Читать книгу Where the Sun Swings North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 11

While Jean and Loll were pursuing their adventures about the post the White Chief was entertaining his other two guests in his low-ceilinged living-room, dusky and pleasantly scented from logs of yellow cedar burning in the fireplace. He was posed in his favorite attitude, half-sitting, half-reclining among the cushions on a low couch of red fox skins. But while he told tales of the country to the interested Boreland, his narrow eyes watched the play of the firelight on the softly-massed golden-brown hair of Ellen, Boreland's wife, who sat knitting in the glow.

Life, for the trader, had taken on a new zest this past week. Long years of acting a part—the part of a great white chief, mysterious, all knowing, all powerful in the eyes of the simple natives of the North, had made him fully alive to the dramatic possibilities of playing host at Katleean, and he was not unaware of his own semi-barbaric attractiveness in these surroundings.

It had been easy to induce Shane Boreland, for the sake of his wife and young sister-in-law, to spend a few weeks in the quarters back of the store, where they were ministered to by the silent, dark-eyed women whose status they did not understand.

The trader's heart was stirred with interest and expectancy. Here at last was an auditor worthy of his best efforts—a white woman, not too young, fair-faced and gentle, yet with the courage to follow her man into the wilds of a new country. A woman, who, he had learned, could unfailingly put a shot in a bull's eye at twenty paces and handle an oar in a small boat, yet a woman who could look sweetly domestic as she knitted on a garment for her small son. To Paul Kilbuck, as to all domineering men who scoff at matrimony, there was something irresistibly appealing in the "sweetly domestic" woman, something suggestive of that oldest occupation of woman—the business of ministering to man's physical and temperamental needs, the duty of making his body and his egotism comfortable. He watched her in covert approval.

How soft and white her throat appeared above the open neck of her blouse—soft and white with a tiny hollow at the base where a man might leave kisses—or the print of his teeth. What little hands she had, white with nails of rosy pink. Little white hands! The words kept singing through his consciousness. So long had brown hands done his bidding up here in the North that he had nearly forgotten that a woman's skin could be so white! To have those little white hands just once, softly feeling, caressing, losing themselves in the blackness of his beard——

The White Chief sat bolt upright to shake off the mad-sweet pang that had thrilled him. The voice of Boreland brought him back from the land of forbidden thought.

"You say this Lost Island is nothing but a myth, Kilbuck?" The prospector had evidently been thinking of the White Chief's last story as he sat rubbing the head of Kobuk, the huskie, who had placed his muzzle on Boreland's knee.

The trader lighted and tossed away a cigarette before he answered.

"Just how much truth there is in the tale of the Lost Island I can't say, Boreland," he said slowly, with a care to his English. He shifted his position until his eyes could no longer rest on the white woman in the fireglow. "It has come down from the days of the Russian occupation of the Aleutian Islands far to the west'ard. Our Thlingets, you know, got it from the natives of that section and the story runs that an Aleut and his wife were banished from their village for some crime, set adrift in a bidarka, a skin boat. Instead of perishing, as their kinsmen intended, the pair turned up a year later with a tale of a marvelous island many days' paddling to the eastward. On this island, they said, the sun shone warmer and the flowers grew larger and the snowfall was lighter than anywhere else in their world; and there was some queer story, I don't remember the details exactly, about an underground passage and sands flecked with shining metal, the stuff that trimmed up the holy pictures the Russian priests brought over from Russia."

"Gold!" interrupted Boreland. "It must have been gold!" His brown eyes glowed and the White Chief noted that an eager alertness lighted his lean tanned face.

"The exiles decided to let a few of their friends in on the island proposition and set out at the head of several bidarkas. According to the story they knocked about up and down the North Pacific from Kodiak to Sitka for several months—but they never found their island. Neither did the natives of later years who went in search of it from time to time."

"But the Russians, Kilbuck, didn't they ever try to find the place?"

The trader, pleased at the interest his story had aroused, lay back once more against his cushions. "Possibly they did," he went on easily. "But it's likely they were satisfied with the wealth of furs their Aleut hunters brought them. Those were great old days for traffic in furs. The early Russians were, for the most part a lazy, rum-drinking lot, you know. To them riches meant sea-otter skins, and they managed by various devilish methods—I can't say more about them in your presence, Mrs. Boreland—to enslave the entire Aleut nation to do their hunting. They gave them a little—and a mighty little—trade goods in return." By the inflections of his voice the agent of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company sought to convey to his listeners the impression that the policy of those early companies was against his principles, though the books, so carefully kept by Add-'em-up Sam might have told a different story.

"And it's possible the Russians thought the yarn to be merely another native fairy tale," continued Kilbuck, waving a careless hand. "As I said there may be no other foundation for it. It has come down now for over two hundred years, and you may be sure when an Indian tells a story it loses nothing in the telling."

The drowsy crackle of the flaming logs filled a short interval.

Shane Boreland sat lost in meditation, his hand resting quietly on the dog's head, his eyes adream as with visions of the golden sands of the Lost Island.

