Pardners by Rex Beach (best books to read fiction txt) 📗

hurry!"

"Aren't you coming, too?" queried Barton. "We'll hire some Eskimos to go after George. I'll pay 'em anything."

"No, I'm going back to him now; he'd freeze before we could send help, and, besides, they wouldn't come out in the storm and the dark."

"But you can't work that big canoe alone. If you get out there and don't find him you'll never get back. Charlie! let me go, too," he said; then apologized. "I'm afraid I won't last, though; I'm too weak."

The squaw, who had questioned not at the absence of her lord, now touched Captain's arm. "Come," she said; "I go with you." Then addressing Barton, "You quick go Indian house; white man die, mebbe. Quick! I go Big George."

"Ah, Charlie, I'm afraid you'll never make it," cried Barton, and, wringing his friend's hand, he staggered into the darkness behind the sled wherein lay the fur-bundled Sullivan.

Captain felt a horror of the starving waters rise up in him and a panic shook him fiercely, till he saw the silent squaw waiting for him at the ice edge. He shivered as the wind searched through his dampened parka and hardened the wet clothing next to his body, but he took his place and dug the paddle fiercely into the water, till the waves licked the hair of his gauntlets.

The memory of that scudding trip through the darkness was always cloudy and visioned. Periods of keen alertness alternated with moments when his weariness bore upon him till he stiffly bent to his work, wondering what it all meant.

It was the woman's sharpened ear which caught the first answering cry, and her hands which steered the intricate course to the heaving berg where the sailor crouched, for, at their approach, Captain had yielded to the drowse of weariness and, in his relief at the finding, the blade floated from his listless hands.

He dreamed quaint dreams, broken by the chilling lash of spray from the strokes of the others, as they drove the craft back against the wind, and he only partly awoke from his lethargy when George wrenched him from his seat and forced him down the rough trail toward warmth and safety.

Soon, however, the stagnant blood tingled through his veins, and under the shelter of the bluffs they reached the village, where they found the anxious men waiting.

Skilful natives had worked the frost from Sullivan's members, and the stimulants in the sled had put new life into Barton as well. So, as the three crawled wearily through the dog-filled tunnel of the egloo, they were met by two wet-eyed and thankful men, who silently wrung their hands or uttered broken words.

When they had been despoiled of their frozen furs, and the welcome heat of whisky and fire had met in their blood, Captain approached the whaler, who rested beside his mate.

"George, you're the bravest man I ever knew, and your woman is worthy of you," he said. He continued slowly, "I'm sorry about the fight this morning, too."

The big man rose and, crushing the extended palm in his grasp, said: "We'll just let that go double, partner. You're as game as I ever see." Then he added: "It was too bad them fellers interferred jest when they did—but we can finish it up whenever you say," and as the other, smiling, shook his head, he continued:

"Well, I'm glad of it, 'cause you'd sure beat me the next time."

WHERE NORTHERN LIGHTS COME DOWN O' NIGHTS

The Mission House at Togiak stands forlornly on a wind-swept Alaskan spit, while huddled around it a swarm of dirt-covered "igloos" grovel in an ecstacy of abasement.

Many natives crawled out of these and stared across the bay as down a gully came an Arctic caravan, men and dogs, black against, the deadly whiteness. Ahead swung the guide, straddling awkwardly on his five foot webs, while the straining pack pattered at his heels. Big George, the driver, urged them with strong words, idioms of the Northland, and his long whip bit sharply at their legs.

His companion, clinging to the sled, stumbled now and then, while his face, splitting from the snap of the frost, was smothered in a muffler. Sometimes he fell, plunging into the snow, rising painfully, and groaning with the misery of "snow-blindness."

"Most there now. Cap, keep up your grit."

"I'm all right," answered the afflicted man, wearily. "Don't mind me."

George, too, had suffered from the sheen of the unbroken whiteness, and, while his eyes had not wholly closed, he saw but dimly. His cheeks were grease-smeared, and blackened with charred wood to break the snow-glare, but through his mask showed signs of suffering, while his blood-shot eyes dripped scalding tears and throbbed distressfully. For days he had not dared to lose sight of the guide. Once he had caught him sneaking the dogs away, and he feared he had killed the man for a time. Now Jaska broke trail ahead, his sullen, swollen features baleful in their injury.

Down the steep bank they slid, across the humped up sea ice at the river mouth and into the village.

At the greeting of their guide to his tribesmen, George started. Twelve years of coast life had taught him the dialect from Point Barrow south, and he glanced at Captain to find whether he, too, had heard the message. As Jaska handed a talisman to the chief he strode to him and snatched it.

"Oho! It's Father Orloff, is it? D—— him!" He gazed at the token, a white spruce chip with strange marks and carvings.

"What does it mean, George?" said the blind man.

