Now things were vastly changed. One hundred thousand deer ranged the tundra. Reindeer moss, eaten away in a single season, requires four or five years to grow again in abundance. Back, back, farther and farther back from shore and river the herds had been pushed, until now it was difficult indeed to transport food to the herders.
With these conditions arising, the rivalry between owners for good feeding ground grew intense. Many and bitter were the feuds that had arisen between owners. There was not the best of feeling between Bill Scarberry, another owner, and her father; Marian knew that all too well.
“And now maybe his herd is coming into our feeding ground,” she sighed.
It was true that the Government Agent attempted to allot feeding grounds. The valley her deer were feeding upon had been written down in his book as her winter range; but when one is many days’ travel from even the fringe of civilization, when one is the herder of but four hundred deer, and only a girl at that, when an overriding owner of ten thousand deer comes driving in his vast herd to lick up one’s little pasture in a week or two, what is there to do?
These were the bitter thoughts that ran through the girl’s mind as she rode up the valley.
The pasture to the right and left of them, and to the north, had been alloted for so many miles that it was out of the question to think of breaking winter camp and freighting supplies to some new range.
“No,” she said firmly, “we are here, and here we stay!”
Had she known the strange circumstances that would cause her to alter this decision, she might have been startled at the grim humor of it.
Just as Marian finished thinking these things through, her reindeer gave a final leap which brought him squarely upon the crest of the highest ridge. From this point, so it seemed to her, she could view the whole world.
As her eyes automatically sought the spot where the four reindeer had first appeared, a stifled cry escaped her lips. The valley at the foot of that slope was a moving sea of brown and white.
“The great herd!” she exclaimed. “Scarberry’s herd!”
The presence of this great herd at that spot meant almost certain disaster to her own little herd. Even if the herds were kept apart—which seemed extremely unlikely—her pasture would be ruined, and she had no other place to go. If the herds did mix, it would take weeks of patient toil to separate them—toil on the part of all. Knowing Scarberry as she did, she felt certain that little of the work would be done by either his herders or himself. All up and down the coast and far back into the interior, Scarberry was known for the selfishness, the brutality and injustice of his actions.
“Such men should not be allowed upon the Alaskan range,” she hissed through tightly set teeth. “But here he is. Alaska is young. It’s a new and thrilling little world all of itself. He who comes here must take his chance. Some day, the dishonest men will be controlled or driven out. For the present it’s a fight. And we must fight. Girls though we are, wemustfight. And we will! We will!” she stamped the snow savagely. “Bill Scarberry shall not have our pasture without a struggle.”
Had she been a heroine in a modern novel of the North, she would have leaped upon her saddle-deer, put the spurs to his side, and gone racing to the camp of the savage Bill Scarberry, then and there to tell him exactly what her rights were and to dare him to trespass against them. Since, so far as we know, there are no saddle-deer in Alaska, and no deer-saddles to be purchased anywhere; and since Marian was an ordinary American girl, with a good degree of common sense and caution, and not a heroine at all in the vulgar sense of the word, she stood exactly where she was and proceeded to examine the herd through her field glass.
If she had hoped against hope that this was not Scarberry’s herd at all, but some other herd that was passing to winter quarters, this hope was soon dispelled. The four deer upon the ridge, having strayed some distance from the main herd, were now only a few hundred yards away. She at once made out their markings. Two notches, one circular and one triangular, had been cut from the gristly portion of the right ear of each deer. This brutal manner of marking, so common a few years earlier, had been kept up by Scarberry, who had as little thought for the suffering of his deer as he had for the rights of others. The deer owned by the Government, and Marian’s own deer, were marked by aluminum tags attached to their ears.
“They’re Scarberry’s all right,” Marian concluded. “It’s his herd, and he brought them here. If they had strayed away by accident and his herders had come after them, they would be driving them back. Now they’re just wandering along the edge of the herd, keeping them together. There comes one of them after the four strays. No good seeing him now. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, and I might say too much. I’ll wait and think.”
