Dewalt Bellefonte, Pa., October 10, 1913. w—— and got lost in the flats. 'Tis a wild | country, rimmed by high mountains, | full of niggerheuds and tundra, with | the river winding clean back to the 1 run out of ' Rex Beach Adventure Stories Wtiere Northern Lights Come Down o’ Nights By REX BEACH i i Copyright by McClure, Phillips & Co. 1 i HE mission house at Togiak stands forloruly on a wind swept Alaskan spit, while hud- dled around it a swarm of dirt | covered iginos grovel in an ecstasy of | abasement Many uvatives crawied out of these aad stared across the bay as down a gully came au arctic caravan, men and dogs. black against the deadly whiteness. Ahead swung the guide, straddling awkwardly on his five foot webs, while the straining pack pat- tered at his heels. Big George. the driver. urged them with strong words, idioms of the uortbland. aud bis long whip bit sharply at their legs His companion. clinging tf the sled, stumbled uow aud then, while nis face, splitting from the snap of the frost, was smothered iv 4 muffler Some times he fell, plunging into the snow, rising painfully and groaning with the misery of “snow blindness.” “Most there vow, Cap your grit.” “I'm all cight," answered the af- flicted man wearily. “Don't mind me.” George, too, had suffered from the sheen of the unbroken whiteness, and, while his eyes had uot wholly closed, be saw but dimly. His cheeks were grease smeared and blackened with charred wood to break the snow glare, but through his ask showed sigus of suffering, while his bloodshot eyes dripped scalding tears ana throbbed distressfully. For days he had not dared to lose sight of the guide. Once be bad caught him sueaking the dogs away, and be feared he had killed the man for a time Now Jaska broke trail abead. his sullen, swollen fea- tures baleful in thelr injury Down the steep bauk they slid, across the humped up sea ire at the river mouth and into the village At the greeuug of their guide to his tribesmen George started Twelve years of coast life bad taught him the dialect from Point Barrow south. and bie glanced at Captain to find whether be, too, had heard the message As Jaska handed a lisman to the chief he strode to bim and suatehed it "Oho! It's Father Orloff, is it? D— him!" He gazed at the token, a white spruce chip with strange marks and carvings. “What does It mean, George? said the blind man. “I's a long story, Charlie. and black. You should have known it be fore we started. I'm a marked man in this coast country It's Orloff's work, the renegade! ‘Father,’ te calls bim- self—-father to these devils be rules and robs for bimself iu the name of the church. His bate is bitter, and he'd have my life If these watery liv- ered curs didn't dread the sound of my voice. God help bim when we meet!” He shook his hairy claws at the hos- tlle circle, then cried to the chief in the native tongue: “Oh. Shaman! We come bleeding and hungry Hunger grips us, and our bones are stiff with frost. The light is gone from my brother's eyes, and we are sick. Open you the door to the mission house that the *Minoks' may rest and grow strong.” The indiaus clustered before the portal, with its rude cross above, and stared malignanty while the chief spoke At the vame of his enemy the ausightly eyes of George gleamed. and te growled contemptuously, advancing among them. They scattered ar the manner of his coming. sud he struck the padlocked door till ft rattled stiff. ly. Then. spying the cross overhead, fe lifted up and gripped the wood. It <came away ripping. aud, with walls of rage and horror at the sacrilege. they closed about him. “Here, Cap! Bust her in quick™ He dragged Captaiu before the en- trance, thrusting the weapon upon him, then ran ferociously among the people. He snatched them to him, coff- ing llke a bear apd rrampling them into the snow. Those who came into the reach of his knotty arms crumpled ap and twisted under his feet. He whirled into the group. roaring hoarse ly. his angry. grease blackened face hideous with rage. The aborigine is not a fighting machine. For him the side step and counter have no being. | They melted abead of his blazing wrath, and he whisked them. fleeing, by their garments, so that they felt the stamp of his moceasined heels Captain dragged the 1~am within, and George. following, blocked the shattered door. “We're safe as long as we stay in the church,” said he “Right of sancruary. eh? Does it occur to you how we're going to get out”™ “Never mind We'll get out some how." sald be, and that night as Charlie Captain. late university man and engineer, lay with eyes swathed in steaming cloths rhe whaler spoke operosely and with the bitterness of vg | Keep up “It bappened when bars of Forty Mile before ever a Chechako had crossed the Chilkoot. 