As Johnny stood awaiting the arrival of the stranger, many wild misgivings raced through his mind. What if this man was but the forerunner of the whole Chukche tribe? Then indeed, for himself and the Japanese girl things were at an end.
The newcomer was armed with a rifle. Johnny would stand little show with him in a duel, good as his automatic was.
But the man came on with a jaunty swing that somehow was reassuring. Who could he be? As he came close, he dropped his rifle on his sled and approached with empty hands.
"I am Iyok-ok," he said in good English, at the same time thrusting out his hand. "I was an American soldier, an Eskimo. Now I am going back to my home at Cape Prince of Wales."
"You got your discharge easily," smiled Johnny.
"Not so easy, but I got it."
"Well, anyway, stranger," said Johnny gripping the other's hand, "I can give you welcome, comrade. We are traveling the same way."
The Eskimo looked at Johnny's regulation army shoes as he said the word comrade, but made no comment.
"Know anything about travel in such a country?" asked Johnny.
"Most things you need to know."
"Then you sure are welcome," Johnny declared. Then, as he looked at the Eskimo closely there came to him a feeling that they had met before but where and when he could not recall. He did not mention the fact, but merely motioned the stranger to a seat on the sled while he dug into his pack for a morsel of good cheer.
Many days later, Johnny lay sprawled upon a double thickness of long haired deer skins. He was reading a book. Two seal oil lamps sputtered in the igloo, but these were for heat, not for light. Johnny got his light in the form of a raggedly round patch of sunlight which fell straight down from the top where the poles of the igloo met.
Johnny was very comfortable physically, but not entirely at ease mentally. He had been puzzled by something that had happened five minutes before. Moreover, he was half angry at his enforced idleness here.
Yet he was very comfortable. The igloo was a permanent one. Erected at the base of a cliff, covered over with walrus skin, lined with deer skin, and floored with planks hewn from driftwood logs, it was perfect for a dwelling of its kind. It stood in a hunting village on the Siberian shore of Behring Sea. The Jap girl, Johnny and Iyok-ok had traveled thus far in safety.
Yes, they had come a long distance, many hundreds of miles. As Johnny thought of it now, he put his book aside (a dry, old novel, left here by some American seaman) and dreamed those days all through again.
Wonderful days had followed the addition of Iyok-ok to their party. From that hour they had wanted nothing of food or shelter. Reared as he apparently had been in such wilds as these, the native skillfully had sought out the best of game, the driest, most sheltered of camping spots, in fact, had done everything that tended to make life easy in such a land.
Johnny's reveries were cut short and he started suddenly to his feet. A pebble had dropped squarely upon the deer skin spread out before him. It had come through the hole in the peak of the igloo. He glanced quickly up, but saw nothing.
Then he grinned. "Just a case of nerves, I guess. Some kids playing on the cliff. Anyway, I'll investigate," he said to himself.
Throwing back the deerskin flap, he stepped outside. Did he see a boot disappear around the point of the cliff above the igloo? He could not tell. At any rate, there was no use wasting more time on the question. To see farther around the cliff, one must climb up its rough face, and by that time any mischief maker might have disappeared.
Yet Johnny stood there worried and puzzled. Twice in the last hour pebbles had rattled down upon the igloo, and now one had dropped inside. An old grievance stirred him: Why were not he and his strange companions on their way? With only four hundred miles to travel to East Cape, with a splendid trail, with reindeer well fed and rested, it seemed folly to linger in this native village. The reindeer Chukches, whose sled deer they had borrowed, might be upon them at any moment, and that, Johnny felt sure, would result in an unpleasant mixup. Yet he had been utterly unable to get the little Oriental girl and Iyok-ok to go on. Why? He could only guess. There were a great many other things he could only guess at. The little Oriental girl's reason for going so far into the wilderness was as much a secret as ever. He could only guess that it had to do with the following of that mysterious driver of a dog team. With unerring precision this man had pushed straight on northward toward East Cape and Behring Strait. And they had followed, not, so far as Johnny was concerned, because they were interested in him, but because he had traveled their way.
At times they had come upon his camp. Located at the edge of some bank or beside some willow clump, where there was shelter from the wind, these camps told little or nothing of the man who had made them. Everything which might tell tales had been carried on or burned. Once only Johnny had found a scrap of paper. Nothing had been written on it. From it Johnny had learned one thing only: it had originally come from some Russian town, for it had the texture of Russian bond. But this was little news.