His wife glanced up at him, uneasily, almost apprehensively it seemed to Kilbuck who was again watching her. Never in all his varied amorous experiences had a woman's eyes held such a look for the White Chief—a look in which there was a protecting tenderness, comradeship and something more.

He settled farther back in his cushions, his eyes narrowing. Love had yet some new delight to offer him. … His virile years were slipping by—he was surprised and disturbed how often this thought had been with him of late. Should he grasp the opportunity offered? There might be a way—up here in Katleean where his word was law. … Perhaps——

Kilbuck brought himself up with a start. Ellen Boreland had dropped her knitting and had crossed to her husband's chair. Her hand rested on his broad shoulder and there was a wistful little twist to her smile as she shook him gently to rouse him.

"He's forever dreaming of the gold that lies beyond the skyline—this man of mine—and always going to find it," she said fondly. "So please, Mr. Kilbuck, don't get him interested in any mythical island. We've been gone from the States six months now, and I want him to go back for the winter." There was a half-playful, half-earnest note of pleading in her voice, but the White Chief noticed that her eyes did not fully meet his.

During all her thirty years, doubtless, Ellen Boreland had looked a friendly world in the eye. She was that sort. He saw that she was troubled now at not being able to do this in the case of the trader of Katleean. Probably he himself was not attractive to her—perhaps he was even fascinatingly repellant with that electric and disturbing and promising quality that drew almost irresistibly. There were women who, under that impulsion, had been moved to come close and gaze into his pale, black-lashed eyes. It was an impulse akin to that which urges people to fling themselves from great heights; to peer into abandoned, stagnant wells. … He had an idea that she knew he saw this, for he had watched her face flush under his glance as though at the thought of having dishonored herself by sharing with him some guilty secret. He saw that she was uncomfortable in accepting his hospitality. Twice during their stay she had entreated her husband to leave Katleean, or at least go back aboard the schooner for the remainder of their visit. But Shane Boreland, clean-hearted adventurer, to whom the vagaries of a woman's mind were a closed book, had only laughed at her request, retorting that life aboard the Hoonah had made her into a little sea-dog and a few weeks ashore with such a host as the White Chief would do her a world of good.

The host now lighted one of his short-lived cigarettes. In his mind was forming a plan suggested by Ellen Foreland's words. He might develop it later, and again he might not, but it would not be amiss to prepare the way.

He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace, slipping without effort into the part he had assigned himself.

"Dreams are the things that make life worth living, Mrs. Boreland." His low, vibrant tones sounded pleasantly in the dusky room. "Boreland here has his dreams of a mine of gold, but I—" he hesitated, his voice taking on a whimsical softness, "but I, in my Northern solitude, have my dreams of a heart of gold." His look was designed to leave no doubt in Ellen Boreland's mind that it was a feminine heart of gold that he sought.

There was a pause during which the charred logs in the fireplace dropped down sending up a brighter flame.

"But you mustn't be too sure that the Lost Island is a myth." He spoke briskly now as it putting aside deliberately his own longings. "In this part of the country some say that the Lost Island is that of Kon Klayu."

As Boreland looked up questioningly the White Chief went on:

"Of course, it does in some ways answer the description. It is ninety miles off the coast here. Cape Katleean is the nearest land. The Japan current gives it a milder climate and we know that the beach sand carries gold—a little gold."

"Anyone living there?" interrupted Boreland eagerly.

"Not a soul. The Alaska Fur and Trading Company did send a party out there some years ago, to start a fox-farm. That's how I got my information. They were a hootch-drinking, lazy lot and the farm wasn't a success. But Add-'em-up Sam, a bookkeeper I used to have, spent a winter there. He told me many things about the place." The White Chief paused a moment. A new idea had just come to him. "Silvertip, who used to be on the whaler Sophie Sutherland, has stopped there for water, too."

Boreland, rising from his chair thrust both hands into his pockets and began to pace up and down the room.

"By thunder, Kilbuck, I'm interested in that island, whether it's the Lost Island or not! Kon Klayu … Kon Klayu … " He repeated the name thoughtfully. "Seems to me that's the Thlinget for ruby sand, which in itself suggests possibilities. Ruby sand is a gold carrier!" There was a note of enthusiasm in Boreland's voice, but as he noticed the look on his wife's face he crossed to her side and put an arm over her slender shoulders. "But we'll talk that over some other time, Chief. I don't want to bore Ellen with too much mining——"

A flinging open of the door that led to the store cut short his speech as an indignant little boy burst in on them.

"Mother! Mother!" he shouted. "That big old Indian, Swimming Wolf, called my Auntie Jean a squaw!"

"And the wretch put his hand on my foot, Ellen!" Jean following close on the heels of her nephew, stopped before her sister, her slim hands clenched at her sides, each outraged shake of her head loosening the ribbon that bound her hair. "I hate this place, Shane!" she cried, turning swiftly to her brother-in-law. "I wish we were all back aboard the Hoonah!" Her voice trembled with unshed tears of mortification, and both her sister and Shane started toward her with exclamations of sympathy and alarm.

