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Show Lamp h, Vallev By ARTHUR STRINGER. I " WJLiiAV J J W. K U. Service THE STOKY SO FAR Lander l en:ged to Barbara Trum-bu Trum-bu 1 whose father heads the company fighting C0burn',?iaim. Lander breaks with Irumbull and moves to Sock-Eye Schlupp's shack. One of Carol', pupils Is Salarla Bry. INSTALLMENT X Carol Coburn, Alaska-bom daughter of a "bush rat" who died with an unimproved unim-proved mining claim, returns North to teach school. Sidney Lander, mining engineer, rescues her aboard ship from annoyances of Eric (the Red) Erlcson. son. a big, it-doors young woman, also in love with Lander. She can hunt a bear easier than read and write. When little Frieda Engstrom gets lost, Carol sends for Sidney. Carol finds the little glrL bunch o' half-wits," averred Sala-ria. Sala-ria. "They're yappin' about not usin' any old-timers. But before freeze-up next fall they'll And swing-In' swing-In' in a hammock don't git no houses built. They're hot-airin' about town halls and administration buildin's when they ain't even a road built or a well dug or shack logs ready for a wickyup." "What," demanded her father, "kin you expect from fruit-tramps and dock-bums? And what'll we git from that shipload o' broken-down sodbusters when they're dumped in this valley? From a lot o' silk-shirt cake-eaters who'll be askin' the gov-er'ment gov-er'ment to drop around ev'ry morn-in' morn-in' to do their milkin' for 'em?" "But won't it mean something," I ventured, "to start a settlement that's really going to take root here? Isn't that what Alaska needs, settlers who bring in their women and children and stay on the land?"' "They won't take root," contended contend-ed Salaria's father. "They'll jus' whimper around for more relief and then head for outside agin. And down in the States they'll be sayin' Alaska's only fit for Eskimos." It, was then that Salaria presented me with a surprise. "I can't see," she said, "why a squarehead like Sid Lander should be wantin' to swing in with them." "To swing in with them?" I echoed. "As sure as sundown," proclaimed Salaria. "That misguided hombre seems t' feel this is the biggest thing I was, for a minute or two, quite forgotten in the tumult of those crowding figures. Then I was startled star-tled by Sock-Eye Schlupp, who cried out as he accosted me with an approving ap-proving thump on the back: "You're good leather, girl! You're good leather!" And I was equally startled star-tled when Olie, without saying a word, crept rather shyly up to me and tightened his arms about my waist I simply pressed his head against my breast, in my happiness, and held it there for a silent moment mo-ment or two. I realized, as I heard them talking talk-ing of all going back to the Eck-strom Eck-strom house for hot coffee and schnapps, that I was very tired. "I've a horse for you here, teacher, teach-er, if you want to ride," Sam Bry-son Bry-son suggested with an unexpected absence of truculence. "I'd rather go home," I said from some mysterious trough of depression depres-sion following after my wave of exaltation. ex-altation. Lander pushed through the crowd and stood beside me. "Sandy and I'll see you get home safe," he said as he linked his arm in mine. Neither of us, for some reason, had much to say. And in that silent partnership of a peril confronted and conquered I felt unexpectedly close to the man'at my side. "Can I come in?" my companion quietly inquired. A wave of recklessness went through me as I stood looking up at him. "Of course," I said, conscious of something portentous in the midnight mid-night quietness about us. We only live once, I told myself as I stared up at the star-strewn sky. I had to fight back the impulse to let my two reckless arms creep up about his stooping shoulders. I could even feel surge through me a secret hope that he himself would be ruthless and reckless, that those two strong arms of his would reach out and draw me so close all thought of our yesterdays and our tomorrows tomor-rows might be forgotten. Then I drew up, abruptly, with a little gasp of surprise. For plainly, in the midnight quietness, I heard the nicker of a horse. A moment later, in the shadow, of the 'shack front, I could make out the uncertain figure of a man. "That you, Sid?" challenged the man standing beside the horse with an empty saddle. "Yes," answered Lander in an oddly flattened voice. The intruder, I could