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Show Lamp &Vafe BY ARTHUR STRINGER JL W. N, U. Service THE STORY SO FAB She Is disappointed that he is Sidney Sid-ney Lander and he Is surprised in turn to learn her name. He is working for the Trumbull company which is contesting contest-ing her father's claim. He is engaged to Trumbull's daughter. INSTALLMENT III Carol Coburn. Alaska born, is returning re-turning north to teach in an Indian school. Aboard ship, she is annoyed by Eric (the Red) Ericson. an agitator. She Is rescued by a young engineer. Miss Teetzel, head of the Indian school, resents Carol's youth. Carol gets a letter from Lander asking for her father's fa-ther's documents and declaring "The Trumbull outfit and I are parting company." rection of Alaska. And next spring they're countin' on plantin' an army o' pie-eaters on the valley tundra and watchin' 'em git rich growin' spinach for themselves." He shifted his cud and brushed aside the mittened hand with which Katie was semaphoring for silence. "This ain't no place for college doods," he doggedly pursued. "I got one o' them .know-it-all engineers engi-neers over V my shack right now. He kin talk big about g'ology and machine-minin', but he could no more take a tom-rocker back in the hills and wash out a poke o' dust than I could pilot one o' them airplanes air-planes that's stampedin' our good ol' brand o' husky-dogs off the trails of Alaska." Katie, very plainly, could stand for no more. "That's all very interesting," she bellowed. "But we're here to find an Indian baby. And if you can help us in our search I'd rather like to know it." The challenge in Katie's voice brought a keener look of animosity from the bewhiskered old face. "I was a-comin' to that, lady, if you'll only keep your shirt on." And stiD again he spat with delibera- "Carol Koyukuk Coburn," I said, feeling a little closer to him. "Sure it was, girlie," said my new-found friend. "Your pappy 'd been pannin' pay dirt along the Koyukuk Koy-ukuk and held he was handin' luck on t' you with that name." Sock-Eye Sock-Eye spat luxuriously, indicated the right trail fork for Katie to take, and turned back to me. "But his own luck didn't hold out. It sure didn't." Still again Sock-Eye spat. "That was a dirty deal they gave him over on the Chakitana." "He died there," I said, with reproving re-proving quietness in my tone. "And died flghtin' for his rights, tryin' to push through t' the Record Office to git his patent from bein' canceled on him. But he was buck-in' buck-in' something too big for him. Seems like you got t' be a college g'ologist and a law sharp before you can stake 'a claim in this country nowadays." "Then somebody else should be keeping up the fight," I said with a sort of she-wolf fierceness that brought the deep-set old eyes back to a study of my face. " 'Tain't a fight where a pinfeath-er pinfeath-er cluck like you'd have a look-in," observed Sock-Eye Schlupp. He spat wide into the fringing spruce. "And nothin' much is gained by bellyach-in' bellyach-in' over water that's gone down the flume, girlie. You should be satisfied satis-fied Klondike sent you outside f git eddicated proper." "Perhaps I'm not," I said, embittered em-bittered by a sense of relapse in the face of some old loyalty. "Then what're you set on doin' with yourself?" my companion coolly cool-ly inquired. I told him, briefly, about my work at Toklutna. But it didn't impress him much. "You're sure wastin' your time on them no-account Nitchies," he averred. His morose eye ranged along the far-off mountain peaks. "Same as I'm wastin' my time in this valley, batchin' it in a ten-by-twelve wickyup and bakin' my own sourdough. I've got me a minin' claim up between the Little Squaw and the Goldstream where the mother moth-er lode runs as thick as your leg and once I get back there and open her up she's sure goin' t' be a second El Dorado." I could feel Katie's elbow prod my ribs. "They all say that," she muttered. I remembered that she was right. I'd seen them broken and wasted from bad diet, and arthritic from bad teeth and burnt out with bad whisky; but still nursing their dream of some lucky strike that was going to make them millionaires overnight. And in it, I felt, lay both the curse and the glory of all Alaska. "Here we be," cried Sock-Eye as we rounded a trail bend and rolled up in front of a log shack with a pair of weather-bleached moose horns over the door. The light wasn't strong in the shadowy warm room. But I could make out a dog, lying beside the stove, and a man in his shirt-sleeves, stooping over a blanket-lined basket