SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS
Three days later Florence found herself seated on the shore of the little
lake that lay at the edge of their claim. She was alone. “How still it
is,” she whispered. Not a leaf moved. The dark surface of the lake lay
before her like black glass.
“The land of great silence,” she thought. She shuddered and knew not why.
This was to her a strange world. All her life she had known excitement.
The rattle of elevated trains, the honk of auto horns, the drum of
airplane motors, all these seemed still to sound in her ears.
“Rivers,” she whispered thoughtfully, “have eddies. There the water that
has been rushing madly on comes to rest. Do lives have eddies? Has my
life moved into an eddy?”
She did not enjoy the thought. Adventure, thrills, suspense, mystery,
these were her favorite words. How could one find them here? And yet,
there was the cabin that lay just up the rise. Their cabin now, it had
belonged to others. Russians probably, spies perhaps.
“What if they come back?” Mary had whispered during their return journey
from that first visit. “What if they demand the cabin?”
“We’ll throw them out,” Florence had said, making a savage gesture. “I
wonder if we would?” had been Mary’s reply. Florence wondered about that
now. She wondered about many things. Why had she come to this place at
all? Because of her love for the little family, her relatives, Mary,
Mark, and their mother. Could love make people do things? She wondered.
Could it make them do slow, hard, drudging, everyday things? If it could,
how long would that last?
The thoughts that came to her there were neither sad nor bitter. They
were such dreamy thoughts as come after a long day of toil. They had
worked, all of them; oh! how they had worked getting settled!
“I—I’d like to go back, back to the city to the wild romance of many
people!” she cried to the empty air of night.
Then, of a sudden, she realized that she did not wish to go back, but
rather to go on, on, on, on into the North. For, as she sat there she
seemed to see again the little man, Mr. Il-ay-ok, and to hear him say,
“Tom Kennedy, yes, I know him,” and Tom Kennedy was her long-lost
grandfather.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “and I shall go!” Springing to her feet, she spread
her arms wide. Seeking out the north star, she faced the land over which
it hung. “Yes, Tom Kennedy, my grandfather, I am coming.
“But not now—not now,” she murmured. “One thing at a time. I have given
my word. I am to help these others win a home. Adventure, thrills,
mystery, romance,” she repeated slowly, “can they be here?”
Then as if in answer to her query, there came a faint sound. It grew
louder, came closer, the night call of wild geese.
“How—how perfect!” she breathed. “The lake, the damp night air, the
silence, then a call from the sky.”
She waited. She listened. The speeding flock came closer. At last they
were circling. They would land. She caught the rush of wings directly
over her head, then heard the faintest of splashes.
“Happy landing!”
But not for long. She was creeping silently away. They were pioneers.
Pioneers lived off the land. Here was promise of roast goose for tomorrow
dinner. Too bad to spoil romance, but life must go on.
Slipping up to the cabin, she took Mark’s gun from its place beside the
door. With her heart beating a tattoo against her ribs, she crept back.
Closer and closer she crept until at last she lay, quite still, among the
tall grass that skirted the pond.
“Where are they?” she whispered to herself. No answer, save the distant
flapping of wings. How was one to shoot a wild goose he could not see?
“Ah, well,” she thought. “I can wait. There will be a moon.”
Wait she did. Once again the strangely silent night, like some great,
friendly ghost, seemed to enfold her in its arms. Far away loomed the
mountains, close at hand spread the plains, and over all silence. Only
now and again this silence was broken by the flapping of wings, a sudden
challenging scream, the call that told her a rich dinner still awaited
her.
At last the moon crept over the white crested mountains. It turned the
lake into a sheet of silver. Dark spots moved across that sheet. They
came closer and closer. Thirty yards they were from shore, now twenty
yards, and now ten yards. The girl caught one long sighing breath. Then,
bang! Bang! Both barrels spoke.
A moment later, waist deep, the girl waded for the shore. In each hand
she carried a dead bird, two big, fat geese. Tomorrow there would be a
feast. Romance? Adventure? Well, perhaps, a little. But much more was to
come. She felt sure of that now. Her heart leaped as she hurried forward
to meet Mark and Mary, who were racing toward her demanding what all the
shooting was about.
