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Show Lamp . x-Vallew BY ARTHUR STRINGER JL W. M. U. Service Carol Coburn, Alaska-born daughter f a "bush rat" who died with an unes-tabliahed unes-tabliahed mining claim, returns North to teach Indian achooL Aboard ihlp, he U annoyed by Eric (the Red) Eric-son Eric-son and la rescued by Sidney Lander, THE STORY SO FAR young mining engineer. Lander, working work-ing (or the Trumbull company, which U fighting Coburn ' claim. Is engaged to Trumbull's daughter. Lander breaks with Trumbull and moves to Sockeye Schlupp'i ihack. INSTALLMENT VII Carol gets the school job at Mata nuska through Doctor Ruddock's aid. But there's no schoolhousa for her. For a residence she gets an abandoned shack. But Carol Is optimistic about Matanuska. handed about it all. When he sharpened sharp-ened a stick and on it speared a lice of bread, which he began toasting at the stove front, I found the aroma of that browning bread mixing with the aroma that came from the coffeepot. And I realized there were times when food was more Important than philosophy. "Things is goin' f come easier," explained Sock-Eye as we ate together to-gether with the honest and unabashed una-bashed appetite of the hungry, "once you've took root here." "And made friends with my neighbors," neigh-bors," I added. "You ain't got no neighbors within with-in a mile," countered Sock-Eye. "And the valley folks nacher'ly ain't goin' f fall over themselves t' welcome wel-come you. seein' you was sent in here by them Juneau bureaucrats. Yep; you'll have t' stoke that ol' firebox yourself. And rustle your own grub and wood and water. I s'pose you've got a shootin' iron?" I didn't see, I told him, how a shooting iron could solve any of my problems. "It kin ease your mind consider-'ble," consider-'ble," argued Sock-Eye. "There's no satisfaction like knowin' you've got a six-gun in reach. Kind o' perks It was not, I could see, a very appealing abode. It looked, with Its sagging and snow-mattressed roof and its time-weathered timbers, about as inviting as a mausoleum. Nor did it add to my Joy when I saw Sock-Eye, kicking away the snow, disclose the flattened-out body of a dead coyote lying there, its teeth grinning malevolently up from ' the uncovered Jawbones. My companion, with a prompt sweep of his foot, brushed the frozen carcass to one side and swung open the door. Doors in Alaska, I remembered, re-membered, were very seldom locked. I had to shut my teeth tight so the trembling of my chin wouldn't betray me. For about all that musty-smelling musty-smelling and deep-shadowed room held was an untidy wall bunk, a table and two wooden chairs with roughly spliced legs. I could see where the smoke pipe had fallen from a rust-stained stove and where rodents ro-dents had been attacking a grub box imperfectly armored with a Joseph's coat of flattened-out tobacco tins. Above it was a dish shelf with a few rusty pans and a showing of sadly chipped crockery. At the foot of the bunk lay the dead body of a parka-squirrel, half buried in a scattering scat-tering of lint from a much-chewed quilt Along the wall directly above the bunk were tacked, to remind me Alaska was still a man's country, Irregular Ir-regular rows of equally Irregular movie-queens, interspersed with dancing houris. Each and every one of them, I observed, was in an arresting ar-resting state of dishabille. But even more revolting was the filth that covered the floor. Sock-Eye's questioning glance must have detected some shadow of hopelessness on my face. "You a-goin' t' stick it?" he challenged. chal-lenged. "I've got to," I said. "There's no other way." My companion, as he turned and swept that room with a saturnine eye, proclaimed that an old skinflint like Sam Bryson should have two inches of lead in his gizzard. "But since he's put you here, I'm a-goin' f give you a hand f git planted." I had thought of Sock-Eye as a maundering old man. But as he threw off his coat and got busy I realized I had altogether misjudged both his skill and his strength. His first act was to force open the case with chintz and convert It into a dressing table. I learned how to tuff duck feathers Into a sugar bag with the lettering boiled off in lye water and call it a pillow, and how to make sheets out of factory cotton cot-ton and dish towels out of flour sacks, and even a Dutch oven out of two boxes Interlined with chopped oat straw. I releamed how to whittle whit-tle shavings from a spruce stick and start a Are, and chop wood without