Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place. Alan turned to speak, but what he saw in the girl's face held him silent. Her lips were parted, and she was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that bewildered her and even startled her.

And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a tense whisper: "I have seen this place before. It was a long time ago. Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand. But I have been here. I have lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it—"

A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan. She looked up at him, and he was puzzled. A weirdly beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.

"I must go ashore here," she said. "I didn't know I would find it so soon. Please—"

With her hand touching his arm she turned. He was looking at her and saw the strange light fade swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance he saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind them.

In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand was resting confidently in the crook of Alan's arm. "Did you ever feel like killing a man, Mr. Holt?" she asked with an icy little laugh.

"Yes," he answered rather unexpectedly. "And some day, if the right opportunity comes, I am going to kill a certain man—the man who murdered my father."

She gave a little gasp of horror. "Your father—was—murdered—"

"Indirectly—yes. It wasn't done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money was the weapon. Somebody's money. And John Graham was the man who struck the blow. Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him. And right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation of this man Rossland—"

"No." Her hand tightened on his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away. "I don't want you to ask an explanation of him," she said. "If he should make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway, Mr. Holt. That will be pleasanter."



CHAPTER VI

Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western mountains, and the Nome was churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to an impulse which he could not understand, and which in ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured the wind-racked canon where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy's sunken grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.

But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about himself. And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to the indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people. There, he had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship's gangway to see when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and civilization and the breaking down of nature's last barriers before science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her gray eyes.

And now, as they stood on the deck of the Nome looking at the white peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight, doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:

"I would always love tents and old trails and nature's barriers. I envy Belinda Mulrooney, whom you told me about this afternoon. I hate cities and railroads and automobiles, and all that goes with them, and I am sorry to see those things come to Alaska. And I, too, hate this man—John Graham!"

Her words startled him.

"And I want you to tell me what he is doing—with his money—now." Her voice was cold, and one little hand, he noticed, was clenched at the edge of the rail.

"He has stripped Alaskan waters of fish resources which will never be replaced, Miss Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them die."

It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.

"And that—is all?"

He laughed grimly. "Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men like John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and graft will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation would not be able to replace."

She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom of evening. "I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney," she said. "I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a woman like her. She could fight, couldn't she? She could make a man's fight?"

"Yes, and did make it."

"And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me, she flung into the Yukon for luck."

"Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger."

She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.

"Then this, too, for luck—the luck of Mary Standish," she laughed softly, and flung the ring into the sea.

She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had done. "It isn't melodrama," she said. "I mean it. And I believe in it. I want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this gateway to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever at the bottom of the Yukon."

She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. "Thank you for the wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget it. It is dinner time. I must say good night."

He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan's look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan's impression of the man was changing in spite of his prejudice. There was a growing something about him which commanded attention, a certainty of poise which could not be mistaken for sham. A scoundrel he might be, but a cool brain was at work inside his head—a brain not easily disturbed by unimportant things, he decided. He disliked the man. As an agent of John Graham Alan looked upon him as an enemy, and as an acquaintance of Mary Standish he was as much of a mystery as the girl herself. And only now, in his cabin, was Alan beginning to sense the presence of a real authority behind Rossland's attitude.

He was not curious. All his life he had lived too near the raw edge of practical things to dissipate in gossipy conjecture. He cared nothing about the relationship between Mary Standish and Rossland except as it involved himself, and the situation had become a trifle too delicate to please him. He could see no sport in an adventure of the kind it suggested, and the possibility that he had been misjudged by both Rossland and Mary Standish sent a flush of anger into his cheeks. He cared nothing for Rossland, except that he would like to wipe him out of existence with all other Graham agents. And he persisted in the conviction that he thought of the girl only in a most casual sort of way. He had made no effort to discover her history. He had not questioned her. At no time had he intimated a desire to intrude upon her personal affairs, and at no time had she offered information about herself, or an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how dangerously near that hazard he had been—and he admired her for the splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland or throwing him overboard!

There was a certain bellicose twist to his mind as he went down to the dining salon, an obstinate determination to hold himself aloof from any increasing intimacy with Mary Standish. No matter how pleasing his experience had been, he resented the idea of being commandeered at unexpected moments. Had Mary Standish read his thoughts, her bearing toward him during the dinner hour could not have been more satisfying. There was, in a way, something seductively provocative about it. She greeted him with the slightest inclination of her head and a cool little smile. Her attitude did not invite spoken words, either from him or from his neighbors, yet no one would have accused her of deliberate reserve.

Her demure unapproachableness was a growing revelation to him, and he found himself interested in spite of the new law of self-preservation he had set down for himself. He could not keep his eyes from stealing glimpses at her hair when her head was bowed a little. She had smoothed it tonight until it was like softest velvet, with rich glints in it, and the amazing thought came to him that it would be sweetly pleasant to touch with one's hand. The discovery was almost a shock. Keok and Nawadlook had beautiful hair, but he had never thought of it in this way. And he had never thought of Keok's pretty mouth as he was thinking of the girl's opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance.

