“10 - 10 = 0,” she marked on the floor with a bit of charcoal. “We are minus a few eatables but we can spare them all right. Besides, it’s real satisfying to know that you’ve given several hungry people an opportunity to earn a week’s provisions.”
Had she known the full and final effect of that week’s provisions, she might have experienced some moments of uncomfortable thinking. Lacking that knowledge, she smiled as she busied herself with preparing a belated breakfast for Terogloona and herself.
To Attatak, whose mind was filled with the weird tales of the spirit world, to enter a cave away on this unknown mountain side was a far greater trial than it was to Marian. Cold, blizzards, the wild beasts of timberlands—these she could face; but the possible dwelling place of the spirits of dead polar bears and walruses, to say nothing of old women who had died because they had disregarded the incantations of witch doctors, “Ugh!”—this was very bad indeed.
Marian felt the native girl tremble as she took her arm and led her gently forward into the dark depths of the cave.
The entrance was not wide, perhaps twelve feet across, but it was fully as high as it was broad.
“Our deer can come in, too,” whispered Marian, “if it goes back far enough.”
“If there are no wolves,” said Attatak with a shudder.
“Wolves?” Marian had not thought of that. “You wait here,” she whispered. “I’ll go for the rifle.”
“No! No!” Attatak gripped her arm until it hurt. “I will go, too.”
So back out of the cave they felt their way, now tripping over rocks that rolled away with a hollow sound like distant thunder, now brushing the wall, till they came at last to the open air.
Marian hated all this delay. Famished with hunger, chilled to the very marrow, and weary enough to drop, she longed for the warmth of the fire she hoped they might light, for the food they would warm over it, and the comforting rest that would follow. Yet she realized that the utmost caution must be taken. Wolves, once driven from a cave, might stampede their reindeer and lose them forever in the mountains. Without reindeer they should have great trouble in getting back to camp; the Agent would go on his way ignorant of their dilemma; their pasture land would be lost, and perhaps their herd with it.
The rifle securely gripped in the hands of Attatak, who was the surer shot of the two, they again started into the cave. Strange to say, once the rifle was in her grasp, Attatak became the bravest of the brave.
Marian carried a candle in one hand, and in the other a block of safety matches. The candle was not lighted. So drafty was the entrance that no candle would stay lighted. Each step she hoped would bring them to a place where the draft would not extinguish her candle. But in this she was disappointed.
“It’s a windy cavern,” she said. “Must be an entrance at each end.”
Calling on Attatak to pause, Marian struck a match. It flared up, then went out. A second one did the same. The third lighted the candle. There was just time for a hasty glance about. Gloomy brown walls lay to right and left of them, and the awful gloom of the cave was most alarming.
Glancing down at her feet, Marian uttered a low exclamation of surprise. Then, with such a definite and direct puff of wind as might come from human lips, the candle was snuffed out.
“Wha—what was it?” Attatak whispered. She was shaking so that Marian feared she would let the rifle go clattering to the rocky floor.
“Nothing,” Marian answered. “Really nothing at all. The ashes of a camp-fire, and I thought—thought,” she gulped, “thought I saw bones in the ashes!”
“Bones?” This time the rifle did clatter to the floor.
“Attatak,” Marian scolded; “Attatak. This is absurd!”
Groping in the dark for the rifle, she grasped a handful of ashes, then something hard and cold that was not the rifle.
“Ugh!” she groaned, struggling with all her might to keep from running away.
Again she tried for the rifle, this time successfully. She gave it to Attatak, with the admonition:
“Ca-ca!” (Do take care!)
“Eh-eh,” Attatak whispered.
Stepping gingerly out of the ashes of the mysterious camp-fire, they again started forward.
The current of air now became less and less strong, and finally when Marian again tried the candle it burned with a flickering blaze.
A glance about told them they were now between narrow dark walls, that the ceiling was very high, and there was nothing beneath their feet but rock.