Who was this stranger who traveled so far? Johnny had a feeling that he was at the moment hiding in this native village, and that this was the reason his two companions did not wish to proceed. There had grown up between these two, the Eskimo boy and the Japanese girl, a strange friendship. At times Johnny had suspicions that this friendship had existed before they had met on the tundra. However that might have been, they seemed now to be working in unison. Only the day before he had happened to overhear them conversing in low tones, and the language, he would have sworn, was neither Eskimo, English, nor Pidgen. Yet he did not question the boy's statement that he was an American Eskimo. Indeed there were times when the flash of his honest smile made Johnny believe that they had met somewhere in America. On his trip to Nome and Fairbanks before the war, Johnny had met many Eskimos, and had boxed and wrestled with some of the best of them.
"Oh, well," he sighed, and stretched himself, "'tain't that I've got a string on 'em, nor them on me. I'll have to wait or go on alone, that's all."
He entered the igloo, and tried again to become interested in his book, but his mind kept returning to the strange friendship which had grown up between the three of them, Iyok-ok, the Jap girl and himself. The Jap girl had proved a good sport indeed. She might have ridden all the time, but she walked as far in a day as they did. She cooked their meals cheerfully, and laughed over every mishap.
So they had traveled northward. Three happy children in a great white wilderness, they pitched their igloos at night, a small one for the girl, a larger one for the two men, and, burying themselves beneath the deer skins, had slept the dreamless sleep of children, wearied from play.
The Jap girl had appeared to be quite content to be going into an unknown wilderness. Only once she had seemed concerned. That was when a long detour had taken them from the track of the unknown traveler, but her cheerfulness had returned once they had come upon his track again. This had set Johnny speculating once more. Who was this stranger? Was he related to the girl in some way? Was he her friend or her foe? Was he really in this village at this time? If so, why did she not seek him out? If a friend, why did she not join him; and, if an enemy, why not have him killed? Surely, here they were quite beyond the law.
Oh, yes, Johnny might get a dog team and go on up the coast alone, but Johnny liked his two traveling companions too well for that, and besides, Johnny dearly loved mysteries, and here was a whole nest of them. No, Johnny would wait.
The seal oil lamps imparted a drowsy warmth to the igloo. The deer skins were soft and comfortable. Johnny grew sleepy. Throwing the ragged old book in the corner, he stretched out full length on the skins, which lay in the irregular circle of light, and was soon fast asleep.
Just how long he slept he could not tell. When he awoke it was with a feeling of greatperiltugging at his heart. His first conscious thought was that the aperture above him had, in some way, been darkened. Instantly his eyes sought that opening. What he saw there caused his heart to pause and his eyes to bulge.
Directly above him, seemingly poised for a drop, was a vicious looking hook. With a keen point and a barb fully three inches across, with a shaft of half-inch steel which was driven into a pole three inches in diameter and of indefinite length, it could drive right through Johnny's stomach, and pin him to the planks beneath. And, as his startled eyes stared fixedly at it, the thing shot downward.
Johnny Thompson, before he joined the army, had been considered one of the speediest men of the boxing ring. His brain worked like lightning, and every muscle in his body responded instantly to its call. Johnny had not lost any of his speed. It was well that he had not, for, like a spinning car-wheel, he rolled over twice before the hook buried itself to the end of its barb in the pungent plank on which he had reclined an instant before.
Nor did Johnny stop rolling then. He continued until he bumped against the skin wall of his abode. This was fortunate also, for he had not half regained his senses when two almost instantaneous explosions shook the igloo, tore the plank floor into shreds, shooting splinters about, and even through the double skin wall, and filling Johnny's eyes with powder smoke and dust.
Johnny sat up with one hand on his automatic. He was fully awake.
"Is that all?" he drawled. "Thanks! It's enough, I should say. Johnny Thompson exit." A wry grin was on his face. "Johnny Thompson killed by a falling whale harpoon; shot to death by a whale gun; blown to atoms by a whale bomb. Exit Johnny. They do it in the movies, I say!"
But that was not quite all. The blazing seal oil lamps had overturned. Splinters from the floor were catching fire. Johnny busied himself at beating these out. As soon as this had been accomplished, he stepped outside.
From an awe-struck ring of native women and children, who had been attracted by the explosion, the little Jap girl darted.
"Oh, Meester Thompsie!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands, "so terrible, awful a catastrophe! Are you not killed? So terrible!"
Johnny grinned.
"Nope," he said, putting out a hand to console her. "I'm not killed, nor even blown to pieces. What I'd like to know is, who dropped that harpoon."
