Because there is no night in the Northland in June, dawn on Kon Klayu was but a tender merging of golden twilight into amber and rose and blue, with the sun reappearing within an hour of his setting, kissing the summer sea into sparking sheets of silver and jade. The little green Island with its girdle of creaming surf had never seemed so beautiful as in the early morning of the day Shane and Kayak and Harlan sailed away in search of help. The electricity of adventure, of hope was in the air, and the wind was as soft and balmy as a breath from tropic seas.
After the last good-bye had been said, Ellen, Jean and Loll stood on the beach below the cabin watching the little whaleboat riding the long, gentle swells just outside the line of breakers. The tin patches on the frail sides glinted bravely in the sunshine, the mended old Christopher Columbus sail caught the breeze, and slenderly outlined against it were the forms of Shane and Harlan waving a cheerful farewell to the watchers. Kayak Bill, his hand on the tiller and his face turned resolutely away, headed the pathetic craft out into the treacherously smiling North Pacific and laid his course for Katleean.
The boat was slowly lost in the sunny silver distance, and the sisters, arm in arm, turned and listlessly followed the trail back to the cabin. Lollie walking on ahead, brushed the tears from his eyes and squared his narrow shoulders as if already he had assumed the responsibilities of the man of the family.
The door of the cabin stood open and the sun made a great rectangle of light on the floor. It was very quiet—and lonely. The loneliness was new to both women and it hurt like a pain in their souls. It seemed impossible that nowhere on the Island were the men to whom they were so accustomed.
Ellen began picking up the dishes which were standing as she had left them after the early breakfast. Jean helped her. When the work was over there seemed nothing left but the aching emptiness of waiting.
The long day wore away at last. Tomorrow, if the wind held favorable and all went well, Ellen and Jean assured each other repeatedly, the whaleboat would reach Katleean, and in two more days a ship might come for them.
At twilight Jean climbed alone to the Lookout. The sunny day had faded in a grey mist. Afar down toward the south cliffs the tree so like a waiting woman stood out against it in weird, life-like appeal. The flat desolation of the plateau was marked by the tundra trail that led across the Island to the Hut—the trail along which Gregg had so often come to meet her. She had not dreamed that life could hold so much of emptiness nor that longing for a loved one could be so intense as to be almost a physical pain. She sank down beside the dull ashes of last night's fire. The loneliness was almost unbearable.
From the pocket in her blouse she took a folded paper. Gregg had pressed it into her hand as he left that morning. She unfolded it. It was a verse from some poet unknown to her. "Read it when I am gone," he had whispered to her.
"When I am standing on a mountain crest,Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;. . . I laugh aloud for love of you,Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather—No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,But hale and hardy as the highland heather,Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,Comrade of the ocean, playmate of the hills."
Before Jean had finished, her shoulders had straightened. She felt strangely comforted, lifted out of herself. Surely, she thought, nothing but happiness could come of a love like this. Even the elements must be kind to one who loved so. Back in her little bunk she thought of him out on the dark sea in an open boat with only the night for a covering, and to calm her fears she repeated over and over again the words of the verse he had left her.
Her faith was sorely tried the next morning when she woke to the old familiar roar of wind and wave, and felt the cabin trembling in the blasts of a gale. She saw, with alarm, that Ellen was not in her bed. On investigating, Jean found her out on the beach standing bareheaded while the wind wound her garments about her, loosening the strands of her braided hair and pelting her with rain and flying spray. Ellen was gazing, in a fascination of dread, at the green-back waves humping their backs like fearful monsters, chasing one another in to the line of foaming breakers that spent themselves at her feet.
Jean slipped her hand into her sister's and drew her back to the cabin.When they entered Loll was up making a fire in the Yukon stove.
The day wore on. The storm increased, though it never became as violent as some they had experienced during the winter. The direction of the wind was favorable to their sailors. Both women knew that no make-shift craft could live in such a sea, yet they hoped with an intensity akin to despair that Shane had made the shelter of Katleean Bay before the full fury of the storm was reached.
Night came on darker than usual, low scudding clouds and flying wavetops seeming to mingle. Waves sheeted with foam faded ghost-like into the tossing greyness. Drifts of rain blew stingingly in from the sea. Cruel and cold the waters appeared now to Jean's anxious eyes, and she found herself repeating again the lines of Gregg's verse, as if it had become the tenets of her faith.
The second day of the storm passed as did the first, except that evening brought a surcease of rain. The clouds in the west began to lift. The sisters drawn closer by their common, mounting dread, slept together that night, one on each side of Loll.
