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IIVSI il l WENT I CHAPTER I I opened tha cabin window and felt the night air blow in on my face. There was no mistaking the smell of that air. It carried with it the scent of wide sprucelands and the sparkle o( highland ice fields and the razor-edged aroma of valleys where the sun falls thin on balsam and alder and buckcrop. It was the breath of Alaska, calling me back to the home of my youth. That little ship's cnbin became suddenly hateful to me. I was tired of tho nni<u? nnrl t>ir? nrrnrdion mil sic of the drunken groups swarm ing north to their cannery work. I was tired of tobacco smoke and al coholic song and crying babies ar.d squawking radios. So I reached for a wrap and made my way up on deck, where all was quiet and not a ship's lamp showed between the shadowy bow and the equally shadowy bridge. It was so quiet that I could feel the tremor of the Yukon's screw as she plowed northward through the night. At times it seemed as though we were steaming straight into a mountain side. But the lulls, as al ways, moved apart and let us pass through and as casually came to*' gether again in our wake. And as I sat there, with the night wind fanning my face, I felt that my mission was not a trivial one. I owed something to Alaska. And I had to justify myself through my work there, in what men called the last frontier. It wouid be different, of course. That new world would have all the roughness of '.ilderness life. And, jackaroo that I was, I'd have to begin all over again. I'd be a cheech ako once more in the colony of old timers. But my country was never ashamed of its pioneer women. And there was something moving and mysterious, I felt, in man's eternal quest for new frontiers. Then the light of mystery faded from the picture. For I woke up to the fact that I was no longer alone on that silent and starlit foredeck. A man, none too steady on his feet, wavered past me in the dark ness. He laughed as he passed an ex ploring hand over the softness of my polo coat. Then he sat down on the crate beside me. I sat silent, without moving, as he turned and tried to throw a bot tle overboard. "Good-by, sweetheart," he said with thick-voiced indifference. He was, I concluded, one of the West Coast wanderers who had been turn ing the lower decks of the Yukon into a cross between a faro joint and a water-front saloon. But he was sober enough to resent my sustained silence. "Can't you talk, pretty one?" he asked, with his face insolently close to mine. I wasn't afraid of him. I'd seen camp drunkards enough in my day. So I continued to confront him with the thunders of silence. He rose unsteadily to his feet and reached into his pocket. From it he took out a flashlight which he even more insolently held up in front of my face. "Not a bad looker," he had the grace to acknowledge. But it in no way added to my happiness. "Why in hell are you heading for the land of the sourdoughs?" That question I also declined to answer. I even moved a little to one side, to avoid the wavering flashlight. "Put out that light," a deep voice commanded from the darkness of the bridge. It was no easy matter, I remembered, to navigate the wa ters of the Inland Passage. My tormentor did as he was told. But he took his time about it. "We lixe it dark, don't we?" he said as he reached for my hand. The vigor with which I removed it from his clasp caused him to lose his balance for a moment or two. "What's taking a peach like you to that tin-can territory?" he finally inquired. "That," I was foolish enough to answer, "is entirely my own affair." But it was plain that I puzzled him. "You're a cheechako," he maun deringly proclaimed. "That fact, my pink and white friend, is written all over you." It didn't seem worth while Celling him I was Alaska born. "And you're still an unpicked peach," he insolently went on, "for no woman who's married is going to be up here stargazing in the dark. But you don't fit in with our flsh pack females. And you're sure not the dance-hall type. On the other hand, you're sure no panhandle chalk-wrangler." He nodded his head in confirmation of his own al coholic discernment. "No, sir; you're no camptoxvn schoolteacher." "It so happens," I informed him, "that I'm going to teach in the In dian school at Toklutna." That seemed to hold him for a moment. But his laugh, this time, was more caustic than ever. "Then your first lesson to those little frostbitten Siwashes ought to be that a bunch of rubber-stamp bureaucrats can't run a country the size of Alaska. Look what they've done with the power rights. Look at their fool laws about salmon fish ing. And look how they've let the big interests come in and choKe the life out of the territory. No wonder it turns an honest worker into a Red. They've got an idea they can turn us workers into an army of tongue tied sheep. They think ? " "They don't seem to have left you tongue-tied," I ventured. "You bet they haven't," he an nounced. "And that's why I'm known as Eric the Red. I can talk to 'em one at a time or five hun dred strong." But I'd had enough of nis soap box oratory. "I wish you'd go away," I told him. His movement, as he leaned clos er over me, was an exnsperatingly intimate one. "On a night like this," he mur mured, "with the stars up there singing together over the mountain tops? Not on your life, lady!" I knew my first tingle of fear as I felt his arm creep like a snake's head about the loose folds of my polo coat. The