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Show Lamp Vaflev by Arthur Stringer .7v 7- W. N. U. Service Sidney Lander. min,. . - .. THE ST0RV 50 FA Sidney Lander, mining engineer. U tngaged to Barbara Trumbull, but d-jjarently d-jjarently h.. (.i,en ta lov. with C.roi Cobum. Maunuska .chool teacher. Sa-larla Sa-larla Bry.on. one of her pupils, a big out-door girl. 1, also In love wlth PL - .... Larola father died In Alaska with an unproven claim which Trumbull Is contesting. con-testing. Lander quits his employ, becomes be-comes field manager for the Matanuska Valley project. Sock-Eye Schlupp. an old sourdough, and others, are skeptical of INSTALLMENT XIV the project's success. Eric (the Bed) Ericson has been stirring discord among the workers. At last, too. a school Is put up. Salaria discusses Sidney Sid-ney with Carol. Salaria has no idea Carol Is Interested In him. comers were both harder to manage and more exacting in their demands. They arrived well fed and well clothed, their lunch-boxes stuffed with Commissary food. They were eyed with envy by the native-born children, who probably saw an orange or-ange only at Christmas. But these wards of Uncle Sam came carrying carry-ing two or three oranges, day by day. Sometimes they had grapefruit and chocolate bars and store cake. Since the supply proved unlimited, they liked to have a pitched battle with those comestibles. After a final overreckless barrage of oranges I had to make it a rule that no Project child was to bring more than one orange into the classroom. class-room. It gave me an unpleasant feeling just under the fifth rib to see poor little Olie Eckstrom rummaging rum-maging through that waste, for a half-eaten orange or two, to carry home to his sister Frieda, who couldn't come to school until her mother was able to get to Anchorage Anchor-age to buy her a pair of shoes. I began to realize that you can hurt people by too much help. I was singing as I went to the road with my water pail one morn- led me over to his truck, saying he'd be glad to drop me at my school door. "But you can't tell how this will turn out," I argued, "and if it's going go-ing to be dangerous I want to be around." "That's just when I don't want you around," he said. "You've had trouble enough in this valley." "But it may mean danger for you," I persisted. Our glances locked, for a moment, mo-ment, and I could see a warmer light well up in his eyes. His brief laugh was both cool and self-confident. But when we stopped at Palmer and he had a quiet look over the towering supply piles along the siding sid-ing there his face took on a new seriousness. se-riousness. For hidden under a layer lay-er of empty hemp bales, between two piles of pine flooring, he found a five-gallon can of gasoline. The contents con-tents of this can he quietly emptied emp-tied into his truck tank. Then, after aft-er a moment's thought, he filled 'the can with water. Making sure his movements were unobserved, he restored re-stored the cap to the can and restored re-stored the can to its hiding place under the heme bales. one sam u without enthusiasm And I, In turn, had my suspl-c suspl-c tons. She was hungering, not unlike un-like myself, for something beyond the knowledge that comes out of books. "Love is never wasted," I said reaching for solid ground in that copybook maxim. Salaria's glowering eyes studied my face. 'Then why," she demanded, "does a silk-wearin' and washed-out she-cat she-cat who ain't got the guts f stick t' his side tie up a real man like Sid Lander? Why should she harpoon har-poon him for life and then back-trail f the States and reckon he's safe among us walrus-eaters?" I gravely considered that double-barreled double-barreled question. "I suppose it's because he's a man of honor," I finally affirmed. Salaria crossed to the door and looked out at the towering peaks of the Talkeetnas. "Honor wouldn't cut much ice," she said over her shoulder, "if I was the blubber-eater he was pick-in' pick-in' out. If he wanted a woman around his wickyup as much as he wants this cock-eyed colony on the map," she abandonedly proclaimed, "he'd damned soon see my shoe-packs shoe-packs under his bunk rail!" I kept telling myself, after that talk with Salaria, that there was something dignifying in the job of teaching, in molding the minds of the young, in bringing light into the dark places of the world. I was the lamp in the valley. But the lamp, plainly, stood in need of some new oil. And full as my days were, I'd a feeling that something important in life was forever for-ever slipping around the corner before be-fore I could