THE INDIAN GIRL’S WARNING
Hours later Florence stirred uneasily in her sleep, then half-awake
murmured dreamily: “A ticket to adventure. That’s what he said, a
ticket—”
Conscious now that some disturbing sound had come to her in her sleep,
she shook herself into further wakefulness.
“Strange,” she murmured. “Everything is so strange.”
Indeed it was. The bed on which she and Mary slept was hard, a mattress
on the dock. About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.
“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was
the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail.
And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers,
modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this
new land be?
She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the
wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of
France were not new to her. But Alaska! How she had thrilled at thought
of it! She was thinking of all this when, of a sudden, she raised herself
on one elbow to listen. “What was that sound?” she whispered. It was
faint, indistinct, disturbing.
Then Mary sleeping at her side, did a strange thing. Sitting bolt upright
she said: “Don’t you want to kill him?”
For a space of seconds she appeared to listen for an answer. Then, with a
sigh, she murmured, “Oh! All right. Some other time.” At that, she sank
back in her place to draw the covers closely about her.
“Talking in her sleep,” the big girl thought. “Dreaming of the little man
in black. She—”
There was that sound again, more distinct now. “A child crying in the
night.” Florence listened intently.
“It’s such a low cry,” she thought wearily, creeping back among the
blankets. “It can’t be anything very much. There has been so much
crying.”
Ah yes, there had been children’s cries that day; rough, unkind words had
been said at times to the children. Little wonder, for they had that
day—hundreds of men, women and children—disembarked from a ship that
carried them far toward their promised land, the Matamuska Valley in
Alaska.
They had been dumped quite unceremoniously, a whole shipload of people
with cows, horses, dogs, cats, canaries, trucks, tractors, tents, lumber,
hardware, groceries, shoes, hammers, saws, and clothespins on the dock at
Anchorage. Men dashed about searching for tents and baggage. Women sought
out lost or strayed pets. Children had cried and above it all had come
the hoarse shout of some enthusiast: “On! On! to our new home! Three
cheers for Alaska!”
Over all this darkness had fallen. After a cold supper, having pitched
their tents and spread their blankets, they had stretched out on the
rough surface of the dock to sleep, if sleep they could. And now Florence
was hearing that distressing moan of a child.
“Near at hand,” she thought, raising herself on an elbow to listen once
more, this time more closely. “A strange sort of cry. Can’t be a child
from our party. I’ve heard them all cry.”
Indeed she had. The long journey half way across America, then along the
coast to Alaska had been hard on the children.
“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered once again. They had come here,
their little party of four, to begin life anew, to secure for themselves
a home and if possible, a modest fortune. Would they win? With God’s
help, could they? And was true adventure to be thrown in for good
measure? The girl thrilled at the thought, for, ambitious as she
undoubtedly was, she was human as well, and who does not feel his blood
race at thought of adventure?
However, at this moment something other than adventure called, the cry of
a child in the night. Florence dearly loved small children. She could not
bear to have them suffer.
“I—I’ve just got to get out and hunt her up,” she murmured.
With a shudder she dragged her feet from the warmth of the blankets,
slipped on knickers and shoes, then crept out into the cheerless night.
She did not have far to go. Huddled in a corner, out of the wind, she
discovered two blanket-wrapped figures. Girls they were, one small, one
large. Indians, she saw as she threw her light upon their dark faces.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, striving to keep her teeth from
chattering.
“Dog bite her,” the older girl spoke in a slow, deep tone. “White man
dog. Strange white man dog. Come steamboat this day.”
“Yes,” Florence moved closer. “We all came by steamboat. There are many
dogs. Too many! Let me see.”
The small child thrust a trembling hand from a greasy blanket.
“Ah!” Florence breathed. “That’s rather bad. Not very deep, but dog bites
are bad. It must be dressed. I’ll be back.”
Stepping quickly to the tent she poured warm water from a thermos bottle
into a basin, snatched up a first-aid kit, then hurried back.