The yellow glow of light cheered them. If there were wolves they had made no sound; the gleam of their eyes had not been seen. If the spirits of the men who had built that long extinguished fire still haunted the place, the light would drive them away. Attatak assured Marian of that.
With one candle securely set in a rocky recess, and with another close at hand, Attatak was even willing to remain in the cave while Marian brought the reindeer in a little way and carried the articles necessary for a meal to the back of the cave.
“There is no moss on this barren mountain,” Marian sighed. “Our reindeer must go hungry to-night, but once we are off the mountain they shall have a grand feast.”
By the time they had made a small fire on the floor of the cave and had finished their supper, night had closed in upon their mountain world. Darkness came quickly, deepened tenfold by the wild storm that appeared to redouble its fury at every fresh blast. The darkness without vied with the bleakness of the cave until both were one. Such a storm as it was! Born and reared on the coast of Alaska, Marian had never before experienced anything that approached it in its shrieking violence. She did not wonder now that the mountains appeared to smoke with sweeping snow. She shivered as she thought what it would have meant had they not found the cave.
“Why,” she said to Attatak, “we should have been caught up by the wind like two bits of snow and hurled over the mountain peak.”
The two girls walked to the mouth of the cave and for a moment stood peering into the night. The whistle and howl of the wind was deafening. “Whew—whoo—whoo—whe-w—w-o—,” how it did howl! The very rock ribbed mountain seemed to shake from the violence of it.
“Eleet-pon-a-muck,” (too bad), said Attatak as she turned her back to the storm.
For Marian, however, the spectacle held a strange fascination. Had the thing been possible, she should have liked nothing better than leaping out into it. To battle with it; to answer its roar with a wild scream of her own; to whirl away with it; to become a part of it; to revel in its madness—this, it seemed to her, would be the height of ecstatic joy. Such was the call of unbridled nature to her joyous, triumphant youth.
It was with reluctance that she at last turned back into the depths of the cave and helped Attatak unroll the bedding roll and prepare for the night.
“To-morrow,” she whispered to Attatak before she closed her eyes in sleep, “if the storm has not passed, and we dare not venture out, we will explore the cave.”
“Eh-eh,” Attatak answered drowsily.
The next moment the roaring storm had no auditors. The girls were fast asleep.
There is something in the sharp tang of the Arctic air, in the honest weariness of a long day of tramping, in the invigorating freshness of everything about one, that makes for perfect repose. In spite of the problems that faced them, regardless of the mystery that haunted this chamber of nature, hour after hour, to the very tune of the whirling storm, the girls slept the calm and peaceful sleep of those who bear ill will toward no one.
When at last Marian pried her eyes open to look at her watch, she was surprised to learn that eight hours had passed. She did not look to see the gleam of dawn at the mouth of the cave. Dawn in this strange Arctic land was still four hours away.
She knew that the storm was still raging. There came the roar and boom of the wind. Now and again, as if the demons of storm were determined upon pulling them from their retreat, a steady sucking breath of it came sweeping down through the cave. Marian listened, and then she quoted:
“‘Blow high, blow low,Not all your snowCan quench our hearth-fire’sRuddy glow.’”
“‘Blow high, blow low,
Not all your snow
Can quench our hearth-fire’s
Ruddy glow.’”
She smiled to herself. Their tiny fire had gone out long ago, but another might easily be kindled.
She was about to turn over in her bed for another ten winks, when she suddenly remembered the mysterious discovery of the night before—the ashes and the bones, and at once she found herself eager for an exploration of the place. To discover if possible what sort of people had been here before her; to guess how long ago that had been; to search for any relics they may have left behind—all these exerted upon her mind an irresistible appeal.
She had risen and was drawing on her knickers when Attatak awakened.
“Come on,” Marian cried, “it is morning. The storm is still tearing away at the mountain side. We can’t go on our way. We—”
“Eleet-pon-a-muck!” (too bad), broke in Attatak. “Now Bill Scarberry will get our pasture. The Agent will pass before we arrive. We shall have no one to defend our herd.”
