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Show Lamp Yate BY ARTHUR STRINGER JL W. H. U. Service Carol Coburn. Alaska born teacher, Is annoyed by Eric (the Red) Ericson, an agitator. She Is rescued by a young engineer, en-gineer, Sidney Lander. He Is working lor the Trumbull company which is contesting con-testing her father's claim. He Is en- THE STORY SO FAR gaged to Trumbull's daughter. But a new romantic spark Is kindled. Carol and Kate O'Connell, nurse, set out to find an Indian baby reported abandoned by Its parents. Sockeye Schlupp, an old sourdough pal of Carol's INSTALLMENT IV dad, leads them to his shack, where Lander Is nursing the missing baby. It has been found by his dog. When Lander Lan-der tells her he won't be long with the Trumbull company she asks "Why not?" "You're facing this like an old-timer," old-timer," he said. "I used to go out on the trail with my father," I reminded him. "That's what I want to talk to you about," he said. "Can you remember re-member his camp on the Chaki-'tana?" Chaki-'tana?" "I was never there," I had to admit. ad-mit. "Then it won't be easy to explain what I want to," he went on. "Your father had a real mine there. And he must have known it." "Of course he did," I said, recalling recall-ing ghostly scraps of talk from my childhood. "Well, so does the Trumbull outfit," out-fit," proclaimed my companion. "The Chakitana Development Company Com-pany always wanted a clean sweep of that valley bottom. They even sent me up there as field engineer to find out how the land lay and corral any territory needed to round out their development work. It was your father's claim which cut their field in two and kept them from having hav-ing full control." "He always said he'd never sell out," I explained. "Of course he did," cried Lander. "He may have been a lone-fire prospector, pros-pector, but he knew he held a key position there. And when they "Because you happen to be Klondike Klon-dike Coburn's daughter. And I don't relish the thought of working against you. It's your father's claim they're trying to swallow up on a clouded title." . "But I'm not sure that claim was ever established." And it was equally obvious that his right either to champion my cause or control my destiny had never been established. But, for all that, an absurd little robin of happiness stood up on the tip of my heart and started to sing. "We can't go into that now," Lan- der said as old Schlupp came in with an armful of stovewood. And Katie, a moment later, was announcing announc-ing that you couldn't kill some children chil-dren with a club. All this little papoose needed, she called out to us, was food. "Then she ain't a-goin' to kick the bucket?" questioned Sock-eye. "Of course she isn't," said Katie. "But if I could lay hands on her fool redskin father I'd have him drawn and quartered." The old fire-eater's, face brightened bright-ened up with a new eagerness. "I'll do it for you, lady," he said with a large and rounded oath. "Sam Bryson was a-tellin' me that no-account no-account Injin's hidin' out in a hill camp up above the Happy Day Mine. And I'd sure relish roundin' him up and ventilatin his good-for-nothin' carcass." "No," Katie said, "that's a luxury we can't afford. But he's going to be made an example of by due process proc-ess of law. And if either of you men will take Miss Coburn and the baby back to Toklutna in the truck I'll get help and push on to the Happy Day and see that this baby killer is put where he belongs." Sidney Lander, who had been looking look-ing down at the blanket-wrapped papoose, pa-poose, lifted his head and caught rfly eye. "I'll take Miss Coburn through to Toklutna," he quietly announced. And I could feel my pulse skip a beat, casual as I tried to appear about it all. It was Sock-Eye who crossed to the door and looked out "There's sure a smell o' snow In the air," he warned. "We'd best fix up that truck more comfortable and stick a shovel in between the blankets and grub bags." CHAPTER IV which my companion said, "Good work!" And I remembered the faded fad-ed and dog-eared certificate, with the photo attached, also slightly faded, fad-ed, showing my father looking young and strong, in the pride of his early manhood. I'd always treasured that picture of him, the only one I possessed. pos-sessed. "That means our battle's half won," proclaimed Lander. "Why do you say our battle?" I asked. Lander's face, as our glances