It was long before sleep visited Jean. But presently she was dreaming that she dangled at the end of a rope over the cliff above the cavern, trying to snatch nuggets from the rocky ledges. The wind blew her body hither and thither, as she clutched the jutting crags. She tried vainly to secure a foot or hand-hold. From above Gregg's voice was calling, calling her plaintively, weirdly. She tried to make out his words but could not. The wind blew them far away, and only a faint, wild "Awh-hoo-oo-oo-oo!" came to her. Then her rope began to slip and she was falling, falling interminably past the face of the precipice, past shags' nests, past thousands of flapping birds who shrieked tauntingly at her. With a convulsive movement she tried to spring to the rock shelf below her—tried so hard that she woke trembling and in a cold perspiration of dream-fear, with her heart pumping so loudly that she could hear it.
The wind had died down and only the muffled beating of the great combers on far seaward bars was audible, but—of a sudden she was bolt upright in bed, listening with every sense alert. On the island, where they three were the only human beings, someone,somethingwas calling. Above the sound of the sea it came—the haunting, long-drawn cry of her dream:
"Awh-oo-oo-oo! Awh-oo-oo-oo!"
But this was no dream. The cry came again, one minute apparently from the depths of the ocean, then from the Lookout above the cabin. It came nearer, growing more appalling, more mysterious in its possibilities. It filled her with fearful, inchoate imaginings. . . .
In an agony of terror she reached out and shook her sister's shoulder.
"Ellen! Ellen!" she whispered tensely. "Listen! Some one is calling!"
Ellen awakened out of a belated sleep, raised on her elbow and tossed the long loose hair from her face.
Again came the unearthly: "Awh-hoo-oo-oo!" rising thin and high and dying away on the falling inflection.
Ellen's face went paler as she listened. She lingered a moment, then sprang out of bed. Slipping her hand beneath her pillow she drew forth the revolver and started for the door. Jean crawled gently over the sleeping Lollie and followed.
They stood on the porch in the freshness of the dawn searching the familiar landscape for some sign of life. The storm had cleared away and long scarf-like clouds streaked the intense blue above. Once out in the open Jean's mind was cleared of its phantoms. But a sudden shock went through her when, from just over the bank, the call came again.
Almost immediately there appeared in the trail the strange, tottering form of a man. He advanced haltingly as if spent from some long struggle, his bare, black head sunk on his chest, his damp garments clinging to him.
"Stop!" Ellen's voice rang out. "Tell me who you are and where you are from!"
The man raised his head. At the sight of the two women standing in their white robes, their loose hair floating about them, a spasm of mortal terror crossed his dark face.
"Kus-ta-ka!Kus-ta-ka!" [1] he yelled, at the same time throwing up his arms and turning to run weakly down the trail.
Ellen covered the staggering figure with her revolver, but Jean caught her hand. "Don't, El! Be careful!" she cried breathlessly. "Can't you see—it's our old friend! It's Swimming Wolf from Katleean!"
She sprang along the trail after him calling: "Wolf! Oh, SwimmingWolf! Don't run away from us! Don't you know your friends?"
The man terrified by something, she knew not what, kept up his feeble running gait. She overtook him and grasped his shirt. The big Indian collapsed on the sand. His hand closed painfully over her arm while his wild black eyes searched her face. At the touch his look gave place to one of relief.
"Ugh! Little squaw with white feet!" he gasped. "Swimming Wolf think you all the same dead—think all you people dead. Long time you have no grub." He pinched her arm again as if to reassure himself that she was flesh and blood and not thekus-ta-ka, the ghost he had thought her. He continued: "Long time now, Swimming Wolf no grub too." He opened his mouth and pointed a shaking finger down his throat. "No grub, no water, no sleep, t'ree day." He held up three fingers turning his head slowly from side to side. "T'ree day lost. Plenty tired."
His voice was weary, plaintive, as only an Indian voice can be. Jean wondered how she had for one instant attributed his Indian cry to supernatural powers—she who had often heard him calling to members of his tribe along the shores of Katleean.
Noting his weak condition, the girl checked the eager questions that rose to her lips, and when Ellen came up, between them they managed to get the worn man to the cabin. They fed him bread and hot sea-parrot broth. He ate ravenously as much as Ellen thought good for him, but when she tried to induce him to lie down in Kayak Bill's bunk, he shook his head, and started unsteadily for the door.
"No, no!" he said sharply. "You come along. Other man with SwimmingWolf."
They followed him down the trail to the beach and turned with him toward Sunset Point. He paid no attention to their eager questions, but suddenly stopped and pointed ahead. In the maw of the surf inside the Point a whaleboat was churning. At the sight of it cries of alarm broke from the women's throats, but again the Indian shook his head.
"Him not there," he assured them. "Him upthere!" He indicated the high-tide-line. He lurched along beside them, intent on taking them to where his friend lay.
They saw the still dark form lying prone on the edge of the rice-grass where Swimming Wolf had dragged it. Ellen, with a bottle of water and some bread in her hand, ran forward toward the prostrate man. Within a few feet of him, Jean saw her check herself and shrink back. Then, reluctantly the girl thought, she went on. Jean quickened her pace.