At this Marian plumped down upon her sleeping bag. What Attatak said was true. Should they be unable to leave the cave this day, the gain they had hoped to make was lost.
“Well,” she laughed bravely, “we have reindeer, and they are swift. We will win yet.”
“Anyway,” she said, springing to her feet, “no use crying over spilled milk. Until we can leave the cave our time’s our own. Come on. Get dressed. We’ll see what wealth lies hidden in this old home in the mountain side.”
In the meantime Patsy was having a full share of strange adventure. Late in the afternoon, feeling herself quite free from the annoying presence of the visiting band of Eskimos and of Scarberry’s herd, she harnessed her favorite spotted reindeer and went for a drive up the valley. The two young Eskimos who worked under Terogloona had been sent into the hills to round up their herd and bring them into camp. This was one of the daily tasks of the herders. If this was done every day the herd would never stray too far. Patsy liked to mount a hill with her sled deer and then, like a general reviewing his troops, watch the broad procession of brown and white deer as they marched down the valley.
This day she was a little late. The herd began passing before she had climbed half way up the ridge. She paused to watch them pass. Then, undecided whether to climb on up the slope or turn back to camp, she stood there until the uncertain light of the low Arctic sun had faded and night had come. Just as she had decided to turn her deer toward home, she caught a purple gleam on the hill directly above her.
“The purple flame!” she exclaimed. “And not a quarter of a mile above me. I could climb up there in fifteen minutes.”
For a moment she stood undecided. Then, seized by a sudden touch of daring, she whirled her deer about, tethered him to his sled, and went scouting up a gully toward the spot where the mysterious flame had flashed for a moment, then had gone out.
“I’ll see something, anyway,” she told herself as she strove in vain to still the painful fluttering of her heart.
She had worked her way to a position on the side of the hill where the outlines of a tent, with its extension of stovepipe standing out black above it, was outlined against the sky. Then, to her consternation, she saw the flaps of the tent move.
“Someone is coming out,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps they have been watching me through a hole in the tent. Perhaps—”
Her heart stopped beating at thought of the dangers that might be threatening. Should she turn and flee, or should she flatten herself against the snow and hope that she might not be seen? Suddenly remembering that her parka, made of white fawnskin, would blend perfectly with the snow, she decided on the latter course.
There was not a second to lose. Hardly had she melted into the background of snow when a person appeared at the entrance of the tent.
Then it was that Patsy received a thrilling shock. She had been prepared to see a bearded miner, an Eskimo, most any type of man. But the person she saw was not a man, buta woman; scarcely that—little more than a girl.
It was with the utmost difficulty that Patsy suppressed an audible exclamation. Closing her lips tight, she took one startled look at the strange girl.
Carefully dressed in short plaid skirt, bright checkered mackinaw, and a blue knit hood; the girl stood perfectly silhouetted against the sky. Her eyes and hair were brown; Patsy was sure of that. Her features were fine. There was a deep shade of healthy pink in her cheeks.
“She’s not a native Alaskan,” Patsy told herself. “Like me, she has not been long in Alaska.”
How she knew this she could not exactly tell, but she was as sure of it as she was of anything in life. Suddenly she was puzzled by a question: “What had brought the girl from the warmth of the tent into the cold?”
Patsy saw her glance up toward the sky. There was a rapt look on her face as she gazed fixedly at the first evening stars.
“It’s as if she were saying a prayer or a Psalm,” Patsy murmured. “‘The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament his handiwork.’”
For a full moment the strange girl stood thus; then, turning slowly, she stepped back into the tent. That the tent had at least one other occupant, Patsy knew at once by a shadow that flitted across the wall as the girl entered.
“Well,” mused Patsy. “Well, now, I wonder?”
She was more puzzled than ever, but suddenly remembering that she had barely escaped being caught spying on these strangers, she rose and went gliding down the hill.
When she reached her reindeer she loosed him and turned him toward home, nor did she allow him to pause until he stood beside her igloo.