Turning her deer, for a time she drove along the crest of the ridge.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” she said to herself, “if he’s already taken up quarters in the old miner’s cabin down there in the willows on the bank of the Little Soquina River. Yes,” she added, “there’s the smoke of his fire.
“To think,” she stormed, enraged at the cool complacency of the thing, “to think that any man could be so mean. He has thousands of deer, and a broad, rich range. He’s afraid the range may be scant in the spring and his deer become poor for the spring shipping market, so he saves it by driving his herd over here for a month or two, that it may eat all the moss we have and leave us to make a perilous or even fatal drive to distant pastures. That, or to see our deer starve before our very eyes. It’s unfair! It’s brutally inhuman!
“And yet,” she sighed a moment later, “I suppose the men up here are not all to blame. Seems like there is something about the cold and darkness, the terrible lonesomeness of it all, that makes men like wolves that prowl in the scrub forests—fierce, bloodthirsty and savage. But that will do for sentiment. Scarberry must not have his way. He must not feed down our pasture if there is a way to prevent it. And I think there is! I’m almost sure. I must talk to Patsy about it. It would mean something rather hard for her, but she’s a brave little soul, God bless her!”
Then she spoke to her reindeer and went racing away down the slope toward the camp.
It was a strange looking camp that awaited Marian’s coming. Two dome shaped affairs of canvas were all but hidden in a clump of willows, surrounded by deer sleds and a small canvas tent for supplies—surely a strange camp for Alaskan reindeer herders.
But how comfortable were those dome shaped igloos! Marian had learned to make them during that eventful journey with the reindeer Chukches in Siberia.
Winter skins of reindeer are cheap, very cheap in Alaska. Being light, portable and warm, Marian had used many of them in the construction of this winter camp. Her heart warmed with the prospect of perfect comfort, and drawing the harness from her reindeer, she turned it loose to graze. Then she parted the flap to the igloo which she and Patsy shared.
Something of the suppressed excitement which came to her from the discovery of the rival herd must still have shown in her face, for as Patsy turned from her work of preparing a meal to look at Marian she noticed the look on her face and exclaimed:
“Oh! Did you see it, too?”
“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” said Marian, puzzled by her question. Where had Patsy been? Surely the herd could not be seen from the camp, and she had not said she was going far from it; in fact, she had been left to watch camp.
“I’ve seen enough,” continued Marian, “to make me dreadfully angry. Something’s got to be done about it. Right away, too. As soon as we have a bite to eat we’ll talk it over.”
“I knew you’d feel that way about it,” said Patsy. “I think it’s a shame that they should hang about this way.”
“See here, Patsy,” exclaimed Marian, seizing her by the shoulder and turning her about, “what are we—what areyoutalking about?”
“Why, I—you—” Patsy stammered, mystified, “you just come out here and I’ll show you.”
Dragging her cousin out of the igloo and around the end of the willows, she pointed toward a hillcrest.
There, atop the hill, stood a newly erected tent, and at that very moment its interior was lighted by a strange purple light.
“The purple flame!” exclaimed Marian. “More trouble. Or is it all one? Is it Bill Scarberry who lights that mysterious flame? Does he think that by doing that he can frighten us from our range?”
“Bill Scarberry?” questioned Patsy, “who is he, and what has he to do with it?”
“Come on into the igloo and I’ll tell you,” said Marian, shivering as a gust of wind swept down from the hill.
As they turned to go back Patsy said:
“Terogloona came in a few minutes ago. He said to tell you that another deer was gone. This time it is a spotted two-year-old.”
“That makes seven that have disappeared in the last six weeks. If that keeps up we won’t need to sell our herd; it will vanish like snow in the spring. It can’t be wolves. They leave the bones behind. You can always tell when they’re about. I wonder if those strange people of the purple flame are living off our deer? I’ve a good mind to go right up there and accuse them of it. But no, I can’t now; there are other more important things before us.”
“What could be more important?” asked Patsy in astonishment.