“A feast!” Mary cried joyously. “A real pioneer feast. Thanksgiving in
June! The Pilgrim Fathers have nothing on us.”
Such a feast as it was! Roast wild goose with dressing, great brown baked
potatoes, slashed and filled with sweet home-made butter, all this topped
with cottage pudding smothered in maple sauce.
“Who says pioneering is a hard life?” Mark drawled when the meal was
over.
“It couldn’t be with such a glorious cook,” Florence smiled at her aunt.
When, at last, she crept up to her bed in the loft that night, she was
conscious of an unusual stiffness in her joints. Little wonder this, for
all day long she had wielded a grubbing hoe, tearing out the roots of
stubborn young trees. They were preparing their land for the plow. They
would raise a crop if no one else among the new settlers did. What crops?
That had not been fully decided.
As Florence lay staring at the shadowy rafters she fell to musing about
what life might be like if one remained in this valley year after year.
“A farm of your own,” she thought, “cows, chickens, pigs, a husband,
children.” Laughing softly, she turned on her side and fell asleep.
Five days later their first real visitor arrived. She was Mrs. Swenson, a
short, plump farm mother and old-time settler of the valley. She had
lived here for fifteen years.
Florence, who was churning while Mary and her mother were away in the
town, gave her an enthusiastic welcome. The handle of the old-fashioned
dasher churn went swish-swash.
“Just keep right on churnin’,” Mrs. Swenson insisted. “You don’t dare
stop or the butter won’t come.
“It’s the strangest thing!” her eyes roved about the large room. “The
Chicaskis—that was the name of the people who built this cabin—they
disappeared, you might say, overnight.”
“Oh! Did you know them?” the swish-swash stopped for a space of seconds.
“Well, yes and no,” Mrs. Swenson smiled an odd smile. “No one got to know
them very well. They left on foot,” she leaned forward in her chair.
“They’d had a horse. They sold that to Tim Huston. So away they went,
each of them with satchels in both hands. That’s all they took. It’s the
strangest thing.”
She paused. The churn went swish-swash. The little tin clock in the
corner went tick-tick-tick. Florence’s lips parted.
Then her visitor spoke again: “They had other things. Wonderful things. A
huge copper kettle and,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “seven golden
candlesticks. Leastwise, I always thought they was gold. She always had
’em up there above the fireplace, and how they did shine! Gold! I’m sure
of it.
“They might have took them. Maybe they did, the candlesticks, I mean. But
that huge copper kettle. They never took that, not in a satchel.
“I don’t mind admitting,” Mrs. Swenson’s tone became confidential, “that
those of us who’ve lived around here ever since have done a lot of
snoopin’ about this old place, lookin’ for that copper kettle and—and
other things.
“There are those who say they hid gold, lots of Russian, or maybe German
gold, around here somewhere. But, of course, you can’t believe all you
hear. And no one has ever found anything, not even the big copper kettle.
So,” she settled back in her chair, “perhaps there’s nothing to it after
all. Mighty nice cabin, though,” her tone changed. “Make you a snug home
in winter. Not like these cabins the other settlers are building out of
green logs. Them logs are goin’ to warp something terrible when they dry.
Then,” she threw back her head and laughed, “then the children will be
crawlin’ through the cracks, and with the temperature at thirty
below—think what that will be like!”
Florence did think. She shuddered at the very mention of it, and
whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the good God who had guided
them to their snug cabin at the edge of the clearing beside that gem of a
lake.
At thought of it all, she gave herself an imaginary hug. From without
came the steady pop-pop-pop of a gasoline motor. Mark was driving a small
tractor, plowing their clearing. They were to have a crop this first
year, for it was still June. Few settlers would have crops. They were
lucky.
She looked at her torn and blistered hand, then heaved a sigh of content.
Those small trees had been stubborn, some had been thorny. It had been a
heartbreaking job, but now all that was over. The tractor chugging
merrily outside was music to her weary soul.