Once inside her lodge, with the candle gleaming brightly and a fire of dry willows snapping in the sheet-iron stove, Patsy took a good long time for thinking things through.
Somewhat to her surprise, she found herself experiencing a new feeling of safety. It was true she had not been much afraid since Marian had left her alone with the herders, for it was but a step from her igloo to Terogloona’s tent. This old herder, who treated her as if she were his grandchild, would gladly give his life in defending her from danger. Nevertheless, a little feeling of fear lingered in her mind whenever she thought of the tent of the purple flame. As she thought of it now she realized that she had lost that fear when she had discovered that there was a girl living in that tent.
“And yet,” she told herself, “there are bad women in Alaska just as there are everywhere. She might be bad, but somehow she didn’t look bad. She looked educated and sort of refined and—and—she looked a bit lonely as she stood there gazing at the stars. I wanted to walk right up to her and say ‘Hello!’ just like that, nice and chummy. Perhaps I will, too, some day.
“And perhaps I won’t,” she thoughtfully added a moment later. Something of the old dread of the purple flame still haunted her mind. Then, too, there were two puzzling questions: Why were these people here at all; and how did they live, if not off Marian’s deer?
Not many days later Patsy was to make a startling discovery that, to all appearances, was an answer to this last question.
With a hand that trembled slightly, Marian held the candle that was to light their way in the exploration of the mysterious mountain cavern. As if drawn by a magnet, she led the way straight to the spot where but a few hours before she had been so frightened by finding herself standing in the burned out ashes and bones of an old camp-fire.
She laughed now as she bent over to examine the spot. There could be no question that there had once been a camp-fire here. There were a number of bones strewn about, too.
“That fire,” she said slowly, “must have burned itself out years ago; perhaps fifty years. Those bones are from the legs of a reindeer or caribou. They’re old, too. How gray and dry they are! They are about to fall into dust.”
She studied the spot for some time. At last she straightened up.
“Not much to it, after all,” she sighed. “It’s interesting enough to know that some storm blown traveler who attempted the pass, as we did, once spent the night here. But he left no relic of interest behind, unless—why—what have you there?” She turned suddenly to her companion.
Attatak was holding a slim, dull brown object in her hand.
“Only the broken handle of an old cow-drill,” she said slowly, still studying the thing by the candle light.
“It’s ivory.”
“Eh-eh.”
“And quite old?”
“Mebby twenty, mebby fifty years. Who knows?”
“Why are you looking at it so sharply?”
“Trying to read.”
“Read what?”
“Well,” smiled Attatak, as she placed the bit of ivory in Marian’s hand, “long ago, before the white man came, my people told stories by drawing little pictures on ivory. They scratched the pictures on the ivory, then rubbed smoke black in them so they would see them well. This cow-drill handle is square. It has four sides. Each side tells a story. Three are of hunting—walrus, polar bear and caribou. But the other side is something else. I can’t quite tell what it says.”
Marian studied it for a time in silence.
“Mr. Cole would love that,” she said at last, and her thoughts were far away. For the moment her mind had carried her back to those thrilling days aboard the pleasure yacht,The O’Moo. Since you have doubtless read our other book, “The Cruise ofThe O’Moo,” I need scarcely remind you that Mr. Cole was the curator of a great museum, and knew all about strange and ancient things. He had done much to aid Marian and her friends in unravelling the mystery of the strange blue face.
“Bring it along,” Marian said, handing the piece back to Attatak. “It tells us one thing—that the man who built that fire was an Eskimo. It is worth keeping. I should like to take it with me to the Museum when I go back.
“Now,” she said briskly, “let’s go all over the cave. There may be things that we have not yet discovered.”
And indeed there were. It was with the delicious sensation of research and adventure that the girls wandered back and forth from wall to wall of the gloomy cavern.
