Читать книгу Rocking Moon - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 3

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The great, hewed-log house, still known in the Alaskan village as the Governor's House, stood high on a green knoll overlooking the Harbor of Rezanoff. It cast a long morning shadow across the grass before its deep veranda—a shadow which ended just at the rim of the knoll where an old Russian cannon thrust itself out over the red roofs of the trading-post on the beach below.

The suns of a hundred and twenty-eight summers have sparkled on the island-dotted Harbor since Alexander Baranoff, the little Czar of the Pacific, placed that cannon there. It is the last of twenty that once guarded this far northern village of Rezanoff from the attacks of hostile Aleuts when the vast country now called Alaska was lettered on the charts of the old navigators as "Russian America."

The other nineteen cannon are gone, no one knows where. By the aid of "powder and shot and the help of God" the Aleuts are a tamed and vanishing race; and the Governor's House, whose walls once rang to the toasts and laughter of adventurous nobles from a Russian court, is the dwelling of Nicholas Nash, the young bachelor owner of the Rezanoff Trading Company. Yet the Muscovian influence lingers and, though the flag-staff has felt the tug of the Stars and Stripes for fifty-five years, the peak of the roof's wide center gable is still surmounted by a large iron bust of Catherine the Great, that Empress of all the Russias, to whose enlightenment and liberality the exploration of Alaska was largely due.

Calm, imperturbable, she basks in the sunshine of Alaska's summers; rusts and reddens in the autumn fogs that drift down from Bering Sea, and braves the snows and blizzards of Alaska's winters, just as she did a century ago when Rezanoff was the greatest fur depot in the New World.

In the past her iron eyes have watched a thousand Aleuts line their bidarkas[1] along the beach below and kneel with heads bowed to the sand while priests in robes of scarlet and gold sprinkled them with holy water and a vested choir of native boys chanted a blessing on the hunt—a blessing which rose above the sobs of the assembled wives and mothers. Her iron ears have heard the brown women weeping because of the danger that lay out there in the storm-beaten kelp-beds, where the outlaw hunters of Baranoff guided the brown men to hunt the morski bobrov—the sea-otter—whose fur was the fur of emperors and nobles and precious enough to bring about the colonization of this savage land. She has heard the chimes of the old Greek Church on the hill herald the triumphant return of those Russian hunters in deep-laden galiots, convoyed by half a thousand bidarkas, all sailing in across the Harbor to unload a priceless cargo into the very log warehouses which form part of the trading-post today.

She has seen the Americans come, and the Russians depart, and the Aleuts die. There are those among the creoles—the half caste Russians—who say that the Iron Empress knows all that goes on below her, and that she still watches jealously to guard the interests of the few Muscovian families remaining in the village.

But there are others, like Colonel Jefferson Breeze, who consider the bust on the old gable but a menace to the safety of anyone who unwarily puts himself in line with its possible fall. The Colonel was standing now on the green before the Governor's House, his middle-height figure listing slightly as he leaned on a cane of mastodon ivory. He had not the slightest claim to the title of Colonel, never having been inside a barracks, but as he often explained, any man not a nonentity eventually acquires some kind of a title in Alaska.

"I tell you, Nicholas, my boy," he boomed in stentorian tones to the young man sprawling in a steamer-chair just outside the veranda, "that Rooshian Empress will tumble down offen that roof some day and kill—you—dead. Sure as God made little apples she will. Get your chair in under the porch." Colonel Jeff used his lower lip almost exclusively in talking, which habit gave him—even on the most serious occasions—the confidential look of one just about to tell a risqué story.

He finished his warning with a swift upward look at the Iron Catherine, wrinkles radiating from his kind, brown eyes, his bulbous nose shining between the two deep lines that marked off his humorous, well-formed mouth. A grunt being the only response to his words, he resumed his former attitude of thoughtful contemplation, one booted foot crossed over the other.

An old khaki hunting-coat, fastened only by the bottom button, strained at the apex of a generous abdominal region. A traveler's cap with an enormous peak tilted jauntily on his gray hair with an effect that was somehow duck-like. But notwithstanding his girth, Colonel Jeff's face was clean-cut and his tanned skin the fine texture of a boy's.