locked, hardened a little. Then he laughed his curt laugh. "Since I muddled into this thing," he said, "I'm going to be bullheaded enough to see it through." "But it's all so long ago," I objected. ob-jected. "And you can't wreck your career championing lost causes." "My career isn't wrecked. I'm thinking of swinging in with the Happy Day outfit, in fact, just beyond be-yond the Matanuska." "Why?" I asked. "Because then we won't be so far apart," he said. "You've been very kind to me," I said. "You're easy to be kind to," Lander Lan-der retorted with a quiet intensity that should have shifted my heart action into high. But I had certain things to remember. "What does that mean?" I exacted. ex-acted. He leaned a little closer under the swaying lantern. "It means I'm happier being with you than with anyone who walks this good green earth." I was able to laugh a little. "It isn't green," I reminded him. "And you might also remember why you so nearly missed the boat at Seattle?" Se-attle?" I could see his jaw muscles harden hard-en as he sat staring at me in the dim light from the lantern. "I guess I'm running a little ahead of schedule," he said as he rose to his feet. I watched him, with a small tingle of disappointment, as he backed out of the tent opening. "You're not going away?" I cried out above the whining of the wind. "I'll bed down up in the driver's seat," he casually remarked. And in a few minutes I could feel the tremor of the truck as he climbed aboard, up In front. I could hear him, a moment later, as he nested himself under his double blankets. He wouldn't, I knew, be veryYom-fortable veryYom-fortable there. I even wondered, as I stretched out on the hay next to my blanket-swathed little papoose, if wind and cold wouldn't drive him back under cover, where he had a perfect right to be. CHAPTER V I was awakened, early the next morning, by Lander reaching in for the lantern. The drifter was over, he explained, but he'd have an hour of shovel work before we could hope to climb back to the trail bed. He hadn't slept any too well, I'm afraid, up on his wind-swept driver's seat. I detected a sort of glum fury in his movements as he shoveled at the snowdrift that embedded us. Even after I'd boiled coffee and cooked breakfast for him he impressed im-pressed me as unnecessarily constrained con-strained and silent. It was late in the afternoon when we got through to Toklutna. Miss Teetzel promptly ordered the Indian baby to the infirmary and sent for Doctor Ruddock. Lander, ignoring the lady's glacial eye, quietly qui-etly asked me if I'd be good enough to give him my father's naturalization naturaliza-tion papers. I had no way of knowing what Miss Teetzel said to Lander during dur-ing my absence. But I didn't like the heat-lightning fire that glowed in those deep-set eyes of his as he took the proffered document from me. He studied it, for a moment, the lines of his mouth still grim. "I'll take this, if you don't mind," he said as he tucked it away. "It'll help to clear things up." I wasn't unconscious, all the while, of Miss Teetzel's narrowed eye fixed on my face. "There's one point I should Uke to see cleared up," she announced, her lips pressed into a foreboding straight line. "Where did you spend the night?" "Why, in the truck, of course," I answered. "There was no place to go." "And this man?" she questioned, with a second stony glance at the altogether unimpressed Lander. "Naturally, he slept in the truck too," I quietly acknowledged. The lemon-squeezer jaw took on a new line of grimness. "I've an idea, Miss Coburn," said the lady of unpolluted purity so icily confronting me, "that your days in this school are quite definitely numbered." num-bered." It was Lander who spoke first. "What does that mean?" he said. "It means, sir." was the icily enunciated reply, "that there are certain things this institution will not stand for. And you and your perilously modern traveling con"' panion have just been guilty of ont of them." ITO BE CONTINUED Before we were an hour out on the road snow began to fall. By the time we were up in the hills we had drifts to buck. When it was necessary for Lander to stop and get busy with his shovel, I'd give my Indian baby its needed attention at-tention and nest it down in its cocoon of blanket-wool again, with only its pinched little yellow face showing like a seal's at the bottom of a blowhole blow-hole Then we'd fight our way on for another hundred