Suddenly her feet hit the floor with a bound. She had heard that sound once more. It was the drum of an airplane motor. She judged by the sound that it was circling for a landing, perhaps on their little lake. How wonderful! Was it their friend, the young aviator? Had he come for them? Her blood raced.
“Mary!” she fairly screamed. “Wake up! An airplane! And it’s going to land. It’s landing right now.”
They jumped into their clothes and were out on the cabin steps just in time to see the beautiful blue and gray airplane, graceful as any wild fowl, circle low to a perfect landing.
With mad scurrying, wild ducks and geese were off the water and away on the wing, leaving the intruders to the perfect quiet of a glorious autumn morning.
A short time later they were all at the water’s edge, Florence, Mary, Mark, Bill, and Dave. The hydroplane had been anchored. Three men had just put off in a small boat.
“Hello, there,” one of them shouted. “How’s the chances for sourdough pancakes and coffee?” It was Speed Samson.
“Fine!” Florence laughed. “Plate of hots coming up.”
“This is not to be our trip.” There was a note of disappointment in Florence’s tone as she murmured these words to Mary. “He’s got a hunting party. Probably going after moose or grizzly bears.” Nevertheless, she was ready enough to offer to the party the true hospitality of the north. Soon their plates were piled high with cakes, their cups steaming with fragrant brown coffee.
As Florence sat talking to them, one of the men, all rigged out in hunting belt filled with shells, riding breeches and high boots, seemed familiar to her. Who was he? For the life of her, she could not think.
It was Mary who dispelled her doubt. “Florence,” once they were alone in the kitchen, she gripped her arm hard, “that man’s the one who roared at the little Eskimo, Mr. Il-ay-ok, back there on the dock in Anchorage.”
“That’s right,” Florence’s whisper rose shrill and high. “I don’t like him and I don’t think I ever shall.”
“Why did he hate that little man?”
“Who knows?” Florence answered hastily. “Anyway, his name is Peter Loome.”
“How—how do you know that?”
Florence did not catch this, she was already hurrying away.
“We’re bound for the big-game hunting ground,” one of the men was explaining to Mark. “Wonderful sport! Wild sheep and goats, moose and big brown bear!”
“Man, you’re lucky!” Bill exclaimed.
Mark made no response.
“Your motor don’t sound just right,” Mark said as the conversation lagged.
“What’s wrong with it?” the young pilot demanded.
“Can’t quite tell,” Mark puckered his brow.
“Ever fly?” The pilot looked at him sharply.
“No-o. But then your motor’s just like the ones we had in some speedboats back in the Copper Country. I tinkered with them. You get to know by the sound,” Mark replied modestly.
“Want to turn her over once or twice?” the pilot invited.
“Sure. Be glad to.”
Two hours later grim, greasy, but triumphant, Mark emerged from the plane. He had located the trouble and had remedied it.
“Say-ee, you’re good!” the pilot was enthusiastic. “Want to go along as my mechanic? Grand trip! Shoot goats, bears, moose, and—”
“Can’t get away just now,” said Mark quietly. “Thanks all the same.”
Just the same, there was a look of longing in his eye that Florence knew all too well. He had two passions, had Mark. He loved growing things and wonderful machinery. Growing was over for this year. Dull, dreary days of autumn were at hand. For him, to spend two weeks or even a month watching over that matchless motor would be bliss.
“No-o,” he repeated slowly, almost mournfully. “I can’t go. There is still work to be done before snow flies.”
“Say!” Bill put in. “Take me. I’ll go.”
“Know anything about motors?”
“Sure, a lot,” Bill, never too modest, replied.
“All right. Get your things.” A half hour later, Bill sailed off to one more adventure.
“Yes,” Florence thought with a grim smile. “He’s spent two weeks felling green trees to cut with his new buzz-saw. Be fine wood in twelve months. But how about next January? Poor Bill!”
Strange to say, the one thought that often haunted both Florence and Mary was the realization that their splendid cabin had been built by someone else. That this someone had hidden a big copper kettle and, perhaps, seven golden candlesticks near the cabin, then had gone away, did not seem to matter. “What if they should come back?” Florence asked herself over and over.