“Wait, I’ll tell you,” said Marian, as she parted the flap of the igloo and disappeared within.
A half hour later they were munching biscuits and drinking steaming coffee. Marian had said not a single word about the problems and adventures that lay just before them. Patsy asked no questions. She knew that the great moment of confiding came when they were snugly tucked in beneath blankets and deerskins in the strangest little sleeping room in all the world. Knowing this, she was content to wait until night for Marian to tell her all about this important matter.
The house in which the girls lived was a cunningly built affair. Eight long poles, brought from the distant river, had been lashed together at one end. Then they had all been raised to an upright position and spread apart like the pole of an Indian’s tepee. Canvas was spread over this circle of poles. That there might be more room in the tent, curved willow branches were lashed to the poles. These held the canvas away in a circle. After this had been accomplished the whole inside was lined with deerskins. Only an opening at the top was left for the passing of smoke from the Yukon stove. The stove stood in the front center of the house. Back of it was a platform six by eight feet. This platform was surrounded on all four sides and above by a second lining of deerskin. This platform formed the floor and the deerskins the walls of a little room within the skin house. This was the sleeping room of Marian and Patsy.
A more cozy place could scarcely be imagined. Even with the thermometer at forty below, and the wind howling about the igloo, this room was warm as toast. With the sleeping bag for a bed, and with a heavy deerskin rug and blankets piled upon them, the girls could sleep in perfect comfort.
In this cozy spot, with one arm thrown loosely about her cousin’s neck, Marian lay that night for a full five minutes in perfect silent repose.
“Patsy,” she said, as her arm suddenly tightened about her cousin’s neck in an affectionate hug, “would you be terribly afraid to stay here all by yourself with the Eskimos?”
“How—how long?” Patsy faltered.
“I don’t know exactly. Perhaps a week, perhaps three. In the Arctic one never knows. Things happen. There are blizzards; rivers can not be crossed; there is no food to be had; who knows what may happen?”
“Why, no,” said Patsy slowly, “with Attatak here I think I shouldn’t mind.”
“I think,” said Marian with evident reluctance, “that I should take Attatak with me. I’d like to take old Terogloona. He’d be more help; but at a time like this he can’t leave the herd. He’s absolutely faithful—would give his life for us. Father once saved him from drowning when a skin boat was run down by a motor launch. An Eskimo never forgets.”
“How strangely you talk,” said Patsy suddenly. “Is—is the purple flame as serious an affair as that?”
“Oh, no!” answered Marian. “That may become serious. They may be killing our deer, but we haven’t caught them at it. That, for the present, is just an interesting mystery.”
“But what are you—where are you going?”
“Listen, Patsy,” said Marian thoughtfully; “do you remember the radio message we picked up three days ago—the one from the Government Agent, sent from Nome to Fairbanks?”
Patsy did remember. She had spent many interesting hours listening in on the compact but powerful radio set her father had presented to her as a parting gift.
“Yes,” she said, “I remember.”
“When did he say he was leaving Nome?”
“The 5th.”
“That means he’ll be at the Siman’s trading station on about the 12th. And Siman’s is the spot on the Nome-Fairbanks trail that is nearest to us. By fast driving and good luck I can get there before him.”
“But why should you?” persisted Patsy.
Then Marian confided to her cousin the new trouble they were facing, the almost certain loss of their range, with all the calamities that would follow.
“If only I can see the Agent before he passes on to Fairbanks I am sure he would deputize someone to come over here and compel Scarberry to take his herd from our range. If I can’t do that, then I don’t see that we have a single chance. We might as well—as well—” there was a catch in her voice—“as well make Scarberry a present of our herd and go on our way back to Nome. We’d be flat broke; not a penny in the world! And father—father would not have a single chance for a fresh start. But we will be ruined soon enough if we try to put up a fight all by ourselves, for Scarberry’s too strong; he’s got three herders to our one. The Agent is our only chance.”