Yukon, at that mo ment, seemed a terribly empty ship. "Not on your life," he said for the second time. And he laughed as I tried to writhe free of his en circling arm. The sound of that carelessly de fiant laugh was still in the air when I saw a shadow detach itself from the shadowy iron bulwark toward the bow of the boat. It was a man, I realized, who'd been leaning against the rail and watching the starlit water. He moved toward me, in the uncertain light, with rather unhurried steps. "Is this mucker annoying you?" he asked. "I wanted to be aione here," I found the courage to protest. But the man on the crate beside me declined to move. It was the tall and shadowy figure above me that came a step or two closer. "Did you hear what the lady said?" he prompted. But still my tormentor held his ground. "Who asked you to barge in on this?" he was reckless enough to challenge. The tall stranger stood silent a moment, in a sort of patiently im patient tolerance. "Isn't your name Ericson?" he finally demanded. "You're tootin' right it is," came the prompt reply. "Well, Ericson, you're not quite sober," said the other. "You haven't been sober a day since we pulled out of Seattle. And at the present moment you're not wanted here." "Who says I'm not wanted?" "I do." "What's that to me?" said the man at my side. "It's this," was the unexpectedly prompt reply. And before I knew it I was alone on the crate. But what startled me, after a quick moment of struggle, was that the young man who answered to the name of Eric the Red had not only been lifted bodily from where he sat, but had been shaken as a rag is shaken by a terrier and had been swung out over the ship's rail. He was held there by the scruff of the neck, writhing and kicking. He began, in fact, to emit muffled little rat squeals as he hung over open space, with nothing but the star riffled, black water under his heels. "Don't," I gasped. "A few gallons of sea water," said the untroubled deep voice beside me, "would wash a little of the fire works out of his system." "Please don't," I implored, re membering that a moment's unex pected rending of cloth might send the man tumbling down into the channel. My rescuer turned to me and ap parently tried to study my face in that rhisty midnight duskiness. Then he swung out his second long arm and lifted the still struggling figure back over the rail. "Now you get down where you be long," said the tall man as he gave his captive a final shake. "And if you talk to this girl again, Erie son, I'll break every bone in your body." It took time for Ericson to get his breath back. "You don't own hrr," he shrilly announced. "And you don't own me. And if you ? " But the other cut him short. ?'Are you going?" he demanded. Ericson fell back a step or two as the other advanced. "I'll do more than talk before I'm through with her." he proclaimed. It was a final effort. I felt, to save his face. After a silent moment or two that impressed me as heavy with hate, he retreated into the darkness. The tall man stooped to pick up the fallen flashlight. "That's the curse." he said, "of our West Coast. It's too full of bums and bindle stiffs. They never stay long enough in one place to take root. And then these soapbox agitators come along and spout communism at them." He looked away, for a moment, and then turned back to me. "But that fire eater had no right getting rough with n wnman With ? woman like you. I mean." "Why with a woman like me?" I questioned. "I spotted you the first day out." he said, "as a girl who rather want ed to be let aione." "I do." I said. But that, I felt, might frighten him away. And I lie was held there by the scruff of the neck, writhing and kick ing. didn't want him to go away. "I mean I did," I amended. "You naturally don't belong among those roughnecks." "I'm afraid I do," I told him. "I'm north born." That seemed to surprise him. "You've been out for quite a time?" he suggested. "For seven long years," I told him. "She's a great country," he said out of the silence. And. being north born, I agreed with him. "But it's no place for a woman," he added. "Why not?" I demanded. He laughed a little at that quick chal lenge. "Because women want anchorage. They're not satisfied with wildness and roughness. And there's been a sort of conspiracy to keep Seward's Icebox uncivilized. It's too proud of its shirt-sleeve past. It's too fond of calling itsell the last frontier and doing things on the dime-novel basis. It's banked too long on the bush-rat with a skillet and a slab of sow belly." "What's wrong with the bush rat?" I demanded, remembering that I was the daughter of one. "Nothing," was the deliberated re ply, "except that he's outlived his usefulness. That's what's the mat ter with your country. It's too full of grubstaked sourdoughs who go out on the creeks with a tomrocker and imagine they're mining. They scratch at the rubble and hill-cracks for a month or two, and wash out a poke of dust and stay drunk for two-thirds of the year. They're ho bos at heart. They do nothing for the country. They don't even know the meaning of real mine work." I had seen those lone-fire wander ers in their lonely valley bottoms, hawking float-gold from the sand of icy creeks, lugging timber down snowy slopes for their cribwork, thawing out the frozen silt of their test pits with hot stones and a hand winch, facing hunger and hardship and pushing deeper and deeper into the unmapped wilderness for their precarious ounce or two of