North Carolina Newspapers

Wie Lamp » W ARTHUR STRINGER JL W. N. U. Service / T Ctoal Cobura Is Alaaka bora, the daugh tor at Klondike Cobura. a "bush rat." who AM with an unestabllhsed mining claim. CM la returning north to teach la an totfaa school. Aboard ship, she Is annoyed by Eric (the "It was," I agreed. "It was all •ather wonderful. But it made me M like a deserter. And it was too good to last. Just when I was kfiing myself I had about every toing one could ask for, I got a let ter from Alaska, nearly seven ■aonths old." "Telling you what?" prompted the voice at my side. •Telling me my father had been tend dead on the open trail," I answered, doing my best to be casu al about it. "He'd been found there, tooxen to death, between his Chaki tana claim and Trail-End Camp, ■n grub bag was empty. Two of Ma dogs had died and the others aaust have left him in the night. I can't help thinking of that lonely grave between the hills when you talk about the uselessness of the aourdough." "I'm sorry," said my companion, with a quick note of contrition. He atood beside me, for a full minute at silence. "Where was your ta tter's claim on the Chakitana?" "That's what I've got to find out," V told him. "But it seems to be somewhere along the Three-Finger Kange between the Cranberry and Blackwater Pass. Father, you see, aras just an old-fashioned sourdough. Be was always brooding about some fcial strike that was going to make ton a millionaire. And he always leH there was a fortune in that ■line of his, once it was opened up. M was his secret. And he hugged II tight, even from me." "But the important point; is, did fee establish his claim?" "I'm afraid not," I had to admit. -That's one of the things I've got to fed out." He leaned closer, as though trying to decipher my face in the starlight. 1 found myself moving away a Kttle. Lonely ladies, after midnight an starlit nights at sea, needed the •eel of something solid under their feet. "It was kind of you," I said as 1 drew my polo coat closer about ■ie, "to help me as you did." But he disregarded that valedic tory note. "1 don't even know your name," he reminded me. Names, on a night like that, didn't aeem to mean much. We were up between the stars, I wanted to tell ton, where time and titles didn't count. "Who are you?" I found myself asking, foolishly glad because of his nearness. He didn't answer me at once. And la that moment of silence I sum moned up courage to reach for the forgotten flashlight. Then I pressed the button and framed his stooping head in a sudden shaft of light. I gulped as the light fell on. his aacc. That face was strong" and hronzed and touched with a quiet audacity that went well with his big frame. But I had seen it before, in an altogether different setting. For this was the mackintoshed man who had stood in the rain with a blonde and blue-eyed girl in his arms be fore the Yukon pulled out from the Seattle wharf. He had been so ab sorbed in that last clasp that he al annst missed getting aboard. The memory of that scene prompt er chilled and steadied me. An ice wall as wide as the Columbia Gla cier seemed to drift in between us. "I don't suppose it makes much difference," he said out of that si- S-nce, "but my name is Lander, Sid *'!j Lander." "No, it doesn't make much dif- S.-rcnce," I heard myself saying in -.a oddly thinned voice. "Why?" he demanded, conscious ••f that remoter note. "We'll probably never see each vJtcr again," I said with a limping a-nough effort at indifference. "But I think we will," he cor rected with unexpected solemnity. )My hand, resting on the rail, could Seel his bigger hand close over it. "Hasn't Eric the Red done enough of that?" I asked in an adequately frosted voice. The man who called himself Sid ney Lander promptly lifted his hand away. "But I still want to know your name," he quietly reminded me. "I think you owe me that mu"h." I laughed and stood silent a mo ■lent. "My name's Carol Coburn," I totally admitted, "free, white, and twenty-one, and heading back to the icebound hills of her birth." "Coburn?" he repeated. And his voice impressed me as almost a atartled one. "Carol Koyukuk Coburn," I an nounced, "with the Koyukuk usual- If suppressed." "What was your father's name?" he asked. "His real name," I said, "was Kenneth Coburn. But back on the creeks he was known as Klondike Coburn." That brought silence between us again. And when the man beside ■ie spoke, it was in an oddly altered voice. -It's a small world, isn't it?" I didn't, at the moment, see much faint to that observation. m STOAT ao FAB Red) Eric *00. an agitator. She U rescued by a young engineer. Thar talk at the changea that had coma to the north, and of courie a (cod