For a long time after this speech all was silence, and Marian was beginning to think that Patsy had gone to sleep. Then she felt her soft warm hand steal into hers as she whispered:
“No, I’m not afraid. I—I’ll stay, and I’ll do all I can to keep that thief and his deer off our range until you get back. I’ll do it, too! See if I don’t!”
Patsy’s southern fighting blood was up. At such a time she felt equal to anything.
“All right, old dear; only be careful.” Marian gave her a rousing hug, then whispered as she drew the deerskins about her:
“Go to sleep now. I must be away before dawn.”
Two hours before the tardy dawn, Marian and Attatak were away. With three tried and trusted reindeer—Spot, Whitie, and Brownie—they were to attempt a journey of some hundreds of miles. Across trackless wilderness they must lay their course by the stars until the Little Kalikumf River was reached. After this it was a straight course down a well marked trail to the trading station, providing the river was fully frozen over.
This river was one of the many problems they must face. There were others. Stray dogs might attack their deer; they might cross the track of a mother wolf and her hungry pack of half grown cubs; a blizzard might overtake them and, lacking the guiding light of the stars, they might become lost and wander aimlessly on the tundra until cold and hunger claimed them for their own. But of all these, Marian thought most of the river. Would it be frozen over, or would they be forced to turn back after covering all those weary miles and enduring the hardships?
“Attatak,” she said to the native girl, “they say the Little Kalikumf River has rapids in it by the end of a glacier and that no man dares shoot those rapids. Is that true?”
“Eh-eh,” (yes) answered Attatak. “Spirit of water angry at ice cut away far below. Want to shoot rapids; boats and man run beneath that ice. Soon smashed boat, killed man. That’s all.”
It was quite enough, Marian thought; but somehow they must pass these rapids whether they were frozen over or not.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “that’s still far away. First comes the fight with tundra, hills and sweeping winds.”
Patting her reindeer on the side, she sent him flying up the valley while she raced along beside him.
These reindeer were wonderful steeds. No food need be carried for them. They found their own food beneath the snow when day was done. A hundred miles in a day, over a smooth trail, was not too much for them. Soft snow—the wind-blown, blizzard-sifted snow that was like granulated sugar—did not trouble them. They trotted straight on. There was no need to search out a water hole that they might slake their thirst; they scooped up mouthfuls of snow as they raced along.
“Wonderful old friends,” murmured Marian as she reached out a hand to touch her spotted leader. “There are those who say a dog team is better. Bill Scarberry, they say, never drives reindeer; always drives dogs. But on a long journey, a great marathon race, reindeer would win, I do believe they would. I—”
She was suddenly startled from her reflections by the appearance of a brown-hooded head not twenty rods away. Their course had led them closer to Scarberry’s camp than she thought. As she came out upon the ridge she saw an Eskimo scout disappearing into the willows from which a camp smoke was rising.
Marian was greatly disturbed by the thought that Scarberry’s camp would soon know of her departure. She had hoped that they might not learn of her errand, that they might not miss her from the camp. For Patsy’s sake she was tempted to turn back, but after a moment’s indecision, she determined to push forward. There was no other way to win, and win she must!
An hour later she halted the deer at a fork in the trail. Directly before her stood a bold range of mountains, and their peaks seemed to be smoking with drifting snow. Blizzards were there, the perpetual blizzards of Arctic peaks. She had never crossed those mountains, perhaps no person ever had. She had intended skirting them to the north. This would require at least one added day of travel. As she thought of the perils that awaited Patsy while alone with the herd, and as she thought of the great necessity of making every hour count, she was tempted to try the mountain pass. Here was a time for decision; when all might be gained by a bold stroke.
Rising suddenly on tip-toe, as if thus to emphasize a great resolve, she pointed away to the mountains and said with all the dignity of a Jean d’Arc:
“Attatak, we go that way.”
Wide-eyed with amazement, Attatak stared at Marian for a full minute; then with the cheerful smile of a born explorer—which any member of her race always is—she said:
“Na-goo-va-ruk-tuck.” (That will be very good.)