As she approached Ellen turned swiftly to her.
"Jean!" she said hardly above her breath. "Look!"
Jean gazed with incredulous eyes into the face on the sand. The black beard was matted with seawater. Below the bandaged forehead two weary grey eyes opened. A moment a faint look of surprise crept into them. Then they closed again and the man lay still as death.
"Oh-o-o!" Jean's voice held an uncontrollable quiver. "Oh-o-o! It's the White Chief of Katleean!"
[1] Ghost.
A week had gone by since the day the White Chief and Swimming Wolf had been cast up on the shores of Kon Klayu. The women, with the help of the Indian, had lifted the inert form of the dazed man to a mattress at the spot where they had found him, and dragged it literally inch by inch along the beach to the cabin. They put him to bed in Kayak's bunk in the little room off the living-room.
For Ellen and Jean the days were filled with intangible doubt and mounting fear, for no sail whitened off Kon Klayu. Added to the acute anxiety in regard to their men was now the problem of the White Chief of Katleean. What queer twist of Fate had tossed the trader, helpless and without food, on the Island where his very life depended on those he had left to starve? And, if their men were lost at sea, what would happen to them when Kilbuck recovered his strength?
Gradually, from the disjointed utterances of the superstitious Indian and from their own knowledge of the trader, they were able to piece together the story of the White Chief's mishap,—not the story as Swimming Wolf knew it, tinged with eerie Thlinget superstition and mystery—but the prosaic version of the white man, who sees everything through logical eyes, and is ever explaining away all that is mysterious in life and much that is interesting.
The White Chief, sometimes going for months without liquor, had, as they knew, periods when he drank as no other man in all Alaska. Curiously enough, he never gave way to his desire while at Katleean, but with one faithful native to attend him, he would go aboard some visiting vessel, and there sink himself into the oblivion brought about by quantities of hootch.
It was in the latter part of May that a schooner, theSilver Fox, came to anchor in the Bay of Katleean. The owner and captain was a German, bound for Cook's Inlet with a load of gasoline and enough equipment to start an illicit still at Turn-again-arm. Paul Kilbuck, after nearly a year of abstinence, succumbed to his craving, and with Swimming Wolf, sought the cabin of theSilver Fox. After two days of the German's liquid hospitality, he was ready for any mad adventure. Doubtless the thought of Ellen and her family must have been with him during the winter. Perhaps he had some inchoate drunken plan of seeking her when he put to sea with the potvaliant captain of theSilver Fox; but six hours from the post he collapsed in a stupor on the captain's bunk.
Tales of the North are replete with instances of the incredible recklessness of men drunk on the pale liquor of that land—men who, sailing along the dangerous coast, lash the wheels of their vessels, and leaving all sail set, go below for a day's carousal; men who drain the very liquid from the compass to satisfy their burning thirst when hootch is gone. So it was no surprise to the women to learn that the storm which swept the Island so soon after the departure of the three men, had broken upon theSilver Foxwhen all hands, except the faithful Swimming Wolf, were too far gone in drink to man the craft.
As he talked, the Indian, with expressive eyes and hands, acted out each step of his story. He told how the wind increased; how he lashed the wheel and all alone tried to reef the bellying canvass, letting it fall as it would at last. With a few words and many dramatic gestures, he made known how the trader, roused from a two-day stupor by the pitching of the vessel and the banging of the boom sticks, had staggered up out of the cabin, and been struck by the heavily swinging boom of the mainsail.
The captain and the three sailors crawled to the deck soon after, where the freshness of the rising gale undoubtedly cleared their brains somewhat. They tried to make things ship-shape to weather the storm. The captain was just about to cut the tow-line that still bound the trader's whaleboat to the stern of theSilver Fox, when suddenly volumes of black smoke came pouring out of the cabin.
Swimming Wolf was never able to give a white man's reason which would explain the fire that started in the hold of the schooner where the gasoline was stored. He swore it was thekus-ta-kawho kindled the flame, thekus-ta-kawho knocked the White Chief on the head and made him fall "all same dead." That he finally got the trader into the whaleboat and escaped the burning vessel while the crew departed in their own small boat was evident. There was but one oar, and the craft was blown hither and thither on the tossing sea at the wind's will. In the dawn of the third day Swimming Wolf had been able to beach it on the rocky shore off which he found himself.
The Indian had no idea where he was landing, and when he saw the white-robed figures appear on the rickety porch of the cabin, it was not surprising that he thought them ghosts.
Further questioning of Swimming Wolf revealed the fact that at Katleean, two drunken sailors had run theHoonahashore in the lagoon on one of the highest tides of the fall. Though uninjured, it would have required some work to get the little craft off again; so there, evidently, she had remained.
