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Show Wie Lamp Vallev BY ARTHUR STRINGER 1 wu - .7" J Carol Coburn, Alaska-born daughter or a "bush rat" who died with an un 1 proved mining claim, returns North to teach school. Sidney Lander, mining engineer, rescues her aboard ship from Annoyances of Eric (the Red) Ericson. THE STORY SO FAR Lander Is engaged to Barbara Trumbull, Trum-bull, whose father is fighting Coburn's claim. Lander breaks with Trumbull and moves to Sock-Eye Schlupp's shack. Carol gets a school Job at Matanuska, but there Is no schoolhouse, and her INSTALLMENT VIII residence la a shack. Barbara vliits her one day while she Is busy cleaning up the place. She slights Carol nd finally tells her It is no use trying to get Sidney away. "Then what are you worrying about?" asks Carol. with that old firearm swinging against my hip. When Sam Bryson first told me he had a girl in need of schooling I pictured a frail and frostbitten child in pigtails. But Salaria Bryson universally spoken of as "S'lary" turned out to be something quite different. I found myself confronted by a dusky and wide-shouldered Boadicea who towered several inches above me. She wore her hair close-cropped, dressed like a man, and could swear like a trooper. She was hard-muscled and strongly-knit and could swing an ax or drive a team or carry a deer carcass over her shoulder. She proved herself fonder of hunting, in fact, than she was of housework. And taken all in all she seemed about the most perfect per-fect specimen of physical womanhood woman-hood I ever clapped eyes on. Her attitude toward me as a chalk-wrangler was openly hostile, until she discovered I was Alaska born and had once lived in a hill camp. She was willing, after that, to overlook my unhappy dower of book learning. But there remained something pathetic about S'lary. She had missed so much of life, without quite knowing it. She was' as strong as an ox and as tireless as a sleigh husky and as fearless, in one way, as a wildcat. She knew her woodcraft and could keep herself alive, I suppose, in any corner cor-ner of Alaska. But she was afraid of that side of life which a schoolteacher school-teacher stands for. The sweat came out on her face when I gave her a list of third-grade words to spell. S'lary, however, was seldom meek. She shared her father's resentment re-sentment against the outsider in general and all invaders of the valley val-ley in particular. And certain newcomers, new-comers, she intimated, would live longer if they talked less about that raft of broken-winded cheechakos I 1 "About the change in Sidney," was the unexpectedly frank response. re-sponse. "He's a man of his word. And he's a good mining engineer. Yet he's willing to throw up his chances by hanging about this Godforsaken God-forsaken valley." I resented that slur on the land of my adoption just as I resented the implications behind it. "I have no intention," I said, "of interfering with Sidney Lander's career. ca-reer. I happen to have a career of my own to look after." "I understand you're to be a teacher teach-er here," she said with a commiserative commiser-ative small smile. "I am," I replied. "And my work will keep me too busy to think of wrecking other people's happiness." , "May I tell Sidney that?" she asked as she buttoned her queenly cloak of mink. "Of course," I retorted with more vigor than I had intended. She stood silent a moment, and I S could see the hardness go out of her i eyes. "Thanks," she said, rather quietly- Before I knew it, in fact, I found myself taking the hand which she held out to me. CHAPTER IX fc It didn't come to me as a surprise sur-prise when I learned that Sidney Lander was no longer concerned with the management of the Willow Creek Mine. What perplexed me , , was the discovery that he didn't go d to Seward when Barbara Trumbull 1 sailed for the States. But it wasn't mine to question why. All I cared to remember was i that, for reasons entirely his own, he somewhat sedulously kept his trail from crossing mine. So, in that interim of suspended action, I lost myself in action enough of my own. I trimmed the wick of the lamp of learning and came a little closer to my valley neighbors. neigh-bors. And even Sam Bryson, I began be-gan to feel, was no longer an open enemy. He thawed out sufficiently around the edges to come and inspect in-spect my shack and declare