The White Chief regarded the attractively disheveled little figure with appreciation, but he realized that something had happened which endangered the stay of his visitors. He rose to place a chair for her. When he spoke his voice, the voice that had charmed many women, soothed while it promised.

"There now, Miss Wiley, things may not be so bad as you think. Sit down and tell me all about it and I'll see what can be done."

Disregarding the proffered chair, the girl launched forth with the story of her encounter with Swimming Wolf. Her slim hands gestured. Above her flushed cheeks her eyes flashed and the unruly cloud of hair, freed at last from its ribbon, fell about her shoulders.

As she told of the slap on Swimming Wolf's ear, the pale eyes of the White Chief glowed. Truly, as Kayak Bill had said, one could never tell about a white woman. Here was a situation he would have to handle with care. Here was a time when his knowledge of Indian nature, gained during years of association with them, stood him in good stead.

"Miss Jean," he said. "Just a moment. I think I can explain Swimming Wolf's extraordinary action." The White Chief measured her with an air of understanding that, he could see, made an impression on the girl in spite of herself. "An Indian, you know, never really grows up. Even though he has the body of a man, he still keeps the heart of a child. Now when you were little, Miss Jean, don't you remember the time you saw your first negro—a black, strange creature? Didn't you wonder, while you looked at his face and his hands if he could possibly be black all over? Be honest now, didn't you?"

Loll who had settled himself on the floor with an arm about Kobuk's neck, sprang up and stood beside his aunt.

"Yes, I did, Chief," he interrupted, with eager, nodding head, "and I asked him about it, too. I did!"

Jean's face was clearing. She inclined her head in faint affirmation.

"Just so," the trader went on. "When Swimming Wolf saw his first white woman no doubt in his simple heart he wondered, too, and so did the other natives who gathered about you—children, all of them. Swimming Wolf, the clumsy siwash, had no English words to ask you about it, so he took the simplest way to find out whether or not the white came off!"

A shadowy smile began to twitch at the corners of Jean's mouth. Seeing it, the White Chief was encouraged to go on:

"The inquisitive rascal is really one of our bravest hunters, and a man of tall totems and many blankets. He would feel astonished and kusk-i-a-tu—very sad—if he knew he had offended you. As a matter of fact,"—the trader laughed—"the Wolf admires you and in his primitive way has paid you a great compliment. I wasn't going to mention it, but since this has come up perhaps it will help explain."

Jean looked up inquiringly.

"Up here in the North, Miss Jean, it is the custom of the young bucks to buy any little girl who takes his fancy. He pays for her while he is strong and a good hunter, you see. When the girl grows up he takes her for his wife."

There was a gasp of astonishment from Ellen and her sister, but Kilbuck went on:

"One hundred dollars is a mighty good price to pay for a wife, but Swimming Wolf, my little lady, came to me yesterday with four black fox skins, which are worth perhaps three thousand dollars. He wanted to know if I would arrange with the Big White Man—your brother-in-law—to take them in payment for the shawut clate, the White-Girl-Who-Makes-Singing-Birds-in-the-Little-Brown-Box."

Jean lifted her chin with a laugh in which amusement and embarrassment were equally mingled. "How quaintly ridiculous, Ellen, to describe my violin playing in such a way! But mercy," she added, after they had all laughed over the incident, "I must run away upstairs and put on some footwear. If I had kept on my shoes and stockings, as I should have done, Swimming Wolf might not have called me 'little squaw with white feet'!"

Kilbuck, satisfied with himself, had settled back once more against his cushions and as she turned to say a parting word to him, was regarding her with half-closed eyes. The firelight played on her slim, white ankles and soft little feet. He surveyed her with a look that slowly, appraisingly, stripped her body of its garments and swept her from her bare feet to her face and back again. The girl caught it. Conscious, for the first time of him—his savage reality as other than a middle-aged man—of her own womanhood, she flushed violently. Shrinking back she reached for Loll's hand, and stammering an incoherent excuse, ran from the room.

Ellen, unconscious of what had happened, measured off a row of stitches in the knitting she had again taken up. "Jean certainly seems to be tumbling in and out of adventures," she remarked. "Sometimes, Shane, I wonder if we did right in bringing her with us."

"Nonsense, Ellen. A year up here will make a different girl of her—help her break away from the cut and dried sameness of school life. Darned if it doesn't make me tired to see all the young women turned out of the same mould."

As Boreland spoke the door leading into the store opened slowly, and into the room sauntered Kayak Bill. He seated himself in silence, tilting his sombrero to the back of his head—the only concession to convention he ever made, since Kayak had never been known to remove that article of apparel until he sought his bunk at night.

"I just been mouchin' round down in the Village, Chief," he drawled, "seein' if there was anything a-doin' in the way o' local sin, and they tells me that the funeral canoes is a-comin' in tonight."