"But Swimming Wolf, why didn't the White Chief get another boat and come with our provisions? Why didn't the Indians come for us? Didn't anyone care whether we starved or not?"
The Wolf looked at Ellen with that stolid, blank expression an Indian assumes when he does not wish to be questioned.
"Me dun know. Me dun know." He shook his head. "Indian have no boat. Kilbuck, he Big Chief. He all time say: 'Mind you business or Indian get no grub. Tomorrow I go.' He all time say 'Tomorrow.'"
Tomorrow! From the lips of Kayak Bill who knew his Alaska, Ellen and Jean knew what tragedies lie behind that word. From waiting on wind and tide and the next steamer to go someplace, from waiting on summer or winter to do something, from waiting on an indifferent government to act on something, people of the North have found that Alaska has become essentially a Land of Tomorrow! A month in Alaska becomes as a day in the States.
Humanity demanded that the two women do their best for the man who had brought about their present perilous situation, though he had forfeited all claim to womanly sympathy. Ellen could not bring herself to go near the White Chief after he was placed in Kayak's bunk, but she directed Swimming Wolf, who nursed and fed him. At first Kilbuck lay in a stupor, but suddenly, at the end of twenty-four hours, he came out of his daze. Jean, going into his room, encountered his narrow grey eyes looking up at her with their normal expression.
He recovered quickly from the blow on the head, and on a diet of bread and broth rapidly regained his strength. The women avoided him whenever possible, but Loll, on whom once more they were dependent for sea-parrots, found time to sit beside him, asking about his friends at Katleean, and in turn telling the trader all his small affairs of the day. As time went by he must have given the man a fair idea of the struggle for existence during the winter on Kon Klayu.
Kilbuck, for the most part, was silent. He made no effort to explain his failure to keep his promises. His strange, grey eyes, whenever it was possible, followed the movements of Ellen and Jean. Sometimes the women could hear him, indistinctly, questioning Lollie.
The fourth day Swimming Wolf assisted him to the porch where he sat looking a long time at the sun-kissed sea. The fifth day, with the Indian's help, he took a walk on the beach. What he thought of the situation Ellen and Jean had no means of knowing, but as they watched him rapidly regaining his old arrogant manner, vague fears crept insiduously into their minds. At the end of the week he was issuing his orders to Swimming Wolf with all the ease and certainty of one in supreme command.
One afternoon Ellen sat on the porch trying to piece together the remnants of a little shirt for Loll. Jean and the boy were off with Swimming Wolf gathering food. The White Chief had gone to his room some time before. Ellen's heart was heavy with anxiety for her husband. If he were alive, he should by now have returned to her. If he were dead. . . . For some minutes she was oblivious to all about her as she strove to thrust this thought from her mind. The incipient menace of the White Chief's presence hovered about her, though so far he had never by word or look betrayed any sentimental interest in her since his advent on the Island. Perhaps by now, she told herself hopefully, time and his illness had changed him for the better. Perhaps——
Something caused her to turn her head toward the cabin door back of her. Against the portal stood the White Chief. His hand was hooked beneath his scarlet belt in the old familiar manner. His narrow, pale eyes were fastened upon her in a way she had known in Katleean. She felt suddenly that he had taken in every detail of her appearance—her heavy braided hair, her worn and faded blouse, her short ragged skirt, and her feet incased in home-made moccasins of canvas. She felt a rush of hot blood rising to her hair. He noted it and smiled, his sardonic, thin-lipped smile. The peculiar warmth that crept into his eyes caused Ellen's heart to contract with a realization of appalling possibilities. A small, inward panic took possession of her.
She rose abruptly and ran swiftly up the hillside trail to the Lookout. She knew now that she was not dealing with a sick man. She and her sister were practically at the mercy of Paul Kilbuck.
She resolved to keep her suspicions from Jean as long as possible, but that evening as they were sitting together in the living-room, after Lollie had climbed into bed, the girl kept glancing apprehensively toward the closed door that shut off the sleeping place of the trader.
"Ellen," she said, hardly above a whisper. "I don't think he's as ill now as he would have us believe." She nodded toward the closed door. "We ought to ask him to move over to the Hut with Swimming Wolf now. . . . Ellen—I'm growing dreadfully afraid of him. . . . Oh!" She started nervously at a sound from the other room.
"I wish we had some way of locking that door." In a low voice Ellen thus admitted her own uneasiness, while her gaze wandered about the room. "We might put the table in front of it, and then if he did try to come through in the night, we would hear him."
Cautiously the two women lifted the table and placed the inadequate barrier across the door.
"From now on, Jean, only one of us will sleep, while the other watches—just to be ready, you know. If he makes one suspicious move—" she broke off and patted almost lovingly the revolver she had drawn from an inside pocket of her blouse.