He looked from face to face of the silent circle. Not one showed a sign of any knowledge of the affair. They had heard the explosion and had run from their homes to see what had happened.
Turning toward the cliff, from which the harpoon had been dropped, Johnny studied it carefully. No trace of living creature was to be discovered there. Then he looked again at the circle of brown faces, seeking any recent arrival. There was none.
"Come!" he said to the Jap girl.
Taking her hand, he led her from house to house of the village. Beyond two to three old women, too badly crippled to walk, the houses were found to contain no one.
"Well, one thing is sure," Johnny observed, "the Chukche reindeer herders have not come. It was not they who did it."
"No," answered the Jap girl.
"Say!" exclaimed Johnny, in a tone more severe than he had ever used with his companion, "why in thunder can't we get out of this hole? What are we sticking here for?"
"Can't tell." The girl wrung her hands again. "Can't tell. Can't go, that's all. You go; all right, mebby. Can't go my. That's all. Mebby go to-morrow; mebby next day. Can't tell."
Johnny was half inclined to believe that she was in league with the treachery which hung over the place, and had shown itself in the form of loaded harpoons, but when he realized that she did not urge him to stay, he found it impossible to suspect her.
"Well, anyway, darn it!"
"What?" she smiled.
"Oh, nothing," he growled, and turned away.
Two hours later Johnny was lying on the flat ledge of the rocky cliff from which the harpoon had been dropped. He was, however, a hundred feet or more down toward the bay. He was watching a certain igloo, and at the same time keeping an eye on the shore ice. Iyok-ok had gone seal hunting. When he returned over the ice, Johnny meant to have a final confab with him in regard to starting north.
As to the vigil he kept on the igloo, that was the result of certain suspicions regarding the occupants of that particular shelter. There was a dog team which hung about the place. These dogs were larger and sleeker than the other animals of the village. Their fights with other dogs were more frequent and severe. That would naturally mark them as strangers. Johnny had made several journeys of a mile or two up and down the beach trail, and, as far as he could tell, the man of mystery whose trail they had followed to this village had not left the place.
"Of course," he had told himself, "he might have been one of the villagers returning to his home. But that doesn't seem probable."
From all this, Johnny had arrived at the conclusion that the watching of this house would yield interesting results.
It did. He had not been lying on the cliff half an hour, when the figure of a man came backing out of the igloo's entrance. Johnny whistled. He was sure he had seen that pair of shoulders before. And the parka the man wore; it was not of the very far north. There was a smoothness about the tan and something about the cut of it that marked it at once as coming from a Russian shop, such as Wo Cheng kept.
"And squirrel skin!" Johnny breathed.
He was not kept long in doubt as to the identity of the wearer. As the man turned to look behind him, Johnny saw the sharp chin of the Russian, the man of the street fight and the many diamonds. He had acquired something of a beard, but there was no mistaking those frowning brows, square shoulders and that chin.
"So," Johnny thought, "he is the fellow we have been trailing. The Jap girl wanted to follow him and so, perhaps, did Iyok-ok. I wonder why? And say, old dear," he whispered, "I wonder if it could have been you who dropped that harpoon. It's plain enough from the looks of you that you'd do it, once you fancied you'd half a reason. I've a good mind—" His hand reached for his automatic.
"No," he decided, "I won't do it. I don't really know that you deserve it; besides I hate corpses, and things like that. But I say!"
A new and wonderful thought had come to him. He felt that, at any rate, he owed this person something, and he should have it. Beside Johnny on the ledge, where some native had left it, out of reach of the dog's, was a sewed up seal skin full of seal oil. To the native of the north seal oil is what Limburger cheese is to a Dutchman. He puts it away in skin sacks to bask in the sun for a year or more and ripen. This particular sackful was "ripe"; it was over ripe and had been for some time. Johnny could tell that by the smooth, balloon-like rotundity of the thing. In fact, he guessed it was about due to burst. Once Johnny had taken a cup of this liquid for tea. He had it close enough to his face to catch a whiff of it. He could still recall the smell of it.
Now his right hand smoothed the bloated skin tenderly. He twisted it about, and balanced it in his hand. Yes, he could do it! The Russian was not looking up. There was a convenient ledge, some three feet above his head. There the sack would strike and burst. The boy smiled, in contemplation of that bursting.