Since the time she had been able to remember anything, these mountains of the far north, standing away in bleak triangles of lights and shadows, smoking with the eternally drifting snows, had always held an all but irresistible lure for Marian. Even as a child of six, listening to the weird folk-stories of the Eskimo, she had peopled those treeless, wind swept mountains with all manner of strange folks. Now they were fairies, white and drifting as the snow itself; now they were strange black goblins with round faces and red noses; and now an Eskimo people who lived in enchanted caves that never were cold, no matter how bitterly the wind and cold assailed the fortresses of rocks that offered them protection.
“All my life,” she murmured as she tightened the rawhide thong that served as a belt to bind her parka close about her waist, “I have wanted to go to the crest of that range, and now I am to attempt it.”
She shivered a little at thought of the perils that awaited her. Many were the strange, wild tales she had heard told round the glowing stove at the back of her father’s store; tales of privation, freezing, starvation and death; tales told by grizzled old prospectors who had lost their pals in a bold struggle with the elements. She thought of these stories and again she shivered, but she did not turn back.
Once only, after an hour of travel up steep ravines and steeper foothills, she paused to unstrap her field glasses and look back over the way they had come. Then she threw back her head and laughed. It was the wild, free laugh of a daring soul that defies failure.
Attatak showed all her splendid white teeth in a grin.
“Who is afraid?” Marian laughed. “Snow, cold, wind—who cares?”
Marian spoke to her reindeer, and again they were away.
As they left the foothills and began to circle one of the lesser peaks—a slow, gradually rising spiral circle that brought them higher and higher—Marian felt the old charm of the mountains come back to her. Again they were peopled by strange fairies and goblins. So real was the illusion that at times it seemed to her that if worst came to worst and they found themselves lost in a storm at the mountain top, they might call upon these phantom people for shelter.
The mountain was not exactly as she had expected to find it. She had supposed that it was one vast cone of gleaming snow. In the main this was true, yet here and there some rocky promontory, towering higher than its fellows, reared itself above the surface, a pier of granite standing out black against the whiteness about it, mute monument to all those daring climbers who have lost their lives on mountain peaks.
Once, too, off some distance to her right and farther up, she fancied she saw the yawning mouth of a cavern.
“Doesn’t seem possible,” she told herself. And yet, it did seem so real that she found herself expecting some strange Rip Van Winkle-like people to come swarming out of the cavern.
She shook herself as a rude blast of wind swept up from below, all but freezing her cheek at a single wild whirl.
“I must stop dreaming,” she told herself stoutly. “Night is falling. We are on the mountain, nearing the crest. A storm is rising. It is colder here than in any place I have ever been. Perhaps we have been foolhardy, but now we must go on!”
Even as she thought this through, Attatak pointed to her cheek and exclaimed:
“Froze-tuck.”
“My cheek frozen!” Marian cried in consternation.
“Eh-eh” (yes.)
“And we have an hour’s climb to reach the top. Perhaps more. Somehow we must have shelter. Attatak, can you build a snow house?”
“Not very good. Not build them any more, my people.”
“Then—then,” said Marian slowly, as she rubbed snow on the white, frozen spots of her cheek, “then we must go on.”
Five times in the next twenty minutes Attatak told her her cheeks were frozen. Twice Attatak had been obliged to rub the frost from her own cheeks. Each time the intervals between freezings were shorter.
“Attatak,” Marian asked, “can we make it?”
“Canok-ti-ma-na” (I don’t know.) The Eskimo girl’s face was very grave.
As Marian turned about she realized that the storm from below was increasing. Snow, stopping nowhere, raced past them to go smoking out over the mountain peak.
She was about to start forward when again she caught sight of a dark spot on the mountain side above. It looked like the mouth of a cavern.
“If only it were,” she said wistfully, “we would camp there for the night and wait for the worst of the storm to pass.”
“Attatak,” she said suddenly, “you wait here. I am going to try to climb up there.” She pointed to the dark spot on the hillside.