the school board would have to keep me in firewood. One Sunday, as I was shoveling the drifts from my doorstep, Sock-Eye Sock-Eye arrived with a home-manufactured hand sleigh, which same, he dourly explained, would make it easier eas-ier for me to mush supplies from the village. On that sleigh, however, howev-er, reposed a war-scarred old rifle and an equally worn revolver, to say nothing of a Morris chair which he had fashioned with his own hands and upholstered with the hide of a moose brought -down by his own trusty forty-five. When he took me out to practice marksmanship on the side hill back of the shack, the rifle made my shoulder sore and the six-gun did things to my wrist. But I soon found I could hit a spruce plank vat twenty paces. Sock-Eye, watch-J watch-J ing me, eventually admitted I han-' han-' died a shooting iron like an old-j old-j timer. "I'll bet it was your pappy first showed you how t' handle them peace-makers," he chucklingly observed. ob-served. "It was," I admitted as I took a final pot shot and made the bark fly from a hemlock trunk. "Then he gave you eddication that meant something," conceded Sock-Eye. Sock-Eye. "I've seen a heap o' changes in this cockeyed country. But she's still raw around the edges. And there's times when slappin' leather's still the short cut t' a square deal." My teaching was an odd sort of teaching. For morning by morning, in parka and mukluks, I set out for one or another of the lonely homesteads, home-steads, and there, beside a stove crackling with spruce wood and birch, I held my classes, sometimes with the Monday's washing or the Tuesday's ironing being done on the other side of the room, sometimes with the sourdough sponge being worked into loaves on the far end of the table at which my solemn-eyed little scholars were at work with paper and pencils. I was asked, as a rule, to have dinner with the family. fam-ily. Sometimes, when I started for home, I'd be given a jar of blueberry blue-berry jam or a bowl of sauerkraut, sometimes even a slab of deer meat. But very few of them, I found, were able to be givers. Most of them were shockingly destitute. t did considerably more than teach tne three R's and correct papers and pass out assignments. Sometimes I looked after a baby or two, and took the bread out of the oven, and airily prescribed for an earache or frostbite, frost-bite, and tried my hand at cutting a 1 pupil's hair, and attached much-i much-i -eedcd buttons and even more ur-' ur-' gently needed patches to the gar-I gar-I ments of my not ungrateful little scholars. They no longer laughed at I Sock-Eye's old revolver, which I carried in a belt holster around my J waist and from which I derived a somewhat foolish sense of protection. protec-tion. For I felt more self-reliant. with a skillet and ax and hacked their homes out o' the wilderness. They cleared their own land and built their own wickyups and didn't ask an agent in brass buttons t' slice their sowbelly for 'em." It was at this point I loosed an arrow in the dark. "Then you don't approve of Sidney Sid-ney Lander?" Salaria's smoldering eyes grew perceptibly softer. "He don't approve o' me," she fipally proclaimed. "He goes dumb ev'ry time I git within .rifle-range o' Sock-Eye's shack." ( CHAPTER X Sock-Eye appeared at my door and presented me with a bearskin, fresh off the stretching frame. I suspected this was merely an excuse for a man-to-man talk. Sid Lander, my caller casually explained, had just blown in after a week out on the traa As I had no answer for that announcement Sock-Eye sat morosely and meditatively medi-tatively chewing his cud. "I reckon you think quite a lot o' Sid?" he finally ventured. I felt the need of picking my way with care. "He was very kind to me once," I acknowledged. "There's too many females think a lot o' that hombre," proclaimed my saturnine old friend. "It's sure get-tin' get-tin' him roped and hog-tied before his time." "What's the trouble?" I asked with an effort at lightness. "The immejit trouble is that outlaw out-law offspring of of Sam Bryson's," he announced. "S'lary's hit so hard she ain't got no shame left. She's borrowin' readin' books from him and carryin' home his socks t' darn. And that ain't good for no hombre who has obligations elsewhere." "What obligations?" I inquired. "I reckon he's told you he's goin' t' marry Big John Trumbull's daughter?" daugh-ter?" I