"This for what you may have done," Johnny whispered, and balancing the sack in his hand, as if it had been a football, he gave it a little toss. Over the cliff it went to a sheer fall of fifteen feet. There followed a muffled explosion. It had burst! Johnny saw the Russian completely deluged with the vile smelling liquid. Then he ducked.
As he lay flat on the ledge, he caught a silvery laugh. Looking quickly about, he found himself staring into the eyes of the little Jap girl. She had been watching him.
"You—you—know him?" he stammered.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Your friend?"
She shook her head vigorously.
"Enemy? Kill?" Johnny's hand sought his automatic.
"No! No! No!" she fairly screamed. "Not kill!" Her hand was on his arm with a frantic grip.
"Why?"
"No can tell. Only, not kill; not kill now. No! No! No! Mebby never!"
"Well, I'll be—" Johnny took his hand from his gun and peered over the ledge. The man was gone. It was a dirty trick he had played. He half wished he had not done it. And yet, the Jap girl had laughed. She knew what the man was. She had been close enough to have stopped him, had she thought it right. She had not done so. His conscience was clear.
They crept away in the gathering darkness, these two; and Johnny suddenly felt for this little Jap girl a comradeship that he had not known before. It was such a feeling as he had experienced in school days, when he was prowling about with boy pals.
Shortly after darkness had fallen, Johnny was seated cross-legged on a deer skin, staring gloomily at the ragged hole left by the whale harpoon bomb. He had not yet seen Iyok-ok. He was trying now to unravel some of the mysteries which the happenings of the day had served only to tangle more terribly. He had not meant to kill the Russian, even though the Jap girl had told him to; Johnny did not kill people, unless it was in defense of his country or his life. He had been merely trying the Jap girl out. He was obliged to admit now that he had got nowhere. She had laughed when he had played that abominable trick on the Russian; had denied that the stranger was her friend, yet had at once become greatly excited when Johnny proposed to kill him. What could a fellow make of all this? Who was this Jap girl anyway, and why had she followed this Russian so far? Somehow, Johnny could not help but feel that the Russian was a deep dyed plotter of some sort. He was inclined to believe that he had had much to do with that harpoon episode as well as the murder attempted by the reindeer Chukches.
"By Jove!" the American boy suddenly slapped his knee. "The knife, the two knives exactly alike. One he tried to use in the street fight at Vladivostok; the other he must have given to the reindeer Chukche to use on anyone who might follow him."
For a time he sat in deep thought. As he weighed the probabilities for and against this theory, he found himself doubting. There might be many knives of this pattern. The knife might have been stolen from him by the Chukche, or the Russian might have given it to the native as a reward for service, having no idea to what deadly purposes it would be put. And, again, if he were that type of plotter, would not the Jap girl know of it, and desire him killed?
The Japanese girl puzzled Johnny more and more. Her friendship for Iyok-ok, her eagerness to protect the Russian—what was to be made of all this? Were the three of them, after all, leagued together in deeds of darkness? And was he, Johnny, a pawn to be sacrificed at the proper moment?
And the Russian, why was he traveling so far north? What possible interests could he have here? Was he, too, planning to cross the Strait to America? Or was he in search of wealth hidden away in this frozen land?
"The furs! I'll bet that's it!" Johnny slapped his knee. "This Russian has come north to demand tribute for his government from the hunting Chukches. They're rich in furs—mink, ermine, red, white, silver gray and black fox. A man could carry a fortune in them on one sled. Yes, sir! That's his business up here."
But then, the diamonds? Again Johnny seemed to have reached the end of a blind alley in his thinking. Who could be so rash as to carry thousands of dollars' worth of jewels on such a trip? And yet, he was not certain the man had them now. He had seen them but once, and that in the disguise shop.
Further thoughts were cut short by a head thrust in at the flap of the igloo. It was Iyok-ok.
"Go soon," he smiled. "Mebby two hours."
"North?"
"Eh-eh" (yes), he answered, lapsing into Eskimo.
"All right."
The head disappeared.
"Well, anyway, my seal oil bath did some good," Johnny remarked to himself. "It jarred the old fox out of his lair and started him on his way."
He wondered a little about the Jap girl. Would she still travel with them? These musings were cut short when he carried his bundle to the deer sled. She was there to greet him with a broad smile. And so once more they sped away over the tundra in the moonlight.
They had not gone five miles before Johnny had assured himself that once more the Russian and his dog team had preceded them.