The tractor? That, too, had been a streak of luck. Or was it luck? Mark
had always loved fine machinery. Because of this he had made it his
business for years to learn all about trucks, tractors, mine hoists,
motor-boats, and all else that came within his narrow horizon. When he
had asked down at Palmer about the use of a tractor the man in charge had
said: “Over yonder they are. Not assembled yet. Put one up and you can
use it.”
“Sure. I’ll do that,” Mark grinned. And he did.
Then they had wanted him to stay and set up others. He had turned his
back on this promising position with good pay. He had come to this land
to make a home for his family, and he was determined not to turn back. So
here was the clearing, ten acres nearly plowed. A short task the
harrowing would be. And then what should they plant?
“I’ll ask Mrs. Swenson about that after a while,” Florence promised
herself. Mrs. Swenson had come a long way and was to stay for dinner.
Florence had raised biscuits and a large salmon baking in the oven of the
stove they had brought up from Palmer. They were to have one more royal
feast. Three other guests were to arrive soon.
She smiled as she opened the oven door, releasing a wave of heat and
delightful odors of cooking things.
“Mr. McQueen’s an old dear,” she thought. “He’ll be the godfather of our
little settlement. I’m sure of that.”
Yes, the newly arrived settler whose land joined theirs at the back was
an interesting old man. Gray haired and sixty, he stood straight as a
ramrod, six feet four in his stockings. Strong, brave, wise with the
wisdom that comes only with years, he would indeed prove a grand
counsellor.
And there was Dave, his son, just turned twenty. “Slow, silent, steady
going, hard working, dependable,” had been Florence’s instant snap-shot
of his character; nor was she likely to be wrong.
Then, there was Bill Vale, whose land joined them on the west. How
different was Bill! A dreamer, at twenty-two he was more a boy, less a
man, than Dave. And Bill’s mother, who adored him, agreed with him in
every detail. The girl’s brow wrinkled as she thought of Bill and his
mother. How were such people to get on in a hard, new land? But then,
what was the good of shouldering the problems of others? They had
problems of their own. What were they to plant? That was their immediate
problem and a large one.
The meal was over and they were all seated before the broad, screened
door, looking away at the lake, blue as the sky, when Florence asked a
question:
“Mrs. Swenson, what shall we plant?”
Mrs. Swenson did not reply at once. The dinner they had eaten was a rich
and jolly one, just such a dinner as Florence could prepare. The day was
warm. Mrs. Swenson was fat and chubby. Perhaps she had all but fallen
asleep.
“Mrs. Swenson,” Florence repeated, louder this time, “what shall we
plant?”
“What’s that?” the good lady started. “Plant? Why, almost anything. Peas,
beans, carrots, beets, some oats and barley for your cow. May not get
ripe, but you cut it for fodder. Soy beans are good, too. And potatoes!
You should have seen our potatoes last year, four hundred bushels on an
acre!”
“Four hundred on an acre!” Florence stared. “That would be four thousand
on our ten acres if we planted it all to potatoes. Four thousand at how
much a bushel, Mrs. Swenson?”
“Why, dear, at nothing at all!” Mrs. Swenson exclaimed. “You can’t sell
’em. We haven’t a market. A few go to Fairbanks. Those are all sold long
ago.”
No market. There it was again. Florence’s heart sank.
“Potatoes and tomatoes,” Mark gave a sudden start. His face lighted as
the earth lights when the sun slips from behind a cloud.
“No,” said Mrs. Swenson, quite emphatically. “Not tomatoes. You’ll get
huge vines and blossoms, beautiful blossoms, that’s all.”
“Tomatoes,” Mark repeated with a slow, dreamy smile. “Bushels and bushels
of tomatoes.”
Mrs. Swenson stared at him in hurt surprise. “No tomatoes,” she said
again.
Florence favored Mark with a sidewise glance. She had seen that look on
his face before two or three times and always something had come of it,
something worth while. Like a song at sunrise, it warmed her heart.