could feel the bearlike old eyes studying my face. "Yes, he told me that," I said as quietly as I could. I couldn't forget what Sock-Eye had said when I was giving Sam Bryson's daughter her next lesson. She surprised me by her new determination de-termination "to better herself." She at last seemed willing to' improve her mind. She even asked me about cosmetics cos-metics and how they were used, though those rich and ruddy lips of hers were in need of no chemical kalsomining. I could see a faraway look come into her eye. "D' you ever git a sniff o' Sid Lander after he's had a shave?" she hungrily inquired. "He smells better 'n that drugstore down t' Anchorage. An-chorage. But what I can't figger out is why he doubles up with an ol' has-been like Sock-Eye Schlupp, why he's willin' to batch it with a rundown run-down bush-rat when he ought t' have a woman doin' a woman's work for him." "Have you ever told him so?" I asked. Salaria's wide shoulders drooped a little. "It wouldn't do no good," she listlessly proclaimed. "He ain't interested in-terested in females that-away." "But he's a man," I reminded her. "I s'pose he is," Salaria retorted with a heightening flame of indignation. indigna-tion. "But I'll bet my bottom dollar dol-lar that lousy four-flushing pie-eatin' Trumbull blonde back in the States is sourin' that hombre on women for life. I seen 'em when she flew in here. And he wasn't turnin' no handsprings hand-springs when she hunted him up." As I stood staring into Salaria's flashing eyes I began to realize that she was of the same statuesque mold as Lander. She had the same love for open trails. She had the same ruggedness of body and the same wide jaw and the same brown tone to her skin. And I fell to won-dering. won-dering. with a ghostly twinge of envy, en-vy, if there mightn't eventually be some kinship of spirit between them. "I'll respect your secret, Salaria," 1 said with what dignity I could command. "Secret? It ain't no secret," was the prompt and primitive reply "Even ol' Sock-Eye knows Sid Lander Lan-der could do what he likes with me. And the fire-eatin' ol' killer piped up and said he'd put a bullet through any short-horn female who made a pass at that shack-pard o' his." "What's Sock-Eye saving hin-for?" hin-for?" I found myself questioning. "For that sap-headed Trumbul blonde that's got him hog-tied, 1 s'pose." was the sadly intoned an swer. "He's willin' t' play ball wit! her even after her yellow-belliec old man came and bought up.tru Happy Day outfit jus' t' give Sid hi.-walkin' hi.-walkin' ticket and grind his nose h the dirt." I sat down to think this over (To r,E coTicr.r The sweat came out on her face. the government was shipping up north in the spring. They were to be families, rumor had it, taken off relief in the Middle West, hard-working farmers who had failed in their old homes and were looking for a new Land of Hope. "But if they was failures there," contended Salaria, "they'll sure fail here. And all they'D do, after the first freeze-up, is amble out and give the valley a bad name." "But they're to bring their women wom-en and children," I pointed out, "and the government is to stand behind them and build their houses and supply them with seed and stock." I could see Salaria's eyes flash. "And it's a hell of a lot the gov-er'ment gov-er'ment did for the old-timer," she exploded. "They fixed it so we couldn't even land a salmon or kill a deer without havin' a warden at our heels. . They put the bush-rat out o' business by playin' into the hands o' the big minin' companies. They kept us with the Indjins and Eskimos and squealed like a stuck pig when we asked for a school allowance. al-lowance. And they wouldn't even build a road for us." "Perhaps," I suggested, "they'll bring along some of the things we seem to need." "What t' hell do we need we ain't got now?" 'as Salaria's prompt challenge. I meekly suggested that hospitals and schools and churches and good roads and telephones and a radio station might help a little. Salaria's smoldering eyes viewed me askance. "I reckon you've been powwowin' with that long-legged college dood who's dennin' up with ol' Sock-Eye for the winter. He sure burns my pappy up hot-airin' about what's go-in' go-in' to happOn to this valley. But any silk-shirt swamp-drainer needn't look for too many lovin' words from the old-timers who came in here I |