Then, one bright autumn day, their dark dream came true. Busy in the kitchen, Florence did not notice the approach of a stranger. Only when she heard heavy footsteps outside did she hurry into the large front room. Then, through the open door, she heard a loud sigh, followed by the creak of a bench as a heavy person settled upon it. After that, in a voice she could not mistake, though she had never heard it before, there came: “Ah! Home at last!”
“Madam Chicaski, the original owner of the cabin,” the girl thought in wild consternation. “She has returned!”
When you buy a house, or even a cabin in the wilderness, how much of it do you really buy? All of it or only part? The walls, the roof, the floor, surely all these are yours. But all those other things, the little cupboard in the corner, all carved out from logs with crude tools, but done so well for someone who has been loved—do you buy this too? And all the other delicate touches that made a house a home, can you buy these or do you only try to buy these and fail? It was thus that Florence thought as she sat dreaming in the sun outside the cabin.
From within came the sound of voices. Her aunt and Madam Chicaski were talking. Already her aunt had come to love the company of this huge Russian woman who had first made this cabin into a home.
A week had passed and still the woman lingered. How long would she stay? No one knew nor seemed to care overmuch. She insisted on working, this stout old woman. And how she did work! When Mark began going to the forest cutting dead trees and dragging them in with the tractor for the winter’s supply of wood, she shouldered an axe and went along. Then how the trees came crashing down! Even Mark was no match for her. In five days a great pile of wood loomed up beside the cabin. High time, too, for the first flurry of snow had arrived.
That Madam Chicaski had a gentler side they learned as she talked beside the fire in the long evenings. She told of her own adventure on this very spot when the valley was all but unknown and life for her was new. Many things she told, tales that brought forth smiles and tears.
One subject she never touched upon, nor was she asked to tell, what had become of the great copper kettle, the seven golden candlesticks and all else that had been left behind. “If she stays long enough, in time I shall know,” Florence assured herself.
There were other things she did not tell. Why had she left the valley and how? Where was her husband now? This much was certain, she was not now in want. Florence had come upon her one afternoon unobserved. She was thumbing a large roll of bills. At the slightest sound she concealed them under her ample dress.
At times she acted strangely. She would go to the back of the yard and stand, for a quarter hour or more, contemplating the great stump. Over this, during the summer, morning-glories had bloomed in profusion. At that moment it was covered only by dry and rustling vines. At such times as this on the Russian woman’s face was a look of devotion. “Like one saying her prayers,” Florence thought.
There came a day when, for a time at least, all thoughts of the mysterious Madam Chicaski were banished from the little family’s thoughts. Mystery was replaced by thrilling adventure.
Once again the air was filled with sound. A large, gray hydroplane came zooming in from the west. They were waiting at the water’s edge, the Hughes family and Madam, when the pilot taxied his plane close in to shore. Florence was not there. She was away on a visit to Palmer.
“How would you like to paddle out and get me?” the pilot invited as he climbed out upon the fuselage.
Mark rowed out in their small home-made skiff.
“I’m on an errand of mercy,” the man explained at once, “and I’m going to need some help. Just received a message by short-wave radio that some men are in trouble up in the mountains.”
“Hunters?” Mark suggested.
“Yes.”
“In a blue and gray plane?” Mary’s dark eyes widened. How about Bill, she was thinking. Despite his shortcomings, Bill held a large place in slender Mary’s heart.
“Any—any one hurt?” she asked.
“One of the hunters has been badly handled by a bear,” the man went on. “Something’s gone wrong with their motor, too. They can’t bring him out.”
“Bear?” said Mark. “That’s sure to be Bill. He’d march right up and shoot a bear in the eye.”
“Yes—yes, it must be Bill,” Mary exclaimed, striving in vain to control her emotions. “We must do something to help him. What can we do?” Months shut away from the outside world had drawn their little company close together. Bound by bonds of friendship and mutual understanding, despite the faults of some, they were very close to one another.
“You can help a great deal,” said the pilot, “that is,” he hesitated, “if you’re willing to take a chance.”
“A—a chance?” Mary stammered.