standing in a tub to protect my feet, to say nothing of the discovery that birch logs split easiest when frozen. I knew how a baking-powder tin could be turned Into a biscuit-cutter, how bag burlap with a design crocheted cro-cheted on its ends made a passable door mat, how a broom handle fastened fast-ened across a room corner curtained off with calico converted the same into a clothes closet, and bow life, after all, was mostly what you made of it I'd never liked that red-rusted old stove of mine, standing as It did a monument of neglect at the center of my new family circle. So on a sufficiently mild afternoon when I could afford to let the fire go down I decided to sandpaper off some of the rust and replace it with a bright and shining coat of black lead. The old potato sack I'd pinned around my waist didn't leave me looking any too regal. My hair came down and my bands took on a distinctly dis-tinctly negroid tint. On my face, too, I must have smudged a good deal of the black lead that should have gone elsewhere. And just as I was wielding my polishing brush on the last rough-surfaced old stove leg a visitor walked into my humble hum-ble abode and stood regarding me with a quietly bewildered eye. "Where will I find Carol Coburn?" an unexpectedly well - modulated voice inquired of me. I knew who it was, even before she told me. "I'm Carol Coburn," I told her, as quietly as I could. "Won't you sit down?" She blinked at me, for an incredulous incredu-lous moment or two. "I'm Barbara Trumbull," she announced. an-nounced. "I know," I murmured as I poured water into my tin basin and engaged in a hasty struggle to remove some of the black lead. "Can't I make you a cup of tea?" "No thank you." she said, with a second study of my partially cleansed face. She pulled up her sleeve and looked at a jeweled wrist watch. "I'm flying back to Anchor- 11 age in a few minutes." "I'm sorry," I said in the silence that ensued. "You know Sidney Lander," she observed. She said it softly. But it was like the softness of velvet with a razor blade wrapped up in its folds. "And?" I prompted, feeling that all the frostiness wasn't to be on one side. "And you know, of course, that we're to be married next summer?" she continued, making it half a question ques-tion and half a challenge. "Yes, he told me about that," I acknowledged. And again I heard the musical laugh edged with ice. "You and Sidney, I understand, had a very adventurous trip together togeth-er a few weeks ago." "We got storm bound on the trail," I explained. "But he survived it, quite unscathed." "That's what I wanted to make sure of," said the lady in the mink coat ignoring the touch of acid in my voice. But her eyes narrowed a little. Then, with great deliberation, delibera-tion, she drew off the luxurious gauntlet that covered her left hand. It was a very white hand. And on the third slender finger I could see the glitter of a diamond. "That's his ring," she quietly but conclusively announced. "Do you want to stop my marriage?" It Impressed me as rather primitive. primi-tive. But I was at least compelled to respect the lady's directness. "What makes you think I could?" I asked. She, apparently, both suspected and resented my air of guileless-ness. guileless-ness. "My convictions in that quarter seem to be weakening," she said with a languid sort of asperity. "Then why bother about the source of them?" I countered, a little tired of being accepted as merely an Audrey Aud-rey of the backwoods. "Why are you fighting my father?" fa-ther?" John Trumbull's daughter rather abruptly demanded. "And making Sidney break with the one man who could have him amount to something? It won't of course, do any good." I met her gaze without flinching. "Are you saying that for your own sake," I asked, "or for your father's?" fa-ther's?" Barbara Trumbull laughed a little. lit-tle. "My father's big enough to fight for himself," she announced. "Then what are you worrying about?" I found the courage to inquire. in-quire. (TO BE COSTIMED) windows. Then, grunting with indignation, he went at the place like a cyclone. He tumbled the greasy table and chairs out into the snow and scraped the litter from the floor. Then he left me alone with my worn-down stub of a broom. He reappeared with a rusted axhead, into which he fitted a rough handle of birch wood. When he started to shovel the ashes from the stove-box I told him to save them, as they'd come in handy for scrubbing. By the time he had a Are going and snowwater melting in our galvanized galva-nized