Then, quite suddenly, the subject was changed. “I don’t see what’s the
good of a market. Not just now,” Bill Vale drawled. “The government’s
willing to provide us everything we need to eat or wear, and a lot of
things besides. Mother and I are getting a gasoline motor to run the
washing machine and a buzz-saw. No freezing at twenty below sawing wood
for me.”
“Nor me,” laughed Dave McQueen. “I aim to work too fast on our old
cross-cut saw to have time to freeze.”
“Fact is, Bill,” Mark put in, “in the end we’ve got to pay for all these
things.”
“Yes,” Bill laughed lightly. “Got thirty years to pay, start in five
years.”
“Well,” the older McQueen drawled. “Five years have rolled round a dozen
times in my lifetime. They all seemed strangely short. And when the
payments start, they’ll be coming round with ominous regularity. Mark and
Florence here have the right idea—keep debts down and get proceeds
rolling in at the earliest possible moment.”
“Tomatoes,” Mark said dreamily. “Bushels and bush—”
At that they all started to their feet. From somewhere just out of their
view had come the loud heehaw, heehaw of a donkey.
“What?” Florence sprang out the door. Then her lips parted in a smile,
for there before her stood one more odd character from this strange new
world: the oddest, she thought, of them all.
Tall, slim, white-haired, an old man sat astride a burro. And behind him
came two other burros heavily laden with packs. From one pack protruded
the handles of a pick and a shovel.
“A forty-niner,” Florence thought.
“A real old sourdough Alaskan prospector!” Bill exclaimed, wild with
enthusiasm.
“Whoa! Hello!” the old man shouted in one breath. “People livin’ here!
That’s bad for me. I’ve been camping here as I came and went for a long
spell.”
“The latch-string is still on the outside,” Florence laughed a welcome.
“We’ve got hot raised biscuits,” she encouraged. “Hot raised biscuits,
sweet, home-churned butter and plenty of coffee.”
“Hot raised biscuits.” The man passed a hand before his eyes. “And sweet
butter. Haven’t heard those words in twenty years. Came to Alaska during
the rush in ’97. Just out of college then. Been prospecting for gold ever
since. Found it twice. It’s all gone now. But there’s gold in them
hills.” His face lighted as he looked away at the snowy peaks. “Gold,” he
repeated softly. “Sure,” his voice changed, the light in his eyes faded.
“Sure. Hot biscuits and sweet butter. Sure, I’ll stop and rest awhile.”
“Well, folks,” Mark stood looking away at his partly plowed field. “I’ve
got to get back to work. Season’s short. Must get in our seed.”
“Bill,” he slapped the tall boy on the back, “you’ve got an acre or two
that’s nearly clear. You get busy and root out the brush. Then I’ll plow
it for you.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Bill scarcely heard. His eyes were on the prospector’s
pack.
“How about offering the same to us?” Dave asked.
“Sure,” Mark exclaimed. “But you got a hard forty to clear, all timber,
looks like.”
“We’ve picked a spot,” Dave drawled. “We’ve got strong backs and weak
minds, Dad and I have,” he laughed a roaring laugh. “We’ll have a garden
spot ready in two days. You’ll see.”
Florence flashed Dave an approving smile.
“Mr. McQueen,” she said quietly, turning to Dave’s father, “we’re having
some of the folks in for a sing Sunday afternoon. Mary will play our reed
organ, you know. Per—perhaps you’d like to say a few words to the folks.”
“Why, yes, I—” the old man hesitated. “I—I’m no orator, but I might say a
word or two. Good, old-fashioned time we’ll have.”
“Sure will!” Mark agreed.
While the others returned to their work, Bill lingered behind to talk
with the prospector. After laying out a generous supply of food, Florence
retired to the kitchen and the dinner dishes. Through the door there
drifted scraps of Bill’s talk with the old man.
“Ever really find gold?”... “Lots of times.”... “Boy! That must have been
great! I’m getting me a pick and shovel right now.”... “Take your time
about that, son,” the old man counselled. “But there’s gold. Plenty of
it. I’ll find it this time. Sure to.” His voice rose.
“Any bears up there?” Bill asked.