“Sure,” the man smiled, “you look like a good nurse. Your brother, here, I am told, is a fine motor mechanic. Climb in the plane and come along with me—both of you.”
“A ticket to adventure!” The words so often repeated now echoed in Mary’s ears.
“What do you say?” Mark turned to her.
“There—there’s still work to be done,” she stammered.
“The work can wait. This appears a plain call of duty.” Mark’s voice trembled ever so slightly.
“All right. We’ll go.” Mary felt a thrill course up her spine. At the same instant she caught the eye of Dave Kennedy. In those fine eyes she read something quite wonderful, a look of admiration and yet of concern.
She and Dave had become great friends. Dave was a wonderful fellow. His Scotch mother was small, quite frail, yet altogether lovely. When their logs in their cabin walls had begun to warp, Dave and his father had sodded it up, quite to the eaves. Now they were all set for winter.
“I’ll look after your horse and cow and—and cut the wood,” Dave said huskily. “I only wish I might take your place.” He looked Mary squarely in the eye.
“I’m glad you can’t,” she laughed, looking away. “I’m sure it will be a wonderful adventure.”
“Cold up there,” suggested the pilot. “We shall need blankets and food. We may have to freeze in and fly out on skis.”
The Hughes family was not stingy. A huge cart-load of supplies was carried to the water’s edge, then ferried to the airplane.
“I stay,” said stout Madam Chicaski. “I stay until you come back. I look after everything.” Mary’s heart warmed to this powerful old woman.
“Goodbye,” she screamed as the motor thundered. “Goodbye, everyone.” A moment later, for the first time in her life, she was rising toward the upper spaces where clouds are made.
The moments that followed will ever remain like the memory of a dream in the girl’s mind. Though the motor roared, they appeared to be standing still in mid-air while a strangely beautiful world glided beneath them. Here a ribbon that was a stream wound on between dark green bands that were fringes of forest, here a tiny lake mirrored the blue sky, there a broad stretch of swamp-land lay brown and drear, while ever before them, seeming to beckon them on—to what, to service or to death?—were the snow-capped mountains.
So an hour passed. Swamps vanished. Jagged rocks appeared. Hemlock and spruce, dark as night, stood out between fields of glistening snow.
And then, with a quick intake of breath, Mary sighted a tiny lake. Half hidden among rocky crags, it seemed the most marvelous part of this dream that was not a dream. And yes—clutching at her breast to still her heart’s wild beating, she shouted to her silent, awe-struck brother:
“That is the place!”
Nor was she wrong. With a sudden thundering swoop that set her head spinning, the powerful ship of the air circled low for a landing.
“Now!” she breathed, and again, “Now!”
One instant it seemed they would graze the rocks to the left of them, the next the bank of trees to the right. And then—
“What was that?” Mark shouted suddenly.
As the pontoons of the plane touched the surface of the lake, there had come a strange ripping sound.
They had not long to wait for the answer. Hardly had the airplane taxied to a spot twenty feet from a shelving bank, when the plane began settling on one side.
“Tough luck!” exclaimed the pilot. “A little ice formed on the lake. Must have punctured a pontoon. No real danger, I guess. Those fellows should be here any—”
“Yes! Yes! There they are now!” Mary exclaimed, pointing to a spot where two men were putting off in a small boat.
The boat, she saw at once, was one used on their own small lake not so many days before. In a narrow cove she sighted the blue and gray airplane.
“Well!” laughed their pilot. “Here we are.”
“Yes,” the girl thought soberly. “Here we are. Two hundred miles from anywhere in a frozen wilderness. Two disabled airplanes. Food for a month. One injured boy. Fine outlook.”
The instant her eyes fell upon the men in the boat she experienced one more shock. Peter Loome, the man with a hard face, who hated all Eskimos, was there. She barely suppressed a shudder. Just why she feared and all but hated this man she was not able at that moment to say.
She was not one to see the dull gray side of life’s little cloud for long. The instant they reached the improvised camp she asked after the injured person and was not surprised to find that it was Bill.
“That bear,” Bill drawled as she dressed the rather deep wounds on his arms and chest, “took an unfair advantage of me. He could run a lot faster’n any man. And he ran the wrong way. Funny part was, when he got up with me, he wanted to hug me. If he hadn’t been badly hurt, he’d have killed me.”
