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Show BY ARTHUR STRINGER, i W-V jM W. N. U. Service Ci,rl Churn ,....K ....... THE ST0R SO FAR enrol coDurn. Alaska-born daughter of a "bush rat" who dlod with an unes-tabllshed unes-tabllshed mining claim, returns North to teach Indian school. Aboard ahlp, she Is annoyed by Eric (the Red) Eric-son Eric-son and is rescued by Sidney Lander, young mining engineer. Lander, work-tag work-tag for the Trumbull company, which la fighting Coburn-s claim, Is engaged to Trumbull's daughter. Lander breaks with Trumbull. But the ngagement to Barbara Trumbull stays. INSTALLMENT VI Christmas day, a Hre breaks out at the school when the children are play, tag round the Christmas tree. The school burns down. Carol proves the heroine, saving the children. The doctor doc-tor orders her to bed. skin gauntlets, a trifle over-sized. She was, I think, genuinely sorry to see me go. So when traffic moved again and I mounted my day coach I found it crowded to the doors with leather-faced leather-faced old sourdoughs and cud-chewing trappers and Mackinaw-clad loggers, log-gers, along with a homesteader's wife who carried an undersized pig in a slatted crate. I wasn't sorry when the conductor, conduc-tor, pushing his way through that overcrowded day coach, blinked down at my still heat-blistered face and said: "Next stop Matanuska, lady." "Could you tell me," I asked one of the men at the station, "where I'd And Mr. Bryson, Mr. Sam Bry-son?" Bry-son?" His face, when he peered up at me, impressed me as both sour and sardonic. "I'm Sam Bryson," he said. "The school superintendent for this district?" I persisted. "I be," he retorted, plainly resenting re-senting my incredulous stare. "And ain't it fit and proper, seein' I happen hap-pen to own that doggoned school-house school-house over there?" I meekly acknowledged that it was. And with equal meekness I polished up a spell on her readin' and writin'. And if you ain't willin' to do your teachin' on the wing that-away, that-away, until this valley gits a real schoolhouse rastled together, I guess, lady, you're mushin' up the wrong traiL" There was no mistaking the finality finali-ty of that statement. "But where am I to live?" I asked as I stared at the snow that stood so white between the gloomy green of the sprucelands. "We was figgerin'," he explained, "on settin' you up in the old Jansen shack. That's just over the hill there behind that tangle o' spruce. But you'd sure have some tidyin' up to do afore you got set there." He looked with a frown of disapproval at my sprawl of luggage. " 'Bout the best thing for you to do, lady, is to leg it over to the Eckstrom farm and see if they'd take you in for a day or two." I had, however, no desire to go wandering about that snowy world asking strangers to take me In. I wanted my own roof over my head. And I so informed the morose Mr. Bryson. Just then I became conscious of a strange figure making its way down the opposing hillside. It was a man carrying the carcass of a deer, a ragged and shambling man with a rifle and a tined head above his stooping shoulders. It was Sock-Eye Schlupp. "I'll be hornswizzled if it ain't Klondike Coburn's gal," he said. "What're you doin' back in these parts?" I told him why I was there. "Where you goin' to bunk?" he demanded. "They tell me I'm to live in the Jansen shack," I explained. , "They're plumb locoed." said But I refused to stay put There was too much to be done. I didn't want to seem a slacker when everybody every-body was so busy. And in looking after the others I could pretty well forget the pain of my own flame-blistered flame-blistered face. Where the rambling old school-' house had been was a stretch of smoldering ashes with the skeletonlike skeleton-like Iron bed frames and a stove or two standing there as melancholy as tombstones. And everything I owned lay consumed in those ashes. All I had left were the few scorched clothes that hung about my tired bones. ' But I hadn't time to feel sorry for myself. A special train, I was told, was already on Its way from Anchorage, Anchor-age, to pick- up our homeless school waifs and carry them on to the Indian In-dian orphanage at Fairbanks. From the pile of emergency clothing Katie commandeered for me an oversized pair of corduroy trousers, a'patched plaid Mackinaw, and a caribou parka par-ka