“All right,” said Attatak. “Be careful. Foot slip, start to slide; never stop.” She looked first up the hill, then down the dizzy white slope that extended for a half mile to unknown depths below.
As Marian’s gaze followed Attatak’s she saw herself gliding down the slope, gaining speed, shooting down faster and faster to some awful, unknown end; a dash against a projecting rock; a burial beneath a hundred feet of snow. Little wonder that her knees trembled as she turned to go. Yet she did not falter.
With a cheerful “All right, I’ll be careful,” she gripped her staff and began to climb.
Hardly had Marian left camp when troubles began to pile up for Patsy. Dawn had not yet come when she heard a strange ki-yi-ing that certainly did not come from the herd collies, and she looked out and saw approaching the most disreputable group of Eskimos she had ever seen. Dressed in ragged parkas of rabbit skins, and driving the gauntest, most vicious looking pack of wolf dogs, these people appeared to come from a new and more savage world than hers. A rapid count told her there were seven adults and five children.
“Enough of them to eat us out of everything, even to skin boots and rawhide harness,” she groaned. “If they are determined to camp here, who’s to prevent them?”
For a moment she stood there staring; then with a sudden resolve that she must meet the situation, she exclaimed:
“I must send them on. Some way, I must. I can’t let them starve. They must have food, but they must be sent on to some spot where they have relatives who are able to feed them. The safety of the herd depends upon that. With food gone we cannot hold our herders. With no herders we cannot hold the deer. Marian explained that to me yesterday.”
Walking with all the dignity her sixteen years would permit, she approached the spot where the strangers had halted their dogs and were talking to old Terogloona. The dogs were acting strangely. Sawing at the strong rawhide bonds that held them to the sleds, they reared up on their haunches, ki-yi-ing for all they were worth.
“They smell our deer,” Patsy said to herself. “It’s a good thing our herd is at the upper end of the range!” She remembered hearing Marian tell how a whole herd of five thousand deer had been hopelessly stampeded by the lusty ki-yi-ing of one wolf dog.
“The reindeer is their natural food,” Marian had explained. “If even one of them gets loose when there is a reindeer about he will rush straight at him and leap for his throat.”
“That’s one more reason why I must get these people to move on at once,” Patsy whispered to herself.
To Terogloona she said: “What do they want?”
Terogloona turned to them with a simple: “Suna-go-pezuk-peet?” he asked, “What do you want?”
With many guttural expressions and much waving of hands, the leader explained their wishes.
“He say,” smiled Terogloona, “that in the hills about here are many foxes, black fox, red fox, white, blue and cross fox. He say, that one, want to camp here; want to set traps; want to catch foxes.”
“But what will they eat?” asked Patsy.
Terogloona, having interpreted the question, smiled again at their answer:
“They will eat foxes,” he answered quietly and modestly.
For a moment Patsy looked into their staring, hungry, questioning eyes. They were lying, and she knew it, but remembering a bit of advice of her father’s: “Never quarrel with a hungry person—feed him,” she smiled as she said to Terogloona:
“You tell them that this morning they shall eat breakfast with me; that we will have pancakes and reindeer steak, and tea with plenty of sugar in it.”
“Capseta! Ali-ne-ca! Capseta!” exclaimed one of the strangers who had understood the word sugar and was passing it on in the native word,Capseta, to his companions.
It was a busy morning for Patsy. There seemed no end to the appetites of these half starved natives. Even Terogloona grumbled at the amount they ate, but Patsy silenced him with the words:
“First they must be fed, then we will talk to them.”
Troubles seldom come singly. Hardly had the last pancake been devoured, than Terogloona, looking up from his labors, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A half mile up from the camp the tundra was brown with feeding reindeer.
“Scarberry’s herd,” he hissed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Patsy. “They dare to do that? They dare to drive their deer on our nearest and best pasture? And what can we do to stop them? Must Marian’s mission be in vain? Must she go all that way for nothing? If they remain, the range will be stripped long before she can return!”
Pressing her hands to her temples, she sat down unsteadily upon one of the sleds of the strangers.