“If you’d left him alone in the first place, probably he wouldn’t have bothered you,” Mary said soberly.
“No-o, probably not,” Bill replied ruefully.
“Oh, well,” one of the hunters consoled him, “you’ll have his skin for a rug back there in your cabin this winter.”
“Not for me,” Bill exploded. “I’ve been cold long enough. That cabin leaks air. Soon’s I get back I’ll be startin’ for old Alabam’, or at least some place that’s warm.”
Mary frowned but said nothing. Already she had come to love that valley where their cabin stood by the little lake. If it was her good fortune to return there in safety she would not ask for more. As for Bill, he had, she thought, brought all his troubles upon himself. But Bill was wounded and ill. What he needed, at the moment, was kindness and gentle care, not advice.
That night Mary and Mark sat down for some time beside a glowing campfire. Bill was resting well, would sleep, they thought, quietly. The others, too, had retired.
“Mark,” the girl’s tone was sober, “I’ve always wanted adventure. Most young people want adventure in one form or another, I guess. But when it comes—”
“It doesn’t seem so wonderful after all,” Mark laughed low.
“Well, no,” his sister agreed.
“May not be so bad after all,” Mark said cheerfully. “While you were taking care of Bill, we floated three large dry logs out to our damaged ship. We lashed them to the pontoon support. That means she won’t sink any more. And when we are frozen in, we—”
“Frozen in!” Mary was startled. She had realized in a vague sort of way that at this very moment the thin ice on the lake was hardening, that they could not hope to get away on pontoons, yet the thought of a forced wait was disturbing.
“How—how long?” she managed to ask.
“Perhaps ten days, perhaps a month. Depends on the weather.”
“Ten days, a month!” The girl’s head swam. Adventure! Surely this was it!
“But, Mark,” her voice was low with emotion, “so many things might happen. A storm may come roaring up the mountainside and—”
“And wreck the planes beyond repair. Yes, but we’ll do our best and we must trust God for the rest.”
“Yes,” the girl thought. “We must trust Him and do our best.”
Then, because she did not wish longer to dwell upon their own position, she forced her thoughts into other channels. She tried to picture the folks at home—mother, quietly knitting by the fire, Florence, if she were back from Palmer, poring over a book, and silent, occupied only with her thoughts, the strange Madam Chicaski.
How often she had wished she might read that woman’s thoughts. Did she sometimes think of the missing copper kettle and the seven golden candlesticks? If so, what did she think? What was in her mind as she stood for a long time staring at the great stump?
“We’ll get away from here,” the girl thought at last. “We’ll go back to our snug cabin and the joys of winter. How peaceful and secure we shall be. Let the wind roar. We shall be snug and warm.
“And Sunday! What a day that will be! The Petersons with the twins will come over in a bobsled, and the Dawsons in their home-made cutter. The Sabins have a dog team. What sings we shall have!
“Mark!” she exclaimed. “It’s too bad you had to give up training your dogs.” Mark had befriended five shaggy dogs deserted by settlers gone back to the States.
“Be back to the dogs before you know it. Besides,” Mark laughed a low, merry laugh, “there’s the cat. What the dogs can’t do, the cat can.” (He was speaking of his caterpillar tractor. They called these “cats” for short.)
“Yes,” Mary joined in the laugh. “But it will be truly thrilling to have a dog team. Wish we had it right now. Then if everything went wrong we could drive out.”
“Yes, but everything won’t go wrong.” Mark rose and yawned sleepily. “You’ll see.”
“Will we see?” the girl asked herself as, a quarter of an hour later, she crept beneath heavy blankets to lie down upon a bed of sweet-scented boughs. She knew their plans in a general sort of way. The gray plane carried skis. The blue and gray one had none. Mark and the pilots would work on the disabled motor of the blue and gray. If they got it working they would make skis for it. The two planes would take off on skis as soon as the ice was safe.
“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered. “When and how will our adventure end? Ah, well, Mr. McQueen says that so long as our adventure comes in the line of duty, Providence will see us through, so surely there is nothing to fear.” With this comforting thought, she fell asleep.