"It's a long story, Charlie, and black. You should have known it before we started. I'm a marked man in this coast country. It's Orloff's work, the renegade. 'Father,' he calls himself. Father to these devils he rules and robs for himself in the name of the Church. His hate is bitter, and he'd have my life if these watery-livered curs didn't dread the sound of my voice. God help him when we meet."

He shook his hairy claws at the hostile circle, then cried to the chief in the native tongue:—

"Oh, Shaman! We come bleeding and weary. Hunger grips us and our bones are stiff with frost. The light is gone from my brother's eyes and we are sick. Open you the door to the Mission House that the 'Minoks' may rest and grow strong."

The Indians clustered before the portal, with its rude cross above, and stared malignantly, while the chief spoke. At the name of his enemy the unsightly eyes of George gleamed, and he growled contemptuously, advancing among them. They scattered at the manner of his coming, and he struck the padlocked door till it rattled stiffly. Then spying the cross overhead he lifted up and gripped the wood. It came away ripping, and with wails of rage and horror at the sacrilege, they closed about him.

"Here, Cap! Bust her in quick!" He dragged Captain before the entrance, thrusting the weapon upon him, then ran ferociously among the people. He snatched them to him, cuffing like a bear and trampling them into the snow. Those who came into the reach of his knotty arms crumpled up and twisted under his feet. He whirled into the group, roaring hoarsely, his angry, grease-blackened face hideous with rage. The aborigine is not a fighting machine; for him the side-step and counter have no being. They melted ahead of his blazing wrath, and he whisked them, fleeing, by their garments, so that they felt the stamp of his moccasined heels.

Captain dragged the team within, and George following, blocked the shattered door.

"We're safe as long as we stay in the Church," said he.

"Right of sanctuary, eh? Does it occur to you how we're going to get out?"

"Never mind, we'll get out somehow," said he, and that night, as Charlie Captain, late University man and engineer, lay with eyes swathed in steaming cloths, the whaler spoke operosely and with the bitterness of great wrong.

"It happened when we rocked the bars of Forty Mile, before ever a Chechako had crossed the Chilcoot. I went over to the headwaters of the Tanana. Into the big valley I went and got lost in the Flats. 'Tis a wild country, rimmed by high mountains, full of niggerheads and tundra, with the river windin' clean back to the source of the Copper. I run out of grub. We always did them days, and built a raft to float down to the Yukon. A race with starvation, and a dead heat it near proved, too, though I had a shade the best of it. I drifted out into the main river, ravin' mad, my 'Mukluks' eat off and my moose-hide gun cover inside of me.

"A girl spied me from the village, and 'twas her brought me ashore in her birch-bark and tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came and the blood ran through me again.

"I mind seein' a white man stand around at times and hearin' him beg her to leave me to the old squaws. She didn't though. She gave me bits of moose meat and berries and dried salmon, and when I come to one day I saw she was little and brown and pleadin' and her clothes all covered with beads. Her eyes was big and sad, Cap, and dimples poked into her cheeks when she laughed.

"'Twas then that Orloff takes a hand—the white man. A priest he called himself; breed, Russian. Maybe he was, but a blacker hearted thief never wronged a child. He wanted the girl, Metla, and so did I. When I asked her old man for her he said she was promised to the Russian. I laughed at him, and a chief hates to be mocked. You know what sway the Church has over these Indians. Well, Orloff is a strong man. He held 'em like a rock. He worked on 'em till one day the tribemen came to me in a body and said, 'Go!'

"'Give me the girl, and I will,' says I.

"Orloff sneered. 'She was mine for a month before ye came,' says he with the fiend showin' back of his eyes. 'Do ye want her now?'

"For a minute I believed him. I struck once to kill, and he went down. They closed on me as fast as I shook 'em off. 'Twas a beautiful sight for a ruction, on the high banks over the river, but I was like water from the sickness. I fought to get at their priest where he lay, to stamp out his grinning face before they downed me, but I was beat back to the bluff and I battled with my heels over the edge. I broke a pole from the fish-rack and a good many went down. Then I heard Metla calling softly from below:—

"'Jump!' she said. 'Big one, jump.'

"She had loosed a canoe at the landing and now held it in the boiling current underneath, paddling desperately.

"As they ran out of the tents with their rifles I leaped.

"A long drop and cold water, but I hit feet first. When I rose the little girl was alongside.

"It's a ticklish thing to crawl over the stern of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle-loaders above. It's shakin' to the nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even when a bullet split the gunnel. She ripped a piece of her dress and plugged a hole under the water line while I paddled out of range.

"The next winter at Holy Cross she ran to me shaking one day.

"'He is here! He is here! Oh, Big man, I am afraid!'

"'Who's here?' says I.

"'He is here—Father Orloff,' and her eyes was round and scared so that I took her up and kissed her while she clung to me—she was such a little girl.

"'He spoke to me at the water-hole, "I have come for you." I ran very fast, but he came behind. "Where is George?"' he said.

"I went out of the cabin down to the Mission, and into the house of
Father Barnum.