quite catch up with it. Yet all I could do, I argued with myself, was to tighten my belt and carry on. I'd no intention of turning into a grumbler. These two hundred families, I maintained, would eventually even-tually do for Alaska what the covered cov-ered wagoners did for the Coast States, seventy long years ago. Or even what the Pilgrim Fathers did for New England. Yet construction lagged because wrong material had been sent in and the workers wouldn't work. Some of the misfits and troublemakers trouble-makers had already been sent back to the States, to spread the news of the colony's collapse. Some of the others imposed on the Commissary and wolfed more than their share of the supplies. Some growled in secret se-cret and some drew up a daily round-robin of complaints. Others went to Wasilla and got drunk. And the less illiterate of the women-folk deplored the rawness of the country coun-try that had betrayed them. In a city of tents, where privacy was unknown, I saw things and heard things that at first touched me with horror: love-making with all the candor of the kennel, family-fights family-fights echoing through thin walls of canvas, the moans of child-birth mixed with the strains of a mouth-organ, mouth-organ, a loose woman with a canine ca-nine cluster of idlers about her, stripped men bathing openly in wash-tubs, mothers in sunny corners cor-ners combing lice from their children's chil-dren's hair, girls jeered at as they slipped into an unscreened outhouse, stained sheets and flimsy underwear flapping on clotheslines, farm-stock surrendering to the biologic urge under one's very nose, profanity and praying side by side, grossness and greediness, empty cans and offal, crying babies and thrumming banjos. ban-jos. It was all honest and open enough. It was too open, from Betsy Sebeck unbuttoning her waist and giving her big breast to a crying baby with a dozen males watching the operation, to the bed-pots which, in a land without plumbing, had to be emptied emp-tied in the light of day. But that reversion re-version to the primitive, I told Katie, produced both a bluntness of address and a coarseness of fiber. And women, I contended, felt it most. Katie didn't agree with me. She said modern woman had got a damned sight too refined for this world, that it did her good to get out on the frontier where life could fling her back to first principles. "We're here," said Katie, for just one end: to work and repro- dU"That," I retorted, "leaves us no better than animals." "Well that's what we are, Katie Ka-tie affirmed, "only the fripperies make us forget it." But surely civilization s brought us something worth keeping," I suggested. sug-gested. Katie laughed. We're not as civilized as you imagine im-agine " she said as she buttoned her mannish-looking leather coat. You'll find that out when your baby's ba-by's pulling at your breast" A touch of unrest. I noticed, extended ex-tended even to my pupils. They could boast of a big yellow motor bus to carry them to the school door every morn.ng. But only a springing sprin-ging of them came. Compared with he children of the old-timers the stolid little Scandinavians and Finns nd native Alaskans who were in-"-d to hardship the ARC new- My pupils didn't get the attention they should have that day. There was many a flicker, before the afternoon aft-ernoon wore away, in the lamp of learning. I was still in my classroom, after the big yellow bus had carried away the last of the children, when Sock-Eye Sock-Eye appeared in the doorway. "I ain't much of a hand at g'og-raphy," g'og-raphy," he said as his bearlike eyes blinked up at my wall map, "but I've got me a homemade chart here I'm needin' a mess 0' help on." He produced a soiled and rumpled rum-pled sheet of paper diversified with many pencil-markings and placed it on the desk top in front of me. "What's this?" I asked, trying in vain to read some meaning into the roughly penciled lines. "That," said Sock-Eye, "is a map o' Klondike Coburn's claim on the Chakitana as I kin best work it out. That's the mine, remember, that ought f be yourn." "John Trumbull says it shouldn't," I reminded him. "And Sid Lander says it does," retorted Sock-Eye. "But I ain't go-in' go-in' into that now, girlie. What I want t' check up on is where them location stakes o' your old pappy ought to stand." His stubby finger pointed to a marking on the map. "Here's the Chakitana, and it ought t' be about here the Big Squaw comes in. But I can't figger out which side 0' that crick the Trumbull Trum-bull outfit is anchored to." "I'm afraid I can't help you much," I said. "You