She was struggling in a wild endeavor to think of some way out. Then, of a sudden, a wolfdog jumped up at her very feet and began to ki-yi in a most distressing fashion.
Looking up, she saw that three of Scarberry’s deer, having strayed nearer the camp than the others, had attracted the dog’s attention. Like a flash, a possible solution to her problem popped into Patsy’s head.
With a cry of delight she sprang to her feet. The next instant she was her usual, calm self.
“Terogloona,” she said steadily, “come into the tent for a moment. I have something I wish to ask you.”
The task which Marian had set for herself, the scaling of the mountain to the dark spot in its side, was no easy one. Packed by the beating blast of a thousand gales, the snow was like white flint. It rang like steel to the touch of her iron shod staff. It was impossible to make an impression in its surface with the soft heel of her deerskin boots. The only way she could make progress was by the aid of her staff. One slip of that staff, one false step, and she would go gliding, faster, faster, ever faster, to a terrible death far below.
Yet to falter now meant that death of another sort waited her; death in the form of increasing cold and gathering storm.
Yet she made progress in spite of the cold that numbed her hands and feet; in spite of her wildly beating heart; regardless of the terror that gripped her. Now she had covered half the distance; now two-thirds; now she could be scarcely a hundred yards away. And now she saw clearly. She had not been mistaken. That black spot in the wall of snow was a yawning hole in the side of the mountain, a refuge in the time of storm. Could she but reach it, all would be well.
Could she do it? From her position the way up appeared steeper. She thought of going back for the reindeer. Their knife-like hoofs, cutting into the flinty snow, would carry them safely upward. She now regretted that she had not driven one before her. Vain regret. To descend now was more perilous than to go forward.
So, gripping her staff firmly, pressing her breast to still the wild beating of her heart, and setting her eyes upon the goal lest they stray to the depths below, she again began to climb.
Now she began going first to right, then to left. This zig-zag course, though longer, was less steep. Up—up—up she struggled, until at last, with an exultant cry of joy, she threw herself over a broad parapet of snow and the next instant found herself looking down at a world which but the moment before had appeared to be reaching up white menacing hands at her. Then she turned to peer into the dark depths of the cave. She shivered as she looked. Her old fancies of fairies and goblins, of strange, wild people inhabiting these mountains, came sweeping back and quite unnerved her.
The next moment she was herself again, and turning she called down to Attatak:
“Who-hoo! Who-hoo! Bring the reindeer up. Here is shelter for the night.”
An inaudible answer came floating back to her. Then she saw the reindeer turn about and begin the long, zig-zag course that in time would bring them to the mouth of the newly discovered cave.
“And then,” Marian said softly to herself.
She was no longer afraid of the dark shadows behind her. In the place of fear had come a great curiosity. The same questions which have come to all people throughout all time upon discovering a strange cave in the mountains, had come to her. “Am I,” she asked herself, “the first person whose footsteps have echoed in those mysterious corridors of nature, or have there been others? If there have been others, who were they? What were they like? What did they leave behind that will tell the story of their visit here?”
Marian tried to shake herself free from these questions. It was extremely unlikely that any one, in all the hurrying centuries, had ever passed this way. They were on the side of a mountain. She had never known of a person crossing the range before. So she reasoned, but in the end found herself hoping that this cave might yield to her adventure loving soul some new and hitherto inexperienced thrill.
In the meantime she heard the labored breathing of the reindeer as they toiled up the mountainside. They would soon be here. Then she and Attatak would make camp, and safe from the cold and storm, they would sleep in peace.
A great wave of thankfulness swept over her, and with the fervent reverence of a child, she lifted her eyes to the stars and uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.
When the wave of emotion had passed, curiosity again gripped her. She wished to enter the cave, yet shrank from it. Like a child afraid of the dark, she feared to go forward alone. So, drawing her parka hood close about her face to protect it from the cold, she waited for Attatak’s arrival.
Even as she waited there crept into her mind a disturbing question:
“I wonder,” she said aloud, “I do wonder how Patsy is getting along with the herd?”