that had seen better days. To these Doctor Ruddock (who'd given up his little wooden-fronted office as sleeping-quarters for Katie and me) added socks and pacs and an old bearskin cap that made me look like a lady-huzzar in a busoy. "What are we going to do?" I asked the ever-hurrying Doctor Ruddock Rud-dock when he dropped in, next day, to anoint my scorched epidermis with ambersine. "Toklutna's off the map," he proclaimed. pro-claimed. "Katie will stay on here, probably until the breakup, to look after the old folks." "Then where do I fit In?" I questioned ques-tioned with a sudden feeling of homelessness. "You fit in very neatly," he said as he listened to my heart action. "I'd the Commissioner on the wire this morning and he agrees with me that this country owes you a berth. So you get the school job at Matanuska." Mata-nuska." It took some time for this to sink in. Sock-Eye. 'You sure can't den up in that pigsty." "I'm north born," I reminded him. "Mebbe you are," he retorted. "But thia Is a plumb lonesome valley val-ley for a chalk-wrangler f take root in. I reckon you'd better come along t' my wickyup until things is ready for you." That, 1 told him, would be out of I the question: "I s'pose you know young Lander's swingin' in with me?" he said with' the air of an angler adjusting a gaudier fly. That, I knew, made it more than ever impossible. "And if that Jansen Jan-sen shack's not ready, I'll have to make it ready." "Quite a fighter, ain't you?" he observed. After a moment's silence, he added: add-ed: "I'll give you a hand over t' that lordly abode o" yours." He left me standing there, to return, re-turn, a few minutes later, with a hand sleigh borrowed from the station sta-tion agent. On this, with altogether unexpected dispatch, he piled my belongings. Over them he draped the deer carcass, thonging the load together with a strand of buckskin. "Let's mush," he said. I took a hand at the towing line, and, side by side, we made our way along the trodden snow, as crisp as charcoal under our feet. The valley seemed strangely silent. But I felt less alone in the world with that morose old figure beside me. "Why is Lander swinging in with you?" I asked. "Seein' this valley ain't bristlin' with hotels," answered Sock-Eye, "he deemed my wickyup good .i J 1 H .1 "When?" I asked. "As soon as you get sense enough to take care of yourself," he said with a barricading sort of curtness. "I told you to rest up, after your fire shock, and you didn't do i. So roll up in that bunk and stay there until you get a release from me." He stopped in the doorway, with his -dog-eared old medicine case in his hand, as I none too willingly shook out the blankets of my floor bunk. "And there's a long-legged engineer engi-neer waiting outside to see you," he added as he watched me dutifully crawl into my bunk. "But ten minutes min-utes is his limit, remember." I had my second shock to digest For the waiting visitor was Sidney Lander. He stood very tall in that small office-surgery. And my appearance must have startled him a little, since he stared down at me, for a full half-minute, without speaking. "Are you all right?" he finally asked. I had to laugh a little at his solemnity. "Just a little scorched around the edges," I said with an effort at levity. levi-ty. But my heart was beating a trifle faster than it should have been. "I flew over, as soon as I heard," he rather clumsily explained. He looked out the window and then back at me. "That was good work, saving sav-ing those children." "But I lost my eyebrows," I reminded re-minded 'him. Lander walked to the window and back. "Next stop Matanuska, lady." told him that I was the new teacher sent on from Toklutna. "But you wasn't to turn up here till Easter," he said testily. "We ain't got nothin' ready for you." I showed him the Territorial Commissioner's Com-missioner's letter, which he held close to his seamed old face, his lips moving as he labored through the undisputable message therein contained. "Well, you should've got off at Wasilla," he complained, "where you could've found lodgin' until things was ready." "But I'm here," I said with a smile that was entirely forced. And as he pushed back his wolfskin cap and stood scratching an attenuated forelock I quietly inquired: "Just where is my school?" He studied me with a lack-luster eye. "You ain't got no