“Here you are,” she said cheerily. “First we wash it. Then we dry it.
Then—this will hurt a little, quite a bit, I guess.” She produced a
bottle of iodine. “You tell her. Tell her it will hurt.” She spoke to the
older girl, who said some words in her own language to the attentive
child. When she had finished, Florence received her first reward—nor was
it to be the last—for this bit of personal sacrifice, the child fixed
upon her a look that registered perfect faith and confidence.
Florence applied the severe remedy. Then she watched the child’s face. A
single tear crept from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek.
It hurt, that iodine, hurt terribly for the moment. Florence knew that.
Yet not a muscle of the child’s face moved.
“This,” Florence thought, with a little tightening at the throat, “is the
spirit of the North. It is with this spirit that we all must face the
trials and dangers that lie before us in this world. If we do this, we
shall be real pioneers and we shall win.
“We shall win!” she whispered hoarsely, as standing erect, hands clenched
tight, she stood for a moment facing the bitter Arctic gale.
“Feel better now?” she asked, dropping again to the child’s side.
The child nodded.
“All right. Now we’ll bind it up tight and it will be fine.”
Five minutes later Florence saw the child’s head fall against her older
sister’s side. Her pain gone, her cry stilled, she had fallen asleep.
That was Florence’s second reward, but not her last.
As she once more crept beneath the warm covers in her tent, she felt the
slender arms of Mary, her cousin, close about her and heard her murmur
with a shudder: “It is so far and so cold!”
“She’s talking in her sleep again,” Florence told herself. Then, out of
sympathy for the frailer girl, she too shuddered.
Yes, it had been a long way and even though it was early June, it was
cold. Yet Florence thrilled at thought of it all. That journey, how it
had unfolded, first on paper, second in their minds, then in reality!
Mark and Mary had lived with their mother in the Copper Country of
Michigan. Because she had few relatives and was in need of a home,
Florence had joined them there.
No copper was being mined, so there was no work and, struggle as they
might, they had grown poorer and poorer.
Then had come word of what appeared to them a wonderful opportunity. The
government was to send two hundred or more families to the rich Matamuska
Valley in Alaska. They were to be given land and to be loaned money that
they might make a fresh start.
“Pioneers! They will be pioneers in a new land!” Florence, who was of
true pioneer stock, young, sturdy and strong, had exclaimed. “Why should
we not go?”
Why, indeed? They had applied, had been accepted, and here they were at
the seaport of the railroad that was to bear them on to their new world.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered softly to herself. “Tomorrow, to—” At that she
fell fast asleep.
If the scene of confusion on the dock at Anchorage with the trucks,
tractors, tents, and groceries had seemed strange, the picture before
Florence, Mary and Mark a few days later might, to a casual observer,
have seemed even more strange. Palmer, dream city of the future, lay
before them. And such a city! A city of tents. Yet, city of tents as it
was, it did not lack signs of excitement. This was the great day. On this
day the future home owners of this rich valley, surrounded by its
snow-capped mountains, were to draw lots for their tracts of land. Some
tracts were close to Palmer, some ten or twelve miles away. A few
settlers there were who wished for solitude in the far-off spots. Many
hoped for tracts close in, where they might walk into town for their mail
and to join in the latest gossip. Florence, Mary, and Mark had sensed the
bleak loneliness of distant farms during the long winter. They too hoped
for a spot close at hand.
“Now,” Florence whispered as, after a long time of waiting in line, Mark
approached the drawing stand. “Now it is your turn!”
Mark’s hand trembled as it went out. Florence felt her heart pause, then
go leaping. It meant so much, so very much, that tiny square of paper
with a number on it.
Turning away from the curious throng, Mark cupped his hand, then together
they all three peered at that magic number.
“One hundred and twelve!” Florence whispered tensely. “Here—here is our
map. Where is our farm? Here! Here! Let’s look!”
