Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
http://www.pgdp.net

                      _A Mystery Story for Girls_

                              A TICKET TO
                               ADVENTURE

                                  _By_
                              ROY J. SNELL

                          The Reilly & Lee Co.
                                Chicago

                             COPYRIGHT 1937
                                   BY
                          THE REILLY & LEE CO.
                        PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

                                CONTENTS

  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I The Little Man in Black                                           11
  II The Indian Girl’s Warning                                        19
  III Seven Golden Candlesticks                                       37
  IV The Great Stump                                                  59
  V Happy Landing                                                     68
  VI A Wanderer Returns                                               76
  VII And Then Came Adventure                                         87
  VIII A Secret Is Told                                              101
  IX Help from the Sky                                               112
  X In Search of a Grandfather                                       121
  XI The Fresh-Dough Club                                            131
  XII Her Great Discovery                                            139
  XIII A Bright New Dream                                            149
  XIV “They Are Off”                                                 157
  XV The Phantom Leader                                              165
  XVI The Golden Quest                                               178
  XVII The Black Seal’s Tooth                                        194
  XVIII To Be or Not to Be                                           206
  XIX Coasting Up Hill                                               216
  XX Black Waters and Gray Dogs                                      227
  XXI The Secret of the Great Stump                                  237

                         A TICKET TO ADVENTURE

                               CHAPTER I
                        THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK

Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage,
Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors,
groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite
suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in
her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than
she.

“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting
black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look
like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she
had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.

Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought
of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic
morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane
from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to
Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could
do about that. So—

“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”

To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.

“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about
this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.

“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”

“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home
is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.

“Then you—”

Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke
in upon them. “Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That’s good!” The
man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of
merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been
hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was
surprised and startled would not express it at all.

She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man
with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it
touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight.
There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap
him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was
little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those
slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and
her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.

Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just
now she stood quite still and waited.

“So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?” The stranger stopped
laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his
appearance.

“Shouldn’t want to meet him in the dark!” the girl thought with another
shudder.

“Want to know what he is, Miss?” the white man turned to Mary. “He’s an
Eskimo.”

“Oh, an—” Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.

“Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo.” The man filled his voice with suggestions of
loathing and utmost contempt. “Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating,
greasy Eskimo that lives in a hole in the ground. That’s what he is to
me. But to you he’s Mister Il-ay-ok. Bah!” The man turned and walked
away.

For a full moment nothing further was said. At last, in a steady,
school-book voice the little man in black said, “Do you know what my
people did to the first white man who visit our village?”

“No. What?” Mary stared.

“Shot him,” the little man’s voice dropped. “Shot him with a whale gun.
Very big gun. Shoot big shell. Like this!” He held up a clenched fist.
“Very bad man like this one. He talked too big,” the little man scowled.

“And would you like to shoot that one?” Mary asked, nodding toward the
retreating figure.

“Not now. Mebby byum bye. You see,” the little man smiled, “I go to visit
your country. I am—”

At that moment Florence Huyler, Mary’s big cousin came booming along from
behind the pile of goods, to cry: “Ah! There you are! I’ve been looking
everywhere for you.”

“Florence,” Mary stopped her, “this is Mr. Il-ay-ok. He’s from Alaska,
and he wants to kill a white man, but not just now.” She laughed in spite
of herself.

“But this is Alaska.” Florence, who was big and strong as a man, looked
at the little man and smiled as she asked, “Is this your home?”

“No—no,” the little man bowed. “Much more north my home. Cape Nome
sometimes and sometimes Cape Prince Wales.”

“Oh you’ve been in Nome?” Florence’s eyes shone. “My grandfather went
there years and years ago. He never came back.”

“Name please?” the little man asked.

“Tom Kennedy.”

“Ah yes,” the little man beamed. “I know him. Big man. Very good man.”

“What?” the big girl’s eyes fairly bulged. “You, you know my grandfather?
No! No! He is dead. He must have died years ago.”

“Not dead please. Tom Kennedy not dead,” the little man appeared puzzled.
“No not dead. Let me tell you.” He took a step toward them. “Very big
man. Very straight. Always smile. Let me show you.” To their vast
surprise the girls saw the little man produce from an inside pocket a
small, ivory paper knife. On its blade had been carved the likeness of a
man’s face. It may not have been a very accurate picture, there was,
however, one touch that could not be wrong, a scar above the left eye.
“Tom Kennedy my friend,” the native said simply.

“Tom Kennedy, my long-lost grandfather!” Florence stared in unbelief. “He
is dead. And yet, he—he must be alive!” She closed her eyes as she tried
to think clearly. Often and often as a small child she had heard her
mother describe this man, her grandfather. Often too she had seen his
picture. Always there had been that scar over the left eye.

“Mary!” she exclaimed, her voice rising high. “My grandfather is alive,
somewhere away up there!” she faced north. “I’m going.”

“Oh, but you couldn’t leave us!” Mary’s tone vibrated with consternation.
“You couldn’t leave us, not just now!”

“That—that’s right. I couldn’t—not just now.” The big girl’s hands
dropped limply to her side.

From the distance came the long drawn hoarse hoot of a steamboat whistle.

“Excuse please,” the little man who called himself Mr. Il-ay-ok bowed
low. “My boat please. I go to visit America. Perhaps please, we meet
again.”

With the swift, sure movement of one who has followed a dog team over
long, long miles or has hunted on the treacherous ice-floes, he was gone.

“No,” Florence repeated slowly as if to herself, “I can’t leave you now.”

For one full moment she stood staring at the spot from which the little
man had vanished. Here indeed was a strange situation. All her life she
had believed her grandfather dead. From her mother’s lips she had heard
vague stories of how he had gone into the north and never returned. Now
here was a little Eskimo saying, “Tom Kennedy my friend. Yes, I know him.
He is alive.”

“And he proved it too,” the girl whispered to herself.

Then, of a sudden, her thoughts came back to the present and to her
immediate surroundings.

“What a jumble!” she said, looking at the heap of goods that, as moments
passed, grew higher and higher. “How will they ever get them sorted out?”

Turning to her cousin, bright-eyed, eager Mary, she said: “‘A ticket to
adventure,’ that’s what the man back there in San Francisco called it, ‘a
ticket to adventure.’ Will it truly be an adventure? I wonder.”

“I hope so!” Mary’s eyes shone.

Turning, the two girls walked away toward a distant spot on the long dock
where a boy, who had barely grown into a young man, was struggling at the
task of setting up a small umbrella tent.

“See!” the big girl cried, “there’s Mark. He’s setting up our first home
in a wilderness.”

                               CHAPTER II
                       THE INDIAN GIRL’S WARNING

Hours later Florence stirred uneasily in her sleep, then half-awake
murmured dreamily: “A ticket to adventure. That’s what he said, a
ticket—”

Conscious now that some disturbing sound had come to her in her sleep,
she shook herself into further wakefulness.

“Strange,” she murmured. “Everything is so strange.”

Indeed it was. The bed on which she and Mary slept was hard, a mattress
on the dock. About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.

“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was
the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail.
And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers,
modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this
new land be?

She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the
wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of
France were not new to her. But Alaska! How she had thrilled at thought
of it! She was thinking of all this when, of a sudden, she raised herself
on one elbow to listen. “What was that sound?” she whispered. It was
faint, indistinct, disturbing.

Then Mary sleeping at her side, did a strange thing. Sitting bolt upright
she said: “Don’t you want to kill him?”

For a space of seconds she appeared to listen for an answer. Then, with a
sigh, she murmured, “Oh! All right. Some other time.” At that, she sank
back in her place to draw the covers closely about her.

“Talking in her sleep,” the big girl thought. “Dreaming of the little man
in black. She—”

There was that sound again, more distinct now. “A child crying in the
night.” Florence listened intently.

“It’s such a low cry,” she thought wearily, creeping back among the
blankets. “It can’t be anything very much. There has been so much
crying.”

Ah yes, there had been children’s cries that day; rough, unkind words had
been said at times to the children. Little wonder, for they had that
day—hundreds of men, women and children—disembarked from a ship that
carried them far toward their promised land, the Matamuska Valley in
Alaska.

They had been dumped quite unceremoniously, a whole shipload of people
with cows, horses, dogs, cats, canaries, trucks, tractors, tents, lumber,
hardware, groceries, shoes, hammers, saws, and clothespins on the dock at
Anchorage. Men dashed about searching for tents and baggage. Women sought
out lost or strayed pets. Children had cried and above it all had come
the hoarse shout of some enthusiast: “On! On! to our new home! Three
cheers for Alaska!”

Over all this darkness had fallen. After a cold supper, having pitched
their tents and spread their blankets, they had stretched out on the
rough surface of the dock to sleep, if sleep they could. And now Florence
was hearing that distressing moan of a child.

“Near at hand,” she thought, raising herself on an elbow to listen once
more, this time more closely. “A strange sort of cry. Can’t be a child
from our party. I’ve heard them all cry.”

Indeed she had. The long journey half way across America, then along the
coast to Alaska had been hard on the children.

“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered once again. They had come here,
their little party of four, to begin life anew, to secure for themselves
a home and if possible, a modest fortune. Would they win? With God’s
help, could they? And was true adventure to be thrown in for good
measure? The girl thrilled at the thought, for, ambitious as she
undoubtedly was, she was human as well, and who does not feel his blood
race at thought of adventure?

However, at this moment something other than adventure called, the cry of
a child in the night. Florence dearly loved small children. She could not
bear to have them suffer.

“I—I’ve just got to get out and hunt her up,” she murmured.

With a shudder she dragged her feet from the warmth of the blankets,
slipped on knickers and shoes, then crept out into the cheerless night.

She did not have far to go. Huddled in a corner, out of the wind, she
discovered two blanket-wrapped figures. Girls they were, one small, one
large. Indians, she saw as she threw her light upon their dark faces.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, striving to keep her teeth from
chattering.

“Dog bite her,” the older girl spoke in a slow, deep tone. “White man
dog. Strange white man dog. Come steamboat this day.”

“Yes,” Florence moved closer. “We all came by steamboat. There are many
dogs. Too many! Let me see.”

The small child thrust a trembling hand from a greasy blanket.

“Ah!” Florence breathed. “That’s rather bad. Not very deep, but dog bites
are bad. It must be dressed. I’ll be back.”

Stepping quickly to the tent she poured warm water from a thermos bottle
into a basin, snatched up a first-aid kit, then hurried back.

“Here you are,” she said cheerily. “First we wash it. Then we dry it.
Then—this will hurt a little, quite a bit, I guess.” She produced a
bottle of iodine. “You tell her. Tell her it will hurt.” She spoke to the
older girl, who said some words in her own language to the attentive
child. When she had finished, Florence received her first reward—nor was
it to be the last—for this bit of personal sacrifice, the child fixed
upon her a look that registered perfect faith and confidence.

Florence applied the severe remedy. Then she watched the child’s face. A
single tear crept from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek.

It hurt, that iodine, hurt terribly for the moment. Florence knew that.
Yet not a muscle of the child’s face moved.

“This,” Florence thought, with a little tightening at the throat, “is the
spirit of the North. It is with this spirit that we all must face the
trials and dangers that lie before us in this world. If we do this, we
shall be real pioneers and we shall win.

“We shall win!” she whispered hoarsely, as standing erect, hands clenched
tight, she stood for a moment facing the bitter Arctic gale.

“Feel better now?” she asked, dropping again to the child’s side.

The child nodded.

“All right. Now we’ll bind it up tight and it will be fine.”

Five minutes later Florence saw the child’s head fall against her older
sister’s side. Her pain gone, her cry stilled, she had fallen asleep.
That was Florence’s second reward, but not her last.

As she once more crept beneath the warm covers in her tent, she felt the
slender arms of Mary, her cousin, close about her and heard her murmur
with a shudder: “It is so far and so cold!”

“She’s talking in her sleep again,” Florence told herself. Then, out of
sympathy for the frailer girl, she too shuddered.

Yes, it had been a long way and even though it was early June, it was
cold. Yet Florence thrilled at thought of it all. That journey, how it
had unfolded, first on paper, second in their minds, then in reality!

Mark and Mary had lived with their mother in the Copper Country of
Michigan. Because she had few relatives and was in need of a home,
Florence had joined them there.

No copper was being mined, so there was no work and, struggle as they
might, they had grown poorer and poorer.

Then had come word of what appeared to them a wonderful opportunity. The
government was to send two hundred or more families to the rich Matamuska
Valley in Alaska. They were to be given land and to be loaned money that
they might make a fresh start.

“Pioneers! They will be pioneers in a new land!” Florence, who was of
true pioneer stock, young, sturdy and strong, had exclaimed. “Why should
we not go?”

Why, indeed? They had applied, had been accepted, and here they were at
the seaport of the railroad that was to bear them on to their new world.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered softly to herself. “Tomorrow, to—” At that she
fell fast asleep.

If the scene of confusion on the dock at Anchorage with the trucks,
tractors, tents, and groceries had seemed strange, the picture before
Florence, Mary and Mark a few days later might, to a casual observer,
have seemed even more strange. Palmer, dream city of the future, lay
before them. And such a city! A city of tents. Yet, city of tents as it
was, it did not lack signs of excitement. This was the great day. On this
day the future home owners of this rich valley, surrounded by its
snow-capped mountains, were to draw lots for their tracts of land. Some
tracts were close to Palmer, some ten or twelve miles away. A few
settlers there were who wished for solitude in the far-off spots. Many
hoped for tracts close in, where they might walk into town for their mail
and to join in the latest gossip. Florence, Mary, and Mark had sensed the
bleak loneliness of distant farms during the long winter. They too hoped
for a spot close at hand.

“Now,” Florence whispered as, after a long time of waiting in line, Mark
approached the drawing stand. “Now it is your turn!”

Mark’s hand trembled as it went out. Florence felt her heart pause, then
go leaping. It meant so much, so very much, that tiny square of paper
with a number on it.

Turning away from the curious throng, Mark cupped his hand, then together
they all three peered at that magic number.