see, was Sock-Eye. And for all the darkness I could feel something some-thing accusatory in his stare as he confronted us. "You forgot your horse," Sock-Eye Sock-Eye explained. That was all he said. But to me it seemed to carry a hint, as I realized real-ized we weren't so alone in the world as I'd imagined. CHAPTER Xn The breakup, this year, meant more than the coming of spring to Matanuska. Along the railway siding sid-ing at Palmer great piles of lumber were being unloaded. Train after train brought in a mountain of machinery ma-chinery and supplies. Federal engineers engi-neers in khaki and high-tops went about consulting blueprints and driving driv-ing stakes and squinting through theodolites. the-odolites. Then a little colony of tents began to dot the roadside, and two or three trim cabins of peeled spruce logs appeared out of nowhere. no-where. That meant, I was told, the ground was being laid out for the two hundred hun-dred families to be brought in from the Middle West, the new settlers who were to show the outside world that Alaska was something more than "Seward's Icebox.". But nothing seemed ready for that incoming army. Not one-tenth of the land was cleared and fit for cropping. There was no shelter for livestock, no homes for women and children. The only solid habitations appeared to be a string of old bunk cars which had been pushed down the valley siding. In these the CCC workers were to sleep and eat, like navvies, until a tent colony could be established. And three days later lat-er the toilers themselves put in an appearance, a whole trainload of them, promptly making the quietness quiet-ness of the valley a thing of the past. They were like children turned loose on a holiday, romping and singing and ki-yiing, quarreling and drinking. Sock-Eye, viewing them with a ' morose eye, reported that they'd been raising hell all the way up from Frisco and Seattle. He further fur-ther announced that the first banjo-strumming banjo-strumming cheechako who made a crack about his shooting irons would ' get three ounces of lead in his larynx. "They won't listen to us," snorted Sam Bryson as his S'lary and I ', dined on yak meat after a two-hour school lesson. "But before summer's sum-mer's over they'll be bcllyachin' ! about everylhin' goin' wrong." "I tell you. P"P. 'they're just a I realized, as he came closer, that his face was strange to me. I lost no time in wrenching my arm away from Ericson's clasp and signaling the stern-eyed traveler. "Will you help me?" I called out. "What's wrong here?" asked the driver, without getting down from his seat. "This coward," I cried, "is threatening threat-ening me." i "Threatening you with what?" inquired in-quired the stranger, still impartial. But he swung down from his seat. "I don't know what," I had to admit. "But it's not the first time he's annoyed me." "Has he any claim on you?" inquired in-quired the still noncommittal stranger. "Of course not," was my quick retort. Then he turned back to Ericson, who was advertising his composure by lighting a cigarette. But in doing do-ing so, I noticed, my enemy quietly backed a step or two off the road. "I think, son, you'd better be on your way," the tall and grizzled stranger announced in a disappointingly disappoint-ingly casual voice. Then he turned to me and once more looked me over. I didn't like the assessing way that glacial eye inspected my person. He was, I could see, very sure of himself. "Where are you going?" he asked. "To my home," I answered. "That's in the Jansen shack down the valley." "Get in," he said, "and I'll take you there." "Po you belong in the valley?" he asked as he picked his way along the puddled ruts. "I'm the teacher here," I explained. ex-plained. That brought his eye quickly quick-ly back to my face. "What's your name?" he questioned, ques-tioned, in a voice too well modulated to be called curt. "I'm Carol Coburn," I answered. "So you're Carol Coburn," he said with meditative quietness. "I rather thought we'd be coming together to-gether soon." "Why?" I asked. "Because I'm the new owner of the Happy Day Mine," he said. "My name's John Trumbull. But I'm not quite what your friend Lander is trying to make me out to be," he added. "I've never tried to steamroller steam-roller orphans out of their rights." I felt, all things considered, the need of caution. "Then you acknowledge I have rights?" I asked. "Where?" he inquired, obviously fencing