To Mary the days that followed were strange beyond belief. The beauty of mountain sunshine on glistening snow, gray rocks, and black forests was entrancing. The sudden up-rushing of a storm, threatening as it did to destroy their only means of escape, was terrifying beyond words.
Many and many were the times that she wished that it might have been Florence who had been whirled off on this wild adventure instead of herself. “She is so much stronger than I,” she said to Mark. “She has seen so much more of life and seems so much older.”
“You had your first-aid lessons in school,” Mark said, a note of encouragement in his tone. “This is one grand opportunity for putting them into practice.”
“Sure,” Bill agreed, overhearing the conversation. “I’m so tough you couldn’t kill me off any way you try.”
“I won’t try to kill you off, Bill.” Mary’s tone was all too sober.
“I know, Mary,” Bill’s voice suddenly went husky. “You’re one grand gal. I don’t deserve half I get, big bum that I am.
“But say,” his voice dropped to a mere whisper, “perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but I wouldn’t have got it so bad if that fellow Peter Loome had done his part.”
“Done his part?” Mary stared.
“Sure. Don’t you know? He was with me. Had a powerful 30-40 rifle in his hands. Saw the bear come after me when I fired and what did he do but stand right still and laugh! Roared good and plenty as if it was all being done in the movies. When I yelled at him he did limber up and get in a shot or two. I never did make him out. Something loose in his make-up, I guess.”
“Something sure,” Mark agreed solemnly. Right then and there he wished Loome had not chanced to be one of the party.
“Not a bit of help, that fellow,” he added after a moment’s silence. “Grumbles about everything, always demanding that we get going at once, insists he is losing a chance at big money by the delay. Then, when we give him an opportunity to help he bungles everything. I never saw such a fellow.”
“Big money,” Mary thought to herself. “Wonder if that has anything to do with Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, and that far north country?” She was to know.
Daily, under her nursing, Bill improved. Nightly, but oh, so slowly, the ice on the lake thickened.
Each day the men labored at the task of making the planes fit for travel. Mark’s genius for fixing things at last won over the sulky motor. Once again it purred sweetly or thundered wildly at man’s will.
Slowly, painstakingly, the men hewed from solid logs, skis for the smaller plane. Would these, cut from green wood, as they must be, stand the strain of taking off? They must wait and see.
To escape haunting, unnamed fears, Mary began exploring the mountain ledges. First she sought out a wild animal trail leading down, down, down, over tumbled rocks, through aisles of trees, over the frozen bed of a narrow stream to a spot where the land appeared to drop from beneath her. Creeping out on a flat rock, she gazed in awed silence down a sheer four hundred feet or more to the treetops of one more forest. Was the trail she found, made by wild sheep and goats, safe for men? She doubted it, yet the time might come when they must follow that trail or starve. She returned silent and thoughtful.
That night a storm swept up from the valley. All night her small tent bulged, flapped and cracked. All night she shuddered beneath her blankets, as she listened to the men shouting to one another down there on the frozen lake. They were, she knew, battling the storm, straining at guy ropes to save the planes.
At dawn the wind died away. The temperature dropped. As she drew her feet from the blankets she found the air unbelievably cold.
“Freezing fast,” she thought. “Just what we want if only—”
She did not finish. Instead, she hurried into her clothes and then, after racing to a rocky ledge, found to her consternation that, for a space of seconds, she did not have the courage to look down at the lake. That one look would be the answer to a question that meant great hope or near despair.
One look at last, then a drop to her knees as she murmured:
“Thank God.” The planes were safe.
Next instant she was on her feet and racing to camp ready to serve hot coffee and sourdough pancakes to the battlers of the night.
“Boo! How gloriously cold!” exclaimed the older of the two pilots. “A day and a night of this and we shall be away.”
There was still some work to be done on the plane. The storm had strained at every strut and guy. It was necessary to test all these and to tighten some. That night, after a hasty supper, the men made their way back to the frozen surface of the lake.
