"Oh, fudge!" she exclaimed, "it won"t. He won"t. I--I--why, I"ll hurry. We"ll be back at East Cape in no time at all."
No wildest nomadic dream could have exceeded the life which the two girls lived in the weeks that followed.
Trailing a reindeer herd over hills and tundra; camping now in a clump of willows by the glistening ice of a stream, now beneath some shelving rock, and now in the open, wind-swept tundra; eating about an open fire, while the smoke curled from the top of the dome of the tepee-like igloo, they reveled in the strange wildness of it all. Here was a people who paid no rent, no taxes, owned no land yet lived always in abundance. In the box beside the sleeping platform were tea and sugar.
Over the fire hung a copper teakettle of ancient design. In the sleeping-box, which was made of long-haired deerskins, were many robes of short-haired deerskin, fawn-skin and Siberian squirrel.
To all these the two girls were more than welcome. Their guide and his daughter did not live alone. A little tribe whose twenty igloos dotted the tundra traveled with him. These people were sometimes in need of simple remedies. For these they were singularly grateful. They, their women and their children, posed untiringly for sketches. But one thing Marian had not taken into consideration; these people seldom visited the village of East Cape. Although she did not know it, their herds were at this time feeding away from this trading metropolis of the Straits region. Each day while she seized every opportunity to sketch and hastened her work as much as she could, found them some ten miles farther from East Cape.
When at last, by signs and such native words as she knew, she indicated to her native friends that she was ready to return to East Cape, they stared at her in astonishment and indicated by a diagram on the snow that they were now at a point three days" journey from that town and that none of them expected to return before the moon was again full.
No amount of gesturing and jabbering could make them understand that it was necessary for the girls to return at once.
"We"ll never get back," Marian mourned in despair, "and it"s all my fault."
"Oh, we"ll make it still," encouraged Lucile, cheerfully. "Probably the Straits are not fully frozen over yet anyway."
However, after a week of inaction, even Lucile lost her cheerful smile.
One morning, after they had reached what appeared to be the final depths of despair, they heard a cry of, "Tomai! Tomai! Tomai," rise in a chorus from among the tents. By this they knew that visitors had arrived. They hurried out to find the villagers grouped about three fur-clad figures standing beside three reindeer hitched to sleds of a strange design.
By a few words and by signs they were made to understand that these people came from a point some two hundred miles farther north, a village on the north coast of Russia.
As ever, eager to look upon some new type, Marian crowded through the throng when, to her immense surprise, the smaller of the three, in reality only a boy, sprang forward, and, kneeling at her feet, kissed the fur fringe of her parka.
This action, so unusual among these natives, struck her dumb. But once he had looked up into her face, she understood all; he was none other than the strange brown boy who had come swimming to them from the sea off the coast of Washington.
She was so surprised and startled at first sight of him that she found herself incapable of action. It seemed to her that she must be seeing a ghost. It appeared entirely incredible that he should be in this out of the way place when they had left him, months before, on a deserted island of Puget Sound.
Her second reaction was one of great joy; here was someone who really owed them a debt of grat.i.tude. Might they not hope to receive a.s.sistance from him in solving the problem of making their way to the sh.o.r.e of Bering Straits?
Springing to his feet, the boy mingled native dialect with badly spoken English in his expression of joy at meeting them again.
At last, when the crowd had gone its way and the girls had invited him to their tent, he told them in the few words of English he had learned since seeing them, and with many clever drawings, the story of his adventures.
He was a native of the north coast of Russia; a far away point where white men"s boats never come. One whaleship had, however, been carried there by the ice-floes. After trading for the natives" furs and ivory, and having found an open channel of water to the east, the captain had kidnaped him and carried him from his home. He had been made the captain"s slave.
So badly was he treated, over-worked, kicked, cuffed and beaten, that when at last he saw land off the coast of Washington, dressed only in his bird-skin suit, he had leaped overboard when no one was looking and had attempted to swim ash.o.r.e.
The ship had pa.s.sed on out of sight. He had been swimming for two hours when the girls rescued him from what was almost sure to have been a watery grave, for he was almost ready to give up hope.
He had been missed from the ship and the captain, fearing the strong arm of the law if he were rescued by others, sent three seamen to search for him along the island. How he had fared with these, the girls knew well enough.
After leaving the camp of the girls he had wandered in the woods and along the beach for two weeks. He had at last been picked up by some honest fishermen who turned him over to the revenue cutter which made Alaskan ports. By the cutter he had been carried to Nome and from there made his way, little by little, by skin-boat, dog-team, and reindeer back to his native village. When he had finished telling his story he turned to Marian and said:
"Idel-bene?" (yours) meaning he would like to hear their story.
Marian was not slow in telling their troubles.
"Me, I will take you back," the boy exclaimed as she finished. "To-day we go."
Two hours later, with sleds loaded, they were discussing two possible trails, one leading down a river where blizzards constantly threatened, the other a valley trail through wolf-infested hills. The latter course was finally chosen, since it promised to be the least dangerous at that time of the year. Then they were away.
CHAPTER IX
A CLOSE CALL
They had made half the distance to the village. Hopes were running high, when something occurred which threatened disaster.
Far up on the side of the hill along the base of which they were traveling, there stood here and there a clump of scraggly, wind-torn fir trees. Suddenly there appeared from out one of these clumps of scrub trees, a gray streak. Another appeared, then another and another, until there were six. They did not pause at the edge of the bush, but rushed with swift, gliding motion down the steep hillside, and their course led them directly toward the little caravan. Six gaunt gray wolves they were, a pack of brigands in the Arctic desert.
Perhaps Marian, who rode on the last sled, saw them first. Perhaps Ad-loo-at, the native, did. At any rate, before she could scream a warning to him he had slapped his reindeer on the back and the sled on which Marian rode shot forward so suddenly that she was nearly thrown from her seat. In driving in the north they do not travel single file, but each deer runs beside the sled of the one before it. The driver who is to occupy the foremost position chooses the best trained deer and attaches two reins to his halter that he may guide him. The drivers who follow use but one rein. By jerking this they can cause the reindeer to go faster, but they have no power to guide him. He simply trots along in his place beside the other sled.
Marian had thought this an admirable arrangement until now. It left her free to admire the sharp triangles of deep purple and light yellow which lay away in the distance, a ma.s.sive mountain range whose tops at times smoked with the snow of an oncoming blizzard. Or, if she tired of this, she might sit and dream of many things as they glided over the snow. But now with a wolf-pack on their trail, with the nearest human habitation many miles away, with her reindeer doing his utmost to keep up with the racing lead-deer, that slender jerk-line with which she could do so little seemed a fragile "life-line" in case of emergency.
With wrinkled brow she watched the pack which now had made its way down the hillside and was following in full cry on their trail. They were not gaining; her heart was cheered by that. At least she did not think they were, yet, yes, there was one, a giant wolf, a third larger than his fellows, outstripping the others. Now he appeared to be ten yards ahead of them, now twenty, now thirty. The rest were only holding the pace of the reindeer, but this one was gaining, there was no mistaking that. She shivered at the thought.
It was a perilous moment, and she felt so helpless. She longed to urge her deer to go faster. She could not do that. He was keeping his place with difficulty. She could only sit and hope that somehow the wolf-leader would tire of the chase.
Even now she was not sorry they had come, but it was unfortunate, she thought, that there were no rifles on their sleds. Ad-loo-at had taken with him only an old-fashioned native lance, a sharp steel point set upon a long wooden handle. That was all the weapon they had and, foot by foot, yard by yard, the gaunt, gray marauder was coming closer.
Marian fancied she could hear the chop-chop of his frothing jaws.
Then, suddenly came catastrophe. With the mad perversity of his kind, her sled deer, suddenly turning from his position beside the sled, whirled about in a wide, sweeping circle which threatened to overturn her sled and leave her alone, defenseless against the hungry pack.
It was a terrible moment. Gripping the ropings of the sled with one hand, she tugged at the jerk-rein with the other.
"It"s no use," she cried in despair; "I can"t turn him."
One glance down the trail turned her heart faint; her sled-deer was now racing almost directly toward the oncoming pack, the gray leader not a hundred yards away.
In desperation, she threw herself from the sled, and, grasping at some dwarf willows as she slid, attempted to check the career of the mad deer. Twice her grip was broken, but the third time it held; the deer was brought round with a wrench which nearly dislocated her shoulder.
And now the deer for the first time scented danger. With a wild snort he turned to face the oncoming foe. A large deer with all his scraggly antlers might hold a single wolf at bay, but this deer"s antlers had been cut to mere stubs that he might travel more lightly. With such weapons he must quickly come to grief.
It was a tragic moment. Marian searched her brain for a plan. Flight was now out of the question, yet defense seemed impossible; there was not a weapon on her sled.
Suddenly her heart leaped for joy. The fight was to be taken from her hand. Ad-loo-at, with the faithful oversight which he exercised over those entrusted to his care, having seen all that had happened had whirled his deer about, tied it to Lucile"s sled and now came racing over the snow. He swung above his head the trusty native lance which had meant defeat to so many wild beasts in the days of long ago.
But what was this? Instead of dashing right at the enemy, the Eskimo boy was coming straight for the reindeer and on the opposite side from that on which the wolf was approaching.
"He doesn"t see the leader," Marian groaned. "He thinks the rest of the pack are all there are."
But in another second she knew this to be untrue, for, stooping low, the boy appeared to go on all fours as he glided over the snow; he was stalking the wolf even as the wolf was stalking the deer.
Realizing that the wolf was planning to attack the deer and not her, Marian set herself to watch a spectacle such as she would seldom witness in a lifetime.