for time. "In the Chakitana," I answered. "Have you ever been there?" he questioned. I told him that I hadn't. "Then you don't and can't understand under-stand the situation," he said with a fatherly sort of deliberateness. "There may be mineral in that claim. But what good is a claim when it's out on the edge of nowhere no-where and road-building costs more than your mine. could produce?" "Whose mine?" I asked in a slightly slight-ly sharpened voice. His cool and not unkindly eye considered con-sidered me for a moment. "That's a decision, apparently, neither you nor I can make. It all goes back to vested rights and the records. And since we've come together to-gether in this friendly way, I don't even want to talk about it." "But it will have to be talked about," I reminded him. "There's been too much of that," he announced, "especially from Lander. Lan-der. Are you in love with that man?" It was plain that he didn't believe in beating about the bush. "I'm quite heart free," I said, meeting his side glance without a flicker. "You know my daughter's going to marry Lander?" he finally observed. ob-served. "So she told me," I retorted. "This whole mix-up is something we've both inherited," he asserted, after another moment of silence. His tone,. I thought, was more friendly. friend-ly. "Neither of us asked for it. And there ought to be some reasonable l way out of it." "What would you suggest?" I quietly qui-etly inquired. I had the feeling of being weighed on a pair of invisible scales. "I'd suggest that we leave Lander out of it," he said, "and go at the thing without rancor or prejudice. Lander's bullheadedness hasn't got you anywhere. And it won't get him anywhere." "I've never had any cause to question ques-tion his loyalty," I asserted. "Well, I have." was the prompt response. "And if you'd fly out to the Chakitana and actually look over the ground you'd understand the situation sit-uation a little better." "With whom?" I questioned. "With me," he answered. I laughed a little. For I pictureo him, in my mind's eye, burying me in one of his test pits, or emulating the Wicked Ur.cie of the Babes in the Wood and leaving me to die in the unmapped wilderness. I could see his frown at my prompt. "No. thank you!" j (TO UK COS UM U)' "They'll jus' whimper around for more relief." that's happened since the Children o' Israel hit out for the Promised Land. He thinks it's as dog-goned stirrin' as the Pilgrim Fathers' land-in' land-in' on Plymouth Rock. And he reckons reck-ons it ain't too late for the right man t' step in and git things organized." or-ganized." "What can he do?" I asked, wondering won-dering at the small thrill that went through my body. "He can't do nothin'," retorted Sam Bryson. "He's got a fool idee that if them Federal bureaucrats make him field manager up here he kin straighten out a tangle that was started wrong from the first. He contends the whole scheme should be took out o' the hands o' the War Department and give to a practical-minded practical-minded worker." I thought over this on my way home. I was still thinking over it as I swung through Palmer and stopped for a moment to watch three CCC workers languidly throwing baggage into a truck backed up to the railway siding. "Look who's here," I heard a slightly mocking voice observe. I detected, in that voice, an unpleasant un-pleasant ring of familiarity. And even before I glanced about I knew it was my soapbox orator known as Eric the Red. "So you've swung in with the cattle," cat-tle," he said as he dropped to the ground. Then he laughed. "Mata-nuska's "Mata-nuska's no longer the mudhole it was!" I felt sorry that in the last few weeks, I'd given up the habit of going about with Sock-Eye's old six-gun six-gun swinging at my hip. Eric swung out from the truck and came striding along beside me. "I don't think you're going to like this valley," he had the effrontery to proclaim. "Something tells me you're likely to get what I got on the Yukon." Is that a threat?" I demanded. "No, it's just a reminder," he said with a venomous sort of bitterness. "You had your innings, and I'm going go-ing to have mine. And d'you know what's going to happen to you?" I essayed no answer to that challenge. chal-lenge. But I felt less defenseless as I noticed an open car pounding and lurching along the deep-rutted roadway. In it I could see a man. a wide-shouldered man. wearing a leather coat and a lcalher-vizored cap. |