One moment of hurried search, then a sigh of disappointment. “Seven miles
from town.” Mary dropped limply down upon a stump.
“Might have been twelve,” Mark said cheerfully. “Bet there’s a bear or a
moose right in the middle of it waiting to be made into hamburger. But
then,” he sighed, “we couldn’t kill him. Can’t get a hunting license for
a year.”
Two hours later Mark and Mary with their mother and Florence close at
hand were listening to a tempting offer. Ramsey McGregor, a huge man from
the western plains, had drawn a tract of land only a half mile from town.
He had no cow. The Hughes family owned a cow, a very good milker. If they
would trade tracts of land and throw in the cow, they might have his farm
close to town.
“Think of it!” Mark cried. “Right in town, you might say!”
“Y-e-s,” Florence agreed. “But then—” Already she had seen quite enough
of the noisy, quarrelsome camp. And besides, there was the cow. Precious
possession, old Boss. Cows were dear—milk was hardly to be had at any
price. “And yet—” she sighed. Long tramps through the deep snow, with a
wild Arctic blizzard beating her back, seemed to haunt her. “You’ll have
to decide,” she said slowly. “It’s to be your home. I—I’m only a helper.”
Into this crisis there stepped an angel in disguise, an unimportant
appearing, dark-faced angel, the older of the two Indian girls Florence
had seen and aided back there at the dock in Anchorage. Now the girl,
approaching timidly, drew Florence’s head down to the level of her own
and whispered, “Don’t trade!”
“Why?” Florence whispered back.
“Don’t trade,” the Indian girl repeated. “Bye and bye I show you.” She
was gone.
“What did she say?” Mark asked. Mark was slow, steady, thoughtful,
dependable. Florence had no relative she liked so much.
“She says not to trade.” There was a look of uncertainty on the big
girl’s face.
“Greasy little Indian girl,” Ramsey McGregor growled. “What does she
know?”
“Might know a lot,” Mark wrinkled his brow. “What do you say?” he turned
to the others. “No trade?”
“No trade, I’d say,” was Florence’s quick response.
“Al—alright. No trade.” Mary swallowed hard. She had wanted to be near
town.
“Whatever you children want,” agreed the meek little mother. Life had
pushed her about so long she was quite willing to take the strong arm of
her son and to say, “You lead the way.”
“It’s a lot like playing a hunch,” Mark laughed uncertainly. “After all,
the claim we got is the claim we drew. Looks like God intended it that
way. Besides there’s old Boss. We couldn’t—”
“No, we couldn’t do without her,” Mary exclaimed. And so the matter was
settled. Somewhere out there where the sun set would be their home.
Two hours later Florence and Mary were enjoying a strange ride. From some
unsuspected source, the Indian girl had secured five shaggy dogs. These
were hitched, not to a sled, for there was no snow, but to a narrow
three-wheeled cart equipped with auto wheels. Whence had come those auto
wheels? Florence did not ask, enough that they eased their way over the
bumps along the narrow, uneven trail that might, in time, become a road.
The land they were passing over fascinated Mary, who had an eye for the
beautiful. Now they passed through groves of sweet-scented, low-growing
fir and spruce, now watched the pale green and white of quaking asp, and
now went rolling over a low, level, treeless stretch where the early
grass turned all to a luscious green, and white flowers stood out like
stars.
The surprise of their journey came when, after passing through a wide
stretch of timber, they arrived quite suddenly upon an open space.
“A clearing! A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”
It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect,
young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin,
standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many
a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the
clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks
swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.
“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence
across the threshold of the cabin.
The large room they entered was almost bare. A rustic table, two
home-made chairs, a great sheet-iron barrel, fashioned into a stove, a
few dishes in the corner, a rusted frying pan and a kettle, that was
about all. Yet, strangely enough, as Florence tiptoed across the
threshold she found herself listening for the slow tick-tock, tick-tock,
of an old-fashioned clock. With all its desolation there was somehow
about the place an air of “home.”