without a handle. I stared at that man, rather stupidly. stu-pidly. Then I looked back at the dog, in an effort to verify the incredible. in-credible. The man stooping over the blanket-lined basket was Sidney Lander. I could feel my heart beating a little faster as I stood staring at him. I could see Katie O'ConneU's eyes widen as she inspected the nursing flask he'd made out of what looked suspiciously like a beer bottle bot-tle with a glove ringer tied over its end. It wasn't working right, apparently, ap-parently, from the thin wails of protest pro-test that came from the basket. "Leave this to me," said the nurse as she reached for her hand-bag. Sidney Lander, thus elbowed aside, stood watching the expeditious expedi-tious hands that betrayed none of the hesitations marking his own clumsy movements. When the dog lifted his puinted nose and rubbed it in a friendly way against my knee his owner raised his eyes and stared straight into my face. He saw. for the first time, just who it was under that worn old parka. But he didn't speak and he didn't smile. He merely stood there, with wonder in his eyes. "I didn't expect this," he said as Sock-Eye Schlupp busied himself stoking the stove. "I was on my way down to Toklutna to find out why you hadn't much faith in me." "In what did. I fail you?" I questioned, ques-tioned, a little resentful of his power to dampen or quicken my spirits. "I asked for the data and documents docu-ments to back up your Chakitana claim," he reminded me. "I don't happen to have any documents, docu-ments, as yet," I told him. "But even if I had, why should they go to you?" "I wanted to lay them before John Trumbull," replied Lander, puzzling me by the grimness of his jaw-line. "He's the big smoke in the Chakitana Chaki-tana Development Company." "But also your boss," I said. "I'm afraid he won't be for long," was Lander's unexpectedly embittered embit-tered reply. 'Why not?" I inquired. (TO BE CONTINUED) CHAPTER III I couldn't send documents which I didn't possess on to Sidney Lander. And I couldn't get any response to my repeated letters to the high-and-mighty Record Office officials at Juneau. Ju-neau. I had to wait, as women so often have to do in this world. Summer, up here under the shadow shad-ow of the pole, seemed a very short season. I'd been twice to Anchorage, Anchor-age, to explore the wooden-fronted shops and buy things to cover my nakedness and bring home an armful arm-ful of month-old magazines. And through it all, as the voice over our tinny radio announced, "Time narches on." For the sun was swinging lower and lower and the birch leaves were turning and the wild fowl heading south. The fireweed was red on the hillsides and I once more faced the familiar old task of stoking a drum stove with spruce logs. There was a sheeting of ice on the trail pools in the morning and we breakfasted by lamplight. Doctor Ruddock brought Katie O'Connell seven wild ducks which he'd shot on the Inlet, explaining that the six mallards were for the staff, and the spoonbill for the principaL With the coming of the first untimely snowfall, in fact, I'd taken to whipcord riding breeches and invested in a pair of pacs, high boots made of rubber, with generous enough foot room to allow for at least two pairs of woolen wool-en socks. Katie, when she saw me thus attired, proclaimed that I once more looked like an old-timer. Then she went over her combination rifle and shotgun, which she called a "game-getter," and asked if I'd swing in with her on a moose hunt across the Inlet. But instead of a moose hunt we went on a baby hunt. For Katie had been right about her vanished papoose. pa-poose. Word came that our poor little lit-tle redskinned Oedipus had been found abandoned in a poplar grove east of Wasilla. Doctor Ruddock, who brought the news to Toklutna, said there was a passable trail through the hills and delegated Katie Ka-tie and me to motor over to Mata-nuska Mata-nuska Valley and bring the outcast back. Katie, who would have started out for Timbuctoo at a word from that doctor of hers, lost no time. It wasn't an entirely dignified departure, depar-ture, for it took place in the school's old wood-toting motor truck. By noon the next day we won through to the Matanuska River, where we were told to push on eastward east-ward along the valley toward what was called the Butte. High up in' the hills, as we went, I could see mountain sheep, looking like little clouds anchored to the rock ledges. Then Katie snorted aloud. For at a turn in the road we came face to face with a bewhiskered old-timer with a holstered hunting knife and a