deal about themselves. It la a dark nlfht on the deck of a ship and they chat quite freely. INSTALLMENT II "I was beginning to feel it was an oppressively big one," I said as I stared out over the lonely hills. "How long," he asked, "will you be at Toklutna?" "For at least a year," 1 told him. "But why do you ask?" "Because I think I'll be seeing you," he said, without the slightest trace of levity. CHAPTER Q It wasn't until the crowding and confusion of our shore stop at Cor dova that I saw Sidney Lander again. Then I caught sight of him on the dock, stooping over a wire covered crate. He let out a long haired sheep dog which disdained the chop bone held out in front of it. The quivering animal merely flung itself on its master, whimpering and crazy with joy. "This is Sandy," he said as he stroked the dog's nose. "There's just Sandy and me." "I'm flying in to the Chakitana," he said. "But Sandy doesn't like air travel." I could feel his eyes on Instead of answering me he led me toward the gangplank. my face. "You go on to Seward, of course?" "Then in to Toklutna," I said. "It would be funny, wouldn't it, if we found ourselves on the same trail there?" he said. "What does that mean?" I asked, when the Yukon's warning whistle gave me a chance to speak again. Instead of answering me he led me toward the gangplank over which the last of the passengers were crowding aboard. The smile faded from his face as he stood there, with my hand in his. He neither spoke por said good-by. But his eyes, as he looked down at me, did things to my heart action. For my wom an's instinct told me that some thing was stirring deep in that bear cave of silence. Those eyes, I felt, were saying something that his lips seemed afraid to put into words. All the way to Resurrection Bay, in fact, I felt oddly alone in the world. It seemed less and less like going home. Yet I knew, once we reached Seward, that I was back on the frontier. But when I found myself face to face with that solemn big school house surrounded by a straggle of cabins that made it look like a moth er hen surrounded by her chicks, no sense of high adventure reposed in my arrival. It was Miss Teetzel who spoiled everything. For Miss Teetzel, the school head, proved to be a some what dehydrated spinster with an eye like a bald-headed eagle's and a jaw like a lemon squeezer. I could see her disapproving glance go over my person, from my gray tweed cap with its rather cocky Ty rolean feather to my frivolous suede pumps. I plainly didn't fit in with her idea of what a teacher should be. I didn't much mind being con signed to the smallest and meanest room in the big old building. But I couldn't overlook the spirit of hostil ity with which I was ushered into my far-north mission. For that spir it expressed itself, once I'd un packed, in the first task with which Miss Teetzel confronted me. It was to take charge of the washing from the children's ward. And it was rather a septic mess to get clean, even with the power machine which Miss O'Connell showed me how to operate. But I knew the lemon squeezer lady was playing an op eratic air or two on the keyboard of my endurance. So I put on my rubber gloves, and shut my teeth, and went through with my job. It wasn't until my third day at Toklutna that I had a chance to hu manize the cell-like baldness of my room. Miss O'Connell helped me do the decorating. And this same Katie O'Connell proved herself the on* girl THE DANBURY REPORTER, THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1941 There la no doubt that a touch of romanco enraptures tha pair. Carol tclla ot working bar way through a university and at a trip to Europe aa companion at a rich man'i daufhter. "That waa a break." be aaya. I liked in that new valley of loneli ness. She had Irish fray eyes, n sense of humor, and a frame like a man's. She was, I discovered, real ly a graduate nurse and should have worn a uniform. But she bowed to the law of the frontier and dressed that muscular body of hers in man nish-looking flannel shirts and khaki breeches and high-laced hunting boots. At Toklutna she plainly found plenty to do. For of the thirty-seven children in our school three had tu bercular neck glands, two had con genital hip disease, and another doz en either ear trouble or ominous chest coughs. They were the off spring of the once stalwart Eskimo and the noble red man of the North, proving how merciless the hand of mercy could sometimes be. Our civ ilization, plainly, hadn't done much for those misfits. We thought we'd been helping them, but all we did was take away their stamina and pauperize them. We left them so improvident they came to regard it as foolish to go out and fish and hunt