With Bill snugly tucked away in the tent at her back, Mary sat before a glowing fire of spruce logs. How grand was the night, after that storm! Not a cloud was in the sky. Not soon would she forget it, dark spruce trees towering toward the sky, gray walls of rocks like grim fortresses of some mythical giant, the cold, still white of snow and above it all, a great, golden moon.
“The North!” she murmured. “Ah, the North!”
And yet, as she thought of it now, they were not so very far north. She looked up and away at the north star and wondered vaguely about Florence’s grandfather, Tom Kennedy, way up there almost beneath that star. Tom Kennedy was not her grandfather, he was on the other side of Florence’s family, yet, so intimate had the relations between herself and her big cousin become, she felt a sudden, burning desire to accompany her on her quest for her grandfather, if indeed the quest was ever begun.
Had she but known it, Florence was at that very moment in Anchorage making inquiries regarding transportation to Nome. Only a few days before, Mark, having received his last payment for the summer’s crop, had pressed a crisp new fifty-dollar bill into her reluctant hand.
“You earned it and much more,” had been his husky reply to her protest. “You’ve been a regular farm hand and—and a brick.”
Fifty dollars! What could one not do with that? It seemed now that nothing much could be done. Had there been a boat, it might have been possible to secure steerage passage. There was no boat, ice had closed sea transportation for nine long months.
“Your only chance is the air-mail plane,” a kindly storekeeper assured her, “and air travel costs money in the north. Nothing like what it was in the days of dog-team travel, but plenty. Fifty dollars? Why, Miss, that wouldn’t buy oil for the trip. Better wait for spring. Then you can go by boat.”
Wait until spring? Nine months? Spring? That was time for work on the little valley farm. “Winter is the time for adventure,” she recalled the young aviator’s words.
“I’ll manage it some way. I—I’ve got to,” she turned suddenly away.
Meantime, in her mountain fastness, Mary was thinking of the long-lost grandfather and wondering vaguely about Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, when, catching a slight sound, she looked up to see Peter Loome sitting beside her.
This sudden discovery was startling. By the light of the fire this man’s face was more repulsive than by day. She wondered, with a touch of panic, why he was here. Then, reassured by the nearness of Bill in the tent and of her friends below on the lake, she settled back in her place.
For a long time they sat there in silence with the eyes of night, the stars, looking down upon them. Then, because she could endure the silence no longer, and because she truly wanted to know, Mary said, “Mr. Loome, why do you hate that little Eskimo who calls himself Mr. Il-ay-ok?”
“Why, I,” the man started, “I—well, you see, he’s in my way, er—that is, he wants to be. He won’t be long. I—” the man’s voice rose, “I’ll smash him!” His foot crashed down upon the rocks. “Like that!”
“Why?” Mary’s voice was low.
For some time there came no answer. In the sky a star began sliding. It cut a circle and disappeared in the dark blue of night. A streak of light reached for the milky way. Northern lights, the girl thought.
Suddenly the man spoke. “I don’t mind tellin’ you. You’ll never be up there,” he pointed toward the north. “None of you dirt-diggers down here will ever be up there where the north begins, where men and dogs fight fer what they git an’ ask neither odds ner quarters.”
Mary caught her breath as he paused. He is sort of a rough poet she thought. At that moment she almost admired him. But not for long.
“It’s the reindeer,” he burst out. “Eskimo’s got ’em. Too many of ’em. What does an Eskimo know about makin’ money? Nothin’! Then what’s the good of him havin’ all them reindeer? No good!” He spat on the snow.
“Well, at last the Government is seein’ reason,” he went on after a time. “The Government’s told the Eskimo they gotta take their reindeer back—back—back, way back to the mountains where there’s plenty of feed.
“Think the Eskimos’ll do it?” He squinted his eyes at her. “Narry a one. They’ll stick to the shore. They’ll hunt seal an’ walrus, or starve. That’s where their homes is, on the coast, allus has been, allus will be.
“So,” his voice dropped. “So they’ll sell their reindeer, sell ’em cheap. And who’ll buy? Me! Me and my company. We got money. We’ll get rich on reindeer. Reindeer!” Leaping to his feet, he started pacing like some wild beast before the fire.