When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith. He found him, half an hour later, feeding a captive bear on the lower deck. It was odd, he thought, that a captive bear should be going north. Stampede explained. The animal was a pet and belonged to the Thlinkit Indians. There were seven, getting off at Cordova. Alan observed that the two girls watched him closely and whispered together. They were very pretty, with large, dark eyes and pink in their cheeks. One of the men did not look at him at all, but sat cross-legged on the deck, with his face turned away.

With Stampede he went to the smoking-room, and until a late hour they discussed the big range up under the Endicott Mountains, and Alan's plans for the future. Once, early in the evening, Alan went to his cabin to get maps and photographs. Stampede's eyes glistened as his mind seized upon the possibilities of the new adventure. It was a vast land. An unknown country. And Alan was its first pioneer. The old thrill ran in Stampede's blood, and its infectiousness caught Alan, so that he forgot Mary Standish, and all else but the miles that lay between them and the mighty tundras beyond the Seward Peninsula. It was midnight when Alan went to his cabin.

He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention and what the human race called progress.

So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown. After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been her thought, too—that she would always love tents and old trails and nature's barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and automobiles come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had guessed what was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.

A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was a quarter after twelve o'clock, an unusual hour for someone to be tapping at his door.

It was repeated—a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again, quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened the door.

It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.

He saw only her eyes at first, wide-open, strange, frightened eyes. And then he saw the pallor of her face as she came slowly in, without waiting for him to speak or give her permission to enter. And it was Mary Standish herself who closed the door, while he stared at her in stupid wonderment—and stood there with her back against it, straight and slim and deathly pale.

"May I come in?" she asked.

"My God, you're in!" gasped Alan. "You're in."



CHAPTER VII

That it was past midnight, and Mary Standish had deliberately come to his room, entering it and closing the door without a word or a nod of invitation from him, seemed incredible to Alan. After his first explosion of astonishment he stood mute, while the girl looked at him steadily and her breath came a little quickly. But she was not excited. Even in his amazement he could see that. What he had thought was fright had gone out of her eyes. But he had never seen her so white, and never had she appeared quite so slim and childish-looking as while she stood there in these astounding moments with her back against the door.

The pallor of her face accentuated the rich darkness of her hair. Even her lips were pale. But she was not embarrassed. Her eyes were clear and unafraid now, and in the poise of her head and body was a sureness of purpose that staggered him. A feeling of anger, almost of personal resentment, began to possess him as he waited for her to speak. This, at last, was the cost of his courtesies to her, The advantage she was taking of him was an indignity and an outrage, and his mind flashed to the suspicion that Rossland was standing just outside the door.

In another moment he would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her face in her hands, but looked at him bravely while the tear-drops glistened like diamonds on her cheeks. He felt his heart give way. She read his thoughts, had guessed his suspicion, and he was wrong.

"You—you will have a seat, Miss Standish?" he asked lamely, inclining his head toward the cabin chair.

"No. Please let me stand." She drew in a deep breath. "It is late, Mr. Holt?"

"Rather an irregular hour for a visit such as this," he assured her. "Half an hour after midnight, to be exact. It must be very important business that has urged you to make such a hazard aboard ship, Miss Standish."

For a moment she did not answer him, and he saw the little heart-throb in her white throat.

"Would Belinda Mulrooney have considered this a very great hazard, Mr. Holt? In a matter of life and death, do you not think she would have come to your cabin at midnight—even aboard ship? And it is that with me—a matter of life and death. Less than an hour ago I came to that decision. I could not wait until morning. I had to see you tonight."

"And why me?" he asked. "Why not Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some other? Is it because—"

He did not finish. He saw the shadow of something gather in her eyes, as if for an instant she had felt a stab of humiliation or of pain, but it was gone as quickly as it came. And very quietly, almost without emotion, she answered him.

"I know how you feel. I have tried to place myself in your position. It is all very irregular, as you say. But I am not ashamed. I have come to you as I would want anyone to come to me under similar circumstances, if I were a man. If watching you, thinking about you, making up my mind about you is taking an advantage—then I have been unfair, Mr. Holt. But I am not sorry. I trust you. I know you will believe me good until I am proved bad. I have come to ask you to help me. Would you make it possible for another human being to avert a great tragedy if you found it in your power to do so?"

He felt his sense of judgment wavering. Had he been coolly analyzing such a situation in the detached environment of the smoking-room, he would have called any man a fool who hesitated to open his cabin door and show his visitor out. But such a thought did not occur to him now. He was thinking of the handkerchief he had found the preceding midnight. Twice she had come to his cabin at a late hour.