“One hundred and twelve!” Florence whispered tensely. “Here—here is our
map. Where is our farm? Here! Here! Let’s look!”

One moment of hurried search, then a sigh of disappointment. “Seven miles
from town.” Mary dropped limply down upon a stump.

“Might have been twelve,” Mark said cheerfully. “Bet there’s a bear or a
moose right in the middle of it waiting to be made into hamburger. But
then,” he sighed, “we couldn’t kill him. Can’t get a hunting license for
a year.”

Two hours later Mark and Mary with their mother and Florence close at
hand were listening to a tempting offer. Ramsey McGregor, a huge man from
the western plains, had drawn a tract of land only a half mile from town.
He had no cow. The Hughes family owned a cow, a very good milker. If they
would trade tracts of land and throw in the cow, they might have his farm
close to town.

“Think of it!” Mark cried. “Right in town, you might say!”

“Y-e-s,” Florence agreed. “But then—” Already she had seen quite enough
of the noisy, quarrelsome camp. And besides, there was the cow. Precious
possession, old Boss. Cows were dear—milk was hardly to be had at any
price. “And yet—” she sighed. Long tramps through the deep snow, with a
wild Arctic blizzard beating her back, seemed to haunt her. “You’ll have
to decide,” she said slowly. “It’s to be your home. I—I’m only a helper.”

Into this crisis there stepped an angel in disguise, an unimportant
appearing, dark-faced angel, the older of the two Indian girls Florence
had seen and aided back there at the dock in Anchorage. Now the girl,
approaching timidly, drew Florence’s head down to the level of her own
and whispered, “Don’t trade!”

“Why?” Florence whispered back.

“Don’t trade,” the Indian girl repeated. “Bye and bye I show you.” She
was gone.

“What did she say?” Mark asked. Mark was slow, steady, thoughtful,
dependable. Florence had no relative she liked so much.

“She says not to trade.” There was a look of uncertainty on the big
girl’s face.

“Greasy little Indian girl,” Ramsey McGregor growled. “What does she
know?”

“Might know a lot,” Mark wrinkled his brow. “What do you say?” he turned
to the others. “No trade?”

“No trade, I’d say,” was Florence’s quick response.

“Al—alright. No trade.” Mary swallowed hard. She had wanted to be near
town.

“Whatever you children want,” agreed the meek little mother. Life had
pushed her about so long she was quite willing to take the strong arm of
her son and to say, “You lead the way.”

“It’s a lot like playing a hunch,” Mark laughed uncertainly. “After all,
the claim we got is the claim we drew. Looks like God intended it that
way. Besides there’s old Boss. We couldn’t—”

“No, we couldn’t do without her,” Mary exclaimed. And so the matter was
settled. Somewhere out there where the sun set would be their home.

Two hours later Florence and Mary were enjoying a strange ride. From some
unsuspected source, the Indian girl had secured five shaggy dogs. These
were hitched, not to a sled, for there was no snow, but to a narrow
three-wheeled cart equipped with auto wheels. Whence had come those auto
wheels? Florence did not ask, enough that they eased their way over the
bumps along the narrow, uneven trail that might, in time, become a road.

The land they were passing over fascinated Mary, who had an eye for the
beautiful. Now they passed through groves of sweet-scented, low-growing
fir and spruce, now watched the pale green and white of quaking asp, and
now went rolling over a low, level, treeless stretch where the early
grass turned all to a luscious green, and white flowers stood out like
stars.

The surprise of their journey came when, after passing through a wide
stretch of timber, they arrived quite suddenly upon an open space.

“A clearing! A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”

It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect,
young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin,
standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many
a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the
clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks
swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.

“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence
across the threshold of the cabin.

The large room they entered was almost bare. A rustic table, two
home-made chairs, a great sheet-iron barrel, fashioned into a stove, a
few dishes in the corner, a rusted frying pan and a kettle, that was
about all. Yet, strangely enough, as Florence tiptoed across the
threshold she found herself listening for the slow tick-tock, tick-tock,
of an old-fashioned clock. With all its desolation there was somehow
about the place an air of “home.”

“Oh!” Mary breathed deeply. Then again, “Oh!”

A stout ladder led to a tall loft where a bed might, for all they could
tell, be waiting. At the back was a door opening into the small kitchen.

“Home,” Florence breathed again.

“Home,” Mary echoed.

Then together they tiptoed out into the sunlight.

Quite unexpectedly, the Indian girl spoke. “This,” she said, spreading
her arms wide to take in the cabin, the clearing and the lake beyond,
“this is it.”

“Thi—this is what?” Mary stammered.

“This,” replied the girl, “is your land.”

“No!” Florence exclaimed. “It can’t be.”

“But yes, it is your farm.” The girl smiled a happy smile. “This is the
number you drew.”

“Ours!” Florence whispered hoarsely. “An abandoned cabin, a clearing, a
lake! All ours! And to think, we nearly missed it!” Then, quite wild with
joy, she surprised the shy Indian girl by catching her up in her arms and
kissing her on the cheek.

At that very moment, as if it were part of some strange drama, there
sounded from the edge of the clearing a loud: “Get up! Go ’long there!”
and a traveling rig as strange as their own burst from the edge of the
timber.

A moment later, a little man on a high-wheeled, wobbly cart, shouted,
“Whoa, January!” to his shaggy horse, then sat for a full moment staring
at the three girls.

“You’re some of them new settlers?” he said at last.

Florence nodded. She was too much surprised to do more. The man, whose
whiskers had grown for months all untrimmed and whose hair fell to his
shoulders, looked as if he might have stepped from an illustration of Rip
Van Winkle.

“This your place?” he asked. Again the girl nodded.

“Well,” his eyes swept the horizon, “you’re lucky maybe—and then again
maybe not. There’s the clearin’ an’ the cabin, but maybe the cabin’s
haunted.

“No—no, not by ghosts!” he held up a hand. “By people who once lived
here. It’s a notion of mine, this business of houses being haunted by
living folks.

“But then,” his voice dropped. “Mebby they’re dead. Some sort of
foreigners they was, the ones that lived in this cabin. Came here durin’
the war. Lot of queer ones in the valley them days. Deserters, some of
’em. Some dodgin’ the draft. Some foreign spies.

“Big man, that one,” he nodded toward the cabin. “Big woman. Hard
workers. Not much to say for themselves.

“One day they’d gone. Where? Why? No one knows. Spies, maybe. Government
boat at Anchorage just at that time. Shot ’em, like as not, for spies.”

Florence shuddered.

“Maybe not,” the man went on. “Might come back—Chicaski was the name.
Russians.”

“If—if they come back, can they claim the cabin?” Florence was thrown
into sudden consternation.

“No-o. I guess not. Didn’t have no legal claim on it like as not. There’s
other deserted cabins in the valley, lots of ’em. Folks got discouraged
and quit. Raise plenty of things to eat. Can’t sell a thing. No market.
Trap fox and mink, that’s all you can sell. Folks want things that don’t
grow on land.

“Got to git along,” he exclaimed, clucking to his horse. “Live back there
five miles, I do. I’ll be seein’ you.

“Git up! Go ’long there!” The strange little man gave his shaggy horse a
light tap with the rein and the odd outfit went rattling away.

“Peter Piper,” said the Indian girl, nodding after the man.

“You mean that’s his name?” Florence asked in surprise.

The girl nodded.

“Oh!” Mary exclaimed. “And did he pick a peck of prickly pears?”

The Indian girl stared at her until they all burst into fits of laughter.

For all that, it was a sober Florence who journeyed back to Palmer.
Strange words were passing through her mind. “Maybe it’s haunted. Raise
anything. Can’t sell anything. No market—you want things that don’t grow
on the ground.” Her world seemed to have taken on a whirling motion that,
like clouds blown by the wind, showed first a bright, then a darker side.
What was to come of it all?

“A ticket to adventure,” she thought at last. “Perhaps that man was more
right than he knew.”

                       SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS

Three days later Florence found herself seated on the shore of the little
lake that lay at the edge of their claim. She was alone. “How still it
is,” she whispered. Not a leaf moved. The dark surface of the lake lay
before her like black glass.

“The land of great silence,” she thought. She shuddered and knew not why.

This was to her a strange world. All her life she had known excitement.
The rattle of elevated trains, the honk of auto horns, the drum of
airplane motors, all these seemed still to sound in her ears.

“Rivers,” she whispered thoughtfully, “have eddies. There the water that
has been rushing madly on comes to rest. Do lives have eddies? Has my
life moved into an eddy?”

She did not enjoy the thought. Adventure, thrills, suspense, mystery,
these were her favorite words. How could one find them here? And yet,
there was the cabin that lay just up the rise. Their cabin now, it had
belonged to others. Russians probably, spies perhaps.

“What if they come back?” Mary had whispered during their return journey
from that first visit. “What if they demand the cabin?”

“We’ll throw them out,” Florence had said, making a savage gesture. “I
wonder if we would?” had been Mary’s reply. Florence wondered about that
now. She wondered about many things. Why had she come to this place at
all? Because of her love for the little family, her relatives, Mary,
Mark, and their mother. Could love make people do things? She wondered.
Could it make them do slow, hard, drudging, everyday things? If it could,
how long would that last?

The thoughts that came to her there were neither sad nor bitter. They
were such dreamy thoughts as come after a long day of toil. They had
worked, all of them; oh! how they had worked getting settled!

“I—I’d like to go back, back to the city to the wild romance of many
people!” she cried to the empty air of night.

Then, of a sudden, she realized that she did not wish to go back, but
rather to go on, on, on, on into the North. For, as she sat there she
seemed to see again the little man, Mr. Il-ay-ok, and to hear him say,
“Tom Kennedy, yes, I know him,” and Tom Kennedy was her long-lost
grandfather.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, “and I shall go!” Springing to her feet, she spread
her arms wide. Seeking out the north star, she faced the land over which
it hung. “Yes, Tom Kennedy, my grandfather, I am coming.

“But not now—not now,” she murmured. “One thing at a time. I have given
my word. I am to help these others win a home. Adventure, thrills,
mystery, romance,” she repeated slowly, “can they be here?”

Then as if in answer to her query, there came a faint sound. It grew
louder, came closer, the night call of wild geese.

“How—how perfect!” she breathed. “The lake, the damp night air, the
silence, then a call from the sky.”

She waited. She listened. The speeding flock came closer. At last they
were circling. They would land. She caught the rush of wings directly
over her head, then heard the faintest of splashes.

“Happy landing!”

But not for long. She was creeping silently away. They were pioneers.
Pioneers lived off the land. Here was promise of roast goose for tomorrow
dinner. Too bad to spoil romance, but life must go on.

Slipping up to the cabin, she took Mark’s gun from its place beside the
door. With her heart beating a tattoo against her ribs, she crept back.

Closer and closer she crept until at last she lay, quite still, among the
tall grass that skirted the pond.

“Where are they?” she whispered to herself. No answer, save the distant
flapping of wings. How was one to shoot a wild goose he could not see?

“Ah, well,” she thought. “I can wait. There will be a moon.”

Wait she did. Once again the strangely silent night, like some great,
friendly ghost, seemed to enfold her in its arms. Far away loomed the
mountains, close at hand spread the plains, and over all silence. Only
now and again this silence was broken by the flapping of wings, a sudden
challenging scream, the call that told her a rich dinner still awaited
her.

At last the moon crept over the white crested mountains. It turned the
lake into a sheet of silver. Dark spots moved across that sheet. They
came closer and closer. Thirty yards they were from shore, now twenty
yards, and now ten yards. The girl caught one long sighing breath. Then,
bang! Bang! Both barrels spoke.

A moment later, waist deep, the girl waded for the shore. In each hand
she carried a dead bird, two big, fat geese. Tomorrow there would be a
feast. Romance? Adventure? Well, perhaps, a little. But much more was to
come. She felt sure of that now. Her heart leaped as she hurried forward
to meet Mark and Mary, who were racing toward her demanding what all the
shooting was about.

“A feast!” Mary cried joyously. “A real pioneer feast. Thanksgiving in
June! The Pilgrim Fathers have nothing on us.”

Such a feast as it was! Roast wild goose with dressing, great brown baked
potatoes, slashed and filled with sweet home-made butter, all this topped
with cottage pudding smothered in maple sauce.

“Who says pioneering is a hard life?” Mark drawled when the meal was
over.

“It couldn’t be with such a glorious cook,” Florence smiled at her aunt.

When, at last, she crept up to her bed in the loft that night, she was
conscious of an unusual stiffness in her joints. Little wonder this, for
all day long she had wielded a grubbing hoe, tearing out the roots of
stubborn young trees. They were preparing their land for the plow. They
would raise a crop if no one else among the new settlers did. What crops?
That had not been fully decided.

As Florence lay staring at the shadowy rafters she fell to musing about
what life might be like if one remained in this valley year after year.
“A farm of your own,” she thought, “cows, chickens, pigs, a husband,
children.” Laughing softly, she turned on her side and fell asleep.

Five days later their first real visitor arrived. She was Mrs. Swenson, a
short, plump farm mother and old-time settler of the valley. She had
lived here for fifteen years.

Florence, who was churning while Mary and her mother were away in the
town, gave her an enthusiastic welcome. The handle of the old-fashioned
dasher churn went swish-swash.

“Just keep right on churnin’,” Mrs. Swenson insisted. “You don’t dare
stop or the butter won’t come.

“It’s the strangest thing!” her eyes roved about the large room. “The
Chicaskis—that was the name of the people who built this cabin—they
disappeared, you might say, overnight.”

“Oh! Did you know them?” the swish-swash stopped for a space of seconds.

“Well, yes and no,” Mrs. Swenson smiled an odd smile. “No one got to know
them very well. They left on foot,” she leaned forward in her chair.
“They’d had a horse. They sold that to Tim Huston. So away they went,
each of them with satchels in both hands. That’s all they took. It’s the
strangest thing.”

She paused. The churn went swish-swash. The little tin clock in the
corner went tick-tick-tick. Florence’s lips parted.