Johnny Thompson was at peace with the world. He was engaged in the most delightful of all occupations, gathering gold. He had often dreamed of gathering gold. He had dreamed, too, of finding money strewn upon the street. But now, here he was, with one of these choice Russian knives, picking away at clumps of frozen earth and picking up, as they fell out, particles of gold. Some were tiny; many were large as a pea, and one had been the size of a hickory nut. Now and again he straightened up to swing a pick into the frozen gravel which lay within the circle of light made by his pocket flashlight. After a few strokes he would throw down the pick and begin breaking up the lumps. Every now and again, he would lift the small sack into which the lumps were dropped. It grew heavier every moment.
It was quite dark all about him; indeed, Johnny was nearly a hundred feet straight into the heart of a cut bank, and, to start on this straight ahead drift, he had been obliged to lower himself into a shaft as into a well, a drop of fifteen feet or more. That the mine had other drifts he knew, but this one suited him. That it had another occupant he also knew, but this did not trouble him. He was too much interested in the yellow glitter of real gold to think of danger. And he was half dazed by the realization that there could be a gold mine like this in Siberia. Alaska had gold, plenty of it, of course, and he was now less than two hundred miles from Alaska, but he had never dreamed that the dreary slopes of the Kamchatkan Peninsula could harbor such wealth. Someone had been mining it, too, but that must have been months, perhaps years, ago. The pick handles were rough with decay, the pans red with rust.
Curiosity had led Johnny to this spot, a half mile from the native village at the mouth of the Anadir River. He had been marooned again in that village. They had covered three hundred miles on their last journey, then had come another pause. This time, though he did not even see his dogs about the village, Johnny felt sure that the Russian had once more taken to hiding.
Having nothing else to do, Johnny had followed a narrow track up the river. The track had come to an end at the entrance to the mine. Thinking it merely a sort of crude cold storage plant for keeping meat fresh, he had let himself down to explore it. Increasing curiosity had led him on until he had discovered the gold. Now he had quite forgotten the person whose tracks led him to the spot.
He was shocked into instant and vivid realization of peril by a cold pressure on his temple and a voice which said in the preciseness of a foreigner:
"Now I have you, sir. Now I shall kill you, sir."
In that instant Johnny prepared himself for his final earthly sensation. He had recognized the voice of the Russian.
There came a click, then a snap. The next instant the revolver which had rested against his forehead struck the frozen roof of the mine. The weapon had missed fire and, between turns of the cylinder, Johnny's good right hand had struck out and up.
The light snapped out, and in the midnight darkness of that icy cavern the two grappled and fell.
Had Johnny been in possession of the full power of his left arm, the battle would have been over soon. As it was they rolled over and over, their bodies crushing frozen bits of pay-dirt, like twin rollers. They struggled for mastery. Each man realized that, unless some unforeseen power intervened, defeat meant death. The Russian fought with the stubbornness of his race; fought unfairly too, biting and kicking when opportunity permitted. Three times Johnny barely missed a blow on the head which meant unconsciousness, then death.
At last, panting, perspiring, bleeding and bruised, Johnny clamped his right arm about his antagonist's neck and, flopping his body across his chest, lay there until the Russian's muscles relaxed.
Sliding to a sitting position, the American began feeling about in the dark. At last, gripping a flashlight, he snapped it on. The face of the Russian revealed the fact that he was not unconscious. Johnny slid to a position which brought each knee down upon one of the Russian's arms. He would take no chances with that man.
Slowly Johnny flashed the light about, then, with a little exclamation, he reached out and gripped the handle of the Russian's revolver.
"Now," he mocked, "now I have you, sir. Now I shall kill you, sir."
He had hardly spoken the words when a body hurled itself upon him, knocking the revolver from his hand and extinguishing the light.
"So. There are others! Let them come," roared Johnny, striking out with his right in the dark.
"Azeezruk nucky." To his astonishment he recognized the voice of Iyok-ok. What he had said, in Eskimo, was, "It would be a bad thing to kill him," meaning doubtless the Russian.
"Azeezruk adocema" (he is a bad one), replied Johnny, throwing the light on the sullen face of the Eskimo.
"Eh-eh" (yes), the other agreed.
"Then what in thunder!" Johnny exclaimed, falling back on English. "He tried to kill me. Kill me! Do you understand? Why shouldn't I kill him?"
"No kill," said the Eskimo stubbornly.
Johnny sat and thought for a full three minutes. In that time, his blood had cooled. He was able to reason about the matter. In the army he had learned one rule: "If someone knows more about a matter than you do, follow his guidance, though, at the time, it seems dead wrong." Evidently Iyok-ok knew more about this Russian than Johnny did. Then the thing to do was to let the man go.