"It would be my inclination to make such a thing possible," he said, answering her question. "Tragedy is a nasty thing."

She caught the hint of irony in his voice. If anything, it added to her calmness. He was to suffer no weeping entreaties, no feminine play of helplessness and beauty. Her pretty mouth was a little firmer and the tilt of her dainty chin a bit higher.

"Of course, I can't pay you," she said. "You are the sort of man who would resent an offer of payment for what I am about to ask you to do. But I must have help. If I don't have it, and quickly"—she shuddered slightly and tried to smile—"something very unpleasant will happen, Mr. Holt," she finished.

"If you will permit me to take you to Captain Rifle—"

"No. Captain Rifle would question me. He would demand explanations. You will understand when I tell you what I want. And I will do that if I may have your word of honor to hold in confidence what I tell you, whether you help me or not. Will you give me that pledge?"

"Yes, if such a pledge will relieve your mind, Miss Standish."

He was almost brutally incurious. As he reached for a cigar, he did not see the sudden movement she made, as if about to fly from his room, or the quicker throb that came in her throat. When he turned, a faint flush was gathering in her cheeks.

"I want to leave the ship," she said.

The simplicity of her desire held him silent.

"And I must leave it tonight, or tomorrow night—before we reach Cordova."

"Is that—your problem?" he demanded, astonished.

"No. I must leave it in such a way that the world will believe I am dead. I can not reach Cordova alive."

At last she struck home and he stared at her, wondering if she were insane. Her quiet, beautiful eyes met his own with unflinching steadiness. His brain all at once was crowded with questioning, but no word of it came to his lips.

"You can help me," he heard her saying in the same quiet, calm voice, softened so that one could not have heard it beyond the cabin door. "I haven't a plan. But I know you can arrange one—if you will. It must appear to be an accident. I must disappear, fall overboard, anything, just so the world will believe I am dead. It is necessary. And I can not tell you why. I can not. Oh, I can not."

A note of passion crept into her voice, but it was gone in an instant, leaving it cold and steady again. A second time she tried to smile. He could see courage, and a bit of defiance, shining in her eyes.

"I know what you are thinking, Mr. Holt. You are asking yourself if I am mad, if I am a criminal, what my reason can be, and why I haven't gone to Rossland, or Captain Rifle, or some one else. And the only answer I can make is that I have come to you because you are the only man in the world—in this hour—that I have faith in. Some day you will understand, if you help me. If you do not care to help me—"

She stopped, and he made a gesture.

"Yes, if I don't? What will happen then?"

"I shall be forced to the inevitable," she said. "It is rather unusual, isn't it, to be asking for one's life? But that is what I mean."

"I'm afraid—I don't quite understand."

"Isn't it clear, Mr. Holt? I don't like to appear spectacular, and I don't want you to think of me as theatrical—even now. I hate that sort of thing. You must simply believe me when I tell you it is impossible for me to reach Cordova alive. If you do not help me to disappear, help me to live—and at the same time give all others the impression that I am dead—then I must do the other thing. I must really die."

For a moment his eyes blazed angrily. He felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking her, as he would have shaken the truth out of a child.

"You come to me with a silly threat like that, Miss Standish? A threat of suicide?"

"If you want to call it that—yes."

"And you expect me to believe you?"

"I had hoped you would."

She had his nerves going. There was no doubt of that. He half believed her and half disbelieved. If she had cried, if she had made the smallest effort to work upon his sentiment, he would have disbelieved utterly. But he was not blind to the fact that she was making a brave fight, even though a lie was behind it, and with a consciousness of pride that bewildered him.

She was not humiliating herself. Even when she saw the struggle going on within him she made no effort to turn the balance in her favor. She had stated the facts, as she claimed them to be. Now she waited. Her long lashes glistened a little. But her eyes were clear, and her hair glowed softly, so softly that he would never forget it, as she stood there with her back against the door, nor the strange desire that came to him—even then—to touch it with his hand.

He nipped off the end of his cigar and lighted a match. "It is Rossland," he said. "You're afraid of Rossland?"

"In a way, yes; in a large way, no. I would laugh at Rossland if it were not for the other."

The other! Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had no intention of explaining. She simply waited for him to decide.

"What other?" he demanded.

"I can not tell you. I don't want you to hate me. And you would hate me if I told you the truth."

"Then you confess you are lying," he suggested brutally.

Even this did not stir her as he had expected it might. It did not anger her or shame her. But she raised a pale hand and a little handkerchief to her eyes, and he turned toward the open port, puffing at his cigar, knowing she was fighting to keep the tears back. And she succeeded.

"No, I am not lying. What I have told you is true. It is because I will not lie that I have not told you more. And I thank you for the time you have given me, Mr. Holt. That you have not driven me from your cabin is a kindness which I appreciate. I have made a mistake, that is all. I thought—"

"How could I bring about what you ask?" he interrupted.