Noting the look of fear that had crept into Jean's eyes since her suspicions had been confirmed, Ellen added: "But it won't be much longer, Jeanie, this waiting. Surely Shane will come in a day or two. It's nearly the twenty-first of June."
The twenty-first of June, the longest and most beautiful day of the year in the North, was also the anniversary of Ellen's wedding. Never during the last ten years had Shane forgotten it. Never had he failed to bring her some little surprise, to arrange some extra pleasure for her. For the past two weeks this thought had been with Ellen constantly, comforting her, promising her. By some complex, womanish process she had come to believe that on the twenty-first of June Shane, if alive,mustcome to her. As she and Jean lay awake whispering during the long, light nights, she had instilled some of her faith into the girl's mind. If they could but keep the trader from any untoward action until then, they both felt that all would be well.
During the days that followed the sisters never left each other's side. Swimming Wolf and Lollie procured the food. The Wolf chopped the wood and attended to other like duties about the cabin. The White Chief did nothing, except lounge on Kayak's bunk. In response to Ellen's suggestion that he move to the Hut on the other side of the Island he had merely looked into her eyes and smiled.
Since recovering his strength he had begun to take long walks about the beaches. Ellen feared that sometime he might come upon their cavern and learn the secret of the gold of Kon Klayu, but Jean assured her that there was no approach from either side of the precipice. The only way to the cave lay by way of the cleft.
As time dragged on the strain of uncertainty became almost more than the women could bear. Sometimes as they sat about the table eating the wild food which was their only sustenance now, Ellen could hardly control her impulse to hurl at the enigmatic man opposite her the questions that rose to her lips. Why was he so silent? For what was he waiting? What did he think of their situation? What did he mean to do with them?
She realized that they could not go on indefinitely as they were now.Somethingmust happen to relieve the tension. She had reached a point where any word, any action that might give her a clew to the trader's intentions, was welcome. She began to long intensely that he might do something which would give her an excuse to use the revolver she carried constantly beneath her blouse.
But beyond looks and an occasional cryptic smile, he did nothing to alarm either of the women. Yet his very silence and inaction were more ominous than threats. He instilled in them a crawling dread, a growing terror and uncertainty that was worse than anything they had hitherto known.
The twenty-first of June dawned beautiful and clear. It had been Ellen's turn to watch all night and she was a-stir early, happier and more cheerful than she had been for months. Today—today Shane must come. She was sure he would come. He had never failed her, She woke Jean and Loll, and with that undying instinct which prompts every true woman to make a feast for her returning man, Ellen prepared an extra amount of the poor fare at her command: gumboot hash, boiled eggs and sea-parrot.
Shortly after the mid-day meal the White Chief, now fully recovered, went off with Swimming Wolf in the direction of the south cliffs. Ellen with her sister and Lollie climbed hopefully to the Lookout to begin their watching.
In the bright sunshine the sea below heaved gently and stretched away to the horizon where, today, the dim outline of the amethyst range showed. Afar out the smoke of a west-bound steamer smudged the sky faintly, lending a suggestion of human nearness to the scene that cheered the waiting ones. Nearly three weeks had gone by since the men had left the Island, and the weather, with the exception of the one storm, had been calm. Today, certainly, Shane would come—if he were alive.
Eagerly, hopefully they talked of his arrival as they sat scanning the ocean toward Katleean. The soft breeze died away. The sea took on the smooth shimmer of undulating satin. From afternoon down to sunset the day grew in beauty.
Time went by and the passing of each hour lessened somewhat the measure of their blind faith and hope. Their talk became desultory. The blue and silver of afternoon gave way to the blue and gold of approaching evening. The tide came in and the amber sky took on the luminous tints of rose and jade, cobalt and orange. The heaving, chameleon sea, unruffled by a breath of wind, gave back the colors quivering, burnished, opalescent, like the bowl of an abalone shell. They, on the Lookout, felt themselves alone inside the tinted bubble of the world. Ellen's day was waning in an enthralling splendor that rendered the watchers speechless; it numbed them by its exquisite beauty so incongruous with their own growing sense of hopelessness. Ellen's day was waning, and yet there was no sign of Shane.
From the pole on the Lookout the home-made flag hung in pathetic bleached tatters, like lifeless grey hair down the back of an old woman. Beneath it, on driftwood left over from the signal fires, sat the watchers. A faint breath from the dead ashes mingled with the freshness of the evening air and added an indefinable touch of loneliness. Little Loll, tired out from his long, vain watching, curled up against Ellen's knee and went to sleep. Shags, dark and witch-like against the glowing sky, flew in long, low lines toward the cliffs. There was no sound except the eternal murmur of the surf.
The opal tints deepened, . . . then faded to a dull amethyst. Just above the line of the sea the blood-red sun stood out against the haze like an immense weirdly-luminous balloon. The women watched it sinking, . . . sinking. It seemed pregnant with awesome, universal mysteries—this dully-growing crimson ball of the sun whose descent marked the close of the day.
"Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie!" Suddenly the low cry quivered on the hush of the night. Ellen's brave spirit had succumbed at last to the awful, beautiful, loneliness. She sank her head on her sister's shoulder and clasping her arms about Jean, vainly tried to still the surge of grief that shook her.
"Jeanie!" she sobbed. "He's dead. Shane—my husband—is dead! If—if he were living—he would have come—to me—today!"
The tattered flag on the pole above stirred to an awakening breeze. . . . The midnight sun touched the rim of the sea, and lingered to kiss with blood-red lips the cruel waters that have taken many men. . . . Then it doubled back on its track and slowly, perceptibly, rose again, as if reluctant to lose sight of the lonely Lookout where Lollie, fully awake now, was trying to gather two sobbing women into his thin, little-boy arms.
An hour later, Ellen, worn out by the vigil of the night before and the long watching on the Lookout, lay on the blankets of her bed fully dressed. Lollie slumbered beside her, his tumbled red head in the crook of his arm. It was Jean's night to watch, and she sat before the table, the revolver ready to her hand. Her shoulders drooped and her eyes were heavy-lidded and swollen from weeping. She rested her elbows on the table and dropped her face in her hands. Numbed by their grief and disappointment, both women for the time being had relaxed their caution, and for the first time in days, the table had not been placed across the closed door of the White Chief's room.
For an hour the girl sat immovable. . . . Then she glanced up at the clock. It had stopped. Ellen had forgotten to wind it. Jean wondered dully how they were now to tell the time. There was no other timepiece on the Island. But time didn't matter. Nothing mattered now. She dropped her face again in her hands. . . . Her head was very heavy. . . . Her arms slipped slowly until they rested on the table. . . . Her head settled forward until it lay upon them. . . . There came a long, tired sigh, and then the regular breathing of the sleeper. . . .
The sun of late morning was streaming in through the little north window when the door off the living-room softly opened. The tall figure of the White Chief stood a moment as he looked in at the quiet forms before him. A gleam of triumph showed in his narrow eyes as they came to rest on the pistol lying before the dark bowed head of the girl at the table. His nostrils twitched and his lip lifted in his wolfish smile. He tip-toed cautiously until his avid hand closed on the weapon.
In the middle of the room he paused, and with an air of satisfaction turned it over and over in his hands. There was a movement on the bed in the corner, and abruptly Ellen sat upright, her wide gaze on the man before her.
"Good morning!" He smiled at her derisively. His instinct for effective poses asserting itself, he began showing off his aptitude with the revolver. He twirled it, with elaborate carelessness, on his trigger finger, and with one movement of his wrist, stopped it, at the same time drawing a bead on the shining gold-scales above the window.
"I've been trying to get my hands on this for days," he said conversationally, turning to her again. "Your aim is a little too sure for me to take any chances." He looked at the weapon in his hand. "You know, my dear, I have never really believed in that popular fallacy concerning women and force—that a club and long hair go together. Still, you never can tell. . . . As a persuader this is a bit better than a club, but—" he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "I'll not need it—here." He extracted the three cartridges from the revolver and tossed it easily to the bed.
"Oh-o-o Ellen!" Jean's despairing voice struck through the room as she woke and found the pistol gone.
The trader glanced from one to the other. "I am indeed a fortunate man," he laughed, "to be cast upon an island with two charming women. Some might think it an embarrassment of riches—but I. . . ." He allowed a significant silence to sink in.
Ellen had risen from the bed and stood beside her sister, a hand resting protectingly on the girl's shoulder. The White Chief crossed to the table and seated himself on the edge of it, one foot swinging free.
"You're both going to think a lot of me before we're taken off Kon Klayu," he told them. "Oh, yes, we'll be taken off, my dears, but not by your husband, Mrs. Boreland." He ignored Ellen's cry and proceeded:
"I was a little afraid the first week that he might, by sheer Irish luck, have escaped the storm and be turning up here—but it's too late now. I'll wager you're a widow."
He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely as his pale eyes lingered first on one and then on the other woman before him.
"The pale white rose, and the dewy red bud," his vibrant voice went on mockingly. "Oh, do not be alarmed—" as they both shrank back—"I'm not going to be crude. I have plenty of time—plenty of time— Oh, you would, would you!" He broke off with a sudden snarl, as Ellen, infuriated by his manner, snatched up the empty revolver and hurled it with all her strength at his head.
He dodged, and with one panther-like movement, leaped at her, his arms closing like a vice about her shoulders.
As if maddened by her struggles he crushed her to him and pinioning her wrists in one powerful hand, he embedded the other in her loose hair and brutally drew her head back until her face was upturned to his. A moment he bent above her, crouching, feral, then he thrust his dark bearded face against hers and shut off her screams.
