mister Il-ay-ok. Bah!” The man turned and walked
away.
For a full moment nothing further was said. At last, in a steady,
school-book voice the little man in black said, “Do you know what my
people did to the first white man who visit our village?”
“No. What?” Mary stared.
“Shot him,” the little man’s voice dropped. “Shot him with a whale gun.
Very big gun. Shoot big shell. Like this!” He held up a clenched fist.
“Very bad man like this one. He talked too big,” the little man scowled.
“And would you like to shoot that one?” Mary asked, nodding toward the
retreating figure.
“Not now. Mebby byum bye. You see,” the little man smiled, “I go to visit
your country. I am—”
At that moment Florence Huyler, Mary’s big cousin came booming along from
behind the pile of goods, to cry: “Ah! There you are! I’ve been looking
everywhere for you.”
“Florence,” Mary stopped her, “this is Mr. Il-ay-ok. He’s from Alaska,
and he wants to kill a white man, but not just now.” She laughed in spite
of herself.
“But this is Alaska.” Florence, who was big and strong as a man, looked
at the little man and smiled as she asked, “Is this your home?”
“No—no,” the little man bowed. “Much more north my home. Cape Nome
sometimes and sometimes Cape Prince Wales.”
“Oh you’ve been in Nome?” Florence’s eyes shone. “My grandfather went
there years and years ago. He never came back.”
“Name please?” the little man asked.
“Tom Kennedy.”
“Ah yes,” the little man beamed. “I know him. Big man. Very good man.”
“What?” the big girl’s eyes fairly bulged. “You, you know my grandfather?
No! No! He is dead. He must have died years ago.”
“Not dead please. Tom Kennedy not dead,” the little man appeared puzzled.
“No not dead. Let me tell you.” He took a step toward them. “Very big
man. Very straight. Always smile. Let me show you.” To their vast
surprise the girls saw the little man produce from an inside pocket a
small, ivory paper knife. On its blade had been carved the likeness of a
man’s face. It may not have been a very accurate picture, there was,
however, one touch that could not be wrong, a scar above the left eye.
“Tom Kennedy my friend,” the native said simply.
“Tom Kennedy, my long-lost grandfather!” Florence stared in unbelief. “He
is dead. And yet, he—he must be alive!” She closed her eyes as she tried
to think clearly. Often and often as a small child she had heard her
mother describe this man, her grandfather. Often too she had seen his
picture. Always there had been that scar over the left eye.
“Mary!” she exclaimed, her voice rising high. “My grandfather is alive,
somewhere away up there!” she faced north. “I’m going.”
“Oh, but you couldn’t leave us!” Mary’s tone vibrated with consternation.
“You couldn’t leave us, not just now!”
“That—that’s right. I couldn’t—not just now.” The big girl’s hands
dropped limply to her side.
From the distance came the long drawn hoarse hoot of a steamboat whistle.
“Excuse please,” the little man who called himself Mr. Il-ay-ok bowed
low. “My boat please. I go to visit America. Perhaps please, we meet
again.”
With the swift, sure movement of one who has followed a dog team over
long, long miles or has hunted on the treacherous ice-floes, he was gone.
“No,” Florence repeated slowly as if to herself, “I can’t leave you now.”
For one full moment she stood staring at the spot from which the little
man had vanished. Here indeed was a strange situation. All her life she
had believed her grandfather dead. From her mother’s lips she had heard
vague stories of how he had gone into the north and never returned. Now
here was a little Eskimo saying, “Tom Kennedy my friend. Yes, I know him.
He is alive.”
“And he proved it too,” the girl whispered to herself.
Then, of a sudden, her thoughts came back to the present and to her
immediate surroundings.
“What a jumble!” she said, looking at the heap of goods that, as moments
passed, grew higher and higher. “How will they ever get them sorted out?”
Turning to her cousin, bright-eyed, eager Mary, she said: “‘A ticket to
adventure,’ that’s what the man back there in San Francisco called it, ‘a
ticket to adventure.’ Will it truly be an adventure? I wonder.”
“I hope so!” Mary’s eyes shone.
Turning, the two girls walked away toward a distant spot on the long dock
where a boy, who had barely grown into a young man, was struggling at the
task of setting up a small umbrella tent.
“See!” the big girl cried, “there’s Mark. He’s setting up our first home
in a wilderness.”