six-gun swinging at his hip, to say nothing of a long-barreled rifle in the crook of his arm. He looked, for some reason, like a picture out of the past. The light in his saturnine sat-urnine old eye was none too kindly as he studied us and then inspected our mud-covered truck. "Them contraptions," he mordant-ly mordant-ly announced, "weren't built for North Country mushin', no more'n women were." Katie, after agreeing with him, made an effort to explain our mission mis-sion there. The rugged and dsfiant old figure assailed the trail ruts with a barrage of tobacco-juice shrapnel. "Injuns like that ought t' be shot. And in the good old days," he said as he slapped his six-gun, "I'd a done it on sight." He spat again. "That's what's the matter with this whole gol-darned country. She's gone soft on us. And 'stead o' spoon feedin' them copper-bellied sons o' she-dogs she should be puttin' a bounty on their scalps." And still again he spat. "That's what's spil-in' spil-in' this ol' territory. Too much gov-er'ment. gov-er'ment. I've trapped her and prospected pros-pected her from Keewalki down f Wrangel. And in the ol' days " "We're from the Toklutna Mission," Mis-sion," interrupted Katie, "on an emergency case." "So I savvied," was the unhurried unhur-ried response. "But in the ol' days, as I was sayin', we could run our own camp. But now it's your Uncle Sam who steps in and runs us same as he runs the Injins. He makes a raft o' fool minin' laws, slaps a closed season on beaver, and gits a game warden after us if we shoot a lady-caribou t' keep body and soul together. He tells us t' settle down and grow turnips. But once we clear an acre or two he claims we ain't provin' her up right and puts her back in the public domain." The old-timer, when he spat again, was able to convert the movement into a sweeping gesture of repudiation. repudia-tion. "And right now a thicvin' lot o' politicians is set on turnin' this valley val-ley into a truck garden for a bunch o' broken-down corn-rustlers on relief. re-lief. They've got their survey men over there, markin' out road lines and drivin' stakes and claimin' they're pavin' the way for the resur- "I was a-comin' to that, lady, if you'U only keep your shirt on." tion. "Your Injin baby's over there in my wickyup." "It's where?" cried Katie, reminding re-minding me of a coiled cobra. The old stranger seemed to relish her bewilderment. "It's over yonder in my wickyup, with that dood engineer tryin' to wet-nurse a little life into it. And I'll be doggoned if he ain't got it squallin' again like a two-year-old." "Take me to it," commanded Katie. Ka-tie. Her lips were grim as she motioned mo-tioned for the old-timer to climb up on the truck. She was, apparently, too exasperated to talk to him. So I did the conversing. "Where," I asked as we rocked along the rough trail, "was the baby found?'" "Why, this long-legged quartz-cracker quartz-cracker came mushin' down through the hills with a sheep dog at his heels, a right smart dog with a nose like a weasel's. Fact is, that hound smelt out something in a poplar grove jus' over the knoll beyont my i clearin'. Kept whimperin' and whin-in' whin-in' and circlin' back there until his owner jus' had t' investigate. And there he rinds an Injin baby wrapped up in a ragged blanket. And then comes stampedin' t' my shack door sayin' we've sure got t' save that little Injin's life. It looked plumb dead t' me. But I'll be gol-darned if that dood didn't get some signs o' life out o' the little varmint, after workin' over her half the night and warmm' her up with hot milk and my last bottle o' hootch. "What's your name?" I asked, primarily to cover Katie's open groan of indignation. "You can call me Sock-Eye," he answered, "Sock-Eye Schlupp. What's yourn?" "It's Coburn," I told him. And the deep-set old eyes studied me with a livelier interest. "You ain't Alaska born?" he ventured. ven-tured. "I was born," I proudly explained, "on the Koyukuk." The man who called himself Sock-Eye Sock-Eye stared at me. "A Coburn from the Koyukuk? You ain't meanin' to tell me you're ol' Klondike Coburn's girl?" I announced that I was. "Why, I mushed many a trail with that leather-necked ol' pan-swizzler," pan-swizzler," was his slightly retarded rejoinder. "And I seen you when you was a squallin" little brat no bigger 'n a minute, over back o' Pickle Crick Camp. Why, it was me helped tote you down t' the sky-pilot sky-pilot at Elk Crossin', when you was christened. And consoomed my share o' the moose-milk after that sky-pilot 'd mushed on t' his next mission post. They called you Carol in them days." |