Before releasing him, he searched him carefully. Beyond a few uninteresting papers, a pencil, a cigaret case and a purse he found nothing. Evidently the revolver had been his only weapon.
As he searched the man, one peculiar question flashed through Johnny's mind; if the Russian had the envelope full of diamonds on his person, what should he do, take them or leave them? He was saved the necessity of a decision; they were not there.
"Now," said Johnny, seating himself on a rusty pan, as the Russian went shuffling out of the mine, "tell me why you didn't let me kill him."
"Can't tell," was Iyok-ok's laconic reply.
"Why?"
"Not now. Sometime, maybe. Not now."
"Look here," said Johnny savagely, "that man has tried to kill me or have me killed, three times, is it not so?"
Iyok-ok did not answer.
"First," Johnny went on, "he induces the reindeer Chukches to try to kill me and furnishes them the knife to do it with. Eh?"
"Maybe."
"Second, he drops a harpoon into my igloo and tries to harpoon me and blow me up."
"Maybe."
"And now he puts a revolver to my head and pulls the trigger. Still you say 'No kill.' What shall I make of that?"
"Canak-ti-ma-na" (I don't know), said the Eskimo. "No kill, that's all."
Johnny was too much astonished and perplexed to say anything further. The two sat there for some time in silence. At last the Eskimo rose and made his way toward the entrance.
Johnny flashed his light about the place. He was looking for his sack of gold. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and put out his hand. What it grasped was the envelope he had seen in the Russian's pocket at Wo Cheng's shop, the envelope of diamonds. And the diamonds were still there; he could tell that by the feel of the envelope.
Hastily searching out his now insignificant treasure of gold, Johnny placed it with the envelope of diamonds in his inner pocket and hurried from the mine.
Darkness again found him musing over a seal oil lamp. He was not in a very happy mood. He was weary of orientalism and mystery. He longed for the quiet of his little old town, Chicago. Wouldn't it be great to put his feet under his old job and say, "Well, Boss, what's the dope to-day?" Wouldn't it, though? And to go home at night to doll up in his glad rags and call on Mazie. Oh, boy! It fairly made him sick to think of it.
But, at last, his mind wandered back to the many mysteries which had been straightened out not one bit by these events of the day. Here he was traveling with two companions, a Jap girl and an Eskimo. Eskimo? Right there he began to wonder if Iyok-ok, as he called himself, was really an Eskimo after all. What if he should turn out to be a Jap playing the part of an Eskimo? Only that day Johnny had once more come upon him suddenly to find him in earnest conversation with the Jap girl. And the language they had been using had sounded distinctly oriental. And yet, if he was a Jap, how did it come about that he spoke the Eskimo language so well?
Dismissing this question, his mind dwelt upon the events of the past few days. Twice he had been begged not to kill the Russian. This last time he most decidedly would have been justified in putting a bullet into the rascal's brain. He had been prevented from doing so by Iyok-ok. Why?
"Anyway," he said to himself, yawning, "I'm glad I didn't do it. It's nasty business, this killing people. I couldn't very well tell such a thing to Mazie; you can't tell such things to a woman, and I want to tell her all about things over here. It's been a hard old life, but so far I haven't done a single thing that I wouldn't be proud to tell her about. No, sir, not one! I can say: 'Mazie, I did this and I did that,' and Mazie'll say, 'Oh, Johnny! Wasn't that gr-ran-nd?'"
Johnny grinned as the thought of it and felt decidedly better. After all, what was the use of living if one was to live on and on and on and never have any adventures worth the telling?
For some time he lay sprawled out before the lamp in silent reflection, then he sat up suddenly and pounded his knee.
"By Jove! I'll bet that's it!" he exclaimed.
He had happened upon a new theory regarding the Russian. It seemed probable to him that this man, knowing of this gold mine, perhaps being owner of it, had come north to determine its value and the advisability of opening it for operation in the spring. In these days, when the money market of the world was gold hungry, that glittering, yellow metal was of vast importance, especially to the warring factions of Russia. Surely, this seemed a plausible explanation. And if it was true then he could hurry on up the coast, with or without his companions and make his way home.
"But then," he said, perplexed again. He reached his hand into his pocket to draw out the envelope he had found in the mine. "But then, there's the diamonds. Would a man coming on such a journey bring such treasure with him? He couldn't trade them to the natives. They know money well enough, but not diamonds."