"I don't know. You are a man. I believed you could plan a way, but I see now how foolish I have been. It is impossible." Her hand reached slowly for the knob of the door.

"Yes, you are foolish," he agreed, and his voice was softer. "Don't let such thoughts overcome you, Miss Standish. Go back to your cabin and get a night's sleep. Don't let Rossland worry you. If you want me to settle with that man—"

"Good night, Mr. Holt."

She was opening the door. And as she went out she turned a little and looked at him, and now she was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Good night."

"Good night."

The door closed behind her. He heard her retreating footsteps. In half a minute he would have called her back. But it was too late.



CHAPTER VIII

For half an hour Alan sat smoking his cigar. Mentally he was not at ease. Mary Standish had come to him like a soldier, and she had left him like a soldier. But in that last glimpse of her face he had caught for an instant something which she had not betrayed in his cabin—a stab of what he thought was pain in her tear-wet eyes as she smiled, a proud regret, possibly a shadow of humiliation at last—or it may have been a pity for him. He was not sure. But it was not despair. Not once had she whimpered in look or word, even when the tears were in her eyes, and the thought was beginning to impress itself upon him that it was he—and not Mary Standish—who had shown a yellow streak this night. A half shame fell upon him as he smoked. For it was clear he had not come up to her judgment of him, or else he was not so big a fool as she had hoped he might be. In his own mind, for a time, he was at a loss to decide.

It was possibly the first time he had ever deeply absorbed himself in the analysis of a woman. It was outside his business. But, born and bred of the open country, it was as natural for him to recognize courage as it was for him to breathe. And the girl's courage was unusual, now that he had time to think about it. It was this thought of her coolness and her calm refusal to impose her case upon him with greater warmth that comforted him after a little. A young and beautiful woman who was actually facing death would have urged her necessity with more enthusiasm, it seemed to him. Her threat, when he debated it intelligently, was merely thrown in, possibly on the spur of the moment, to give impetus to his decision. She had not meant it. The idea of a girl like Mary Standish committing suicide was stupendously impossible. Her quiet and wonderful eyes, her beauty and the exquisite care which she gave to herself emphasized the absurdity of such a supposition. She had come to him bravely. There was no doubt of that. She had merely exaggerated the importance of her visit.

Even after he had turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a new color to his visionings he exchanged his half-burned cigar for a black-bowled pipe, which he filled and lighted. Then he began walking back and forth in his cabin, like a big animal in a small cage, until at last he stood with his head half out of the open port, looking at the clear stars and setting the perfume of his tobacco adrift with the soft sea wind.

He felt himself growing comforted. Reason seated itself within him again, with sentiment shuttled under his feet. If he had been a little harsh with Miss Standish tonight, he would make up for it by apologizing tomorrow. She would probably have recovered her balance by that time, and they would laugh over her excitement and their little adventure. That is, he would. "I'm not at all curious in the matter," some persistent voice kept telling him, "and I haven't any interest in knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin." But he smoked viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish's words, "If I should make an explanation, you would hate me," or something to that effect. He couldn't remember exactly. And he didn't want to remember exactly, for it was none of his business.

In this humor, with half of his thoughts on one side of the fence and half on the other, he put out his light and went to bed. And he began thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming. Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska. They would go on to Nome together. After that he would spend a week or so in the Peninsula, then go up the Kobuk, across the big portage to the Koyukuk and the far headwaters of the north, and still farther—beyond the last trails of civilized men—to his herds and his people. And Stampede Smith would be with him. After a long winter of homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams. But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok, laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan thought drowsily—she was always tormenting someone.

He felt better in the morning. The sun was up, flooding the wall of his cabin, when he awoke, and under him he could feel the roll of the open sea. Eastward the Alaskan coast was a deep blue haze, but the white peaks of the St. Elias Range flung themselves high up against the sun-filled sky behind it, like snowy banners. The Nome was pounding ahead at full speed, and Alan's blood responded suddenly to the impelling thrill of her engines, beating like twin hearts with the mighty force that was speeding them on. This was business. It meant miles foaming away behind them and a swift biting off of space between him and Unalaska, midway of the Aleutians. He was sorry they were losing time by making the swing up the coast to Cordova. And with Cordova he thought of Mary Standish.

He dressed and shaved and went down to breakfast, still thinking of her. The thought of meeting her again was rather discomforting, now that the time of that possibility was actually at hand, for he dreaded moments of embarrassment even when he was not directly accountable for them. But Mary Standish saved him any qualms of conscience which he might have had because of his lack of chivalry the preceding night. She was at the table. And she was not at all disturbed when he seated himself opposite her. There was color in her cheeks, a fragile touch of that warm glow in the heart of the wild rose of the tundras. And it seemed to him there was a deeper, more beautiful light in her eyes than he had ever seen before.

