Chapter 8 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."