and trap. So they let the white man bask in the glory of the white man's bur den. They gave up and wallowed in shiftlessness and loafed about in rags and mated and reproduced and passed their ill-begotten offspring over to Toklutna to feed and clothe and make into good little Ameri cans. Miss Teetzel, I soon discovered, did her best to keep the native girls in the school from talking with the old women of the outside settlement. For these verminous old squaws had a lot of tribal superstitions they tried to pass on to the youngsters. Ac cording to Miss O'Connell, they made a practice of not letting their first born children live, especially the Copper River Indians who believed that if their first little papoose lasted only until he was eight or nine months old his father went straight to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Katie O'Connell, In fact, was on the warpath because of an Indian couple who sneaked over into the Matanuska Valley with their seven months-old baby, ostensibly on a hunting trip. But if they came back without that papoose, our grim-eyed nurse proclaimed, she was going to have them locked up for life. Miss Teetzel took the savor out of my mission. She also quietly con trived to make me as uncomfortable as possible. She seemed to feel that the scrub brush was a major factor in pedagogics. But Sidney Lander was right. I hadn't much to work on at Toklutna. The little slant-eyed Eskimos, I found, were both brighter and mer rier-minded than the Siwash chil dren. They all seemed fond of mu sic, though, especially the march music Katie and I pounded out on the old school organ. So the two of us concluded that a little dancing might brighten up the emptiness of their evenings. We tried putting them through an old-fashioned square dance or two. And just when the fun was at its highest Miss Teetzel appeared and looked me over with that sardonic eye of hers. "I'm afraid," she observed, "that you're a trifle too modern for us." I had to swallow it, of course. But after that we were restricted to group-singing and saluting the flag and a handful of dolorous old hymns which my Siwash charges translat ed into a pagan chant of woe. As I quartered back across the schoolyard, after stopping a fight be tween two of my little redskin war riors (based on a can of tinned cow stolen from the kitchen), I bumped into Doctor Ruddock, who looked us over once a week. He stopped, with his black bag in his hand, and rather solemnly looked me over. "You're not very happy here," he said. "How'd you like a whack at a school over at Wasilla?" My first impulse was to tell him that I didn't believe in running away from things. But I said, instead, that I was waiting for rather an im portant report from the Record Of fice at Juneau. He glanced at the shabby old bar racks that overshadowed us. "Well, if they crowd you too hard here, let me know. I can pull • string or two, when you're ready. And that Matanuska Valley, if I don't miss my guess, is going to be very much on the map." The memory of that message didn't stay with me as long as it might have. For on my way to my room Katie O'Connell handed me a letter from Sidney Lander. It had come out from Chakitana by air plane and had been mailed at Fair banks. The writer of that letter said that I had been very much in his thoughts. But the comforting little glow a message like that could bring just under one's floating ribs was cut short by the further mes sage that the sooner I could marshal all data and documents in connec tion with my father's Chakitana claim the more definite it would make Lander's course of action in the immediate future. "The Trum bull outfit and I are parting compa ny," it concluded. (TO BE CONTINUED) England May Get Food \fSSkI Under Lease-Lend' Bill jHrtjfl Increasing Shortages Now Appear Likely; Roosevelt Opposed to Censorship Of'Defense'lnformation. Ik IJH By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1395 National Press Bldg., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON.—In the past few weeks the tall figure of a Hoosier farmer has been seen frequently en tering and leaving the White House. This was not so strange to us who watch the busy portals because the man was Secretary of Agriculture Wickard. Like other members of the cabinet, he is called in for fre quent conferences with the Presi dent these days. Cabinet officers and other government officials have been helping the President plan the con crete steps to be taken to aid Brit ain under the lend-lease bill. But what a lot of us did not guess was just what Secretary Wickard was up to. The purpose of those visits has not been officially an nounced, as I write these lines. But it can be safely predicted that he was working out plans with the Pres ident to include farm products among the first supplies to be loaned or leased to England. Secretary Wickard was able to achieve his purpose partly as a re sult of his own persuasiveness, and partly for other reasons that I will explain later. Here is the tip-off on the plan the secretary discussed with the Presi dent, in Mr. Wickard's own words. It is pretty cagily expressed but if you know how, you can read be tween the lines. This is what Secre tary Wickard said in a public speech during the congressional battle on the lend-lease bill: Overproduction Held Unlikely. "Frankly speaking, there is little likelihood that we will produce too much meat, butter, cheese, milk and other dairy products in the months to come. I have an idea that all we produce in the South and else where will be needed. "The reports about the British food situation are not too encouraging. The British have lost their sources of food supply on the continent. They are handicapped still further by their shipping losses. The Eng lish may want some of our food and want it pretty soon. If they call on us, I think we will answer the call." Almost all of the products to be sent to Britain under the lend-lease plan will be proteins (meat, milk and milk products and eggs). There will be, however, some cotton, wheat and tobacco, but these commodities will constitute a minor part of the shipments. The practical arguments for sending proteins are obvious: 1. The extra physical demands on fighting men require a greater pro tein diet. 2. These products up to now have been shipped to England all the way from Australia, New Zealand and the Argentine. Two trips can be made from New York to Britain while one is being made from these distant points. Unfortunately the protein commod ities which are needed by England are not the ones we most want to sell. They do not constitute our great surpluses, disposition of which has caused the biggest headaches in the department of agriculture since the farm problem was tossed in the government's lap. Surplus Produce Unaffected. Furthermore, they are the prod ucts which, later on, when the de fense industries expand, we will need at home because if all our un employed were working full time and eating three meals a day, we would not have enough proteins at the pres ent rate of production to satisfy them. The things we do want to get rid of—the things of which we have enough and to spare—are not as greatly affected by increased em ployment. Department of agricul ture experts here will tell you any day that in prosperous times there is not an important increase in the use of cotton, tobacco and wheat. But as far as the British go, they have to consider first things first, and they have all the cotton, wheat and tobacco they need, or they can get these products as conveniently from their own dominions as from the United States. So this new "lend-lease" market won't solve the problem of farm sur pluses. Nevertheless, it will absorb some of them, for the government is insisting that along with the pro teins, some of the surplus products will be included in the commodities we dispose of under the lend-lease plan. How long this new market over BRIEFS . • • by Baukhage On the same day that President Roosevelt declared that he approved of wire-tapping by department of justice operatives where sabotage was suspected, the guards in the Capitol building were replaced by policemen and no one is now permit ted to carry packages of any kind into the building. Even cameras have to be checked at special stands at the entrances. seas will last no one can say. It is impossible to predict how long the emergency will last or what the fortunes of war will be. But the ef fort of the New Deal planners is to build up an increasing demand at home for the things the farmer raises. As Secretary Wickard says on every occasion when he gets the chance: "Whether they lose or keep the foreign markets, farmers must try to increase consumption in their best market—the domestic market." a • • Prendent Discutset Newt Control With Reportert Imagine the head of a European state sitting for half an hour while he was questioned by a group of newsmen on any subject they chose, including the government's confi dential transactions! And, yet, that happens twice a week in Washington at the White House press conferences. There the President sits at his desk covered with papers; members of the White House staff sitting about him, two secret service men standing incon spicuously behind him, between the stars and stripes and the presiden tial flag. To us in Washington, the White House press conference is routine. But a recent