She nodded, smiled at him, and resumed a conversation which she had evidently broken for a moment with a lady who sat next to her. It was the first time Alan had seen her interested in this way. He had no intention of listening, but something perverse and compelling overcame his will. He discovered the lady was going up to teach in a native school at Noorvik, on the Kobuk River, and that for many years she had taught in Dawson and knew well the story of Belinda Mulrooney. He gathered that Mary Standish had shown a great interest, for Miss Robson, the teacher, was offering to send her a photograph she possessed of Belinda Mulrooney; if Miss Standish would give her an address. The girl hesitated, then said she was not certain of her destination, but would write Miss Robson at Noorvik.

"You will surely keep your promise?" urged Miss Robson.

"Yes, I will keep my promise."

A sense of relief swept over Alan. The words were spoken so softly that he thought she had not wanted him to hear. It was evident that a few hours' sleep and the beauty of the morning had completely changed her mental attitude, and he no longer felt the suspicion of responsibility which had persisted in attaching itself to him. Only a fool, he assured himself, could possibly see a note of tragedy in her appearance now. Nor was she different at luncheon or at dinner. During the day he saw nothing of her, and he was growing conscious of the fact that she was purposely avoiding contact with him. This did not displease him. It allowed him to pick up the threads of other interests in a normal sort of way. He discussed Alaskan politics in the smoking-room, smoked his black pipe without fear of giving offense, and listened to the talk of the ship with a freedom of mind which he had not experienced since his first meeting with Miss Standish. Yet, as night drew on, and he walked his two-mile promenade about the deck, he felt gathering about him a peculiar impression of aloneness. Something was missing. He did not acknowledge to himself what it was until, as if to convict him, he saw Mary Standish come out of the door leading from her cabin passageway, and stand alone at the rail of the ship. For a moment he hesitated, then quietly he came up beside her.

"It has been a wonderful day, Miss Standish," he said, "and Cordova is only a few hours ahead of us."

She scarcely turned her face and continued to look off into the shrouding darkness of the sea. "Yes, a wonderful day, Mr. Holt," she repeated after him, "and Cordova is only a few hours ahead." Then, in the same soft, unemotional voice, she added: "I want to thank you for last night. You brought me to a great decision."

"I fear I did not help you."

It may have been fancy of the gathering dusk, that made him believe he caught a shuddering movement of her slim shoulders.

"I thought there were two ways," she said, "but you made me see there was only one." She emphasized that word. It seemed to come with a little tremble in her voice. "I was foolish. But please let us forget. I want to think of pleasanter things. I am about to make a great experiment, and it takes all my courage."

"You will win, Miss Standish," he said in a sure voice. "In whatever you undertake you will win. I know it. If this experiment you speak of is the adventure of coming to Alaska—seeking your fortune—finding your life here—it will be glorious. I can assure you of that."

She was quiet for a moment, and then said:

"The unknown has always held a fascination for me. When we were under the mountains in Skagway yesterday, I almost told you of an odd faith which I have. I believe I have lived before, a long time ago, when America was very young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that sometime—somewhere—I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is that faith which gives me courage to go on with my experiment. That—and you!"

Suddenly she faced him, her eyes flaming.

"You—and your suspicions and your brutality," she went on, her voice trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before him. "I wasn't going to tell you, Mr. Holt. But you have given me the opportunity, and it may do you good—after tomorrow. I came to you because I foolishly misjudged you. I thought you were different, like your mountains. I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them bad—and I lost. I was terribly mistaken. Your first thoughts of me when I came to your cabin were suspicious. You were angry and afraid. Yes, afraid—fearful of something happening which you didn't want to happen. You thought, almost, that I was unclean. And you believed I was a liar, and told me so. It wasn't fair, Mr. Holt. It wasn't fair. There were things which I couldn't explain to you, but I told you Rossland knew. I didn't keep everything back. And I believed you were big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my—friendship, even though I came to your cabin. Oh, I had that much faith in myself—I didn't think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!"

"Good God!" he cried. "Listen to me—Miss Standish—"

She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile, and she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the darkness, and his face as white as the girl's had been. Her words had held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror. And she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment and common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool—

Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door. When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology in words.

He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing. For her clear eyes, her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had faced him remained with him overpoweringly. He could not get away from the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears like diamonds on her cheeks. Somewhere he had missed fire. He knew it. Something had escaped him which he could not understand. And she was holding him accountable.

The talk of the smoking-room did not interest him tonight. His efforts to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland's face rested against her fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan turned away, an unpleasant thought of Rossland's association with Mary Standish in his mind. He strolled down into the steerage. The Thlinkit people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was himself. The thrill he had always experienced with this particular writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for a cigar—and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind refused to function, and there was no comfort in his cigar.