“Oh!” Mary breathed deeply. Then again, “Oh!”
A stout ladder led to a tall loft where a bed might, for all they could
tell, be waiting. At the back was a door opening into the small kitchen.
“Home,” Florence breathed again.
“Home,” Mary echoed.
Then together they tiptoed out into the sunlight.
Quite unexpectedly, the Indian girl spoke. “This,” she said, spreading
her arms wide to take in the cabin, the clearing and the lake beyond,
“this is it.”
“Thi—this is what?” Mary stammered.
“This,” replied the girl, “is your land.”
“No!” Florence exclaimed. “It can’t be.”
“But yes, it is your farm.” The girl smiled a happy smile. “This is the
number you drew.”
“Ours!” Florence whispered hoarsely. “An abandoned cabin, a clearing, a
lake! All ours! And to think, we nearly missed it!” Then, quite wild with
joy, she surprised the shy Indian girl by catching her up in her arms and
kissing her on the cheek.
At that very moment, as if it were part of some strange drama, there
sounded from the edge of the clearing a loud: “Get up! Go ’long there!”
and a traveling rig as strange as their own burst from the edge of the
timber.
A moment later, a little man on a high-wheeled, wobbly cart, shouted,
“Whoa, January!” to his shaggy horse, then sat for a full moment staring
at the three girls.
“You’re some of them new settlers?” he said at last.
Florence nodded. She was too much surprised to do more. The man, whose
whiskers had grown for months all untrimmed and whose hair fell to his
shoulders, looked as if he might have stepped from an illustration of Rip
Van Winkle.
“This your place?” he asked. Again the girl nodded.
“Well,” his eyes swept the horizon, “you’re lucky maybe—and then again
maybe not. There’s the clearin’ an’ the cabin, but maybe the cabin’s
haunted.
“No—no, not by ghosts!” he held up a hand. “By people who once lived
here. It’s a notion of mine, this business of houses being haunted by
living folks.
“But then,” his voice dropped. “Mebby they’re dead. Some sort of
foreigners they was, the ones that lived in this cabin. Came here durin’
the war. Lot of queer ones in the valley them days. Deserters, some of
’em. Some dodgin’ the draft. Some foreign spies.
“Big man, that one,” he nodded toward the cabin. “Big woman. Hard
workers. Not much to say for themselves.
“One day they’d gone. Where? Why? No one knows. Spies, maybe. Government
boat at Anchorage just at that time. Shot ’em, like as not, for spies.”
Florence shuddered.
“Maybe not,” the man went on. “Might come back—Chicaski was the name.
Russians.”
“If—if they come back, can they claim the cabin?” Florence was thrown
into sudden consternation.
“No-o. I guess not. Didn’t have no legal claim on it like as not. There’s
other deserted cabins in the valley, lots of ’em. Folks got discouraged
and quit. Raise plenty of things to eat. Can’t sell a thing. No market.
Trap fox and mink, that’s all you can sell. Folks want things that don’t
grow on land.
“Got to git along,” he exclaimed, clucking to his horse. “Live back there
five miles, I do. I’ll be seein’ you.
“Git up! Go ’long there!” The strange little man gave his shaggy horse a
light tap with the rein and the odd outfit went rattling away.
“Peter Piper,” said the Indian girl, nodding after the man.
“You mean that’s his name?” Florence asked in surprise.
The girl nodded.
“Oh!” Mary exclaimed. “And did he pick a peck of prickly pears?”
The Indian girl stared at her until they all burst into fits of laughter.
For all that, it was a sober Florence who journeyed back to Palmer.
Strange words were passing through her mind. “Maybe it’s haunted. Raise
anything. Can’t sell anything. No market—you want things that don’t grow
on the ground.” Her world seemed to have taken on a whirling motion that,
like clouds blown by the wind, showed first a bright, then a darker side.
What was to come of it all?
“A ticket to adventure,” she thought at last. “Perhaps that man was more
right than he knew.”