“This Il-ay-ok,” he went on after a time. “He thinks he can stop us. He’s educated. Think of it! Educated! An Eskimo educated!” he laughed hoarsely.
“He seemed such a nice, polite little man,” Mary ventured.
“Well, maybe he is. Polite!” one more burst of laughter. “But he won’t get nowhere with politeness. He’s outside now, down in Washington. The last boat’s come from up yonder. No more for nine months. Reindeer got to get into the mountains before this old year dies. What can this polite Il-ay-ok do about that?”
“There are airplanes,” Mary suggested.
“Yes. Like them down there!” the man exploded. “I wish to—they’d get the things going. He might escape me, your polite, greasy little Es-ki-mo.
“‘Dear little Es-ki-mo,’” he chanted hoarsely, “‘Leave all your ice and snow. Come play with me.’ I used to sing that in school. Can you e-mag-ine!” His laugh rose louder than before. Then, of a sudden, it faded. Footsteps were heard approaching.
“Well,” Mark said cheerfully. “Everything is O. K. We’ll be out of here in twenty-four hours.”
“Good! That-a-boy!” Peter Loome patted him on the back.
As for Mary, she suddenly found herself wishing that their stay here might be prolonged, she was thinking of the polite little man who called himself “Mr. Il-ay-ok.”
True to Mark’s prophecy, dawn of the following day found them on the move. By the light of a candle, hotcakes and coffee had been stowed away under their belts. Now they were ready to pack up.
As Mary stepped from the tent her eyes fell upon a pair of lifeless eyes that seemed to stare down upon her. One of the hunters had killed a moose. All this time, well out of the reach of thieving wild creatures, its head had hung there in a tree. It seemed now a little strange that those dead eyes could give her such a start.
“Nonsense!” she whispered, stamping her foot. “Enough to dread without that.” And indeed there was. Despite the fact that the men agreed on the solidness of the ice, she dreaded the take-off. What if the ice were thinner in some places than at others? What if it should give way at just the wrong time? What of the planes? Were they truly fit for service? And what of those hand-made skis? All these fears were banished by the excitement of breaking camp. Tents were taken down, bedding was made into bundles, and bags were packed. Bill, now quite able to walk, but with arms still smothered in bandages, was helped down the trail.
Mary thrilled anew as she approached the small blue and gray plane. “A ticket to adventure,” she whispered for the hundredth time. Then her face sobered. Was this to be the end of adventure or only its beginning? An hour’s safe flying would bring them to the cabin where there awaited dishes to wash, beds to make, paths to shovel, all the daily round. “Yes,” she told herself with renewed interest, “yes, and Madam Chicaski to wonder about. Where adventure ends, mystery begins.”
One thing pleased her, she was to travel with Bill and Mark in the smaller plane. She liked being with her friends. She was very fond of Speed Samson, the smiling young pilot. She feared and hated Peter Loome.
“I am taking the hunters straight to Anchorage. They seem to be in one grand rush,” Dave Breen, pilot of the large gray plane, said. Then aside to Mary he whispered, “They’re paying me well. Hunt me up in Anchorage and I’ll buy you a hot fudge sundae.” Mary smiled her thanks. They were fine fellows, these pilots, just how fine she was later to learn.
The take-off was exciting. She shuddered as they glided over the ice. An ominous crack-crack-crack sent chills up her spine, yet the ice held. There had been a light snowfall. The snow was sticky, it would not let them go. Round and round the lake they whirled. Louder and louder the motors thundered. Then someone shouted “Up!” and up they went whirling away over the treetops.
Once again the glorious panorama of dark forest, gray crags, winding streams and blankets of snow lay beneath them.
“We’re going home! Home!” Mary shouted in Mark’s ear. Mark nodded soberly. He was listening. Listening for what? Mary knew well enough, for trouble, motor trouble.
“There will be no trouble,” she assured herself. Once again she thought of home. What a place of joy that once deserted valley of the North had become for them. She thought of the worried millions in the cities and scattered over the plain far to the south of them—worried millions wondering where the next week’s food supply was to come from. She thought of their well-lined cupboards, of their cellar bursting with good things to eat, then sighed a sigh of content.