He knew he was fighting against a new thing, even as he subconsciously lied to himself. And he was obstinately determined to win. It was a fight between himself and Mary Standish as she had stood against his door. Mary Standish—the slim beauty of her—her courage—a score of things that had never touched his life before. He undressed and put on his smoking-gown and slippers, repudiating the honesty of the emotions that were struggling for acknowledgment within him. He was a bit mad and entirely a fool, he told himself. But the assurance did him no good.

He went to bed, propped himself up against his pillows, and made another effort to read. He half-heartedly succeeded. At ten o'clock music and dancing ceased, and stillness fell over the ship. After that he found himself becoming more interested in the first book he had started to read. His old satisfaction slowly returned to him. He relighted his cigar and enjoyed it. Distantly he heard the ship's bells, eleven o'clock, and after that the half-hour and midnight. The printed pages were growing dim, and drowsily he marked his book, placed it on the table, and yawned. They must be nearing Cordova. He could feel the slackened speed of the Nome and the softer throb of her engines. Probably they had passed Cape St. Elias and were drawing inshore.

And then, sudden and thrilling, came a woman's scream. A piercing cry of terror, of agony—and of something else that froze the blood in his veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending in a moaning wail and a man's husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He could not distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to respond. There came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by the pounding shock of reverse and the clanging alarm of a bell calling boats' crews to quarters.

Alan faced his cabin door. He knew what had happened. Someone was overboard. And in this moment all life and strength were gone out of his body, for the pale face of Mary Standish seemed to rise for an instant before him, and in her quiet voice she was telling him again that this was the other way. His face went white as he caught up his smoking-gown, flung open his door, and ran down the dimly lighted corridor.



CHAPTER IX

The reversing of the engines had not stopped the momentum of the ship when Alan reached the open deck. She was fighting, but still swept slowly ahead against the force struggling to hold her back. He heard running feet, voices, and the rattle of davit blocks, and came up as the starboard boat aft began swinging over the smooth sea. Captain Rifle was ahead of him, half-dressed, and the second officer was giving swift commands. A dozen passengers had come from the smoking-room. There was only one woman. She stood a little back, partly supported in a man's arms, her face buried in her hands. Alan looked at the man, and he knew from his appearance that she was the woman who had screamed.

He heard the splash of the boat as it struck water, and the rattle of oars, but the sound seemed a long distance away. Only one thing came to him distinctly in the sudden sickness that gripped him, and that was the terrible sobbing of the woman. He went to them, and the deck seemed to sway under his feet. He was conscious of a crowd gathering about the empty davits, but he had eyes only for these two.

"Was it a man—or a woman?" he asked.

It did not seem to him it was his voice speaking. The words were forced from his lips. And the other man, with the woman's head crumpled against his shoulder, looked into a face as emotionless as stone.

"A woman," he replied. "This is my wife. We were sitting here when she climbed upon the rail and leaped in. My wife screamed when she saw her going."

The woman raised her head. She was still sobbing, with no tears in her eyes, but only horror. Her hands were clenched about her husband's arm. She struggled to speak and failed, and the man bowed his head to comfort her. And then Captain Rifle stood at their side. His face was haggard, and a glance told Alan that he knew.

"Who was it?" he demanded.

"This lady thinks it was Miss Standish."

Alan did not move or speak. Something seemed to have gone wrong for a moment in his head. He could not hear distinctly the excitement behind him, and before him things were a blur. The sensation came and passed swiftly, with no sign of it in the immobility of his pale face.

"Yes, the girl at your table. The pretty girl. I saw her clearly, and then—then—"

It was the woman. The captain broke in, as she caught herself with a choking breath:

"It is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering." He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.

Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and a strange calmness began to possess him. "You are quite sure it was the girl at my table?" he found himself saying. "Is it possible you might be mistaken?"

"No," said the woman. "She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I'm almost sure she smiled at me and was going to speak. And then—then—she was gone!"

"I didn't know until my wife screamed," added the man. "I was seated facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly."

Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman's scream. Mary Standish was gone.

He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted. Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.

He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly to confront Captain Rifle. The little man's face was like gray wax. For a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe crumpled in Alan's hand.

"The boats got away quickly," he said in a husky voice. "We stopped inside the third-mile. If she can swim—there is a chance."

"She won't swim," replied Alan. "She didn't jump in for that. She is gone."

In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan's words. It took only a few seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going into details. The captain's hand was on Alan's arm when he finished, and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.

"We'll talk with Rossland after the boats return," he said.

He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.

Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain. Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of it came to him—failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to rise up out of it and forgive him.

He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she would have been right. His heart was gone.

Two people were at Rossland's door when he came up. One was Captain Rifle, the other Marston, the ship's doctor. The captain was knocking when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.