Not until they had passed the spot where they had spent the night, and were far back in the cave, did they make a discovery of any importance. Then it was that Marian, with a little cry of joy, put out her hand and took from a ledge of rock a strange looking little dish no larger than a finger bowl. It was so incrusted with dirt and dust that she could not tell whether it was really a rare find of some ancient pottery, or an ordinary china dish left here by some white adventurer. However, something within her seemed to whisper: “Here is wealth untold; here is a prize that will cause your friend, the museum curator, to turn green with envy.”
“Sulee!” (another), said Attatak, as she took down a larger object of the same general shape.
A few feet farther on was a ledge fairly covered with curious objects; strange shaped dishes; bits of ivory, black as coal; pieces of copper, dulled with age. Such were the treasures of the past that lay before them.
“Someone’s pantry of long ago,” mused Marian.
“Very, very old,” said Attatak, holding up a bit of black ivory. “Mebby two hundred, mebby five hundred years. Ivory turn black slow; very, very slow. By and by, after long, long time, look like that.”
As Attatak uttered these words Marian could have hugged her for sheer joy. She knew now that they had made a very rare find. The objects had not been left there by a white man, but by some native. Broken bits of ancient Eskimo pottery had been found in mounds on the Arctic coast. Those had been treasured. But here were perfect specimens, such as any museum in the world would covet.
And yet, had she but known it, the rareness and value of some of these were to exceed her fondest dreams. But this discovery was to come later.
Drawing off her calico parka, Marian tied it at the top, and using it as a sack, carefully packed all the articles.
“Let’s go back,” she said in an awed whisper.
“Eh-eh,” Attatak answered.
There was a strange spookiness about the place that made them half afraid to remain any longer.
They had turned to go, when Marian, chancing to glance down, saw the bit of ivory they had found by the outer camp-fire. At first she was tempted to let it remain where it lay. It seemed an insignificant thing after the discovery of these rarer treasures. But finally she picked it up and thrust it into her bag.
Well for her that she did. Later it was to prove the key to a mystery, an entirely new mystery which had as yet not appeared above their horizon, but was, in a way, associated with the mystery of the purple flame.
“Listen!” said Marian, as they came nearer to the mouth of the cave, “I do believe the storm is passing. Perhaps we can get off the mountain to-day. Oh, Attatak! We’ll win yet! Won’t that be glorious?”
It was true; the storm was passing. Attatak was dispatched to investigate, and soon came hurrying back with the report that they could be on their way as soon as they had eaten breakfast and packed.
Marian was possessed with a wild desire to inspect her newly discovered treasure—to wash, scrub and scrape it and try to discover how it was made and what it was made of. Yet she realized that any delay for such a cause would be all but criminal folly. So, after a hasty breakfast, she rubbed as much dust as she could from the strange treasures and packed them carefully in the folds of the sleeping bags.
Soon the girls found themselves beside their deer, picking their way cautiously forward over the remaining distance to the divide; then quite as cautiously they started down the other side.
During the day they halted for a cold lunch while their reindeer fed on a broad plateau, a protected place where they were safe from the wild blizzards of the peaks that loomed far above them.
“From now on,” said Marian, “there will be little rest for us. Our bold stroke has saved us nothing. It is now a question of whether reindeer are trustworthy steeds in the Arctic; also whether girls are capable of solving problems, and of enduring many hardships. As for me,” she shook her fist in the general direction of Scarberry’s herd, “I’ll say they are. We’ll win! See if we don’t!”
To this declaration Attatak uttered an “Eh-eh,” which to Marian sounded like a fervent “Amen!”
At nightfall of the following day, worn from the constant travel, and walking as if in their sleep, the two girls came to the junction of the two forks of a modest sized river. The frozen stream, coated as it was by a hard crust of snow, had given them a perfect trail over the last ten miles of travel. Before that they had crossed endless tiers of low-lying hills whose hard packed and treacherously slippery sides had brought grief to them and to their reindeer. Twice an overturned sled had dragged a reindeer off his feet, and reindeer, sled and driver had gone rolling and tumbling down the hill to be piled in a heap in the gully below.