Johnny opened the envelope and shook it gently. Three stones fell into his hand. They were of purest blue white, perfect stones and perfectly cut. A glance at the envelope showed him that it was divided into four narrow compartments and that each compartment was filled with diamonds wrapped in tissue paper. Only these three were unwrapped.
Running his fingers down the outside of the compartments, he counted the jewels.
"One hundred and four," he breathed. "A king's ransom. Forty or fifty thousand dollars worth, anyway. Whew!"
Then he stared and his hand shook. His eye had fallen upon the stamp of the seal in the corner of the envelope. He knew that secret mark all too well; had learned it from Wo Cheng. It was the stamp of the biggest and worst society of Radicals in all the world.
"So!" Johnny whispered to himself. "So, Mr. Russian, you are a Radical, a red, a Nihilist, a communist, an anything-but-society-as-it-is guy. You want the world to cough up its dough and own nothing, and yet here you are carrying round the price of a farm in your vest pocket." He chuckled. "Some reformer, I'd say!"
But his next thought sobered him. What was he to do with all that wealth? One of those stones would make Mazie happy for a lifetime. But it wasn't his. He had no right to it. He could not do a thing he'd be ashamed to tell Mazie and his old boss about.
But, if they didn't belong to him, perhaps the diamonds didn't belong to the Russian either. At any rate, the latter's disloyalty to his nation had forfeited his right to own property.
Even should this Russian be the rightful owner, Johnny could not very well hunt him up and say: "Here, mister. You tried to kill me yesterday. Here are your diamonds. I found them in the mine. Please count them and see if they are all there."
Johnny grinned as he thought of that. There seemed to be nothing to do but keep the stones, for the time being at least.
"Anyway," he said to himself as he rolled up in his deer skins. "I'll bet I have discovered something. I'll bet he's one of the big ones, perhaps the biggest of them all. And he's trying to make his way across to America to stir things up over there."
"What do you know about that gold mine?" Johnny asked, turning an inquiring eye on Iyok-ok, whom Johnny now strongly suspected of being a Japanese and a member of the Mikado's secret service as well.
"Which mine?" Iyok-ok smiled good-naturedly as he blinked in the sunlight. It was the morning after Johnny's battle with the Russian.
"Are there others?"
"Seven mines."
"Seven! And all of them rich as the one we were in yesterday?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
"Some much richer," he declared.
"How long has the world known of this wealth?"
"Never has known. A few men know, that's all. The old Czar, he knew, but would let no one work the mines. Just at the last he said 'Yes.' Then they hurried much machinery over here, but it was too late. The Czar—well, you know he is dead now, but they have their machinery here still."
"Who are 'they'?" asked Johnny with curiosity fully aroused.
"American. I know. Can't tell. Worked for them once. Promise never tell."
Johnny wrinkled his brow but did not press the matter.
"But this Russia, the Kamchatkan Peninsula?" Iyok-ok continued. "Whom does it belong to now? Can you tell me that?"
Johnny shook his head.
"Neither can They tell. If They knew, and if They knew it was safe to come back and mine here, when the world has so great need of gold, you better believe They would come and mine, But They do not know; They do not know." The boy pronounced the last words with an undertone of mystery. "Sometime I will know. Then I—I will tell you, perhaps."
"Where's the machinery?" asked Johnny.
"Up the river. Wanta see it?"
"Sure."
They hurried away up the frozen river and in fifteen minutes came upon a row of low sheds. The doors were locked, but to his great surprise Johnny discovered that his companion had the keys.
They were soon walking through dark aisles, on each side of which were piled parts of mining machines of every description, crushers, rollers, smelters and various accessories connected with quartz mining. Mingled with these were picks, pans, steam thawers, windlasses, and great piles of sluice timber. All these last named were for mining placer gold.
"Quartz too?" asked Johnny.
"Plenty of quartz," grinned Iyok-ok. "Come out here, I will show you."
They stepped outside. The boy locked the door, then led his companion up a steep slope until they were on a low point commanding a view of the village below and a rocky cliff above.
"See that cliff?" asked Iyok-ok. "Plenty of gold there. Pick it out with your pen knife. Rich! Too rich."
"Then this Peninsula is as rich as Alaska?"
"Alaska?" Iyok-ok grinned. "Alaska? What shall I say? Alaska, it is a joke. Think of the great Lena River! Great as the Yukon. Who knows what gold is deposited in the beds and banks of that mighty stream? Who knows anything about this wonderful peninsula? The Czar, he has kept it locked. But now the Czar is dead. The key is lost. Who will find it? Sometime we will see."