see, Sock-Eye, Sock-Eye, I've never been there." "Then why ain't you there now?" demanded the old fire-eater. "Because I'm needed here in the valley," I answered. "And Sidney Lander's supposed to be looking after aft-er my claim." "Yes," snapped Sock-Eye, "fuss-in' "fuss-in' round with these pie-eatin' pikers and waitin' for a bunch of law sharks t' put in the final word. But court rulin's don't git you nowhere, back on the cricks." I sat looking at Sock-Eye until he shifted a little uneasily under my gaze. I was thinking, as I studied his seamed old face, that he was so misplaced in time that he was pathetic. pa-thetic. He impressed me, for all his bristlings of belligerency, as childishly helpless before the newer forces crowding in on his trail. He made me think of a cumbersomely armored turtle, overconfident of his safety as he ambles along a motor highway between the flashing wheels of change that could so easily crush him. "What's right or wrong," I finally final-ly observed, "isn't decided by gunpowder." gun-powder." Sock-Eye's laugh was brief and raucous. "More'n once, girlie, I've seen it blow a short cut t' the seat 0' justice," jus-tice," he said as he patted the worn leather of his gun holster. "And this valley wouldn't be where she is if she could rouse up a leather-slapper leather-slapper or two t' straighten her out." The desolate old figure took a bite of plug tobacco, chewed vigorously, and spat into the stove front. "Filled with a mess o' women and gas cars that ain't needed here." "The trouble with you," I suggested, sug-gested, "is that you've lived too long alone." Sock-Eye looked at me with the kingly scorn of the unmated male. "Because I never got me a woman?" wom-an?" he demanded. "If you want to put it that way," 1 acceded. Still again Sock-Eye spat adroitly into the stove front. "I ain't had trade nor truck with 'em for forty odd years," he averred. "And I guess I'll git along without 'em to the last roun.iup. No, ma'am. I ain't succumbed f the plumb loco idee a shack ain't a home unless there's a female i-issin' round the dough-crock." "What can you do?" 1 asked. Sock-Eye chuckJed in his .edthery old throat. (TO BE CUNT1M F.DI "Why avoid me, Moon of my Delight?" ing. And as I turned I came face to face with Eric the Red. "Why avoid me, Moon of my Delight?" De-light?" he said with his habitual and hateful mockery. "Why shouldn't I?" I asked. I compelled myself to meet his gaze. For along the road I could see the approaching figure of Olie Eckstrom, swinging his tin milk pail as he whistled to the tree tops. There was something maddening about the cool assurance of Eric-son's Eric-son's smile. "Why should you, sweet lady, when it's written in the stars we're to come together?" His laugh was both brief and unpleasant. "I'm still awaiting that happy hour. And when it arrives I don't intend to be the forgotten man." I made no response to that Instead, In-stead, I turned and called to Olie, who quickened his pace as he caught sight of me. My little Swedish friend was no Goliath, but even his diminutive diminu-tive figure meant an acceptable ally along that lonely road. Ericson, watching that figure in bibbed overalls, essayed an ironic gesture of farewell and moved on down the road. " 'E ban a bad man," Olie announced an-nounced with quiet conviction. "Why do you say that?" I asked. Olie's answer, when he gave his reasons, was in English both broken and bewildering. But in the end it rather took my breath away. For j from the slow-tongued Swede boy I gathered that he had been in the habit of collecting building blocks for his sister Frieda, small board ends that could be picked up between be-tween the lumber piles along the siding track. The workmen there were apt to treat him roughly and drive him away with a cuff and a kick. So it was natural, the night before, that he should promptly bide away when he heard voices. But he was able to gather the gist of the talk among those transient soreheads. sore-heads. And their plan, apparently, was to stage a demonstration in front of the Commissary (where a curb had been put on the open-handed distribution of Federal supplies) and while the officials were busy with that riot Ericson and his followers fol-lowers were to start a fire, a purely accidental fire, in the great piles of timber and equipment that lined the railway track. CHAPTER XVIII Lander listened, with a quiet enough eye, as 1 told him what I could of Olie's story. Instead of venturing any comment on the situation he asked me if John Trumbull had been in touch with me during the last few days. When I informed him to the contrary he |