Then her visitor spoke again: “They had other things. Wonderful things. A
huge copper kettle and,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “seven golden
candlesticks. Leastwise, I always thought they was gold. She always had
’em up there above the fireplace, and how they did shine! Gold! I’m sure
of it.

“They might have took them. Maybe they did, the candlesticks, I mean. But
that huge copper kettle. They never took that, not in a satchel.

“I don’t mind admitting,” Mrs. Swenson’s tone became confidential, “that
those of us who’ve lived around here ever since have done a lot of
snoopin’ about this old place, lookin’ for that copper kettle and—and
other things.

“There are those who say they hid gold, lots of Russian, or maybe German
gold, around here somewhere. But, of course, you can’t believe all you
hear. And no one has ever found anything, not even the big copper kettle.
So,” she settled back in her chair, “perhaps there’s nothing to it after
all. Mighty nice cabin, though,” her tone changed. “Make you a snug home
in winter. Not like these cabins the other settlers are building out of
green logs. Them logs are goin’ to warp something terrible when they dry.
Then,” she threw back her head and laughed, “then the children will be
crawlin’ through the cracks, and with the temperature at thirty
below—think what that will be like!”

Florence did think. She shuddered at the very mention of it, and
whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the good God who had guided
them to their snug cabin at the edge of the clearing beside that gem of a
lake.

At thought of it all, she gave herself an imaginary hug. From without
came the steady pop-pop-pop of a gasoline motor. Mark was driving a small
tractor, plowing their clearing. They were to have a crop this first
year, for it was still June. Few settlers would have crops. They were
lucky.

She looked at her torn and blistered hand, then heaved a sigh of content.
Those small trees had been stubborn, some had been thorny. It had been a
heartbreaking job, but now all that was over. The tractor chugging
merrily outside was music to her weary soul.

The tractor? That, too, had been a streak of luck. Or was it luck? Mark
had always loved fine machinery. Because of this he had made it his
business for years to learn all about trucks, tractors, mine hoists,
motor-boats, and all else that came within his narrow horizon. When he
had asked down at Palmer about the use of a tractor the man in charge had
said: “Over yonder they are. Not assembled yet. Put one up and you can
use it.”

“Sure. I’ll do that,” Mark grinned. And he did.

Then they had wanted him to stay and set up others. He had turned his
back on this promising position with good pay. He had come to this land
to make a home for his family, and he was determined not to turn back. So
here was the clearing, ten acres nearly plowed. A short task the
harrowing would be. And then what should they plant?

“I’ll ask Mrs. Swenson about that after a while,” Florence promised
herself. Mrs. Swenson had come a long way and was to stay for dinner.
Florence had raised biscuits and a large salmon baking in the oven of the
stove they had brought up from Palmer. They were to have one more royal
feast. Three other guests were to arrive soon.

She smiled as she opened the oven door, releasing a wave of heat and
delightful odors of cooking things.

“Mr. McQueen’s an old dear,” she thought. “He’ll be the godfather of our
little settlement. I’m sure of that.”

Yes, the newly arrived settler whose land joined theirs at the back was
an interesting old man. Gray haired and sixty, he stood straight as a
ramrod, six feet four in his stockings. Strong, brave, wise with the
wisdom that comes only with years, he would indeed prove a grand
counsellor.

And there was Dave, his son, just turned twenty. “Slow, silent, steady
going, hard working, dependable,” had been Florence’s instant snap-shot
of his character; nor was she likely to be wrong.

Then, there was Bill Vale, whose land joined them on the west. How
different was Bill! A dreamer, at twenty-two he was more a boy, less a
man, than Dave. And Bill’s mother, who adored him, agreed with him in
every detail. The girl’s brow wrinkled as she thought of Bill and his
mother. How were such people to get on in a hard, new land? But then,
what was the good of shouldering the problems of others? They had
problems of their own. What were they to plant? That was their immediate
problem and a large one.

The meal was over and they were all seated before the broad, screened
door, looking away at the lake, blue as the sky, when Florence asked a
question:

“Mrs. Swenson, what shall we plant?”

Mrs. Swenson did not reply at once. The dinner they had eaten was a rich
and jolly one, just such a dinner as Florence could prepare. The day was
warm. Mrs. Swenson was fat and chubby. Perhaps she had all but fallen
asleep.

“Mrs. Swenson,” Florence repeated, louder this time, “what shall we
plant?”

“What’s that?” the good lady started. “Plant? Why, almost anything. Peas,
beans, carrots, beets, some oats and barley for your cow. May not get
ripe, but you cut it for fodder. Soy beans are good, too. And potatoes!
You should have seen our potatoes last year, four hundred bushels on an
acre!”

“Four hundred on an acre!” Florence stared. “That would be four thousand
on our ten acres if we planted it all to potatoes. Four thousand at how
much a bushel, Mrs. Swenson?”

“Why, dear, at nothing at all!” Mrs. Swenson exclaimed. “You can’t sell
’em. We haven’t a market. A few go to Fairbanks. Those are all sold long
ago.”

No market. There it was again. Florence’s heart sank.

“Potatoes and tomatoes,” Mark gave a sudden start. His face lighted as
the earth lights when the sun slips from behind a cloud.

“No,” said Mrs. Swenson, quite emphatically. “Not tomatoes. You’ll get
huge vines and blossoms, beautiful blossoms, that’s all.”

“Tomatoes,” Mark repeated with a slow, dreamy smile. “Bushels and bushels
of tomatoes.”

Mrs. Swenson stared at him in hurt surprise. “No tomatoes,” she said
again.

Florence favored Mark with a sidewise glance. She had seen that look on
his face before two or three times and always something had come of it,
something worth while. Like a song at sunrise, it warmed her heart.

Then, quite suddenly, the subject was changed. “I don’t see what’s the
good of a market. Not just now,” Bill Vale drawled. “The government’s
willing to provide us everything we need to eat or wear, and a lot of
things besides. Mother and I are getting a gasoline motor to run the
washing machine and a buzz-saw. No freezing at twenty below sawing wood
for me.”

“Nor me,” laughed Dave McQueen. “I aim to work too fast on our old
cross-cut saw to have time to freeze.”

“Fact is, Bill,” Mark put in, “in the end we’ve got to pay for all these
things.”

“Yes,” Bill laughed lightly. “Got thirty years to pay, start in five
years.”

“Well,” the older McQueen drawled. “Five years have rolled round a dozen
times in my lifetime. They all seemed strangely short. And when the
payments start, they’ll be coming round with ominous regularity. Mark and
Florence here have the right idea—keep debts down and get proceeds
rolling in at the earliest possible moment.”

“Tomatoes,” Mark said dreamily. “Bushels and bush—”

At that they all started to their feet. From somewhere just out of their
view had come the loud heehaw, heehaw of a donkey.

“What?” Florence sprang out the door. Then her lips parted in a smile,
for there before her stood one more odd character from this strange new
world: the oddest, she thought, of them all.

Tall, slim, white-haired, an old man sat astride a burro. And behind him
came two other burros heavily laden with packs. From one pack protruded
the handles of a pick and a shovel.

“A forty-niner,” Florence thought.

“A real old sourdough Alaskan prospector!” Bill exclaimed, wild with
enthusiasm.

“Whoa! Hello!” the old man shouted in one breath. “People livin’ here!
That’s bad for me. I’ve been camping here as I came and went for a long
spell.”

“The latch-string is still on the outside,” Florence laughed a welcome.
“We’ve got hot raised biscuits,” she encouraged. “Hot raised biscuits,
sweet, home-churned butter and plenty of coffee.”

“Hot raised biscuits.” The man passed a hand before his eyes. “And sweet
butter. Haven’t heard those words in twenty years. Came to Alaska during
the rush in ’97. Just out of college then. Been prospecting for gold ever
since. Found it twice. It’s all gone now. But there’s gold in them
hills.” His face lighted as he looked away at the snowy peaks. “Gold,” he
repeated softly. “Sure,” his voice changed, the light in his eyes faded.
“Sure. Hot biscuits and sweet butter. Sure, I’ll stop and rest awhile.”

“Well, folks,” Mark stood looking away at his partly plowed field. “I’ve
got to get back to work. Season’s short. Must get in our seed.”

“Bill,” he slapped the tall boy on the back, “you’ve got an acre or two
that’s nearly clear. You get busy and root out the brush. Then I’ll plow
it for you.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Bill scarcely heard. His eyes were on the prospector’s
pack.

“How about offering the same to us?” Dave asked.

“Sure,” Mark exclaimed. “But you got a hard forty to clear, all timber,
looks like.”

“We’ve picked a spot,” Dave drawled. “We’ve got strong backs and weak
minds, Dad and I have,” he laughed a roaring laugh. “We’ll have a garden
spot ready in two days. You’ll see.”

Florence flashed Dave an approving smile.

“Mr. McQueen,” she said quietly, turning to Dave’s father, “we’re having
some of the folks in for a sing Sunday afternoon. Mary will play our reed
organ, you know. Per—perhaps you’d like to say a few words to the folks.”

“Why, yes, I—” the old man hesitated. “I—I’m no orator, but I might say a
word or two. Good, old-fashioned time we’ll have.”

“Sure will!” Mark agreed.

While the others returned to their work, Bill lingered behind to talk
with the prospector. After laying out a generous supply of food, Florence
retired to the kitchen and the dinner dishes. Through the door there
drifted scraps of Bill’s talk with the old man.

“Ever really find gold?”... “Lots of times.”... “Boy! That must have been
great! I’m getting me a pick and shovel right now.”... “Take your time
about that, son,” the old man counselled. “But there’s gold. Plenty of
it. I’ll find it this time. Sure to.” His voice rose.

“Any bears up there?” Bill asked.

“Plenty of ’em. But I don’t bother ’em and they don’t bother me.”

“I’d bother them,” Bill cried.

“Yes,” Florence thought. “Bill would bother them.” She remembered the
high-powered rifle that decorated Bill’s tent.

“Temptation,” she thought, “does not belong to great cities alone. Here
boys are tempted to go after big game, to search for gold, to chase
rainbows.” Already Bill’s young brain was on fire.

To her consternation, she suddenly realized that her blood too was
racing. Had she caught the gleam of gold on the horizon? Would she listen
to the call of wild adventure until it led her away into those
snow-capped mountains?

“No,” she whispered fiercely. She had come to this valley to help those
she loved, Mary, Mark, and their mother, to assist them in securing for
themselves a home. She would cling to that purpose. She _would_! She
stamped her foot so hard the dishes rattled and Bill in the other room
gave a sudden start.

“Probably thought I was a bear,” she laughed low.

Then a thought struck her with the force of a blow. “He said he’d been in
Alaska since ’97. That old man said that,” she whispered. “Perhaps—” She
sprang to the door.

“Mister—er,” she hesitated.

“Name’s Dale—Malcomb Dale,” the old man rose and bowed.

“Oh, Mr. Dale,” Florence caught her breath. “You said you had been in
Alaska a long time. Did you ever know a man named Tom Kennedy?”

“Tom Kennedy! Sure! A fine man, but like the rest of us.” He smiled
oddly. “A little touched in the head, you might say, always looking for
gold.”

“And did—did he ever find it?”

“Yes, once, I’m told. Let’s see. That was, well, never mind what year.
They found gold, he and his partner, found it way back of the beyond, you
might say, and—”

“And—” Florence prompted.

“And they lost it.”

“Lost—lost it?” Florence stared.

“His partner, Dan Nolan, became ill. Tom Kennedy dragged him all the way
to Nome on a small sled. No dogs. Stormed all that time. No trail,
nothing. Got lost, nearly froze, but he came through. Powerful man, Tom
Kennedy. Good man, too, best ever. True a man as ever lived.”

“Oh, I—I’m glad.” Unbidden the words slipped out.

The prospector stared at her. “I said they lost the mine, never found it
again. Nolan died.”

“And Tom Kennedy, he—”

“He’s alive, far as I know. He’s always hunting that mine. Never found it
yet. But then,” the old man sighed, “there’s plenty of us like that up
here where the sun forgets to set in summer. Gets in your blood.

“Well,” he put out a hand, “I’ll get my burros started. I—I’ll be goin’,”
his voice was rich and mellow with years. “I shall not forget you. And
when I strike it rich—” he hesitated, then smiled a smile that was like
the sunset, “I’ll trade you gold and diamonds for raised biscuits and
sweet butter.” He stared for a moment, as if seeing a vision of the past,
then bowed himself out. He was gone. Bill went with him. How far he would
go the girl could only guess.

Left alone with her thoughts, Florence found herself wondering about many
things. Was there truly no market for the things they raised? As the
months and years rolled on, would there still be no market? Fairbanks, a
small city to the north of them, was in need of many kinds of food. Could
they not supply some of these needs?

Then, of a sudden, she recalled Mark’s words, “Tomatoes. Bushels and
bushels of tomatoes.” Why had he insisted, why repeated this word, even
after Mrs. Swenson had said, “no tomatoes”? Mark had something in mind.
What was it? She could not guess, but dared hope.

She recalled Mrs. Swenson’s words about the mysterious pair that had,
with so much labor, erected this cabin, cleared this land, then left it
all. “I wonder why they left?”

Then, “Seven golden candlesticks,” she murmured, “and a great copper
kettle. We could use that kettle.” After that, in spite of her desire to
be practical, she found herself searching the place from foundation to
the loft. All she found was an ancient Dutch oven, rusted beyond
reclaiming.

“All the same,” she thought, “it _is_ strange what became of that copper
kettle and—“ She did not allow the thought to finish itself. She had been
about to think “gold.” She knew that in this land one must not dream—at
least, not too much.

                               CHAPTER IV
                            THE GREAT STUMP

There was one thing about their little farm that, from the first time she
saw it, had seemed strange to Florence. Back of the house stood the stump
of a forest giant. Fully three feet across it stood there, roots embedded
deep, while all about it were pigmies of the tree world. There was not a
tree on the farm that measured more than thirty feet tall. Why? Perhaps a
fire had destroyed the primeval forest. Yet here was this great stump.