yards or two. So we ploughed on, feeling out our way in the uncertain light. Twice, when we slewed perilously close to the ravine that yawned at our car wheels, I thought the end had come. And twice, where the trail wound so vaguely about the upper slopes, we had to cut our way through drifts, with the help of the shovel. We did very little talking. talk-ing. But I could breathe more easily eas-ily when we were over the hump and dropping down into the next valley. Yet even there the drifts and darkness were too much for us. We got off the road and bumped head-on head-on into a spruce stump. The old truck, with indignation boiling from its radiator cap, refused to go farther. far-ther. I could see Lander's grim smile as I sat there staring out at the flailing snow. There wasn't a shack or settler, I felt sure, within ten miles of us. "What'll we do?" I asked with a gulp. "I suppose we'll have to sleep out here," he casually announced. 4,I suppose so," I agreed. But I wasn't as placid-minded about it as I pretended. Lander, in fact, stared into my face for a moment or two before swinging down from his driver's seat. Then he lighted the primus stove and hung a lantern lan-tern from one of the bows of our little covered-wagon truck-tent. And , then, after shutting out the snow and f wind by closing the end flaps of the tarpaulin, he announced that he was going to have a look ahead along the trail. He stayed away longer than I expected. By the time he got back, in fact, I'd melted snow and had our coffee boiling on the primus stove. The smell of that coffee made our little canvas-covered cave seem rather homelike. And my cave mate watched me with a ruminative eye as I warmed milk and fed the quietly qui-etly complaining Indian baby. When our papoose was back in its blanket-muffled blanket-muffled basket, and we sat eating, with the primus stove between us, it seemed oddly paleolithic to be squatting there on a bundle of hay, dining on bacon and beans and sourdough sour-dough bread. Lander helped me pack things away when the meai was over. "He always said he'd never sell out," I explained. couldn't buy him out they did what they could to cancel on him." "Then he had his patent?" I asked. "Yes; but they tried to cloud his title by claiming his location lines were wrong. The official survey, when his first twenty acres were patented, pat-ented, showed the eastern limits of the claim to border on the Big Squaw where that creek ran into the Chakitana. The Big Squaw, in the open season, has a fine flow of water. And you can't mine in Alaska Alas-ka without water. I saw the Fairbanks Fair-banks Exploration Company spend a year and a half bringing water to their placer fields. And Trumbull Trum-bull wants that water for his upper shelf just about as much as he wants the claim." "How do you know all this?" I asked. "Because I've seen the Trumbull papers. And I made it my business to investigate some of the Trumbull Trum-bull moves. I know, for example, that while his engineers pretended to be doing development work their powdermen planted enough dynamite dyna-mite in the right place to change the course of Big Squaw Creek. Then they brought in a Record Office surveyor sur-veyor who naturally found the Co-' Co-' burn location stakes all wrong." "The thing that puzzles me," I interposed, "is why you're not loyal to the man you're working for." Lander's laugh was curt. "If you can't sense that," he said, "I can't explain it to you." He laughed again, less harshly. "Let's I put it down to the fact that a man can't work for a boss he doesn't believe in." I still found a blaze or two missing miss-ing along that trail. "But why should he call my father's fa-ther's claim a fraudulent one?" "Klondike Coburn, he contends, was born on the Canadian side of the line." "That's true enough," I conceded. conced-ed. "But what about it?" "A great deal. It means he wasn't a citizen. And the law says a patent pat-ent can be allotted only to citizens." "But my father was naturalized," I told him, "a year or two before I was born. He even used to talk about when he moved up out of the Indian class and got a right to vote." Lander's spine suddenly stiffened. "Are you sure of that?" he demanded. de-manded. "Trumbull claims there's no record of it." "But I have his papers," I explained. ex-plained. "He sent them out to me so I could get my passports when I was sailing for Europe." I wondered at the g"imness wiU |