“Plenty of ’em. But I don’t bother ’em and they don’t bother me.”
“I’d bother them,” Bill cried.
“Yes,” Florence thought. “Bill would bother them.” She remembered the
high-powered rifle that decorated Bill’s tent.
“Temptation,” she thought, “does not belong to great cities alone. Here
boys are tempted to go after big game, to search for gold, to chase
rainbows.” Already Bill’s young brain was on fire.
To her consternation, she suddenly realized that her blood too was
racing. Had she caught the gleam of gold on the horizon? Would she listen
to the call of wild adventure until it led her away into those
snow-capped mountains?
“No,” she whispered fiercely. She had come to this valley to help those
she loved, Mary, Mark, and their mother, to assist them in securing for
themselves a home. She would cling to that purpose. She _would_! She
stamped her foot so hard the dishes rattled and Bill in the other room
gave a sudden start.
“Probably thought I was a bear,” she laughed low.
Then a thought struck her with the force of a blow. “He said he’d been in
Alaska since ’97. That old man said that,” she whispered. “Perhaps—” She
sprang to the door.
“Mister—er,” she hesitated.
“Name’s Dale—Malcomb Dale,” the old man rose and bowed.
“Oh, Mr. Dale,” Florence caught her breath. “You said you had been in
Alaska a long time. Did you ever know a man named Tom Kennedy?”
“Tom Kennedy! Sure! A fine man, but like the rest of us.” He smiled
oddly. “A little touched in the head, you might say, always looking for
gold.”
“And did—did he ever find it?”
“Yes, once, I’m told. Let’s see. That was, well, never mind what year.
They found gold, he and his partner, found it way back of the beyond, you
might say, and—”
“And—” Florence prompted.
“And they lost it.”
“Lost—lost it?” Florence stared.
“His partner, Dan Nolan, became ill. Tom Kennedy dragged him all the way
to Nome on a small sled. No dogs. Stormed all that time. No trail,
nothing. Got lost, nearly froze, but he came through. Powerful man, Tom
Kennedy. Good man, too, best ever. True a man as ever lived.”
“Oh, I—I’m glad.” Unbidden the words slipped out.
The prospector stared at her. “I said they lost the mine, never found it
again. Nolan died.”
“And Tom Kennedy, he—”
“He’s alive, far as I know. He’s always hunting that mine. Never found it
yet. But then,” the old man sighed, “there’s plenty of us like that up
here where the sun forgets to set in summer. Gets in your blood.
“Well,” he put out a hand, “I’ll get my burros started. I—I’ll be goin’,”
his voice was rich and mellow with years. “I shall not forget you. And
when I strike it rich—” he hesitated, then smiled a smile that was like
the sunset, “I’ll trade you gold and diamonds for raised biscuits and
sweet butter.” He stared for a moment, as if seeing a vision of the past,
then bowed himself out. He was gone. Bill went with him. How far he would
go the girl could only guess.
Left alone with her thoughts, Florence found herself wondering about many
things. Was there truly no market for the things they raised? As the
months and years rolled on, would there still be no market? Fairbanks, a
small city to the north of them, was in need of many kinds of food. Could
they not supply some of these needs?
Then, of a sudden, she recalled Mark’s words, “Tomatoes. Bushels and
bushels of tomatoes.” Why had he insisted, why repeated this word, even
after Mrs. Swenson had said, “no tomatoes”? Mark had something in mind.
What was it? She could not guess, but dared hope.
She recalled Mrs. Swenson’s words about the mysterious pair that had,
with so much labor, erected this cabin, cleared this land, then left it
all. “I wonder why they left?”
Then, “Seven golden candlesticks,” she murmured, “and a great copper
kettle. We could use that kettle.” After that, in spite of her desire to
be practical, she found herself searching the place from foundation to
the loft. All she found was an ancient Dutch oven, rusted beyond
reclaiming.
“All the same,” she thought, “it _is_ strange what became of that copper
kettle and—“ She did not allow the thought to finish itself. She had been
about to think “gold.” She knew that in this land one must not dream—at
least, not too much.