Turning from the group of strange natives, Patsy lead Terogloona into the igloo and drawing his grandfatherly head down close to hers, she whispered:
“Terogloona, are reindeer much afraid of native wolf dogs?”
“Eh-eh!” Terogloona nodded his head.
“Very, very, very much afraid of them?” Patsy insisted.
Terogloona’s head nodded vigorously.
“Then,” said Patsy, with a twinkle in her eye, “if we let one wolfdog loose, and he went toward Bill Scarberry’s herd, would they run away?”
“Eh-eh.Mebby. Want kill reindeer, that dog. Mebby kill one, two, three—many. Sometimes that way, wolfdogs.”
Terogloona’s horror of the thing she had proposed, shone in his eyes. Many years he had been a herder of reindeer. Many a dog had he killed to save a reindeer. His love for dogs was strong. His love for reindeer was stronger. To deliberately turn a wolfdog loose to prey upon a herd of reindeer, even an enemy’s herd, was unthinkable.
Patsy, having read his thoughts, threw back her head and laughed.
“We won’t do that,” she said soberly, “but, Terogloona, if each one of those strange Eskimo people should take a dog by his draw rope, and then they all should walk toward that old cheat’s herd, what would happen?”
A sudden gleam stole into the aged herder’s eyes. He was beginning to catch her meaning. The deer were upon forbidden ground. She was finding a way to drive them back to the place where they belonged.
“They would go away very fast,” he said quickly.
“And would these Eskimos do that; would they do it for two sacks of flour; two cans of baking-powder; two slabs of bacon and some sugar?” asked Patsy breathlessly.
“For all that,” said Terogloona, staring at her, “they would do anything; anything you say.”
“Go tell them they shall have it,” said Patsy. “Tell them they must drive Scarberry’s herd back to the Come-saw River valley where they belong, and that they may take their flour, sugar and other things along.”
The Eskimos crowded about Terogloona, listened to him in silence until he had finished, then burst into a chorus of “Eh-eh! Ke! Ke Kullemuk, Ke-Ke,” which Patsy rightfully interpreted as meaning that they were ready for the enterprise and that Terogloona was to bring on the reward.
It was a strange line of march that formed soon after. Seven Eskimos, each holding to a strap, at the other end of which a native dog reared and ki-yi’ed, spread out in a broad line, and followed by a sled drawn by the four remaining dogs, they started toward Scarberry’s herd.
As they came closer to the herd, the leaders of the antlered throng tossed their heads and whistled. As they came still closer there sounded the rattle of antler upon antler as the herd backed in upon itself.
The solitary herder, who had been left to watch the herd, looked at the on-coming members of his own race and then shouted at them angrily.
The Eskimos with the dogs marched straight ahead, appearing not to hear the shouts of the angry herder. In less time than it takes to tell it the herd was in full stampede. In vain were the shouts of Scarberry’s herders. In vain their herd dogs sought to stem the flight. The reindeer had scented their ancient foe; they had heard his loud ki-yi. They were headed for their home range, and would not pause until they had reached it. Marian’s hills and tundra were not for them.
As for Scarberry’s herders, they might remain where they were or follow. They chose to follow. An hour later, with a sigh of satisfaction, Patsy saw them driving their sled deer over the broad trail of the herd that had vanished.
“Will they come back?” she asked Terogloona.
“Mebby yes; mebby no,” said Terogloona. “Can’t tell.”
For a moment he was silent; then with a queer look on his face he said:
“One thing I am much afraid of.”
“What is that?” asked Patsy.
“Mebby not come,” said Terogloona, looking as if he was sorry he had spoken.
That was all he would say and Patsy felt a bit uneasy over his remark. Nevertheless, she could not help having a feeling of pride in her first day’s work as manager of the herd. Two serious problems had arisen and she had matched them against each other with the result that both had vanished. She had succeeded in getting rid of the unwelcome visitors and Bill Scarberry’s great herd. She had a right to feel a bit proud.