She tried to picture the tree towering above its fellows. She found
herself wishing that it had not been felled by some woodsman’s axe. Why
had they cut it down? That they might build its logs into the house was a
natural answer, yet the house contained no such logs. Well, here was a
riddle.

On top of the stump the original dwellers in the cabin had placed a
massive flower-box. Somehow, they had secured wild morning-glory seeds
and planted them there. These must, from year to year, have replanted
themselves, for, even in June, the vines were beginning to droop over the
edge of the box. By autumn the great stump would be a mass of flowers.
However others might regard wild morning-glories, Florence knew she would
adore them.

She was standing staring at the stump and thinking of it with renewed
wonder when Mark came in from his plowing.

“There! That’s done,” he exclaimed as he dropped down upon a bench. “Now
for the planting.” Then, to his cousin’s renewed astonishment, he said.
“Bushels and bushels of tomatoes.”

“Mark!” exclaimed Florence. “Why do you keep on insisting that we can
raise tomatoes here when Mrs. Swenson, who has lived here so long, says
we can’t?”

“Because we can,” Mark grinned broadly.

“How?”

“Sit down and stop staring at that stump as if it hid some strange secret
and I’ll tell you.”

Florence sat down.

“You know the way I have of poking about in all sorts of odd corners
wherever I am,” Mark began. “Well, while we were in Anchorage I got to
prowling round and stumbled upon a small greenhouse set way back on a
side street where very few people would see it.

“Well, you know you’ll always find something interesting in a greenhouse.
Some new vegetable or flower, a strange form of moss or fungus, or even a
new species of plant pest. So I went in.”

“And you—”

“I found tomato plants all in blossom, dozens and dozens of them in
pots.”

“But why—”

“That’s what I asked the man—why? He said he’d raised them for some
gardener in a town down south, half way to Seattle. Something had gone
wrong with the man or his garden. He couldn’t use them so—”

“There they were.”

“Yes,” Mark agreed with uncommon enthusiasm. “There they were, and there,
I am quite sure, they are still. They can be bought cheap, probably four
hundred plants in pots. Must be tomatoes big as marbles on them by now.”

“And you know,” he went on excitedly, “when you set out potted plants the
blossoms and small tomatoes do not drop off, they just keep on growing.
And here, where the sun will be shining almost twenty-four hours a day,
they should just boom along. Have ripe tomatoes in six weeks. Then how
those well-to-do people in Anchorage, Seward and Fairbanks will go after
them! Tomatoes!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms wide. “Bushels and
bushels of tomatoes; ripe, red gold!”

“But if there is a frost?”

“Yes,” Mark said with a drop in his voice. “A June frost. That happens
sometimes. It’s a chance we’ll have to take. I’m going to Anchorage for
those plants tomorrow.

“You know,” his voice dropped, “I can’t see all this going in debt for
the things you eat and wear, to say nothing of tools, machinery, and all
that. It’s got to be paid sometime and it’s going to come hard.

“It’s all right if you have to do it, better than getting no start at
all. I’m not criticising anyone else. But, as for the Hughes family,
we’re going to pay as we go if we can, and who knows but those tomatoes
will pay for our winter’s supply of flour, sugar, and all the rest?”

“Who knows?” Florence echoed enthusiastically.

Six weeks had passed when once again Florence sat beside the lake. There
was a moon tonight. It hung like a magic lantern above the snow-capped
mountain. The lake reflected both mountains and moon so perfectly that
for one who looked too long, it became not a lake at all, but mountains
and moon.

Florence had looked too long. She was dreaming of wandering among those
jagged peaks in an exciting search. A search for gold. And why not? Had
not the aged prospector appeared once more at their door? Had she not
feasted him on hot-cakes and wild honey? Had he not repaid her with fresh
tales of her grandfather’s doings in the very far north?

“I shall go in search of him,” she told herself now. “A search for a
grandfather,” she laughed. Well, why not? He had lost a rich gold mine.
She was strong as a man, was Florence. No man, she was sure, could follow
a dog team farther nor faster than she. She would find Tom Kennedy and
together they would find that mine.

“But first this!” she sighed as on other occasions, flinging her arms
wide to take in the claim, the lake, and the cabin.

“First what?” a voice close at hand said.

Startled, she sprang to her feet. “Oh! It’s you, Mark.” She made a place
for him beside her on a broad flat rock.

“First your little farm,” she said soberly. “Tomatoes and potatoes and
all the rest. A shelter for old Boss, everything that will go to make
this a home for you and Mary and your mother.”

“And you,” Mark’s voice was low.

“No. Not for me, Mark. For you this is life. I understand that. I admire
you for it. To have a home, and a small farm, to add to that year after
year, to change the log cabin for a fine home, to have cattle and sheep
and broad pasture and—” she hesitated, then went on, “and children, boys
and girls, happy in their home. All this is your life and will be years
on end. But for me, it is only—what should I say—an episode, one
adventure among many, a grand and glorious experience.”

“Yes,” Mark said, and there was kindness in his voice. “Yes, I suppose
that is it. Awfully good of you to share the hardest year with us.”

“What do you mean hardest?” Florence demanded. “It’s been glorious. And
we are succeeding so well. Already the tomatoes are up to my shoulders.
What a crop they will be!”

“Yes,” Mark’s voice was husky. “We’ve been lucky.”

For a time there was silence. Then Mark spoke again. “There was a time,
and not so long ago, when I thought to myself, ‘Life’s stream must grow
darker and deeper as we go along.’ But now—well—” he did not finish.

“Now,” Florence laughed from sheer joy of living. “Now you must know that
it grows lighter and brighter.”

“Lighter and brighter,” Mark laughed softly. “Those are fine words,
mighty fine.”

“They’re grand words,” the girl cried. “True words, too. It—why, life is
like a summer morning! Only day before yesterday I went out to find old
Boss before dawn. It was more than half dark. Clouds along the horizon
were all black. They looked ominous, threatening. Soon, some power behind
them began to set them on fire. Redder and redder they shone, then they
began to fade. Salmon colored, deep pink, pale pink, they faded and faded
until like a ghost’s winding sheet they vanished. Lighter and brighter.
Oh, Mark! how grand and beautiful life can be!” Leaping to her feet she
did a wild dance, learned in some gypsy camp with her good friend, Petite
Jeanne; then, dropping to her place beside the boy, she looked away into
the night. For her, darkness held no terror, for well she knew there
should be a brighter dawn.

Of a sudden, as they sat there, each busy with thoughts of days that were
to come, they were startled by a sudden loud splash.

“Oh!” Florence jumped.

“Only some big old land-locked salmon,” Mark chuckled.

“I didn’t know—”

“That they were here? Oh, sure! I’ve heard them before.”

“Mark, I love to fish. Couldn’t we fix up something?”

“Sure. There’s a line or two in the cabin and some three gang hooks. I’ll
cut the handle off a silver-plated spoon. It’ll spin all right without
the handle. That’ll fool ’em. You’ll see!”

She did see. The very next day she saw what Mark’s inventive skill would
do and, seeing, she found fresh adventure that might have ended badly had
not some good angel guided one young man to an unusually happy landing.

                               CHAPTER V
                             HAPPY LANDING

Dull gray as a slate roof, the lake lay before Florence next morning.
There was a threat of rain. From time to time, like scurrying wild
things, little ripples ran across the water.

“Just the time for a try at that big old salmon trout,” she exulted.

They had a boat, of a sort. A great hollow log brought down from the
hills, with its ends boarded up. It leaked, and it steered like a balky
mule, but what of that? She would have a try at trolling.

Dropping on her knees at the back of the boat, she seized the paddle,
then went gliding out across the gray, rippling water. Quite deftly she
dropped in her silver spoon and played out her line.

After that, for a full quarter hour, she paddled about in ever-widening
circles. Once her heart skipped a beat. A strike! No, only a weed. She
had come too near the shore. Casting the weed contemptuously away, she
struck out for deeper water.

Round and round she circled. Darker grew the surface of the lake. Going
to rain, all right. Clouds were closing in, dropping lower and lower.
Well, let it rain. Perhaps—

Zing! What was that? Something very like a sledge-hammer hit her line.

“Got him!

“No. Oh, gee! No.” He was gone.

Was he, though? One more wild pull. Then again a slack line. What sort of
fish was this?

Line all out. She would take in a little slack. Her hand gripped the line
when again there came that mighty tug.

“Got you,” she hissed.

And so she had, but for how long? The line, she knew, was strong enough.
But the rod and reel? They were mere playthings. Bought for perch and
rock bass, not for thirty-pound salmon. Would they do their part? She was
to see.

Dropping her paddle, she settled low in her uncertain craft. A sudden
rush of the fish might at any moment send her plunging into the lake. Not
that she minded a ducking. She was a powerful swimmer. But could one land
a salmon that way? She doubted this. And she did want that fish. What a
grand feast! She’d get a picture, too. Send it to her friends—who
believed her lost in a hopeless wilderness.

“Yes, I—I’ve got to get you.” She began rolling in. The reel was
pitifully small. She had not done a dozen turns when the tiny handle
slipped from her grasp.

Zing! sang the reel. Only by dropping the rod between her knees and
pressing hard could she halt the salmon’s mad flight.

“Ah,” she breathed, “I got you.”

This time, throwing all the strength of her capable hands into the task,
she reeled in until, with a sudden rush the fish broke water.

“Oh! Oh!” she stared. “What a beauty! But look! You’re up, head, tail and
all. How’re you hooked, anyway?”

Before she could discover the answer he was down and away. Once again the
reel sang. Once more its handle bored a hole in her right knee.

“Dum!” she exclaimed as her boat began to move. “He’s heading for the
weeds. He—he’ll snag himself off.”

The boat gained momentum. Reel as she might, the fish gained ground. Deep
under the surface were pike-weeds. She knew the spot, twenty yards away,
perhaps. Now fifteen. Now—

Wrapping the line about her shoe, she seized the paddle and began
paddling frantically.

“Ah! That gets you.” Slowly, reluctantly, the fish gave ground. Then,
driven to madness, he broke water a full fifty yards from the boat. This
move gave the line a sudden slack. The boat shot sidewise and all but
overturned. In a desperate effort to right herself, the girl dropped her
paddle. Before the boat had steadied itself the paddle was just out of
her reach.

“Oh, you! I’ll get you if I have to swim for it.”

All this time, quite unknown to the girl, something was happening in the
air as well as the water. There was the sound of heavy drumming overhead.
Now it lost volume, and now picked up, but never did it quite end.

Without a paddle, with her reel serving her badly, the girl was driven to
desperation. Seizing the line, she began pulling it in hand over hand.
This was a desperate measure; the line might break, the hook might loose
its grip. No matter. It was her only chance.

Yard by yard the line coiled up in the bottom of the boat. And now, of a
sudden, the thunder of some powerful motor overhead grew louder. Still,
in her wild effort to win her battle, the girl was deaf to it all.

The line grew shorter and shorter, tighter and tighter. What a fish!
Thirty yards away, perhaps, now twenty. Now—how should she land him? She
had no gaff.

That question remained unanswered, for at that instant things began to
happen. The fish, in a last mad effort to escape, leaped full three feet
in air. This was far too much for the crazy craft. Over it went and with
it went the girl.

That was not all; at the same instant a dark bulk loomed out of the
clouds to come racing with the speed of thought towards the girl.

“An—an airplane,” she gasped. Closing her eyes, she executed a sudden
dive.

This action would have proved futile, the pontoons of the plane sank
deep. Fortunately, they passed some thirty feet from the spot where the
girl disappeared.

When she rose sputtering to the surface, her first thought was of the
fish. No use. The line was slack, the salmon gone.

She looked up at the plane. At that moment a young aviator was peering
anxiously out over the fuselage.

“Ah! There you are!” he beamed. “I’m awfully glad.”

“Why don’t you look where you’re going? You cut my line. I lost my fish.”
Florence was truly angry.

“Fish? Oh, I see! You were fishing?” The young aviator stood up. He was
handsome in an exciting sort of way. “But I say!” he exclaimed, “I’ll fix
that. I’ve a whole leg of venison here in my old bus. What do you say we
share it? Can you bake things?”

“Sure, but my aunt can do it much better.” Florence climbed upon a
pontoon to shake the water out of her hair.

Five hours later, with the rain beating a tattoo on the well weathered
roof of the cabin, they were seated about the hand-hewn table, the Hughes
family, Florence, and the young aviator. Seven candles winked and blinked
on the broad board. At the head sat Mark, and before him the first roast
of wild venison the family had ever tasted. How brown and juicy it was!

“Wonderful!” Florence murmured. “How did you get it?” the words slipped
unbidden from her lips.

“No secret about that,” Speed Samson, the aviator, smiled. “I’m a guide.
Take people up into the mountains for fish and game. Just left a party up
there. Going back in a week. It’s wonderful up there. Snow. Cold.
Refreshing. Great! Want to go along?” He looked at Florence.

“Why, I—” she hesitated.

“Take you all,” his eyes swept them in a circle.

“Can’t be done just now. Thanks all the same.” It was Mark who spoke.
“We’re new here. Lots to do. Adventure will have to wait.

“Of course,” he hastened to add, “I’m not talking for Florence.”

“Oh, yes, you are!” the big girl flashed back. “I’m in this game the same
as you, at least until snow flies.”

“O. K.!” the aviator laughed. “When snow flies I’ll be back. Winter up
here is the time for adventure.” He was looking now at Mary, whose dark
eyes shone like twin stars. “I’ll take you for a long, long ride.”

At that instant something rattled against the windowpane. Was it sleet
driven by the rain or was it some spirit tapping a message, trying to
tell Mary how long and eventful that ride would really be?

Next day the smiling aviator went sailing away into a clear blue sky.
Florence and Mary went back to their work, but things were not quite the
same. They never are after one has dreamed a bright dream.

Three days later, Florence got her fish, or was it his brother? He
weighed twenty pounds. Of course that called for one more feast.
Fortunately, one who works hard may enjoy a feast every day in the year
and never waste much time. Truth is, only one who _does_ work hard can
truly enjoy any feast to its full. The Hughes family enjoyed both work
and wonderful food.