At the first intimation of the man's violence Jean had rushed to her sister's aid and was beating him with wildly impotent hands, calling despairingly to Lollie, to Swimming Wolf, even to Gregg. Then like a young tigress she sprang at him from behind trying to get a hold on his neck so that she might drag him from Ellen.
But the man was impervious to everything outside the circle of his arms.
"Oh, Swimming Wolf! Oh, help! Help us!" Jean's desperate screams rang out again as she heard the sound of hasty footsteps on the porch outside.
She leaped for the door, but before her hand touched the latch it was flung open and against the blinding sunshine loomed the tall figure of Shane Boreland.
With one bound he crossed the living-room. There came the sound of a blow, . . . struggling, . . . a sudden choked cry, and Shane's gasping words:
"God . . . you cur . . . come . . . in the open . . . I'll kill you!"
Two writhing, panting figures reeled about the living-room. . . . They broke. . . . Shane, livid with rage, side-stepped, and with the agility of a wild-cat leaped again at his adversary. His arm encircled and tightened about the trader's neck. Kilbuck turned in the grip and chest to chest they swayed, strained, their tentative blows rendered impotent by their very nearness to each other. With twistings of legs and sudden saggings of bodies they sought to get each other prostrate. The hot breath whistling from their gaping mouths made the only human sounds. Wheeling, lurching they fought swiftly about the room, knocking over chairs, . . . the table . . . sweeping the stove from its foundation. Then Shane's ankle turned as his foot encountered the fallen revolver, and he lost his balance.
In that instant the trader had him down—was upon him, slugging viciously with both fists. From the first there was no science in the fight. Both men inflamed—one with a long-denied passion for revenge, the other with hatred for one he had wronged, had reverted to the primitive lust to gouge, to claw, to kill with bare hands. They rolled about the floor, first one on top, then the other, striking, tearing at each other's throats, their very blind fury defeating their purpose. . . . Again a turn found them on their feet, and like snarling beasts they bounded back to the attack. Shirts were torn from their backs, warm, gummy blood on their sweating bared bodies rendered their grips insecure. . . . After what seemed to the watchers a frenzied eternity, their efforts began slowly to slacken. Their grips became more feeble, their hoarse rasping gasps for breath more labored. . . . The Chief attempted groggily to dodge a blow. Shane recovered his balance, rushed him low, and closed. A moment they swayed together, then slowly the trader was lifted off his feet; a sudden twist of Shane's shoulders, a heave, and the Chief was slammed against the edge of the overturned table, his arm striking heavily. Even as he went down Shane was on top of him, his hands fastened in a death grip about Kilbuck's throat. The man's face began to turn purple, his pale narrow eyes widened slowly, horribly until they seemed starting from the sockets.
Then Jean screamed.
"Gregg! Kayak! Stop him! Don't let him commit murder!"
The sound of the girl's voice broke the spell that had bound the spectators standing in the doorway. Kayak Bill and Harlan strode into the cabin and between them tore Boreland from his enemy and placed him on the bed in the corner, where Ellen and Lollie took charge of him. The insensible White Chief was carried into the next room and put in Kayak's bunk. Breathing heavily from exertion Kayak Bill stepped back to look at him.
"That lyin' skunk's so crooked he cain't lay straight in bed, Gregg. I was honin' somethin' powerful to horn in on that little shindy—but I reckon Shane's bunged him up conside'ble," he drawled with immense satisfaction, as he leaned over and felt the trader's arm. "'Pears like he's got a busted flipper, and I know his noggin is sure addled. Get some water, Gregg. I mout as well bring the durned squaw-pirate back to life, 'cause when he's well again, I aim to knock hell outen him myself——"
Kayak turned to find that his remarks had fallen on the empty air, for Gregg and Jean, standing amid the ruins of the dish cupboard, were oblivious to all the world except each other. His hazel eyes roved to the bed where Ellen and Loll were welcoming Shane as if he had returned from the dead. Kayak stood a moment.
"'Pears like I'm playin' a lone hand here," he said wistfully as he started for the water that was to revive the White Chief.
"Oh, Kayak! Kayak!" came Lollie's shout as he burrowed out from between his parents. "It's your turn now to get some lovin'. Wait a minute!" And the little fellow sprang from one end of the bed into Kayak's arms. A second later both Ellen and Jean were welcoming him with a warmth of affection that sent his new sombrero flying and made his old hair-seal waistcoat slip half-way off his shoulders. Delighted but unprepared for such demonstrations, Kayak was at a loss how to meet them. His cheeks turned fiery red, and though his eyes were glowing he backed away the moment they released him and began earnestly to readjust his worn waistcoat.