tub I'd unearthed a shriveled cake of yellow soap and a lopsided scrub brush. While I scoured the grease-blackened table and chairs with hot water and wood ashes he dragged the bunk mattress out into the snow, emptied it, pounded the last of the dust from it and refilled it with wild hay which he commandeered comman-deered from a pole-stack at the back of the clearing. At last everything smelled clean, and seemed different and the singing sing-ing of the old iron kettle on the drum stove was almost homelike. But my spirits declined to rise as they should. Sock-Eye, after spitting into the rusty stove front, reached for his coat and crossed to the door. "I'm a-goin' over t' the village," he offhandedly announced. "We've a one-hoss store there. I'll see If I kin rustle a pair o' blankets and pack In a mite o' grub for you." When he returned, I stood blinking at the size of his sleigh load. "Git in out o' the cold," he commanded. com-manded. "I reckon I purty well know what a cheechako needs." I felt my throat tighten. "You can't do this for me," I contended as Sock-Eye piled things on the table end. "I ain't a-doln" it for you," he retorted. "I'm a-doin It for your ol' pappy. He rustled many a mess o' grub tor me." That didn't take the lump from Qmy throat. I watched him in silence as he disinterred two candles from his store supplies and lighted them. "Evenin' 'pears to be comin' on," he said. "I reckon I may as well stay an' have chow with you." I started to thank him, but he cut me short "When you git settled," he said. "You'll have t' have a gas lamp. And I'll tote over a hunk of sourdough sour-dough for your bread-makin'. And, meanwhile, I'll leave you a slab o' deer meat that'll help tide over the week end." I laid the table, using a newspaper for a cloth, while the old-timer beside be-side the stove cooked bacon and eggs and put coffee on to boil and punched two holes- in the top of a milk tin with his hunting knife. He was surprisingly adroit and quick- "It kin ease your mind consider'ble." you up when you're alone. And I reckon I got an ol' blunderbuss or two I kin be bringin' over f you." I was afraid to thank him for what he had done. It didn't seem to be the valley way. I merely stood in the doorway watching him as he trudged off in the snow and was lost in the blue-tinted darkness. CHAPTER VIII Those first days in my Matanuska wickyup always remained a clouded memory of discomfort shot through with Incongruous moods of exaltation. exalta-tion. But Sock-Eye had been right One took root, in some way, and fiber by fiber time wove one back to the soil of one's birth. I learned more about the valley of the Muddied Waters for that, in the language of the local Indians, was what the word "Matanuska" meant It revealed itself as a deep-soiled deep-soiled and lightly timbered valley of almost two hundred square miles, with a friendly huddle of mountain shoulders that cut off the Arctic winds and framed the lowlands in eternal white. Diagonally across the valley ran the Matanuska River, and up that river, in the open season, the salmon came in swarms. Here and there, along the lower benches, little patches of land had been cleared, mostly as subsistence farms for hill trappers and disheartened gold-seekers, like old Sock-Eye and Sam Bryson. On those farms they grew two-pound potatoes and thirty-pound thirty-pound cabbages and oats and rye and bay as high as a horse's back. For the growth from that black soil, once played on by its bath of twenty-hour twenty-hour sunshine, was prodigious. But the little homestead shacks, I found, were scattered and far apart, and life, apparently, was still precarious, pre-carious, with no fixed market for the settlers' produce and no final reward for a short season of industry indus-try after a long season of hibernation. hiberna-tion. Yet the valley was rich. It could, according to Sidney Lander, prove itself the grub bag of the North. Its soil was drouthless and inexhaustible. inex-haustible. And under that soil it had coal in abundance. And through all its outer hills it had game enough for an ever-enduring backlog on the fires of hunger. I came to Matanuska as a teacher, teach-er, but it was the valley, I found, that was teaching me things. Its first lesson seemed to be that frontier fron-tier life was the mother of invention inven-tion and the father of resourcefulness. resourceful-ness. For I learned how to attach a wire handle to a discarded gasoline can and turn it into a water pail, and how to cover an empty packing |