Those had been trying hours; but now they were looking forward to many miles of smooth going between the banks of this river.
First, however, there must be rest and food for them and for their deer. They were watching the shelving bank for some likely place to camp, where there was shelter from the biting wind and driftwood lodged along the bank for a fire. Then, with a little cry of surprise, Marian pointed at a bend in the river.
“At this point,” she said, “the river runs southwest.”
Attatak looked straight down the river and at the low sweeping banks beyond, then uttered a low: “Eh-eh,” in agreement.
“That means that we cannot follow the river,” said Marian. “Our course runs northwest. Every mile travelled on the river takes us off our course and lessens our chance of reaching our goal in time.”
“What shall we do?” asked Attatak, in perplexity.
“Let me think,” said Marian. “There is time enough to decide. We must camp here. The deer must have food and rest. So must we. There is not much danger of wolves. If any come prowling around, the deer will let us know soon enough. We will sleep on our sleds and if anything goes wrong, the deer, tethered to the sleds, will tumble us out of our beds. Anyway, they will waken us.”
Soon supper was over. The deer, having had their fill of moss dug from beneath the snow, had lain down to rest. The girls spread their sleeping bags out upon the sleds and prepared for a few hours of much needed rest. Attatak, with the carefree unconcern that is characteristic of her race, had scarcely buried her face in an improvised pillow when she was fast asleep.
Sleep did not come so quickly to Marian. Many matters of interest lingered in her mind. It was as if her mind were a room all littered up with the odds and ends of a day’s work. She must put it to rights before she could sleep.
She thought once more of the strange treasures they had brought from the cave. Tired as she was, she was tempted to get out those articles and look at them, and to brush them up a bit and see what they were like.
“I know it’s foolish,” she told herself, “but it’s exactly as if I had hung up my stocking on Christmas Eve, and then when Christmas morning came, had been obliged to seize my stocking without so much as a glance inside, and forced to start at once on a long journey which would offer me no opportunity to examine my stocking until the journey was at an end. But I won’t look; not now. It’s too cold. Brr-r,” she shivered.
As she drew herself farther down into the furry depths of her sleeping bag, she was reminded of the time she and Patsy had slept together beneath the stars. She could not help wishing that Patsy was with her now, sharing her sleeping bag, and looking up at the gleaming Milky Way.
She wondered vaguely how Patsy was getting on with the herd, but the thought did not greatly disturb her. She was about to drift off to the land of dreams, when a thought popped into her mind that brought her up wide awake again. Their morning’s course was not yet laid. What should it be?
She closed her eyes and tried to think. Then, like a flash, it came to her.
“It’s the hard way,” she whispered to herself. “Seems as if it were always the hard way that is safe and sure.”
The thought that had come to her was this: In order to reach their destination, they must still travel several miles north. The river they were following flowed southwest. To go south was to go out of their way. Were they to strike due north, across country, they might in the course of a day’s travel come to another stream which did not angle toward the south. That would mean infinitely hard travel over snow that was soft and yielding, and across tundra whose frozen caribou bogs were as rough as a cordwood road.
“It’s the long, hard way,” she sighed, “but we may win. If we follow this river we never can.”
Then, with all her problems put in order, she fell asleep.
Two days later Marian and Attatak found themselves tramping slowly along behind their tired deer. It was night. Now and again the moon shot a golden beam of light across their trail. For the most part that trail was dark, overshadowed by great spruce and fir trees that stood out black against the whiteness of the snow, each tree seeming a gown clad monk—silent witnesses of their passing.
There was now a definitely marked trail. An ax cut here and there on a tree told them this trail had been made by men, and not by moose and caribou. They had seen no traces of man. No human habitation had sent its gleam of light across their trail to bid them welcome. Scarcely knowing whether she wished to see the light of a cabin, Marian tramped doggedly on. It was long past camping time, yet she feared to make camp. Several times she had caught the long drawn howl of a wolf, faint and indistinct in the distance.