1 went over to the headwaters of the Tanana. loto the big valley | went source of the Copper. grub. We always did them days and built & raft to float down to the Yu- kon. A race with starvation, and a dead beat it near proved, too, though I had a shade the best of it. 1 drifted out into the malin river, raving mad, ' my ‘Mukluks' eat off and my moose bide gun cover inside of me. “A girl spied me from the village, ' and ‘twas her brought me ashore In her birch bark and tended we in her wickiup till reason came and the blood rap through me again. *l mind seeing a white map stand | around at times and bearing him beg | her to leave me to the old SqQUAWS, She didn’t, though. She gave me bits of moose meat and berries and dried | salmon, and when | come to one day | I saw she was little and brown and | pleading and her clothes all covered He Whirled Into the Group, Roaring Hoarsely. With beads. Her eyes was big and sud, Cap, and dimples poked into her cheeks when she laughed. “'Twas then that Urloff takes a hdnd—-the white man, A priest he called bimself; breed, Russian. May- be be was. but a blacker hearted thief bever wronged a child. He wanted the girl, Metla, and so did 1. When I asked ber old man for her he said she was promised to the Russian. 1 laughed at him. and a chief hates to be mocked. You Kuow what sway the chured nas over these Indians. Well, Orioff is a stroug man, He held ‘em tke a rock. He worked on ‘em till one day the rribesmen came to me io a body and said. ‘Go “Give me the girl suys |. “Orloff sneered. ‘She was mine for a month before ye ume, says he, with the fend showin back of his eyes ‘Do ye want ter uow? “For a minute | believed him. I struck once to kill, aud né went down. They closed ou me as fast as | shook “tm off "Twas a beautiful sight for a ruction on the high banks over the river, but | was Ifke water from the sickness. 1 fought to get at their priest where he lay to stamp out his grinning face before they downed, me, but | was beat back to the bluff. and 1 battled with my heels over the edge. I broke a pole from the fish rack, and 8 good many went down. Then I heard Metla calling softly from be- low: “Jump! she suid. ‘Big one, jump! “She had loosed a canoe at the land. ing and now held it iu the boiling current underneath, paddling desper- ately. “As they ran out of the tents with their rifles | leaped. “A long drop and cold water. but bit feet first. When | rose the little girl was alongside. “It's a ticklish thing tw crawl over the stern of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle loaders above. It's shaking to the nerves, but | the maid never flinched. not even when a bullet split the gunnal. She ripped a | piece of her dress and plugged a hole under the water line while I paddled out and | will, xt winter at Holy Cross she ran to me shaking one day. 1 } “*He spoke to me at the water | hole—*1 bave come for you” 1 ran | rery fast, but he came behind. “Where | ® George” be said . “I went out of the cabin down to the | mission and into the house of Father | Barnum. He was there { **Orioff! What do ye want? 1 says, “Father Barnum speaks up. He's known for a good man the length of the river. ‘George. says he. ‘Father Orloff tells me you stole the girl Metla | from ber tribe. ‘Tis a shameful thing | for a white to take a red girl for his wife, but its a crime 1 Hive 28 you ’ we rocked the on his shoulder close to the neck. ‘I , been with her, but there was no one | a week late, with bleeding dogs and ' frozen Indians straining at the sled : before I came to the cabin, and when . Into the church, bur | bear down the | door with my naked tists, mocking at , his prayers inside. and may | vever | through his peephole, George distin. “and the strongest team on the coast . can’t wallow through it under a week. | These on shore gales Is beauts.” | off the sea Into the open bight at i whose head lay Toglak. and its vio- | lence wrecked the armor of shore ice ‘In the bay |- “tree sides by a stream soft carpeted “ ‘What? says 1 “ ‘We can't sell you provisions nor | allow you to stay in the village. ! “Orloff grins. ‘You must go on.’ he says, ‘or give her up. : "No! I'll do either.’ And I shows | the paper from the missionary at Nu- | lato stating that we were married. ‘She’s my wife,’ says 1, ‘and too good for me. She's left her people and her gods, and I'll care for ber’ 1 saw | how it hurt Orloff, and 1 laid my hand distrust ye, and sure as Fate ye'll dle | the shocking death if ever harm comes to the little one.’ “That was the winter of the famine, though every winter was the same then, and | went to Anvik for grub— took all the strong men and dogs in the village. | was afraid when 1 left, tov, for ‘twas the time J should bave else to go. * ‘When you come back. she said, ‘there will be another—a little boy-— and be will grow mighty and strong like his father. She bung her arms around me, Cap, and | left with her kissex warm on my Hips. “It was a terrible trip—the river wet with overflows and the cutoffs drifted deep. so 1 drove back into Holy Cross ropes. “I heard the wail of the old women Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness | went back into the dark and down to the mission | remem- ber how the northern lzhts flared over the bills above and rhe little spruces on the summit looked to me like head- stones, black against the moon, and | laughed when | suw the snow red in the night glare, for it meant blood and death. “It was as lusty a habe as ever crowed, but Orloff had come to the sickbed and sent her squaws away, Baptism and such things he said he'd do. The little fellow died that night. “They say the mission door was lock. | ed and barred. but | pushed through it | like paper and came into Father Bar | uum's house. where they sat. Fifty below is bad for the naked flesh. | broke in, bareheaded. mittenless, and I'd froge some on the way down. He saw murder in my eyes and tried to run, but | got him as he went out of the room. He tore his throat loose from my stiffened fingers and went be closer to death than Orloff was that night. “Then a squaw tugged at my parka. “‘She is dying. Auguk. she said, and | ran back ap the hill with the cold bitiug at my heart. “There wus vo death rhat night in Holy Cross, though tod knows one naked soul was due to walk out on to the snow. At daylight. when | cawe back for him, he had fled down rhe river with rhe fastest dogs, and to this day [I've never seen his face, though ‘tis often I've felt his hate. “He's grown into the strongest mis- slonary on the coast, and he never lets a4 chance go by to barry me or the | girl. i “D'ye wind the time ‘Skagway’ Hen- ! net died? We was pardners up Nor- | ton sound way when be was killed. They thought he suicided. but | now, I found a cariboo belt tn the brush near camp—the kind they make on the Kuskokwim, Father Orloff’: coun- try. His men took the wrong one, that's all. “I'm sorry 1 didn’t tell ye (bis. Cap, before we started, for now we're into | the south country. where he owns the | natives. He knows we've come, as the | blcod token of the guide showed. He | wants my life, nod there's great trou- | ble coming up. I'm hoping ye'll soon l ! get your sight. for by now there's a runner twenty miles into the bills with| news that we're blind in the church, at Toglak. Three days he'll ve going, | and on the fifth ye'li hear the jangle | of Russian dog vells. He'll kill the fastest team In Nushagnk in the com- ing, and God belp us if we're here.” George scraped a bit of frost lace from the lone window pane. Dark fig- ures moved uver the snow, circling the: chapel. and he knew that each was armed. Only their reverence for the! church beid them from doing the task! set by Orloff. and ne sighed as he changed the bandages on bis suffering mate. They awoke the next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snow. clouds past their walls. Staring guished only a seethe of whirling flakes that grayed the view, blotting even the neighboring huts, and when the early evening brought a rising note in the storm the trouble lifted from his face. “A three day blizzard.” te rejoiced, For three days the wind tore from till it beat and roared against the spit. a thrashing mael- strom of shattered bergs. The waters piled into the inlet. driven by the 1ash of the storm. till they overflowed the river ice behind tbe village, submerg- ing and breaking it into ragged. dan- gerous confusion. On the third day. with arctic vagary, the wind gasped reluctantly and scur- ried over the range. In its wake the surging ocean churned loudly, and the backwater behind the town, held by’ the dam of freezing siush ice at the, river mouth. was skimmed by a thin fee paper. pierced here and there by the up ended piles from beneath. This held the night's smow. so that morning showed the village girt on The short story of Dockash Olewines Hardware keath the feet of a child. “Your eyes are coming along mighty | How." worried George “I'm hoping | his reverence is up to his gills In drifts back yonder. We must leave him a sled trail for a souvenir.” “How can we with the place guard- ld? “Too late, too late!” he sald. “Here And safe to the eye, but falling be Ee. be comes! It's time I killed him.” He ! spoke gratingly, with the dull anger of | years. hillside a sled bearing a muffled fig. | ure appeared silhouetted against the | glisten of the crust bank, and the guide swung on to the | runners behind. while the voice of the | people rose to their priest In a whirl | of soft snow they drove down on to | the treachery of the ice. The screams | or the natives frenzied the pack, and they rioted out on to the bending sheet, | while the long sledge, borne by its mo- | wentum, shot forward tll the split ting cry of the ice sounded over the lamentations. It slackened, sagged and disappeared in a surge of congeal- ing waters The wheel dogs were dragued Into the opening and thelr Mates ahead jerked backward on to them nro the xwir Orloff leaped trow the sinking sled. | but. hindered by his fur swaddling, crashed through and lunged beavily | in his struggles to mount the edge of [Continued on page 7, Col. 1.) Medical. 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