yellow metal. "To me," I maintained, "they're all terribly brave." "And terribly inadequate," amend ed my companion. "How wouW you have done it?" I asked. I could hear his quiet chuck le at the challenge in my voice. "The only way it can be dojie," he answered. "By big business, by the geologist and the engineer who does more than tickle the surface of things. Then you get something bet ter than claim-jumpera and gun toters and fly-by-night camps. You get roads and honest workers and towns and settlements and some thing permanent, while your old sourdough squats beside a saloon drum stove and dreams about the strike he's going to make when ha gets back to the hill claim he hasn't even done assessment work on." "You seem to know all about Alaska," I ventured. But he dis regarded the barb in my voice. "Not as much as I'm going to," he said. "I fell for the North, my first year out of Lehigh. The bug bit me when I prospected the Mi chikmamau country in Labrador and had to dig in for the winter. Then I went to Flin Flon for a year. Then I headed for Fairbanks and had a couple of seasons on the gold dredges along the Tanana. where the work's plotted out three and four years in advance. That's what you'd call real mining." "Where you're really a part of a machine." I amended. "Sure," he agreed. "But she's ? 1 grand old machinc. Why. the barge I worked had a million dollars sunk in her before she turned a wheel. ^ "And you're still on the lanana? j I questioned, absurdly chilled by the aroma of big business. "No; the next summer I did field work for a big company along the upper Yukon. Then I swung in with the Trumbull outfit." "And now?" I prompted. "Now I'm headed for the valley of the Chakitana, where the Trumbull company is going to consolidate its claims ar.d tackle that territory in earnest. It's got something to work with there." "The Chakitana," I echoed, ig noring the Quiet exultation in his voice. The once-familiar sound of the Chakitana came back to me, across the years, with an oddly dis turbing ring. "Do you know that country well?" I asked. "Not yet, of course," he said. "But I know something big is going to break before we get through with it. We'll dig a little deeper than the old pan-tilters who've been fussing around the fringes there. And I want to be in on the show when the color comes." "Where you'll be safe and well fed and getting the news of the world by radio," I said, thinking ! of the lone-fire old-timers. "But merely a hired man," my companion added with an unexpect- ; ed note of regret. Then he laughed, a little defensively, and leaned clos er to me in the starlight. "What I'd rather know is more about you. And why you're heading north again. And what you're going to do with yourself up there on the last frontier." "I promised my father I'd come | back and work for Alaska," I told j him. "Dig in and civilize the sour- j dough?" he said with a flippancy I | resented. I told him that I was going to j teach in the Indian school at Tok lutna. "But twenty thousand teachers couldn't tame that country. She was born wild and she seems to want to stay wild." "I have a promise to keep," X told him. "And I've my father's claim to look into." "Why'd he ever send you down to the States?" "He and I were alone, back in the Waceeta hills. And when he struck through to prospect in the Ghost Lake country he felt it wasn't fair to me. He felt I ought to bet ter myself, as he put it. So he sent me out to get civilized." My companion's laugh was curt but not unkindly. "It seems to have succeeded," he said. "Where'd you go for your slice of civilization?" "All the way to Michigan," I told him. "I had an aunt there who was supposed to look after me. But she died the year I entered Ann Arbor." "Then you had to shift for your self? Or was your father in Alaska still helping you?" "He'd promised to come down to the States, but he kept putting it off. I think he was afraid of that outside world he knew nothing about. Then he went back in th? hills, and I had trouble keeping in touch with him. Nearly a year went by, once, before I got a letter." "That's not so nice," observed my new-found friend. "How did you keep going?" "By working in a girls' camp for the summer. Then by teaching for a year in a north-side Saginaw school. Then by tutoring a lumber man's feather-headed daughter. And j after my final year at Ann Arbor ; I got a chance to go to England for the summer. I was taken along as a sort of companion for a Detroit automobile-maker's daughter. She wasn't very strong. But she got to like me. And when the family went to Amalfl for the winter they kept me on. Then in the spring they went north to Florence, where they leaped a villa just above Fiesole." "I'd call that quite a break," said the man beside me. (TO BE CONTINUED' Tttictmvi aiTO I like to tl-Ue rr\y per* Ar?a 5tt t-rvd dretj-r, tJor\e. , P^r\d gr*.b *v. little. TKou^Kt Frorrv o\A. tKe Gret_t WNU Service. BABY CHICKS Danger-Proof Jails Building a modern prison is one of the most difficult constructional jobs, for the convict of today is a scientifically minded fellow who bursts his way out with tools and explosives. Hacksaw artists have to be curbed by laminated bars of hardened steel let into concrete walls. 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The Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.)
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March 13, 1941, edition 1
8
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