meeting was so demo cratic, so unlike anything that could possibly happen abroad, that it stands out clearly in my memory. Mr. Roosevelt started it. The ques tion which the American public ought to think about, as he put it, had to do with the ethics, morals jpnd patriotism of making public, matters which might be injurious to national defense. First, should a member of congress divulge testi mony before a secret committee ses sion; second, should a newspaper publish or a radio station broadcast such information. The issue was raised by the publi cation of testimony given by the chief of staff, General Marshall, be fore an executive session of the sen ate military affairs committee in connection with a shipment of army bombers to Hawaii. Censorship Not Desired. The President said he had neither the desire nor the power to censor the news, but he wished us to con sider whether it was ethical, moral or patriotic to publish any informa tion which the heads of the army and navy believed should, in the in terests of national defense, be kept confidential. The newsmen did not question the advisability of withholding from the public important military secrets, but they showed plainly that they re sented any suggestion that the free dom of the press be interfered with. One correspondent said frankly that the chief of staff ought not to tell things to congressmen which he did not want to get out because such information always leaked. The President replied, quietly, that nat urally, one did not like to withhold any information asked for by con gress. Another reporter asked how the press was to know what information, once they had received it, ought to be withheld, and what could be printed. The President answered this could be determined by what the heads of the army and navy felt would be injurious to national de fense. The President admitted he had no specific proposal to suggest. No definite conclusion to the dis cussion was reached at the interview. The incident had one effect. Short ly after the meeting, a writer who is usually excellently informed, stat ed that the President had turned down flatly a plan to place all in formation concerning defense under what amounted to a censorship board. It had been long known that such a plan was placed on the President's desk at the time war broke out abroad. The President turned it down then. When it came up the second time, he again turned it down. Later, Lowell Mellett, ad ministrative advisor to the Presi dent, said no plan of censorship was being considered. If war comes, some method of regulating the publication of milita ry information will probably be put into effect. But until that moment, the press and radio will fight for freedom of speech, the spoken word, or the written. The average American soldier eats about 40 per cent more than he does in civilian life, according to the national defense advisory commis sion. He gets much more than 40 per cent more meat. In some lo calities as many as one-third of the draftees who are otherwise eligible for army service have to be turned down because of physical conditions due entirely to deficiency in diet. FOUR enticing designs—the love " liest of the year—are these to r pillow slip embroidery. A refresh ing iris motif, the appealing bird pair, a butterfly and flower ar rangement, and the cross stitch basket of pansies will find favor, j • • • As Z9202. 15c. you receive an easy-to atamp transfer of all four designs—and.; you may stamp this transfer more than once. Send order to: i AUNT MARTHA Box ICC-W Kansas City, Ma. Enclose 13 cents for each pattern desired. Pattern No Name Address i !■■■■■■■■■■■■■ BABY CHICKS BlHi-Tciiii Chicks. Popular breeds $5.50 100 assorted for layers W. 65. Cockerela $2.35. Postage prepaid. RUSHTON FOLLETTE, Box MS, Mill town, lad. Deceptive First Sight Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance de ceives many; the intelligence of few perceives what has been care fully hidden in the recesses of the mind.—Phaedrus. Beware Coughs from common colds That Hang On Creomulsion relieves promptly be cause it goes right to the seat of the trouble to help loosen and expel germ laden phlegm, and aid nature to soothe and heal raw, tender, In flamed bronchial mucoua mem branes. Tell your druggist to sell you a bottle of Creomulsion with the un derstanding you must like the way It quickly allays the cough or you are to have your money back. CREOMULSION for Coughs, Chest Colds, Bronchitis Seeking Truth If you seek truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by everyj possible means; and when you have found truth, you need not fear being defeated.—Epictetus. 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