                               CHAPTER VI
                           A WANDERER RETURNS

Florence stirred uneasily beneath the blankets. Morning was coming. A
faint light was creeping in over the cabin loft where she and Mary slept
in a great, home-made bed.

More often than not it is a sound that disturbs our late slumbers.
Florence had never become quite accustomed to the morning sounds about
their little farm. All her life she had lived where boats chug-chugged in
the harbor and auto horns sounded in the streets. Here more often than
not it was the croak of a raven, the song of some small bird, the wild
laugh of a loon on the lake that awoke her.

Now, as a sharp suggestion of approaching winter filled the air, on more
than one morning it was the quack-quack of some old gander of the wild
duck tribe, flown to the lake from the far North, or the honk-honk of
geese.

All this was music to the nature-loving girl’s ear. And, of late, all of
life seemed to her a great symphony full of beautiful melodies. The hard
battle of summer was over. Bravely the battle had been fought. The Hughes
family had come to this valley to win themselves a home. She was one of
them, in spirit at least. The beginning they had made surpassed their
expectations. Now, as she opened her eyes to find herself fully awake,
she thought of it all.

“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered low to herself, “that’s what the
man said he was giving me. It’s been a ticket to duty and endless labor.
And yet,” she sighed, “I’m not complaining.” A great wave of contentment
swept over her. They were secure for the winter. That surely was
something.

“Adventure,” she laughed, silently. “Bill has had the adventure. He—”

Her thoughts broke off. From somewhere, all but inaudible, a sound had
reached her ear. More sensation than sound, she knew at once that it was
made by no wild thing. But what could it be? She listened intently, but,
like a song on their little battery radio, it had faded away.

Yes—her thoughts went back to her neighbor—Bill Vale had sought adventure
and had found it. With his mother still in Palmer, he had packed up a
generous supply of food, charged to his mother’s account at the
government commissary, and joining up with the dreamy-eyed prospector,
Malcomb Dale, had gone away into the hills searching for gold.

“Not that Bill’s mother would have objected,” Florence thought. “She
would have said, ‘Bill is incurably romantic. The quest for gold appeals
to him. All our desires in the end must be satisfied if we are to enjoy
the more abundant life. Besides, what is there to do? There are six
hundred men working in gangs. They will clear up our land for us and
build cabins before snow flies. We shall be charged with it all, but then
we have thirty years to pay.’ Yes, that is exactly what Bill’s mother
would have said,” and the thought disgusted Florence not a little.

So Bill had gone away into the mountains. The mountains, those glorious,
snow-capped mountains! Florence, as she bent over her work in their large
garden, had watched him start. And as she saw him disappear, she had, for
the moment, envied him.

Often and often, in the sweet cool of the evening, she and Mary had
talked about how, in some breathing spell, they would borrow a horse and
go packing away into those mountains. The breathing spell had never come.
And now, the brief autumn was here. Winter was just around the corner.
Florence had no regrets. Never before had she felt so happy and secure.

Bill had been gone six weeks. The clearing and building crew had arrived
while he was away. There was dead and down timber at the back of Bill’s
lot that would have made a fine, secure cabin, had Bill been there to
point it out. He was not there. So the cabin was built of green logs.
Already you could see daylight through the cracks, and Bill’s mother, who
had moved in with what to Florence seemed an unnecessary amount of
furniture and equipment, was complaining bitterly about “the way the
government has treated us poor folks.”

Bill had returned at last. Sore-footed and ragged, his food gone, his
high-priced rifle red with rust, he had returned triumphant. He had found
gold. In the spring he would begin operations in a big way. Proudly he
displayed six tiny nuggets, none of them bigger than a pea.

“Seeds,” old John McQueen had called them. “Golden seeds of discontent.”
But to Bill they were marvelous. For him they hid the cracks in their
cabin, his unplowed field, his uncut woodpile. And, because she doted on
her son, they hid all these things from his mother’s eyes as well—at
least, for a time.

“Poor Bill!” Florence sighed, as she snuggled down beneath the blankets.
“He’s such a dreamer. He—”

There was that strange sound again, like a speedboat motor. She laughed
at the thought of a speedboat on their tiny lake. But now, as before, it
faded away.

Yes, with her help, the Hughes family had won. Their summer had been a
complete success. How they had worked, morning to night. Mosquitoes and
flies, tough sod and weeds, they had battled them all. And how they had
been rewarded! Never had plants grown and flourished as theirs did.
Mark’s tomatoes were a complete success. Twice, it was true, the mercury
dropped to a point perilously near freezing and their heads rested on
uneasy pillows. But the Alaskan weather man had been kind. Their bright
red harvest, “bushels and bushels of tomatoes,” had come and had been
sold at unbelievable prices. All along the Alaskan railroad, people had
gone wild about their marvelous tomatoes.

“And now,” the girl heaved another happy sigh. Now their little sodded-in
cellar was packed full of potatoes, beets, turnips, and carrots; their
shelves were lined with home-canned wild fruit, raspberries, blueberries,
high bush cranberries, and their storeroom crowded with groceries, all
paid for. What was more, a horse! “Old Nig,” bought from a discouraged
settler, was in their small log barn. It was marvelous, truly marvelous!
And yet, in this wild land full of possible exciting events, they had
known no adventure.

“Duty first,” John McQueen had said to her once. “And when duty is done,
let adventure come as it may. And it _will_ come.”

“Good old McQueen,” she sighed. “God surely knows all our needs. He sends
us such men.”

Suddenly her feet hit the floor with a bound. She had heard that sound
once more. It was the drum of an airplane motor. She judged by the sound
that it was circling for a landing, perhaps on their little lake. How
wonderful! Was it their friend, the young aviator? Had he come for them?
Her blood raced.

“Mary!” she fairly screamed. “Wake up! An airplane! And it’s going to
land. It’s landing right now.”

They jumped into their clothes and were out on the cabin steps just in
time to see the beautiful blue and gray airplane, graceful as any wild
fowl, circle low to a perfect landing.

With mad scurrying, wild ducks and geese were off the water and away on
the wing, leaving the intruders to the perfect quiet of a glorious autumn
morning.

A short time later they were all at the water’s edge, Florence, Mary,
Mark, Bill, and Dave. The hydroplane had been anchored. Three men had
just put off in a small boat.

“Hello, there,” one of them shouted. “How’s the chances for sourdough
pancakes and coffee?” It was Speed Samson.

“Fine!” Florence laughed. “Plate of hots coming up.”

“This is not to be our trip.” There was a note of disappointment in
Florence’s tone as she murmured these words to Mary. “He’s got a hunting
party. Probably going after moose or grizzly bears.” Nevertheless, she
was ready enough to offer to the party the true hospitality of the north.
Soon their plates were piled high with cakes, their cups steaming with
fragrant brown coffee.

As Florence sat talking to them, one of the men, all rigged out in
hunting belt filled with shells, riding breeches and high boots, seemed
familiar to her. Who was he? For the life of her, she could not think.

It was Mary who dispelled her doubt. “Florence,” once they were alone in
the kitchen, she gripped her arm hard, “that man’s the one who roared at
the little Eskimo, Mr. Il-ay-ok, back there on the dock in Anchorage.”

“That’s right,” Florence’s whisper rose shrill and high. “I don’t like
him and I don’t think I ever shall.”

“Why did he hate that little man?”

“Who knows?” Florence answered hastily. “Anyway, his name is Peter
Loome.”

“How—how do you know that?”

Florence did not catch this, she was already hurrying away.

“We’re bound for the big-game hunting ground,” one of the men was
explaining to Mark. “Wonderful sport! Wild sheep and goats, moose and big
brown bear!”

“Man, you’re lucky!” Bill exclaimed.

Mark made no response.

“Your motor don’t sound just right,” Mark said as the conversation
lagged.

“What’s wrong with it?” the young pilot demanded.

“Can’t quite tell,” Mark puckered his brow.

“Ever fly?” The pilot looked at him sharply.

“No-o. But then your motor’s just like the ones we had in some speedboats
back in the Copper Country. I tinkered with them. You get to know by the
sound,” Mark replied modestly.

“Want to turn her over once or twice?” the pilot invited.

“Sure. Be glad to.”

Two hours later grim, greasy, but triumphant, Mark emerged from the
plane. He had located the trouble and had remedied it.

“Say-ee, you’re good!” the pilot was enthusiastic. “Want to go along as
my mechanic? Grand trip! Shoot goats, bears, moose, and—”

“Can’t get away just now,” said Mark quietly. “Thanks all the same.”

Just the same, there was a look of longing in his eye that Florence knew
all too well. He had two passions, had Mark. He loved growing things and
wonderful machinery. Growing was over for this year. Dull, dreary days of
autumn were at hand. For him, to spend two weeks or even a month watching
over that matchless motor would be bliss.

“No-o,” he repeated slowly, almost mournfully. “I can’t go. There is
still work to be done before snow flies.”

“Say!” Bill put in. “Take me. I’ll go.”

“Know anything about motors?”

“Sure, a lot,” Bill, never too modest, replied.

“All right. Get your things.” A half hour later, Bill sailed off to one
more adventure.

“Yes,” Florence thought with a grim smile. “He’s spent two weeks felling
green trees to cut with his new buzz-saw. Be fine wood in twelve months.
But how about next January? Poor Bill!”

Strange to say, the one thought that often haunted both Florence and Mary
was the realization that their splendid cabin had been built by someone
else. That this someone had hidden a big copper kettle and, perhaps,
seven golden candlesticks near the cabin, then had gone away, did not
seem to matter. “What if they should come back?” Florence asked herself
over and over.

Then, one bright autumn day, their dark dream came true. Busy in the
kitchen, Florence did not notice the approach of a stranger. Only when
she heard heavy footsteps outside did she hurry into the large front
room. Then, through the open door, she heard a loud sigh, followed by the
creak of a bench as a heavy person settled upon it. After that, in a
voice she could not mistake, though she had never heard it before, there
came: “Ah! Home at last!”

“Madam Chicaski, the original owner of the cabin,” the girl thought in
wild consternation. “She has returned!”

                              CHAPTER VII
                        AND THEN CAME ADVENTURE

When you buy a house, or even a cabin in the wilderness, how much of it
do you really buy? All of it or only part? The walls, the roof, the
floor, surely all these are yours. But all those other things, the little
cupboard in the corner, all carved out from logs with crude tools, but
done so well for someone who has been loved—do you buy this too? And all
the other delicate touches that made a house a home, can you buy these or
do you only try to buy these and fail? It was thus that Florence thought
as she sat dreaming in the sun outside the cabin.

From within came the sound of voices. Her aunt and Madam Chicaski were
talking. Already her aunt had come to love the company of this huge
Russian woman who had first made this cabin into a home.

A week had passed and still the woman lingered. How long would she stay?
No one knew nor seemed to care overmuch. She insisted on working, this
stout old woman. And how she did work! When Mark began going to the
forest cutting dead trees and dragging them in with the tractor for the
winter’s supply of wood, she shouldered an axe and went along. Then how
the trees came crashing down! Even Mark was no match for her. In five
days a great pile of wood loomed up beside the cabin. High time, too, for
the first flurry of snow had arrived.

That Madam Chicaski had a gentler side they learned as she talked beside
the fire in the long evenings. She told of her own adventure on this very
spot when the valley was all but unknown and life for her was new. Many
things she told, tales that brought forth smiles and tears.

One subject she never touched upon, nor was she asked to tell, what had
become of the great copper kettle, the seven golden candlesticks and all
else that had been left behind. “If she stays long enough, in time I
shall know,” Florence assured herself.

There were other things she did not tell. Why had she left the valley and
how? Where was her husband now? This much was certain, she was not now in
want. Florence had come upon her one afternoon unobserved. She was
thumbing a large roll of bills. At the slightest sound she concealed them
under her ample dress.

At times she acted strangely. She would go to the back of the yard and
stand, for a quarter hour or more, contemplating the great stump. Over
this, during the summer, morning-glories had bloomed in profusion. At
that moment it was covered only by dry and rustling vines. At such times
as this on the Russian woman’s face was a look of devotion. “Like one
saying her prayers,” Florence thought.

There came a day when, for a time at least, all thoughts of the
mysterious Madam Chicaski were banished from the little family’s
thoughts. Mystery was replaced by thrilling adventure.

Once again the air was filled with sound. A large, gray hydroplane came
zooming in from the west. They were waiting at the water’s edge, the
Hughes family and Madam, when the pilot taxied his plane close in to
shore. Florence was not there. She was away on a visit to Palmer.

“How would you like to paddle out and get me?” the pilot invited as he
climbed out upon the fuselage.

Mark rowed out in their small home-made skiff.

“I’m on an errand of mercy,” the man explained at once, “and I’m going to
need some help. Just received a message by short-wave radio that some men
are in trouble up in the mountains.”

“Hunters?” Mark suggested.

“Yes.”

“In a blue and gray plane?” Mary’s dark eyes widened. How about Bill, she
was thinking. Despite his shortcomings, Bill held a large place in
slender Mary’s heart.

“Any—any one hurt?” she asked.

“One of the hunters has been badly handled by a bear,” the man went on.
“Something’s gone wrong with their motor, too. They can’t bring him out.”

“Bear?” said Mark. “That’s sure to be Bill. He’d march right up and shoot
a bear in the eye.”

“Yes—yes, it must be Bill,” Mary exclaimed, striving in vain to control
her emotions. “We must do something to help him. What can we do?” Months
shut away from the outside world had drawn their little company close
together. Bound by bonds of friendship and mutual understanding, despite
the faults of some, they were very close to one another.

“You can help a great deal,” said the pilot, “that is,” he hesitated, “if
you’re willing to take a chance.”

“A—a chance?” Mary stammered.

“Sure,” the man smiled, “you look like a good nurse. Your brother, here,
I am told, is a fine motor mechanic. Climb in the plane and come along
with me—both of you.”

“A ticket to adventure!” The words so often repeated now echoed in Mary’s
ears.

“What do you say?” Mark turned to her.