With a burst of joy and hope she thought of the progress they had made. The tramp across open tundra had been fearfully hard. They had, however, reaped from it a rich reward; the river they had found was larger than the other and its surface had offered an almost perfect trail. It flowed north by west instead of southwest. It took them directly on their way. Even now Marian was wondering if this were not the very river at whose junction with the great Yukon was located the station they sought to reach before the Government Agent had passed.
“If it is,” she murmured, “what can hinder us from making the station in time?”
It seemed that there could be but one answer to this; yet in the Arctic there is no expression that is so invariably true as this one: “You never can tell.”
Then, suddenly, Marian’s thoughts were drawn to another subject. A peculiar gleam of moonlight among the trees reminded her of the purple flame. At once she began wondering what could be the source of that peculiar and powerful light; who possessed it, and what their purpose was in living on the tundra.
“And Patsy?” she questioned herself, “I wonder if they are troubling her. Wonder if they are really living off our deer. I wish I had not been obliged to leave our camp. Seems that there were problems enough without this. I wish—”
Suddenly she put out one hand and stopped her deer, while with the other she gave Attatak a mute signal for silence.
Breaking gently through the hushed stillness of the forest, like a spring zephyr over a meadow, there came to her ears a sound of wonderful sweetness.
“Music,” she breathed, “and such music! The very music of Heaven!”
Moments passed, and still with slightly bowed heads, as if listening to the Angelus, they stood there, still as statues, listening to the strange music.
“The woods were God’s first temples,” Marian whispered.
For the moment she lived as in a trance. A great lover of music, she felt the thrill of perfect melody breaking over her soul like bright waves upon golden sand. She fancied that this melody had no human origin, that it was a spontaneous outburst from the very heart of the forest; God himself speaking through the mute life of earth.
When this illusion had passed she still stood there wondering.
“Attatak, what day of the week is this?”
For a moment Attatak did not answer. She was counting on her fingers.
“Sunday,” she said at last.
“Sunday,” Marian repeated. “And that is a pipe organ. How wonderful! How perfectly beautiful! A pipe organ in the midst of the forest!”
“And yet,” she hesitated, scarcely daring to believe her senses, “how could a pipe organ be brought way up here?”
“But it is!” she affirmed a few seconds later. “Attatak, you watch the deer while I go ahead and find out what sort of place it is, and whether there are dangerous dogs about.”
Her wonder grew with every step that she took in the direction of the mysterious musician. As she came closer, and the tones became more distinct, she knew that she could not be mistaken.
“It’s a pipe organ,” she told herself with conviction, “and a splendid one at that! Who in all the world would bring such a wonderful instrument away up here? Strange I have never heard of this settlement. It must be a rather large village or they could not afford such an organ for their church.”
As she thought of these things, and as the rise and fall of the music still came sweeping through the trees, a strange spell fell upon her. It was as if she were resting upon the soft, cushioned seat of some splendid church. With the service appealing to her sense of the artistic and the beautiful, and to her instinct of reverence; with the soft lights pervading all, she was again in the chapel of her own university.
“Oh!” she cried, “I do hope it’s a real church and that we’re not too late for the service.”
One thought troubled her as she hurried forward. If this was a large village, where were the tracks of dog teams that must surely be travelling up the river; trappers going out over their lines of traps; hunters seeking caribou; prospectors starting away over the trail for a fresh search for the ever illusive yellow gold? Surely all these would have left a well beaten trail. Yet since the last snow there had not been a single team passing that way.
“It’s like a village of the dead,” she mused, and shivered at the thought.
When at last she rounded a turn and came within full sight of the place from which the enchanting tones issued, the sight that met her eyes caused her to start back and stare with surprise and amazement.
She had expected to find a cluster of log cabins; a store, a church and a school. Instead, she saw a yawning hole in a bank of snow; a hole that was doubtless an entrance to some sort of structure. Whether the structure was built of sod, logs, or merely of snow, she could not guess. Some thirty feet from this entrance, and higher, apparently perched on the crust of snow, were two such cupola affairs as Marian had seen on certain types of sailing vessels and gasoline schooners. From these there streamed a pale yellow light.