"I can't rouse him," he said. "And I did not see him among the passengers."

"Nor did I," said Alan.

Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.

"I think the circumstances permit," he explained. In a moment he looked up, puzzled. "The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in the lock."

He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his knuckles were red. There was still no response.

"Odd," he muttered.

"Very odd," agreed Alan.

His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp, and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly, upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.

After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle close the door behind them, and from Marston's lips came a startled whisper:

"Good God!"

Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in that moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle's eyes met Alan's. The same thought—and in another instant disbelief—flashed from one to the other.

Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. "A knife stab, close to the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and dressing."

"The door was locked on the inside," said Alan, as soon as the doctor was gone. "And the window is closed. It looks like—suicide. It is possible—there was an understanding between them—and Rossland chose this way instead of the sea?"

Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. "There is no knife," he said stonily. And in a moment he added: "There are red stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was—"

"Murder."

"Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window. Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We've got to believe that. It was a man."

"Of course, a man," Alan nodded.

They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle made a gesture toward the door. "Better go," he advised. "This is a ship's matter, and you won't want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it. Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you."

The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan passed them, and he heard the door of Rossland's room close behind him. The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He went to Mary Standish's cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard. Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with the captain.

Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He nodded toward a chair.

"We'll reach Cordova inside of an hour," he said. "Doctor Marston says Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the Nome in port until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make oath to that. Have you anything—in mind?"

"Only one thing," replied Alan, "a determination to go ashore as soon as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it. As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the assault upon him. It was merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me our location when she leaped into the sea."

He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to him.

"We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west. If her body goes ashore, it will be on the island, or the mainland east of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a chance. And I hope you will find her."

Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth. "It's a bad blow for the ship—her first trip," he said. "But I'm not thinking of the Nome. I'm thinking of Mary Standish. My God, it is terrible! If it had been anyone else—anyone—" His words seemed to choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. "It is hard to believe—almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin."

Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain details of the girl's visit. But a number of things which she had trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon Rossland's influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort, and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in his eyes.

"You're not responsible—not so much as you believe," he said. "Don't take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and let me know. You will do that—you will let me know?"

"Yes, I shall let you know."

"And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his assailant is still on board."

"Undoubtedly."

The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: "There is nothing in Miss Standish's room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into the sea—before she went."

"Such a thought is possible," agreed Alan evasively.

Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. "That's all, Alan. God knows I'd give this old life of mine to bring her back if I could. To me she was much like—someone—a long time dead. That's why I broke ship's regulations when she came aboard so strangely at Seattle, without reservation. I'm sorry now. I should have sent her ashore. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you do—"

"I shall send you word."

They shook hands, and Captain Rifle's fingers still held to Alan's as they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky. The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the darkened sea.

"A thunder-storm," said the captain.

His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And then he said,

"Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives."

Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.

He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin. Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to go ashore at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.

Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not questioned him too closely. He was not analyzing the reasonableness of his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of a pale face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the dispassionate calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour—since he had heard the scream of the woman—he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.

But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And not until Alan's feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him. The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near, as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the earth unaware.

Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen, half a mile up the shore, and he knew Ericksen would still be there, where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced to deadly combat.

The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the thrill of storm.

He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash of the elements about his father's cabin and the roaring voices of the ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen's cabin.

He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face, and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he and Alan's father had tramped the mountains together.

He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent shoulders, his massive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from Ericksen. They gripped hands.

The Swede's voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan's face made him pause to hear other words than his own.

Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea, bracing his arm against it. The wind tore in, beating his whitening beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that drenched him as he stood there. He forced the door shut and faced Alan, a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.

From then until dawn they waited. And in the first break of that dawn the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out to sea.



CHAPTER X

The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch Alan could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber slicker, and Olaf's great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable gloom he opened speed until the Norden was shooting with the swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.

In Olaf's cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the Norden as the slim craft leaped through the water.

Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction he was going to win now—that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he found her—

He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in moments it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting to keep out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his mental pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind, and waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.

Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to him in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the Nome. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word, proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, "You will understand—tomorrow."

He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf did not press his folly upon him, but kept the Norden pointed seaward, adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland loomed up in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day the rain subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped. Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair. White mists began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.

The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly—in a final triumph of the sun—the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.

The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But in Alan's there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met the other's smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to the truth.

Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan's face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it inspired by the captain of the Nome, as Alan had given him reason to believe. There was more than grimness in the other's face, and a strange sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly undulating surface of the sea.

At last he said, "If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard out there," and he pointed.

Alan stood up.

"But she wouldn't be there now," Olaf added.

In his heart he believed she was, straight down—at the bottom. He turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the rocks and timber that came down close to the sea.

"That's McCormick's," he said.

Alan made no answer. Through Olaf's binoculars he picked out the Scotchman's cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow water.

They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly. Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man. They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the Nome and what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if he found the girl's body.

To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf's face McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the most precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.

Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when she heard what had happened aboard the Nome. Alan left the three together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed—that this girl whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end of the world to Alan Holt.

For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch. He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left details of the drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the finding of the body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many women were seeking before nightfall.

"And remember," Sandy told each of them, "the chances are she'll wash ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes ashore at all."

In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.

Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy's wife were in the cabin when he returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others had been. He knew. The woman's eyes told him, the almost mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of Mary Standish.

Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children—a lot of them. Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman's face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.

"We're building a new cabin," he said, "and there's two rooms in it specially for kids."

There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf's eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt, should think of such a matter at all.

The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with Olaf at the wheel of the Norden. It was sunset when they returned, and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and the treachery of them.

Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days—probably weeks—if it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea. That was what he called it—"a peaceful resting-place"—and in his earnestness to soothe another's grief he blundered still more deeply into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.

Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.

"You—you didn't find her?" she asked.

"No." His voice was tired and a little old. "Do you think I shall ever find her?"

"Not as you have expected," she answered quietly. "She will never come like that." She seemed to be making an effort. "You—you would give a great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?"

Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips and nodded.

"Of course. Everything I possess."

"You—you—loved her—"

Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the probing did not sting him; it was not a woman's curiosity that inspired them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for himself, but for someone else—aloud.

"Yes, I did."

The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick's face and eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish's belongings, and gave it to Sandy's wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to speak in a businesslike way.

"Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you don't find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day." It seemed hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: "I don't think I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova, and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you do find her, you will look after her yourself, won't you, Mrs. McCormick?"

Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by. Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down to the beach.

The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars, when the Norden's shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full. But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away, that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that lay beneath the mountains.



CHAPTER XI

That night, in Olaf's cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second letter—carefully sealed—which was not to be opened unless they found Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to put into words in Sandy's cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the Norden, for Captain Rifle's ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told briefly the disappointing details of his search.

He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank, Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan's intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes. In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him, uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told him.

They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland. Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax, and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north, whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him. He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the next range.

Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor, and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and he was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova much longer. Siberia was dragging him—that forbidden world of adventure and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles across the strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he forgot Alan's tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was going if he lived another year or two—going to find his fortune or his end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes. Twice he had tried it since his old comrade had died, and twice he had been driven out. The next time he would know how to go about it, and he invited Alan to go with him.

There was a thrill in this talk of a land so near, scarcely a night ride across the neck of Bering Sea, and yet as proscribed as the sacred plains of Tibet. It stirred old desires in Alan's blood, for he knew that of all frontiers the Siberian would be the last and the greatest, and that not only men, but nations, would play their part in the breaking of it. He saw the red gleam of firelight in Olaf's eyes.

"And if we don't go in first from this side, Alan, the yellow fellows will come out some day from that," rumbled the old sour-dough, striking his pipe in the hollow of his hand. "And when they do, they won't come over to us in ones an' twos an' threes, but in millions. That's what the yellow fellows will do when they once get started, an' it's up to a few Alaska Jacks an' Tough-Nut Bills to get their feet planted first on the other side. Will you go?"

Alan shook his head. "Some day—but not now." The old flash was in his eyes and he was seeing the fight ahead of him again—the fight to do his bit in striking the shackles of misgovernment from Alaska and rousing the world to an understanding of the menace which hung over her like a smoldering cloud. "But you're right about the danger," he said. "It won't come from Japan to California. It will pour like a flood through Siberia and jump to Alaska in a night. It isn't the danger of the yellow man alone, Olaf. You've got to combine that with Bolshevism, the menace of blackest Russia. A disease which, if it crosses the little neck of water and gets hold of Alaska, will shake the American continent to bed-rock. It may be a generation from now, maybe a century, but it's coming sure as God makes light—if we let Alaska go down and out. And my way of preventing it is different from yours."

He stared into the fire, watching the embers flare up and die. "I'm not proud of the States," he went on, as if speaking to something which he saw in the flames. "I can't be, after the ruin their unintelligent propaganda and legislation have brought upon Alaska. But they're our salvation and conditions are improving. I concede we have factions in Alaska and we are not at all unanimous in what we want. It's going to be largely a matter of education. We can't take Alaska down to the States—we've got to bring them up to us. We must make a large part of a hundred and ten million Americans understand. We must bring a million of them up here before that danger-flood we speak of comes beyond the Gulf of Anadyr. It's God's own country we have north of Fifty-eight, Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in Alaska and at Washington won't let them come. With coal enough under our feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We've got billions in copper and oil, but can't touch them. We should have some of the world's greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not, because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn't conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon industry—but they didn't. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of the plains.

"The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will take place right here—in Alaska—and not in Siberia. And if we don't win—"