“There—there’s still work to be done,” she stammered.

“The work can wait. This appears a plain call of duty.” Mark’s voice
trembled ever so slightly.

“All right. We’ll go.” Mary felt a thrill course up her spine. At the
same instant she caught the eye of Dave Kennedy. In those fine eyes she
read something quite wonderful, a look of admiration and yet of concern.

She and Dave had become great friends. Dave was a wonderful fellow. His
Scotch mother was small, quite frail, yet altogether lovely. When their
logs in their cabin walls had begun to warp, Dave and his father had
sodded it up, quite to the eaves. Now they were all set for winter.

“I’ll look after your horse and cow and—and cut the wood,” Dave said
huskily. “I only wish I might take your place.” He looked Mary squarely
in the eye.

“I’m glad you can’t,” she laughed, looking away. “I’m sure it will be a
wonderful adventure.”

“Cold up there,” suggested the pilot. “We shall need blankets and food.
We may have to freeze in and fly out on skis.”

The Hughes family was not stingy. A huge cart-load of supplies was
carried to the water’s edge, then ferried to the airplane.

“I stay,” said stout Madam Chicaski. “I stay until you come back. I look
after everything.” Mary’s heart warmed to this powerful old woman.

“Goodbye,” she screamed as the motor thundered. “Goodbye, everyone.” A
moment later, for the first time in her life, she was rising toward the
upper spaces where clouds are made.

The moments that followed will ever remain like the memory of a dream in
the girl’s mind. Though the motor roared, they appeared to be standing
still in mid-air while a strangely beautiful world glided beneath them.
Here a ribbon that was a stream wound on between dark green bands that
were fringes of forest, here a tiny lake mirrored the blue sky, there a
broad stretch of swamp-land lay brown and drear, while ever before them,
seeming to beckon them on—to what, to service or to death?—were the
snow-capped mountains.

So an hour passed. Swamps vanished. Jagged rocks appeared. Hemlock and
spruce, dark as night, stood out between fields of glistening snow.

And then, with a quick intake of breath, Mary sighted a tiny lake. Half
hidden among rocky crags, it seemed the most marvelous part of this dream
that was not a dream. And yes—clutching at her breast to still her
heart’s wild beating, she shouted to her silent, awe-struck brother:

“That is the place!”

Nor was she wrong. With a sudden thundering swoop that set her head
spinning, the powerful ship of the air circled low for a landing.

“Now!” she breathed, and again, “Now!”

One instant it seemed they would graze the rocks to the left of them, the
next the bank of trees to the right. And then—

“What was that?” Mark shouted suddenly.

As the pontoons of the plane touched the surface of the lake, there had
come a strange ripping sound.

They had not long to wait for the answer. Hardly had the airplane taxied
to a spot twenty feet from a shelving bank, when the plane began settling
on one side.

“Tough luck!” exclaimed the pilot. “A little ice formed on the lake. Must
have punctured a pontoon. No real danger, I guess. Those fellows should
be here any—”

“Yes! Yes! There they are now!” Mary exclaimed, pointing to a spot where
two men were putting off in a small boat.

The boat, she saw at once, was one used on their own small lake not so
many days before. In a narrow cove she sighted the blue and gray
airplane.

“Well!” laughed their pilot. “Here we are.”

“Yes,” the girl thought soberly. “Here we are. Two hundred miles from
anywhere in a frozen wilderness. Two disabled airplanes. Food for a
month. One injured boy. Fine outlook.”

The instant her eyes fell upon the men in the boat she experienced one
more shock. Peter Loome, the man with a hard face, who hated all Eskimos,
was there. She barely suppressed a shudder. Just why she feared and all
but hated this man she was not able at that moment to say.

She was not one to see the dull gray side of life’s little cloud for
long. The instant they reached the improvised camp she asked after the
injured person and was not surprised to find that it was Bill.

“That bear,” Bill drawled as she dressed the rather deep wounds on his
arms and chest, “took an unfair advantage of me. He could run a lot
faster’n any man. And he ran the wrong way. Funny part was, when he got
up with me, he wanted to hug me. If he hadn’t been badly hurt, he’d have
killed me.”

“If you’d left him alone in the first place, probably he wouldn’t have
bothered you,” Mary said soberly.

“No-o, probably not,” Bill replied ruefully.

“Oh, well,” one of the hunters consoled him, “you’ll have his skin for a
rug back there in your cabin this winter.”

“Not for me,” Bill exploded. “I’ve been cold long enough. That cabin
leaks air. Soon’s I get back I’ll be startin’ for old Alabam’, or at
least some place that’s warm.”

Mary frowned but said nothing. Already she had come to love that valley
where their cabin stood by the little lake. If it was her good fortune to
return there in safety she would not ask for more. As for Bill, he had,
she thought, brought all his troubles upon himself. But Bill was wounded
and ill. What he needed, at the moment, was kindness and gentle care, not
advice.

That night Mary and Mark sat down for some time beside a glowing
campfire. Bill was resting well, would sleep, they thought, quietly. The
others, too, had retired.

“Mark,” the girl’s tone was sober, “I’ve always wanted adventure. Most
young people want adventure in one form or another, I guess. But when it
comes—”

“It doesn’t seem so wonderful after all,” Mark laughed low.

“Well, no,” his sister agreed.

“May not be so bad after all,” Mark said cheerfully. “While you were
taking care of Bill, we floated three large dry logs out to our damaged
ship. We lashed them to the pontoon support. That means she won’t sink
any more. And when we are frozen in, we—”

“Frozen in!” Mary was startled. She had realized in a vague sort of way
that at this very moment the thin ice on the lake was hardening, that
they could not hope to get away on pontoons, yet the thought of a forced
wait was disturbing.

“How—how long?” she managed to ask.

“Perhaps ten days, perhaps a month. Depends on the weather.”

“Ten days, a month!” The girl’s head swam. Adventure! Surely this was it!

“But, Mark,” her voice was low with emotion, “so many things might
happen. A storm may come roaring up the mountainside and—”

“And wreck the planes beyond repair. Yes, but we’ll do our best and we
must trust God for the rest.”

“Yes,” the girl thought. “We must trust Him and do our best.”

Then, because she did not wish longer to dwell upon their own position,
she forced her thoughts into other channels. She tried to picture the
folks at home—mother, quietly knitting by the fire, Florence, if she were
back from Palmer, poring over a book, and silent, occupied only with her
thoughts, the strange Madam Chicaski.

How often she had wished she might read that woman’s thoughts. Did she
sometimes think of the missing copper kettle and the seven golden
candlesticks? If so, what did she think? What was in her mind as she
stood for a long time staring at the great stump?

“We’ll get away from here,” the girl thought at last. “We’ll go back to
our snug cabin and the joys of winter. How peaceful and secure we shall
be. Let the wind roar. We shall be snug and warm.

“And Sunday! What a day that will be! The Petersons with the twins will
come over in a bobsled, and the Dawsons in their home-made cutter. The
Sabins have a dog team. What sings we shall have!

“Mark!” she exclaimed. “It’s too bad you had to give up training your
dogs.” Mark had befriended five shaggy dogs deserted by settlers gone
back to the States.

“Be back to the dogs before you know it. Besides,” Mark laughed a low,
merry laugh, “there’s the cat. What the dogs can’t do, the cat can.” (He
was speaking of his caterpillar tractor. They called these “cats” for
short.)

“Yes,” Mary joined in the laugh. “But it will be truly thrilling to have
a dog team. Wish we had it right now. Then if everything went wrong we
could drive out.”

“Yes, but everything won’t go wrong.” Mark rose and yawned sleepily.
“You’ll see.”

“Will we see?” the girl asked herself as, a quarter of an hour later, she
crept beneath heavy blankets to lie down upon a bed of sweet-scented
boughs. She knew their plans in a general sort of way. The gray plane
carried skis. The blue and gray one had none. Mark and the pilots would
work on the disabled motor of the blue and gray. If they got it working
they would make skis for it. The two planes would take off on skis as
soon as the ice was safe.

“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered. “When and how will our adventure
end? Ah, well, Mr. McQueen says that so long as our adventure comes in
the line of duty, Providence will see us through, so surely there is
nothing to fear.” With this comforting thought, she fell asleep.

                              CHAPTER VIII
                            A SECRET IS TOLD

To Mary the days that followed were strange beyond belief. The beauty of
mountain sunshine on glistening snow, gray rocks, and black forests was
entrancing. The sudden up-rushing of a storm, threatening as it did to
destroy their only means of escape, was terrifying beyond words.

Many and many were the times that she wished that it might have been
Florence who had been whirled off on this wild adventure instead of
herself. “She is so much stronger than I,” she said to Mark. “She has
seen so much more of life and seems so much older.”

“You had your first-aid lessons in school,” Mark said, a note of
encouragement in his tone. “This is one grand opportunity for putting
them into practice.”

“Sure,” Bill agreed, overhearing the conversation. “I’m so tough you
couldn’t kill me off any way you try.”

“I won’t try to kill you off, Bill.” Mary’s tone was all too sober.

“I know, Mary,” Bill’s voice suddenly went husky. “You’re one grand gal.
I don’t deserve half I get, big bum that I am.

“But say,” his voice dropped to a mere whisper, “perhaps I shouldn’t say
it, but I wouldn’t have got it so bad if that fellow Peter Loome had done
his part.”

“Done his part?” Mary stared.

“Sure. Don’t you know? He was with me. Had a powerful 30-40 rifle in his
hands. Saw the bear come after me when I fired and what did he do but
stand right still and laugh! Roared good and plenty as if it was all
being done in the movies. When I yelled at him he did limber up and get
in a shot or two. I never did make him out. Something loose in his
make-up, I guess.”

“Something sure,” Mark agreed solemnly. Right then and there he wished
Loome had not chanced to be one of the party.

“Not a bit of help, that fellow,” he added after a moment’s silence.
“Grumbles about everything, always demanding that we get going at once,
insists he is losing a chance at big money by the delay. Then, when we
give him an opportunity to help he bungles everything. I never saw such a
fellow.”

“Big money,” Mary thought to herself. “Wonder if that has anything to do
with Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, and that far north country?” She was to
know.

Daily, under her nursing, Bill improved. Nightly, but oh, so slowly, the
ice on the lake thickened.

Each day the men labored at the task of making the planes fit for travel.
Mark’s genius for fixing things at last won over the sulky motor. Once
again it purred sweetly or thundered wildly at man’s will.

Slowly, painstakingly, the men hewed from solid logs, skis for the
smaller plane. Would these, cut from green wood, as they must be, stand
the strain of taking off? They must wait and see.

To escape haunting, unnamed fears, Mary began exploring the mountain
ledges. First she sought out a wild animal trail leading down, down,
down, over tumbled rocks, through aisles of trees, over the frozen bed of
a narrow stream to a spot where the land appeared to drop from beneath
her. Creeping out on a flat rock, she gazed in awed silence down a sheer
four hundred feet or more to the treetops of one more forest. Was the
trail she found, made by wild sheep and goats, safe for men? She doubted
it, yet the time might come when they must follow that trail or starve.
She returned silent and thoughtful.

That night a storm swept up from the valley. All night her small tent
bulged, flapped and cracked. All night she shuddered beneath her
blankets, as she listened to the men shouting to one another down there
on the frozen lake. They were, she knew, battling the storm, straining at
guy ropes to save the planes.

At dawn the wind died away. The temperature dropped. As she drew her feet
from the blankets she found the air unbelievably cold.

“Freezing fast,” she thought. “Just what we want if only—”

She did not finish. Instead, she hurried into her clothes and then, after
racing to a rocky ledge, found to her consternation that, for a space of
seconds, she did not have the courage to look down at the lake. That one
look would be the answer to a question that meant great hope or near
despair.

One look at last, then a drop to her knees as she murmured:

“Thank God.” The planes were safe.

Next instant she was on her feet and racing to camp ready to serve hot
coffee and sourdough pancakes to the battlers of the night.

“Boo! How gloriously cold!” exclaimed the older of the two pilots. “A day
and a night of this and we shall be away.”

There was still some work to be done on the plane. The storm had strained
at every strut and guy. It was necessary to test all these and to tighten
some. That night, after a hasty supper, the men made their way back to
the frozen surface of the lake.

With Bill snugly tucked away in the tent at her back, Mary sat before a
glowing fire of spruce logs. How grand was the night, after that storm!
Not a cloud was in the sky. Not soon would she forget it, dark spruce
trees towering toward the sky, gray walls of rocks like grim fortresses
of some mythical giant, the cold, still white of snow and above it all, a
great, golden moon.

“The North!” she murmured. “Ah, the North!”

And yet, as she thought of it now, they were not so very far north. She
looked up and away at the north star and wondered vaguely about
Florence’s grandfather, Tom Kennedy, way up there almost beneath that
star. Tom Kennedy was not her grandfather, he was on the other side of
Florence’s family, yet, so intimate had the relations between herself and
her big cousin become, she felt a sudden, burning desire to accompany her
on her quest for her grandfather, if indeed the quest was ever begun.

Had she but known it, Florence was at that very moment in Anchorage
making inquiries regarding transportation to Nome. Only a few days
before, Mark, having received his last payment for the summer’s crop, had
pressed a crisp new fifty-dollar bill into her reluctant hand.

“You earned it and much more,” had been his husky reply to her protest.
“You’ve been a regular farm hand and—and a brick.”

Fifty dollars! What could one not do with that? It seemed now that
nothing much could be done. Had there been a boat, it might have been
possible to secure steerage passage. There was no boat, ice had closed
sea transportation for nine long months.

“Your only chance is the air-mail plane,” a kindly storekeeper assured
her, “and air travel costs money in the north. Nothing like what it was
in the days of dog-team travel, but plenty. Fifty dollars? Why, Miss,
that wouldn’t buy oil for the trip. Better wait for spring. Then you can
go by boat.”

Wait until spring? Nine months? Spring? That was time for work on the
little valley farm. “Winter is the time for adventure,” she recalled the
young aviator’s words.

“I’ll manage it some way. I—I’ve got to,” she turned suddenly away.