“Well!” she exclaimed. “Well, of all things!”
For a moment, undecided whether to flee from that strange place, she stood stock still.
The organ, for the moment, was stilled. The woods were silent. Such a hush as she had never experienced in all her life lay over all. Then, faint, indistinct, came a single note of music. Someone had touched a key. The next instant the world seemed filled with the most wonderful melody.
“Handel’s Largo,” she whispered as she stood there enchanted. Of all pipe organ music, she loved Handel’s Largo best. Throughout the rendering of the entire selection, she stood as one enchanted.
“It is enough,” she said when the sound of the last note had died away in the tree tops. “It’s all very mysterious, but any person who can playHandel’s Largolike that is not going to be unkind to two girls who are far from home. I’m going in.”
With unfaltering footsteps she started forward.
Having walked resolutely to the black hole in the snow bank, Marian looked within. There was no door; merely an opening here. A dim lamp in the distance sent an uncertain and ghostly light down the corridor. By this light she made out numerous posts and saw that a narrow passage-way ran between them.
There was something so mysterious about the place that she hesitated on the threshold. At that moment a thought flashed through her mind, a startling and disheartening thought.
“Radio,” she murmured, “nothing but radio.”
She was convinced in an instant that her solution of the origin of the wonderful music was correct.
The persons who lived in this strange dwelling, which reminded her of pictures she had seen of the dens and caves of robbers and brigands, had somehow come into possession of a powerful radio receiving set. Somewhere in Nome, or Fairbanks, or perhaps even in Seattle—a noted musician was giving an organ recital. This radio set with its loud speaker had picked up the music and had faithfully reproduced it. That was all there was to the mystery. There was no pipe organ, no skillful musician out here in the forest wilderness. It had been stupid of her to think there might be.
This revelation, for revelation it surely seemed to be, was both disappointing and disturbing. Disappointing, because in her adventure-loving soul she had hoped to discover here in the wilderness a thing that to all appearances could not be—a modern miracle. Disturbing it was, too, for since a mere instrument, a radio-phone, has no soul, the character of the person who operated it might be anything at all. She could not conceive of the person who actually touched the keys and caused that divine music to pour forth as a villain. Any sort of person, however, might snap on the switch that sends such music vibrating from the horn of the loud speaker of a radiophone.
For a full five minutes she wavered between two courses of action; to go on inside this den, or to go back to Attatak and attempt to pass it unobserved.
Perhaps it was the touch of a finger on what she supposed to be a far off key—the resuming of the music; perhaps it was her own utter weariness that decided her at last. Whatever it was, she set a resolute foot inside the entrance, and the next instant found herself carefully picking her way down the dark passage toward the dim lamp.
To her surprise, when she at last reached the lamp that hung over a door, she found not an oil lamp, but a small electric light bulb.
“Will marvels never cease?” she whispered.
For a second she hesitated. Should she knock? She hated spying; yet the door stood invitingly ajar. If the persons within did not appear to be the sort of persons a girl might trust; if she could see them and remain unobserved, there was still opportunity for flight.
Acting upon this impulse, she peered through the crack in the door.
Imagine her surprise upon seeing at the far end of a long, high-ceilinged, heavily timbered room, not a radio horn, but a pipe organ.
“So,” she breathed, “my first thought was right. That enchanting musicwasproduced on the spot. And by such a musician!”
Seated with his side toward her, was the bent figure of an old man. His long, flowing white beard, his snowy locks, the dreamy look upon his face as his fingers drifted back and forth across the keys, reminded her of pictures she had seen of ancient bards playing upon golden harps.
“‘Harp of the North that mouldering long has hung,’” she recited in a low voice.
The fingers on the keys suddenly ceased their drifting, the dreamy look faded from the musician’s face. A smile lighted his eyes as, turning about, he spoke in a cheery voice: