"Maybe."
"Second, he drops a harpoon into my igloo and tries to harpoon me and blow me up."
"Maybe."
"And now he puts a revolver to my head and pulls the trigger. Still you say "No kill." What shall I make of that?"
"Canak-ti-ma-na" (I don"t know), said the Eskimo. "No kill, that"s all."
Johnny was too much astonished and perplexed to say anything further.
The two sat there for some time in silence. At last the Eskimo rose and made his way toward the entrance.
Johnny flashed his light about the place. He was looking for his sack of gold. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and put out his hand. What it grasped was the envelope he had seen in the Russian"s pocket at Wo Cheng"s shop, the envelope of diamonds. And the diamonds were still there; he could tell that by the feel of the envelope.
Hastily searching out his now insignificant treasure of gold, Johnny placed it with the envelope of diamonds in his inner pocket and hurried from the mine.
Darkness again found him musing over a seal oil lamp. He was not in a very happy mood. He was weary of orientalism and mystery. He longed for the quiet of his little old town, Chicago. Wouldn"t it be great to put his feet under his old job and say, "Well, Boss, what"s the dope to-day?" Wouldn"t it, though? And to go home at night to doll up in his glad rags and call on Mazie. Oh, boy! It fairly made him sick to think of it.
But, at last, his mind wandered back to the many mysteries which had been straightened out not one bit by these events of the day. Here he was traveling with two companions, a j.a.p girl and an Eskimo. Eskimo?
Right there he began to wonder if Iyok-ok, as he called himself, was really an Eskimo after all. What if he should turn out to be a j.a.p playing the part of an Eskimo? Only that day Johnny had once more come upon him suddenly to find him in earnest conversation with the j.a.p girl.
And the language they had been using had sounded distinctly oriental.
And yet, if he was a j.a.p, how did it come about that he spoke the Eskimo language so well?
Dismissing this question, his mind dwelt upon the events of the past few days. Twice he had been begged not to kill the Russian. This last time he most decidedly would have been justified in putting a bullet into the rascal"s brain. He had been prevented from doing so by Iyok-ok. Why?
"Anyway," he said to himself, yawning, "I"m glad I didn"t do it. It"s nasty business, this killing people. I couldn"t very well tell such a thing to Mazie; you can"t tell such things to a woman, and I want to tell her all about things over here. It"s been a hard old life, but so far I haven"t done a single thing that I wouldn"t be proud to tell her about. No, sir, not one! I can say: "Mazie, I did this and I did that,"
and Mazie"ll say, "Oh, Johnny! Wasn"t that gr-ran-nd?""
Johnny grinned as the thought of it and felt decidedly better. After all, what was the use of living if one was to live on and on and on and never have any adventures worth the telling?
For some time he lay sprawled out before the lamp in silent reflection, then he sat up suddenly and pounded his knee.
"By Jove! I"ll bet that"s it!" he exclaimed.
He had happened upon a new theory regarding the Russian. It seemed probable to him that this man, knowing of this gold mine, perhaps being owner of it, had come north to determine its value and the advisability of opening it for operation in the spring. In these days, when the money market of the world was gold hungry, that glittering, yellow metal was of vast importance, especially to the warring factions of Russia.
Surely, this seemed a plausible explanation. And if it was true then he could hurry on up the coast, with or without his companions and make his way home.
"But then," he said, perplexed again. He reached his hand into his pocket to draw out the envelope he had found in the mine. "But then, there"s the diamonds. Would a man coming on such a journey bring such treasure with him? He couldn"t trade them to the natives. They know money well enough, but not diamonds."
Johnny opened the envelope and shook it gently. Three stones fell into his hand. They were of purest blue white, perfect stones and perfectly cut. A glance at the envelope showed him that it was divided into four narrow compartments and that each compartment was filled with diamonds wrapped in tissue paper. Only these three were unwrapped.
Running his fingers down the outside of the compartments, he counted the jewels.
"One hundred and four," he breathed. "A king"s ransom. Forty or fifty thousand dollars worth, anyway. Whew!"
Then he stared and his hand shook. His eye had fallen upon the stamp of the seal in the corner of the envelope. He knew that secret mark all too well; had learned it from Wo Cheng. It was the stamp of the biggest and worst society of Radicals in all the world.
"So!" Johnny whispered to himself. "So, Mr. Russian, you are a Radical, a red, a Nihilist, a communist, an anything-but-society-as-it-is guy.
You want the world to cough up its dough and own nothing, and yet here you are carrying round the price of a farm in your vest pocket." He chuckled. "Some reformer, I"d say!"
But his next thought sobered him. What was he to do with all that wealth? One of those stones would make Mazie happy for a lifetime. But it wasn"t his. He had no right to it. He could not do a thing he"d be ashamed to tell Mazie and his old boss about.
But, if they didn"t belong to him, perhaps the diamonds didn"t belong to the Russian either. At any rate, the latter"s disloyalty to his nation had forfeited his right to own property.
Even should this Russian be the rightful owner, Johnny could not very well hunt him up and say: "Here, mister. You tried to kill me yesterday. Here are your diamonds. I found them in the mine. Please count them and see if they are all there."
Johnny grinned as he thought of that. There seemed to be nothing to do but keep the stones, for the time being at least.
"Anyway," he said to himself as he rolled up in his deer skins. "I"ll bet I have discovered something. I"ll bet he"s one of the big ones, perhaps the biggest of them all. And he"s trying to make his way across to America to stir things up over there."
CHAPTER VII
SAVED FROM THE MOB
"What do you know about that gold mine?" Johnny asked, turning an inquiring eye on Iyok-ok, whom Johnny now strongly suspected of being a j.a.panese and a member of the Mikado"s secret service as well.
"Which mine?" Iyok-ok smiled good-naturedly as he blinked in the sunlight. It was the morning after Johnny"s battle with the Russian.
"Are there others?"
"Seven mines."
"Seven! And all of them rich as the one we were in yesterday?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
"Some much richer," he declared.
"How long has the world known of this wealth?"
"Never has known. A few men know, that"s all. The old Czar, he knew, but would let no one work the mines. Just at the last he said "Yes."
Then they hurried much machinery over here, but it was too late. The Czar--well, you know he is dead now, but they have their machinery here still."
"Who are "they"?" asked Johnny with curiosity fully aroused.
"American. I know. Can"t tell. Worked for them once. Promise never tell."
Johnny wrinkled his brow but did not press the matter.
"But this Russia, the Kamchatkan Peninsula?" Iyok-ok continued. "Whom does it belong to now? Can you tell me that?"
Johnny shook his head.
"Neither can They tell. If They knew, and if They knew it was safe to come back and mine here, when the world has so great need of gold, you better believe They would come and mine, But They do not know; They do not know." The boy p.r.o.nounced the last words with an undertone of mystery. "Sometime I will know. Then I--I will tell you, perhaps."