This mood was short-lived. Even she caught and understood the strange shudders that shook the small plane. A moment of this and they went circling downward toward the shining white surface of a small lake. Once again her heart was in her mouth. They had left the higher altitudes where the nights were bitter cold. They were equipped with skis. Would this new lake be frozen hard enough for that? Scarcely time for these few flashing thoughts and bump—they hit the lake. Bump—bump—bump. What glorious bumps those were. They meant one more happy landing.
Dismounting, the girl stared aloft while the large gray plane circled over them. Once, twice, three times it circled through the blue, then, with a sudden burst of speed, like some wild duck that had heard the bang of a hunter’s gun, it sped straight away.
Florence was walking disconsolately back and forth along the pier at Anchorage early that same afternoon. She was deep in her own thoughts. Having gone for a visit to Palmer, she had been invited to come for a stay at Anchorage. Sending a note back to her cousins, she had taken the train for Anchorage.
Strangely enough, Mary had met high adventure, while she was meeting with bitter disappointment. She had so hoped that her lone fifty-dollar bill would somehow carry her to that charmed city of her grandfather, Nome, Alaska.
“No chance!” she murmured low. “Not a chance in the world.” And yet, she dared hope.
Now catching the drone of an airplane motor, she shaded her eyes to look away toward the east. Standing where she was, she watched the large gray plane come driving in, then circling low, make a perfect landing.
“Oh!” she breathed. “If only—” she did not finish, but marched soberly on her way.
Having made a round of the city’s stores, she was headed back to the home of her hostess. “Tomorrow,” she thought, “I shall go back to our happy valley.” But would it be so happy for her? When one longs to be in one place, can he be truly happy in another? Who knows? As it turned out, Florence would not be obliged to test her ability to be happy.
Of a sudden, as she walked along, she heard someone call: “Florence! Florence Huyler!” Turning about, she found herself facing a total stranger.
“You are Florence Huyler,” the man smiled.
“How—how did you know?” she gasped.
“If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have turned about so quickly,” he laughed. “Ever try calling out quite loudly, ‘John!’ at the edge of a large crowd? No, of course not. Just try it sometime. You’ll be surprised at the number of Johns that turn to answer.
“But that—” his voice changed, “that’s not the point. Suppose you heard of the accident?”
“Accident? No! I—” her face paled.
“Now, now! nothing to be excited about,” he warned. “You’ve been away from home so you haven’t heard. Your friend Bill got clawed up a bit by a bear. Say!” his voice rose. “Want to come in here and sit on a stool while I tell you? I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”
“Al—all right.”
Three minutes later, their feet dangling from stools, they were drinking coffee, munching doughnuts, and talking.
“So you see,” the aviator ended his story, “your cousin did me a mighty fine turn. I got a good fee for bringing those hunters out and so if you or he ever need a lift, just signal me by Morse code or any other way and I’ll turn my motor over P.D.Q.
“Of course,” he added, “I’m off to Nome tomorrow, but I’ll be back. Back before you know it. Not such a long trip that.
“But say!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” The girl’s face had turned purple.
“Choked! Well, I’ll be! Here, let me—” He began pounding her on the back.
“Just—just a—a—piece of dough—doughnut,” she managed to sputter at last. “Went—dow—down the wrong way.”
“Do you get that way often?” he grinned.
“Only when people tell me they’re going to Nome.”
“What’s so awful about that?”
“Awful? It’s glorious. If only—”
“If only what?”
“If only I were going!”
“And why not?”
Fishing in her pocket, she displayed her only banknote.
“That’s good money,” the pilot felt of it with thumb and finger.
“But not enough,” she shook her head sadly.
“For what?”
“A trip to Nome.”
“To Nome! You want to go to Nome? You’re off, child! You’re off right now. There’s just room for one more. Got the Bowmans to take up, three of ’em. Big reindeer people. Grand folks! Just room for you.”
“Tha—” Florence could not finish. She had choked again, but not on a doughnut. Mutely she held out the crumpled bill.
“Put it in your pocket, child,” his tone was gruff but kind, “you’ll need it. But say! Why do you want to go to Nome?”
“Got a grandfather up there.”
“And haven’t seen him for a long time,” he added for her.