school," he proclaimed. pro-claimed. "But I was sent here to teach," I contended, trying to keep my tern- enougn lor a cuuegt; uuuu unm ujcj could build him up-to-date livin' quarters at the Happy Day." But I thought outsiders bought up the Happy Day," I ventured. Sock-Eye stopped to gnaw a corner cor-ner from his chewing plug. .."They sure did," he admitted. "And left young Lander out on the limb. But, as far as I kin make out, that hombre ain't no squealer. And I reckon Big John Trumbull'll find him as full o' fight as a bunch o' matin' copperheads." We went on until we came td a solitary small figure standing knee-deep knee-deep in the roadside snow. It proved to be a Swede boy in an incredibly ragged Mackinaw, with a blue woolen scarf wrapped around his waist as high as his armpits. His eyes, I noticed as Sock-Eye asked him about a short cut to the Jansen Jan-sen shack, were even bluer than his encircling sash. "But ol' Yansen ban dead," he announced. "He ban dead of the flu over three months ago." "Which same makes room for you, little cheeckako," snorted my grim-eyed grim-eyed trail breaker. But I stopped to ask the sash-wrapped sash-wrapped youth his name. I liked the feeling 'of warmth he carried under that cocoon of wool and rags. "Ah ban Olie Eckstrom," he aid with the friendliest of smiles. It wasn't until we came tu the edge of a clearing that Sock Eye stopped for breath. "There be your wickyup," said Sock-Eye. with a wave of his miv-tened miv-tened hand. flu BE CONTlNLEDi per. "Sure you was sent here to teach," acknowledged the old-timer. "But it ain't our fault we wasn't rigged out with a noo schoolhouse this winter. win-ter. Gover'ment's so danged busy with a heap o' highfalutin' plans for this valley it ain't got time to look after our needs. Spends a half-million on that noo Injin school at Juneau Ju-neau and lets us hillbillies scramble for our book-larnin' as best we can!" "Then what am 1 to do?" I asked, feeling more interested in my own immediate future than in the mistakes mis-takes of governmental expenditure. "I guess you'll just have to siwash it," he s'aid, "the same as us old-timers old-timers did when we hit this valley." "Just how will I siwash it?" I demanded. "By froggin' through as best you can, the same as our circuit-ridin' sky-pilot does, without a meetin'-place meetin'-place We was figgerin' on you cir-culalin' cir-culalin' round the valley homesteads and ladlin' out the book-larnin' where it was most needed. Instead o' them comin' to you. you'll have to go to them." Why can't thai old schoolhouse be used?" "She needs a noo roof and noo floor sills," was the listless answer. And I'm danged if I'm goin' to dig down for 'em." "Are you trying to tell me. I quavered, "that I'll have to go from farm to farm, like a mail carrier, and give my lessons in a kitchen? You've guessed it," he wearily acceded "Only you'" be Plumb lurkv to be stretchin' your legs out in a" warm kitchen. I've got a gir over home right now. rarm to git "We've at least saved those citizenship citi-zenship papers," he announced. I've shown them to John Trumbull," he explained, "and Trumbull claims they're not backed up by the records. rec-ords. That led to an argument that ended in a split-up. The Chakitana Development Company has lost its field engineer." "What are you going to do?" I asked. His laugh was curt. "I was tying up with the Happy Day outfit," he explained. "But Trumbull's just trumped my ace by buying up the Happy Day." "Does that mean you're going outside?" out-side?" I asked, trying to make the question a casual one. "Not on your life," was his prompt reply. "We've got to wait until the records show who's right in this." "But that's my problem," I objected. ob-jected. "I happen to have made it mine," he retorted with an unexpected light ot battle in his eyes. CHAPTER VII I began to understand the meaning mean-ing of what they call "the deep cold" before I set out for Matanuska. Matanus-ka. For the snows of midwinter toon buried the ruins of our lost school. The storms along Alaska's one stretch of railway also brought slides and broken snowsheds enough to block the line and keep trains Irom moving for over a week. That cloud had the silver lining of giving me a chance to make over ny ni-ndescript wardrobe, to which Dig-herted Katie added a sweater at Scotrn wool and a pair of woli- |