The boy was interrupted by wild shouts coming from the village. As their eyes turned in that direction, Johnny and Iyok-ok beheld a strange sight. The entire village had apparently turned out to give chase to one man. And, down to the last child, they were armed. But such strange implements of warfare as they carried! All were relics of by-gone days; lances, walrus harpoons, bows and arrows, axes, hammers and many more.
As Johnny watched them, he remembered having been told by an old native that during and after the great war these people had been unable to procure a sufficient supply of ammunition and had been obliged to resort to ancient methods of hunting. These were the bow and arrow, the lance and the harpoon. Powerful bows, of some native wood, shot arrows tipped with cunningly tempered bits of steel. The drawn and tempered barrel of a discarded rifle formed a point for the long-shafted lance. The harpoon, most terrible of all weapons, both for man and beast, was a long wooden shaft with a loose point attached to a long skin rope. Once five or six of these had been thrown into the body of a great white bear or some offending human he was doomed to die a death of agonizing torture; his body being literally torn to pieces by the drag upon the strong skin ropes, fastened to the steel points imbedded in his flesh.
Now it seemed evident that for some misdeed one member of the tribe had been condemned to die. As Johnny stood there staring, the whole affair seemed so much like things he had seen done on the screen, that he found it difficult to realize that this was an actual tragedy, being enacted before his very eyes.
"They do it in the movies," he said.
"Yes," his companion agreed, "but here they will kill him. We must hurry to help him."
"Who is he?"
"Don't you see? The Russian."
"Oh!" sighed Johnny. "Let 'em have him. He deserves as much from me, probably deserves more from them."
"No! No! No!" Iyok-ok protested, now very much excited. "That will never do. We must save him. They think he's from the Russian Government. Think he will demand their furs and carry them away. They mistake. They will kill him. Your automatic! We must hurry. Come."
Johnny found himself being dragged down the hill. As he looked below, he realized that his companion was right. The man was doomed unless they interfered. Already skillful archers were pausing to shoot and their arrows fell dangerously near the fugitive.
"Now, from here," panted Iyok-ok. "Your automatic. Shoot over their heads. They will stop. I will tell them. They will not kill him."
Johnny's hand went to his automatic, but there it rested. These natives? What did he have against them that he should interrupt them in the chase? And this Russian, what claim did he have on him that he should save his life? None, the answer was plain. And yet, here was this boy, to whom he had grown strangely attached, begging him to help save the Russian. A strange state of affairs, for sure.
Toward them, as he ran, the Russian turned a white, appealing face. To them came ever louder and more appalling the cry of the excited natives. Now an arrow fell three feet short of its mark. And now, a stronger arm sent one three yards beyond the man, but a foot to one side. The whole scene, set as it was in the purple shadows and yellow lights of the north-land, was fascinating.
But the time had come to act.
"Well, then," Johnny grunted, whipping out his automatic, "for your sake I'll do it."
Three times the automatic barked its vicious challenge. The mob paused and waited silently.
Out of this silence there came a voice. It was the voice of Iyok-ok by Johnny's side. Through cupped hands, he was speaking calmly to the natives. His words were a jumble of Eskimo, Chukche and pidgen-English, but Johnny knew they understood, for, as the speech went on, he saw them drop their weapons, then one by one pick them up again to go shuffling away.
Johnny looked about for the Russian. He had disappeared.
"Now what did you do that for?" he asked his companion.
"Can't tell now," Iyok-ok answered slowly. "Sometime, mebbe. Not now. Azeezruk nucky, that's all."
He paused and looked away at the hills; then turning, extended his hand. "Anyway, I thank you very, very much I thank you."
With that they made their way toward the village and the sea, which, packed and glistening with ice, reflected all the glories of the gorgeous Arctic sunset.
Three hours later Iyok-ok put his head in at Johnny's igloo and said:
"One hour go."
"North?" asked Johnny.
"North."
"You go?"
"Eh-eh."
"Jap girl go?"
"Eh-eh."
"East Cape? Behring Strait?"
"Mebbe." With a smile, the boy was gone.
"Evidently the Russian is on the move again," Johnny observed to himself. "Wonder what he intends to do about his diamonds? Well, anyway, that proves that the gold mines are not his goal."
As Johnny dug into his pack for a dry pair of deer skin stocks, he discovered that his belongings had been tampered with.
"The Russian," he decided, "evidently hasn't forgotten his diamonds."