The Alaskan (5 page)

The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm, grinning at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded face. But in Alan's there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of day and of sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but something was missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met the other's smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to the truth.

Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan's face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it inspired by the captain of theNome , as Alan had given him reason to believe. There was more than grimness in the other's face, and a strange sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed the straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly undulating surface of the sea.

At last he said, "If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboardout there ," and he pointed.

Alan stood up.

"But she wouldn't be there now," Olaf added.

In his heart he believed she was, straight down-at the bottom. He turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the mountains was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A quarter of an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the rocks and timber that came down close to the sea.

"That's McCormick's," he said.

Alan made no answer. Through Olaf's binoculars he picked out the Scotchman's cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow water.

They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly. Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man. They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard theNome and what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if he found the girl's body.

To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable he would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf's face McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the most precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.

Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when she heard what had happened aboard theNome . Alan left the three together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed-that this girl whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end of the world to Alan Holt.

For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light shore-launch. He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence, and with Scotch canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen cabins he left details of the drowning and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the finding of the body, so that twenty men and boys and half as many women were seeking before nightfall.

"And remember," Sandy told each of them, "the chances are she'll wash ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes ashore at all."

In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.

Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy's wife were in the cabin when he returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others had been. He knew. The woman's eyes told him, the almost mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of Mary Standish.

Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children-a lot of them. Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman's face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.

"We're building a new cabin," he said, "and there's two rooms in it specially for kids."

There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf's eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt, should think of such a matter at all.

The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with Olaf at the wheel of theNorden . It was sunset when they returned, and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and the treachery of them.

Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days-probably weeks-if it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea. That was what he called it-"a peaceful resting-place"-and in his earnestness to soothe another's grief he blundered still more deeply into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.

Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.

"You-you didn't find her?" she asked.

"No." His voice was tired and a little old. "Do you think I shall ever find her?"

"Not as you have expected," she answered quietly. "She will never come like that." She seemed to be making an effort. "You-you would give a great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?"

Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips and nodded.

"Of course. Everything I possess."

"You-you-loved her-"

Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the probing did not sting him; it was not a woman's curiosity that inspired them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only for himself, but for someone else-aloud.

"Yes, I did."

The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick's face and eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish's belongings, and gave it to Sandy's wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to speak in a businesslike way.

"Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you don't find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day." It seemed hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: "I don't think I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at Cordova, and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found. And if you do find her, you will look after her yourself, won't you, Mrs. McCormick?"

Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by. Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down to the beach.

The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of stars, when theNorden's shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full. But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away, that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that lay beneath the mountains.

* * *

The physical sign of strain in Stampede's face, and the stolid effort he was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion's promised disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation and relief. What he had passed through recently had burned out of him a certain demand upon human ethics which had been almost callous in its insistence, and while he believed that something very real and very stern in the way of necessity had driven Mary Standish north, he was now anxious to be given the privilege of gripping with any force of circumstance that had turned against her. He wanted to know the truth, yet he had dreaded the moment when the girl herself must tell it to him, and the fact that Stampede had in some way discovered this truth, and was about to make disclosure of it, was a tremendous lightening of the situation.

"Go on," he said at last. "What do you know about Mary Standish?"

Stampede leaned over the table, a gleam of distress in his eyes. "It's rotten. I know it. A man who backslides on a woman the way I'm goin' to oughta be shot, and if it was anything else-anything-I'd keep it to myself. But you've got to know. And you can't understand just how rotten it is, either; you haven't ridden in a coach with her during a storm that was blowing the Pacific outa bed, an' you haven't hit the trail with her all the way from Chitina to the Range as I did. If you'd done that, Alan, you'd feel like killing a man who said anything against her."

"I'm not inquiring into your personal affairs," reminded Alan. "It's your own business."

"That's the trouble," protested Stampede. "It's not my business. It's yours. If I'd guessed the truth before we hit the Range, everything would have been different. I'd have rid myself of her some way. But I didn't find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok's music machine to their cabin. I've been trying to make up my mind what to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States, a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody's bunco pigeon chased by the police-almost anything-we could forgive her. Even if she'd shot up somebody-" He made a gesture of despair. "But she didn't. She's worse than that!"