"By he—hen, Lady," he managed to say with some semblance of his old nonchalance, as he fumbled with a torn buttonhole. "I—I—" he glared accusingly at the hair-seal garment, "I believe this durned thing is—is—is a-sufferin' from poverty o' the buttons, or—or maybe enlargement o' the buttonholes!" And in the laughter that greeted his statement he went off to care for the White Chief.
Joy in the reunion and an hour's rest put Shane on his feet again. While the women gathered up their few belongings, they learned how the old whale-boat in which the men had left Kon Klayu had held together, seemingly by a miracle, during the first part of the storm, but later had been driven out of its course. When Shane finally landed at a cannery fifty miles from Katleean the boat was abandoned and they were taken to the trading post in the canoes of some fishing Indians. There they learned of the White Chief's trip on theSilver Foxand set about getting theHoonahoff the beach at the lagoon. The tides of June being higher than usual they had little trouble, but it took days to calk the seams and put the schooner in shape for the trip.
"We were within fifty miles of here yesterday when the wind died down, El," Shane told his wife, "and myself doing my best to make it on our wedding anniversary! I knew you'd be expecting me, little fellow." He patted her hand. "Well," he continued after some strictly personal remarks, "I suppose we'll have to take Kilbuck to a doctor before we go to Katleean—damn him, I ought to kill him, though. There's an M.D. at the cannery this summer. I want the blackguard fixed up so I can settle with him later." He drew a new corn cob from his pocket and cramming it with tobacco, lit it. "But I tell you, girls," he went on between puffs of the keenest enjoyment, "Kayak and I had the biggest surprise of our lives the day before we left Katleean!" He turned to Gregg and made a ludicrous confidential attempt to wink a swollen eye. "A cannery steamer put in and landed no less person than his royal nibs—the president of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company!"
This announcement was received with no particular enthusiasm by either of his listeners. He went on:
"We got close as paving bricks right off the reel, and he's going to finance the mining of Kon Klayu!" He stopped to note the effect of this statement. "We left him at the post looking into the business methods of the White Chief. The cannery steamer will be back in ten days and we'll all strike out for San Francisco together and get our outfit. We'll be back here at Kon Klayu this fall to begin operations." There was a dismayed exclamation from Ellen; a delighted one from Jean. "Oh, cheer up, El," he said to his wife. "You and I won't have to come unless we want to. We've already appointed the old man's son resident manager. He wants the job—is crazy about it in fact. Turn around girls, and I'll present him to you—Mr. Gregg Harlan, ladies!" With a grand flourish Shane indicated the flushing young man. "Why he chose to keep it a secret all these months, he hasn't told us yet, but—perhaps Jean will find out!" Laughing at the incredulous look on Ellen's face he limped out to the shed where Kayak Bill was doing up samples of ore to take aboard theHoonahlying just off the bluff.
At midnight the schooner was rippling gently over the long swells into an atmosphere of golden sunset light that flooded the sky and crinkled along the wavetops in shimmering, mellow orange. Up in the bow of theHoonahsilhouetted against the glow, old Kayak Bill stood alone. In his hazel eyes was the wistful look that crept there sometimes when he watched the domestic happiness of those about him. A-top the cabin by the mainmast Jean and Gregg stood looking back over the lengthening stretch of water. Kon Klayu lay, an oblong of jade in the amber light, ringed with a wreath of foam. A single gull winnowed across the vision calling a wistful question, and from the Lookout the tattered flag flung itself out on the breeze as if in farewell. Jean's happy voice came to him from where she snuggled in the circle of Harlan's arm.
Kayak Bill let his gaze wander to the stern where Shane and Ellen stood together at the wheel: Despite Boreland's battered countenance his chin was up in his old jaunty and debonaire manner. The wind ruffled the hair on his bare head. One hand managed the steering gear. The other arm lay across his wife's shoulders.
Kayak, watching shook his head gently.
"I always hearn tell," he spoke softly to himself, "that the only difference a-tween happy marriages and unhappy ones is that the happy ones keeps their bickerin's private like—but I don't know, . . . I don't know . . ."
A moment more he looked at the prospector and his wife, then he turned away and his old eyes gazed out across the tinted ocean spaces to that something which had always seemed to beckon him from beyond the sunset glow. Lost in his dreaming the old man did not hear Shane's eager voice as he released the wheel a moment and pointed off the bow to where, beyond the rim of the sea, lay the northwest coast of Alaska.
"It's up there in the Valley of the Kuskokwim, El! They've made a brand new strike and are getting ten dollars to the pan!" He looked down at her and went on in his most coaxing Irish way. "Darlin', when we get Loll in school, and Jean and Gregg and Kayak safely settled on Kon Klayu . . ." he hesitated, then finished eagerly, "Sure El, it would do us the world of good to go up there, little fellow, . . . just to take a bit of a look. . . ." He straightened, his eyes alight with the old questing expression, his face turned to the northwest, his spirit already faring forth across sea and land to the beckoning Valley of the Kuskokwim.