Meantime, in her mountain fastness, Mary was thinking of the long-lost
grandfather and wondering vaguely about Mr. Il-ay-ok, the Eskimo, when,
catching a slight sound, she looked up to see Peter Loome sitting beside
her.

This sudden discovery was startling. By the light of the fire this man’s
face was more repulsive than by day. She wondered, with a touch of panic,
why he was here. Then, reassured by the nearness of Bill in the tent and
of her friends below on the lake, she settled back in her place.

For a long time they sat there in silence with the eyes of night, the
stars, looking down upon them. Then, because she could endure the silence
no longer, and because she truly wanted to know, Mary said, “Mr. Loome,
why do you hate that little Eskimo who calls himself Mr. Il-ay-ok?”

“Why, I,” the man started, “I—well, you see, he’s in my way, er—that is,
he wants to be. He won’t be long. I—” the man’s voice rose, “I’ll smash
him!” His foot crashed down upon the rocks. “Like that!”

“Why?” Mary’s voice was low.

For some time there came no answer. In the sky a star began sliding. It
cut a circle and disappeared in the dark blue of night. A streak of light
reached for the milky way. Northern lights, the girl thought.

Suddenly the man spoke. “I don’t mind tellin’ you. You’ll never be up
there,” he pointed toward the north. “None of you dirt-diggers down here
will ever be up there where the north begins, where men and dogs fight
fer what they git an’ ask neither odds ner quarters.”

Mary caught her breath as he paused. He is sort of a rough poet she
thought. At that moment she almost admired him. But not for long.

“It’s the reindeer,” he burst out. “Eskimo’s got ’em. Too many of ’em.
What does an Eskimo know about makin’ money? Nothin’! Then what’s the
good of him havin’ all them reindeer? No good!” He spat on the snow.

“Well, at last the Government is seein’ reason,” he went on after a time.
“The Government’s told the Eskimo they gotta take their reindeer
back—back—back, way back to the mountains where there’s plenty of feed.

“Think the Eskimos’ll do it?” He squinted his eyes at her. “Narry a one.
They’ll stick to the shore. They’ll hunt seal an’ walrus, or starve.
That’s where their homes is, on the coast, allus has been, allus will be.

“So,” his voice dropped. “So they’ll sell their reindeer, sell ’em cheap.
And who’ll buy? Me! Me and my company. We got money. We’ll get rich on
reindeer. Reindeer!” Leaping to his feet, he started pacing like some
wild beast before the fire.

“This Il-ay-ok,” he went on after a time. “He thinks he can stop us. He’s
educated. Think of it! Educated! An Eskimo educated!” he laughed
hoarsely.

“He seemed such a nice, polite little man,” Mary ventured.

“Well, maybe he is. Polite!” one more burst of laughter. “But he won’t
get nowhere with politeness. He’s outside now, down in Washington. The
last boat’s come from up yonder. No more for nine months. Reindeer got to
get into the mountains before this old year dies. What can this polite
Il-ay-ok do about that?”

“There are airplanes,” Mary suggested.

“Yes. Like them down there!” the man exploded. “I wish to—they’d get the
things going. He might escape me, your polite, greasy little Es-ki-mo.

“‘Dear little Es-ki-mo,’” he chanted hoarsely, “‘Leave all your ice and
snow. Come play with me.’ I used to sing that in school. Can you
e-mag-ine!” His laugh rose louder than before. Then, of a sudden, it
faded. Footsteps were heard approaching.

“Well,” Mark said cheerfully. “Everything is O. K. We’ll be out of here
in twenty-four hours.”

“Good! That-a-boy!” Peter Loome patted him on the back.

As for Mary, she suddenly found herself wishing that their stay here
might be prolonged, she was thinking of the polite little man who called
himself “Mr. Il-ay-ok.”

                               CHAPTER IX
                           HELP FROM THE SKY

True to Mark’s prophecy, dawn of the following day found them on the
move. By the light of a candle, hotcakes and coffee had been stowed away
under their belts. Now they were ready to pack up.

As Mary stepped from the tent her eyes fell upon a pair of lifeless eyes
that seemed to stare down upon her. One of the hunters had killed a
moose. All this time, well out of the reach of thieving wild creatures,
its head had hung there in a tree. It seemed now a little strange that
those dead eyes could give her such a start.

“Nonsense!” she whispered, stamping her foot. “Enough to dread without
that.” And indeed there was. Despite the fact that the men agreed on the
solidness of the ice, she dreaded the take-off. What if the ice were
thinner in some places than at others? What if it should give way at just
the wrong time? What of the planes? Were they truly fit for service? And
what of those hand-made skis? All these fears were banished by the
excitement of breaking camp. Tents were taken down, bedding was made into
bundles, and bags were packed. Bill, now quite able to walk, but with
arms still smothered in bandages, was helped down the trail.

Mary thrilled anew as she approached the small blue and gray plane. “A
ticket to adventure,” she whispered for the hundredth time. Then her face
sobered. Was this to be the end of adventure or only its beginning? An
hour’s safe flying would bring them to the cabin where there awaited
dishes to wash, beds to make, paths to shovel, all the daily round.
“Yes,” she told herself with renewed interest, “yes, and Madam Chicaski
to wonder about. Where adventure ends, mystery begins.”

One thing pleased her, she was to travel with Bill and Mark in the
smaller plane. She liked being with her friends. She was very fond of
Speed Samson, the smiling young pilot. She feared and hated Peter Loome.

“I am taking the hunters straight to Anchorage. They seem to be in one
grand rush,” Dave Breen, pilot of the large gray plane, said. Then aside
to Mary he whispered, “They’re paying me well. Hunt me up in Anchorage
and I’ll buy you a hot fudge sundae.” Mary smiled her thanks. They were
fine fellows, these pilots, just how fine she was later to learn.

The take-off was exciting. She shuddered as they glided over the ice. An
ominous crack-crack-crack sent chills up her spine, yet the ice held.
There had been a light snowfall. The snow was sticky, it would not let
them go. Round and round the lake they whirled. Louder and louder the
motors thundered. Then someone shouted “Up!” and up they went whirling
away over the treetops.

Once again the glorious panorama of dark forest, gray crags, winding
streams and blankets of snow lay beneath them.

“We’re going home! Home!” Mary shouted in Mark’s ear. Mark nodded
soberly. He was listening. Listening for what? Mary knew well enough, for
trouble, motor trouble.

“There will be no trouble,” she assured herself. Once again she thought
of home. What a place of joy that once deserted valley of the North had
become for them. She thought of the worried millions in the cities and
scattered over the plain far to the south of them—worried millions
wondering where the next week’s food supply was to come from. She thought
of their well-lined cupboards, of their cellar bursting with good things
to eat, then sighed a sigh of content.

This mood was short-lived. Even she caught and understood the strange
shudders that shook the small plane. A moment of this and they went
circling downward toward the shining white surface of a small lake. Once
again her heart was in her mouth. They had left the higher altitudes
where the nights were bitter cold. They were equipped with skis. Would
this new lake be frozen hard enough for that? Scarcely time for these few
flashing thoughts and bump—they hit the lake. Bump—bump—bump. What
glorious bumps those were. They meant one more happy landing.

Dismounting, the girl stared aloft while the large gray plane circled
over them. Once, twice, three times it circled through the blue, then,
with a sudden burst of speed, like some wild duck that had heard the bang
of a hunter’s gun, it sped straight away.

Florence was walking disconsolately back and forth along the pier at
Anchorage early that same afternoon. She was deep in her own thoughts.
Having gone for a visit to Palmer, she had been invited to come for a
stay at Anchorage. Sending a note back to her cousins, she had taken the
train for Anchorage.

Strangely enough, Mary had met high adventure, while she was meeting with
bitter disappointment. She had so hoped that her lone fifty-dollar bill
would somehow carry her to that charmed city of her grandfather, Nome,
Alaska.

“No chance!” she murmured low. “Not a chance in the world.” And yet, she
dared hope.

Now catching the drone of an airplane motor, she shaded her eyes to look
away toward the east. Standing where she was, she watched the large gray
plane come driving in, then circling low, make a perfect landing.

“Oh!” she breathed. “If only—” she did not finish, but marched soberly on
her way.

Having made a round of the city’s stores, she was headed back to the home
of her hostess. “Tomorrow,” she thought, “I shall go back to our happy
valley.” But would it be so happy for her? When one longs to be in one
place, can he be truly happy in another? Who knows? As it turned out,
Florence would not be obliged to test her ability to be happy.

Of a sudden, as she walked along, she heard someone call: “Florence!
Florence Huyler!” Turning about, she found herself facing a total
stranger.

“You are Florence Huyler,” the man smiled.

“How—how did you know?” she gasped.

“If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have turned about so quickly,” he
laughed. “Ever try calling out quite loudly, ‘John!’ at the edge of a
large crowd? No, of course not. Just try it sometime. You’ll be surprised
at the number of Johns that turn to answer.

“But that—” his voice changed, “that’s not the point. Suppose you heard
of the accident?”

“Accident? No! I—” her face paled.

“Now, now! nothing to be excited about,” he warned. “You’ve been away
from home so you haven’t heard. Your friend Bill got clawed up a bit by a
bear. Say!” his voice rose. “Want to come in here and sit on a stool
while I tell you? I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”

“Al—all right.”

Three minutes later, their feet dangling from stools, they were drinking
coffee, munching doughnuts, and talking.

“So you see,” the aviator ended his story, “your cousin did me a mighty
fine turn. I got a good fee for bringing those hunters out and so if you
or he ever need a lift, just signal me by Morse code or any other way and
I’ll turn my motor over P.D.Q.

“Of course,” he added, “I’m off to Nome tomorrow, but I’ll be back. Back
before you know it. Not such a long trip that.

“But say!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” The girl’s face had turned
purple.

“Choked! Well, I’ll be! Here, let me—” He began pounding her on the back.

“Just—just a—a—piece of dough—doughnut,” she managed to sputter at last.
“Went—dow—down the wrong way.”

“Do you get that way often?” he grinned.

“Only when people tell me they’re going to Nome.”

“What’s so awful about that?”

“Awful? It’s glorious. If only—”

“If only what?”

“If only I were going!”

“And why not?”

Fishing in her pocket, she displayed her only banknote.

“That’s good money,” the pilot felt of it with thumb and finger.

“But not enough,” she shook her head sadly.

“For what?”

“A trip to Nome.”

“To Nome! You want to go to Nome? You’re off, child! You’re off right
now. There’s just room for one more. Got the Bowmans to take up, three of
’em. Big reindeer people. Grand folks! Just room for you.”

“Tha—” Florence could not finish. She had choked again, but not on a
doughnut. Mutely she held out the crumpled bill.

“Put it in your pocket, child,” his tone was gruff but kind, “you’ll need
it. But say! Why do you want to go to Nome?”

“Got a grandfather up there.”

“And haven’t seen him for a long time,” he added for her.

“Never saw him!”

“What? Never saw your grandfather? Say! That’s terrible. I had two of
’em. Grand old sports. Both gone now. Say! That’s great! And you’re going
with me to hunt up your grandfather. That, why that’s like moving
pictures. Going? Of course you’re going! Due to take off at nine a. m.”
He slid off the stool, then held out a hand. “Glad to have met you. Meet
you again right here at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Will you be here?”

Would she? If necessary she would form a one-man line and stand right
here in the snow and cold until the sun rose and the clock said a half
hour after eight.

                               CHAPTER X
                       IN SEARCH OF A GRANDFATHER

Nothing very serious had happened to the blue and gray plane that was
carrying Mary and her friends toward their home.

“A loose wire connection, that’s all,” the pilot explained as he read the
worry wrinkles on the girl’s brow. “Have it fixed before you know it. And
then—”

“Home,” Mary breathed. How she loved that word. Would she ever want to
leave that home again?

A half hour later they were once again in the air. One more half hour and
their skis touched the frozen surface of their own small lake.

“Welcome home,” Dave shouted as he came racing toward them. “Just in time
for a feast. Tim Barber got a deer yesterday. We’re having a roast of it
for dinner, your mother and—”

“And Madam Chicaski?”

“Oh, sure!” Dave laughed. “You couldn’t drive her away. And who’d want
to? She’s been a splendid help to your mother, milked the cow, fed the
horse, hauled wood, everything. And now,” he laughed, “I think she’s
fixing to run a trap-line. From somewhere she’s dug out a lot of rusty
traps and is shining them up.”

“Has she—” Mary hesitated.

“Revealed her secrets—copper kettle, golden candlesticks, all that? Not a
word.

“But Mary,” Dave took both her hands. “How good it is to see you back.”

“I—I’m glad to be back, David,” Mary blushed in spite of herself.

“And how about me?” Bill demanded in a bantering tone. “You should be
glad I’m back.”

“We are, Bill,” Mrs. Hughes said with a friendly smile. “Awfully glad to
have you back.”

“But you’ll not have me long. Boo!” Bill shuddered. “I’m off with the
wild birds for a warmer climate.”

“You’ll be back, Bill,” the elder McQueen rumbled. “You’ve been a pioneer
for a summer. After that you may not want to be a pioneer, but you’ll be
one all the same. The snow-peaked mountains, the timber that turns to
green in spring and gold in autumn, the lure of gold, the call of the
wild will bring you back.”

“I don’t know about that.” For once Bill’s face took on a sober look.

Turning about, Mrs. Hughes led them all, like a brood of chicks, to the
cabin where the delicious odor of roast venison greeted their nostrils.
Over that venison, now turning it, now testing, and now turning again,
large, silent, mysterious, hovered Madam Chicaski.

“So you’re going to Nome by plane?” the eyes of Mrs. Maver, Florence’s
gray-haired hostess at Anchorage, shone. “Going with the Bowmans? Why,
that’s splendid. They are old friends of ours. We knew them before they
went to Nome. I must have them over to dinner.” And she did.

“So you’re going north with us?” Mrs. Bowman, a round, jolly person,
beamed on Florence as they entered the small parlor to await the
announcement of dinner. “Never been there before, have you?”

“No, I—”

“You’ll enjoy it. Why, you’re just the sort of girl for that country.
Healthy! Look at her cheeks, John,” Mrs. Bowman turned to her husband.

“You’d make a grand prospector,” Mr. Bowman, a large, ruddy-faced man,
laughed. “Going after gold, I suppose.”

“I—I might,” Florence admitted timidly. “But first I must find my
grandfather.”

“Your grandfather?” Mrs. Bowman stared at her. “Is he in Nome?”

“Yes, I—”

“Look, John!” Mrs. Bowman broke in excitedly. “This is Tom Kennedy’s
granddaughter. She, why, she’s the living image of him!”

“You are right, my dear,” the husband admitted.

“Oh! And do I truly look like him?” Florence’s mind went into a wild
whirl. “I am his granddaughter, but who’d have thought—”

“That we could tell it? That is strange. But such things do happen. Shall
we be seated?” Mrs. Bowman took a chair.

“Let me tell you,” she leaned forward, “your grandfather is a wonderful
man, truly remarkable.”

“He—he is?” Florence stared. “I thought—”

“That he was just an old sourdough prospector,” Mr. Bowman put in. “Not a
bit of it. He is a prospector, has been for thirty-five years. Found gold
once and lost it again to save his partner’s life. Yes, a prospector, but
a long beard, hair to the shoulders, beer guzzler always dreaming about
the past? Not a bit of it! Tom Kennedy is young, young as a boy. Keen as
any youngster, too.”

“And clean,” Mrs. Bowman put in. “Never drinks a drop. I don’t think he
even smokes.

“Just now,” her voice dropped to conversational tone, “he’s doing a truly
wonderful thing. He’s got the notion that our young people are growing
soft.”

“They are, too,” Mr. Bowman grumbled.

“Tom Kennedy’s trying to bring back some of our glorious past, dog-teams,
long, moonlit trails, the search for gold. He’s trying to interest the
young people in all that,” added Mrs. Bowman.

“He’s doing it, too,” Bowman nodded his head. “Look at the dog race. They
really think they’ll win,” he laughed good-naturedly. “Of course they
won’t. Smitty Valentine’s going to beat ’em, by an hour or two. Good
thing to have them try, though.”

“You see,” Mrs. Bowman explained, “we have an annual dog race. It ends
with a big feast in honor of the winner. Your grandfather has gotten the
young people interested in that race, made them think they can win.
They’ve put their best dogs together into a team. A boy named Jodie
Joleson is going to drive it. I surely wish they could win. But this man,
Smitty Valentine, who is backed by all the pool halls and men’s clubs in
town, has won so many years hand running, that we’ve lost track.”

“Belongs to the Sourdough Club,” Bowman explained. “Sort of old timers’
club.”

“And now these young people have what they call the ‘Fresh Dough Club’ of
young timers,” Mrs. Bowman laughed.

“And now I think you may all come in and sit down at the table.” It was
their hostess who brought to an end this—to Florence—amazing revelation.

“So that is what he’s like,” she whispered to herself. “How strange! How
wonderful! And yet—”

It was a sober Florence who, after sending word to her cousins regarding
this, her proposed journey, climbed aboard the large gray monoplane.
“This,” she was thinking, “is to be my most exciting adventure. I wonder
how it will end?” How indeed? Seldom does a girl go in search of her
grandfather. And how her ideas of that grandfather had changed! She had
always known, in a sketchy manner, the story of her grandfather’s life. A
big, boisterous, fun-loving youth, little more than a boy, he had loved
and married a beautiful, frail girl from a proud well-to-do family. That
girl became Florence’s grandmother.

Tom Kennedy was not loved by his wife’s parents. They made life hard for
him. When at last life under his own roof became unbearable, he had found
escape by joining the gold rush to Alaska.

Alaska brought more hardships, cold, hunger, and disappointment. And
after that, months on the way, a letter reached him, saying that his wife
was dead and that, without his consent, her parents had adopted his only
child, a girl. That girl had been Florence’s mother.

From that day, Tom Kennedy was lost to the outside world. “But Alaska,”
Florence thought, with a tightening at the throat, “Alaska, it would
seem, came to know and love him. And now—”

Ah, yes—and now. She had always thought of Tom Kennedy as a typical
prospector, like Malcomb Dale, who had lured Bill from his ranch. And now
here he was, not rich, but loved and respected. She was going to him. The
large gray plane, drumming steadily onward, carried her over broad
stretches of timber, frozen lakes, arms of the sea, on and on and on,
toward Tom Kennedy, her grandfather. And how would he receive her?

The answer to this question came when, four days later, a little
breathless, but quite determined, she stood at the door of a
weather-beaten cabin, on the outskirts of Nome.

“Come in!” a large, hearty voice roared.

It was with uncertain movements that she lifted the iron latch, pushed
the door open and stepped inside.

“I—I beg your pardon, Miss.” A tall man, with keen gray eyes that matched
his well-trimmed beard, rose hastily to his feet. “I thought it was one
of the boys. And it’s you, a stranger and a girl.”

“Not a stranger,” the girl’s voice was low with emotion. “I—I am Florence
Huyler, your granddaughter.”

The effect on the old man was strange. Taking a step backward, he drew a
hand across his face, then spoke as in a dream:

“My granddaughter? No! It cannot be. And yet, it could be so. I had a
wife. She was beautiful.... I loved her.... She died.... All this was
long ago. I could not go back. The call of gold got me, and—

“So you are my granddaughter,” his voice changed. The notion seemed
unreal but pleasing to him. “My granddaughter! How strange!”

“They say,” Florence tried to smile, “that we look alike.”

“That so?” Tom Kennedy looked at her long and earnestly. “Big for a
girl,” he murmured. “You look strong as a man.”

“I am,” Florence admitted frankly.

At that, Tom Kennedy looked at himself in a glass by the window. “Yes,”
his eyes brightened, “yes, we do look alike. Welcome, child! Welcome to
your grandfather’s cabin.” Seizing her hand, he held it for a moment with
a grip that hurt.

“One more member for that gang of young pirates that haunt this cabin of
mine,” he laughed. “You must meet them all, meet them and get to know
them. They’re a fine lot, my gang. First thing I know you’ll be their
leader, I’m bound. You’re a Kennedy and that means a lot.”

“Yes,” Florence replied with a smile, “I am sure it means a very great
deal.”

And so it was that Florence found her grandfather, and at once a whole
new wonderful life opened up for her.

                               CHAPTER XI
                          THE FRESH-DOUGH CLUB

“Such a delicious odor!” Florence exclaimed. With the prompt reactions of
buoyant youth, she made herself at home in her grandfather’s cabin. Now,
being hungry, she began sniffing the air.

“Mulligan stew,” the old man explained. “It’s done to a turn. Never a
better one made. Prime young reindeer meat, bacon, evaporated potatoes,
fresh onions, a spoonful of dried eggs, a pound of red beans, pepper,
salt, fresh seal oil. Guess that’s about all there is in it. Hungry?” he
smiled down at her.

“I’m always hungry,” Florence smiled.

Taking a huge bowl from the cupboard in the corner, Tom Kennedy filled it
to the brim. Into an equally huge cup was poured steaming black coffee.
“We’re healthy up here,” he explained. “We can take it straight.”

“So can I,” Florence gulped down a burning draught.

“Um—um,” she breathed a moment later as she tasted the stew. “I can cook
a little, but not like that.”

“It comes,” said the old man, his words slow and melodious, “comes with
time. I’ve been in the North thirty-five years.” The expression on his
face changed. His thoughts, Florence told herself, must be far away.

She tried to read those thoughts, to discover whether they had to do with
his boyhood days and his frail, child-wife who had died long ago, or with
gray mountains, long trails, whirling snow and the lost mine.

Her thoughts were suddenly broken in upon by a breezy figure who appeared
to have been blown through the door by a gust of wind.

A ruddy-faced youth, he was, garbed in a blue drill parka that looked
like a slip-over dress, corduroy trousers and sealskin boots.

“Hi, Pop!” he exclaimed, not seeing the girl. “Great stuff today. Did
fifty miles an’ cut twenty minutes off the time. I—

“Hey, you! Stay out!” he shouted suddenly as a half dozen great
gray-brown beasts came tumbling into the room. They struck the young man
with such force that he was suddenly thrown into the corner where
Florence sat.

“I—I beg pardon,” he stammered. “I didn’t know—”

“Jodie, meet my granddaughter, Florence Huyler.” Wrinkles of amusement
appeared about Tom Kennedy’s eyes.

“Your—your granddaughter!” the young man’s eyes opened wide. “Why, Pop,
we didn’t know you had a living relative!”

“Neither did I, son. Not until just now. She dropped down from the sky.

“Jodie, here,” Tom Kennedy turned to Florence, “is the uncrowned king of
Alaskan dog-mushers.”

“Yeah,” Jodie drawled, “crown’s likely to get a trifle tarnished before I
get to wear it.”

“Jodie Joleson,” there was a ring of enthusiasm in the girl’s voice.
“I’ve heard of you.”

“Where?” he stared.

“Anchorage.”

“Way down there! How fame does travel,” he replied in mock seriousness.

“Tell me, Grandfather,” Florence faced about. “Did a girl ever win your
dog race?”

“What? A girl?” the old man stared.

“Of course not,” Jodie answered for him.

“Why so certain?” Florence gave the young man a look.

“Well, you see—see,” he hesitated, “it’s a long race, hundred miles and
back. How could she?”

“I—I was just wondering. You see, I’m new to the country,” Florence half
apologized. There remained in her eyes, quite unobserved by her
companions, a peculiar gleam that might mean almost anything.

The days that followed were the strangest, most thrilling of Florence
Huyler’s young life. Because she was Tom Kennedy’s granddaughter, she was
taken at once into the very heart of the young set of Nome. A bright,
jolly, carefree, healthy crowd she found them to be. She might, had she
so chosen, have risen at once to a place of leadership among them. She
did not choose. A natural, friendly girl, she loved being a member of
some jolly gang, but being their leader, ah! that was quite another
matter. She was not ambitious in this way.

She might, had she wished it, have been wined and dined from morning to
night, for, of all the sociable, good-time-loving people, the dwellers of
Alaska belong at the top. This she did not choose. From time to time she
joined in some quiet evening affair. For the most part, two subjects held
the center of her every waking thought, her grandfather and the coming
annual dog race.

On stormy days she enjoyed lying stretched out on a couch before the
glowing fire, while Tom Kennedy in his low, musical voice that rumbled
like a drum, told of his days on Arctic trails. Always and always she
listened for the story that would, she knew, hold her spellbound, the
story of his lost mine. Day after day passed and he made no mention of
it. More than once she bit her lips to keep from suggesting it. Always
her question remained unasked. She could wait.

On bright days she might have been seen trotting along after Jodie
Joleson’s dog sled. At first the boy appeared to resent that. She could
almost hear him say, “A girl! Sooner or later she’ll go too far, play
out, then I’ll have to haul her home.”

To his vast astonishment and final utter admiration, he found that she
did not tire.

Florence, as you will know if you have read about her, was far from a
weakling. From a small child she had gloried in strength and health. No
slender waist line acquired on a diet of pickles and nut sundaes for her.
She gloried in all of life, good things to eat, long nights of sleep, and
now, most of all, long, long trails.

One day, when a storm was coming in from the northwest, Jodie
deliberately took the trail that leads up the coast, then over the bitter
wind-blown flats of Tissue River.

By the time they reached those flats, the whole narrow valley was a mad
whirl of snow. Without a word to the girl, Jodie headed his dogs straight
into the storm and shouted one word:

“Mush!”

Magnificent beasts that they were, they sprang into the harness. Their
speed redoubled, they leaped forward.

Plop-plop-plop, went Jodie’s skin boots on the hard-packed snow. Fainter,
yet unmistakable, came the girl’s trotting footsteps behind him.

The storm grew wilder. The team, striking a stretch of glare-ice, was
blown straight across it to pile up in a heap on the other side. Without
a word Jodie disentangled them. Then, turning to the girl, he said,
“Cheek’s froze. Take off your mitten and thaw it out with your hand.”

“Thanks,” Florence smiled as best she could. “Yours too are frozen. If
you don’t mind, I’ll do yours first.”

His hand went hastily to his cheek, then he chuckled, “O. K. You win.”

Five minutes more and they were again battling the storm.

For two full hours, with the wind tearing at their parkas and the frost
biting their cheeks, they battled onward. Then, of a sudden, the dogs
took a sharp turn, climbed a ridge, dropped down into a valley, and they
were out of the storm.

“You—you’re a better man than I am, Gungadin!” Jodie panted.

“Do you really think I’m good?” there was a note of suppressed eagerness
in the girl’s voice.

“Sure you are!” the boy exclaimed. “Of course you are. Why?”

“Oh! I was just thinking,” she evaded. “You—you know, everybody wants to
be good at things,” she added rather lamely. “But look!” she exclaimed,
“your face is frozen again!”

“So is yours. My turn for thawing out.” His mitten was off, his warm hand
on her cheek.

And thus Florence won Jodie’s complete approval.

That night the girl learned the joyous comfort of a long-haired deer skin
sleeping-bag in a road house bunk. She slept the sleep of the just while
the storm roared on.

Next day, with the wind down and the sun creeping low above the jagged
outline of snow-topped mountains, they journeyed slowly homeward,
Florence, Jodie, and the racing team.

                              CHAPTER XII
                          HER GREAT DISCOVERY

Of all the girls in the Fresh-Dough Club, Florence liked Alene Bowman
best. Alene was quiet and, for a girl of the North, very modest. She was
greatly interested in the social events of the season and especially in
the annual dog race.

“There’s one thing I’d like to ask you,” Florence said to her, the day
after her return from that trip up the coast. “What do you think would
happen if a girl entered the race?”

“What?” Alene stared for a space of ten seconds. “Why, nothing, I guess.
This is the North, you know. You thinking of going in?”

“No-o,” Florence spoke slowly. “Of course, I wouldn’t go in against
Jodie, unless—”