He had turned his back on the unresponsive young trader in the steamer-chair and, with thumb and forefinger pinching his lower lip, had focused his eyes on the figure of another man lying unconscious on the grass before him.

"Nick," he said presently, "blamed if I like the way this chap here continues to stay knocked out. I wish the doctor would get through with Feodor—that no-account, pusillanimous scab on the tail of humanity—and get around to look this fellow over. He hasn't budged since we carried him up here from the dock." With lowered chin the Colonel peered down over his glasses at the object of his anxiety.

A tall young man with wide shoulders and lean, strong-looking limbs lay with his head pillowed on an air-cushion from a launch. Hair of intense black swept back from a pale, high forehead; and, whether from necessity or intent, Nature had for some time been allowed to take its course in the matter of beard. This, though dark and thick, failed to conceal a lump on the jaw. A smock of coarse, nondescript material was belted about the man's waist with an old suit-case strap. Faded blue overalls and boots of thin leather, knee high and obviously of Russian make, completed a costume which clung to him damply.

"Oh, he'll come round all right, Colonel. You can't kill that breed." The occupant of the steamer-chair laughed carelessly. "I never saw such a tough-looking baby in my life. Looks like a Bolshevik to me."

The Colonel was silent for a moment. Very deliberately he tucked his cane under his arm, drew from his tight coat pocket a briar pipe, and inserted it in his mouth. He reached inside his coat, produced a fat, banded cigar, upended it in the bowl of the pipe and while applying a lighted match to the tip, drew violently on the pipe-stem, working his lips so energetically that the dewlap under his chin trembled. A volley of smoke announced a satisfactory draught.

"W-e-l-l, I admit he does bear the facial characteristics of a malamute pup, Nick." The Colonel turned again toward the veranda and spoke slowly, between puffs of the keenest enjoyment, projecting his words from under the pipe-stem by a sideways manipulation of his lower lip.

"But I'm telling you," he went on, "no Bolshevik would have jumped overboard to save that wretched, low-flung upstart of a Feodor. Of course, it's my own fault—my own fault entirely. When we left the Island of Rocking Moon this morning for those supplies for Sasha, I promised her I'd keep an eye on that devil half-breed, but Great Mahogany Ghost! How was I to know that I'd find the Starr in from the West'ard, with my old tillicum, Spider Peach, captain of her? I tell you, Nick, my boy, we hadn't any more'n got the Simmie and Ann roped to the dock before that onery, ossified son-of-a-gun Feodor scrambled aboard the Big Swede's schooner lying just offen the stern of the Starr. Said he was going after a herring net the Swede had borrowed!" The Colonel took his pipe from his mouth and gave vent to a violent, one-syllable snort. "Herring net be blowed! He got a whiff of the Swede's macoola barrel, and ever since Father Anton went away, Feodor's been rarin' for a spree. I'll swear, Nick, I hadn't been talking to Spider more'n twenty minutes, when there comes the dummedest racket you ever heard. We rushed aft just in time to see the Swede with a capstan-bar and Feodor with a bottle. That devil was chasing the Swede round the deck of the schooner yelling to beat all git-out. Just as I shouted, the Swede threw the capstan-bar, landing it on Feodor. It knocked him plumb overboard and broke his arm—though we didn't know this till later. Nicholas, my boy, the bloody creole sank like a ton of ore, and this chap—" the Colonel pointed with his cane to the smocked figure on the grass, "—this chap, who was leaning over the stern of the Starr taking in the rumpus, goes overboard in as pretty a dive as I ever did see! He got hold of Feodor and started to tow him ashore—the tide running out like a mill-race, too. I don't know how in hell it happened, Nick, but just before he landed him, that crazy half-breed ups with the bottle he still held, and hits the fellow on the jaw. Yes, sir. Knocked seven bells outten him!"

Unheeded by the indignant Colonel, the small steamer Starr was moving slowly away from the dock below. Overhead seagulls called and answered. From across the village came the faint barking of a dog, and the nearer phonographic rendering of a "mammy" song popular in the States, 2000 miles southeast. But Colonel Jeff was oblivious of these familiar sounds. He lifted his cap and with the little finger of the same hand perplexedly scratched his gray head.

"And by the lord, here we are in a pretty kettle of fish," he growled. "That scoundrel Feodor laid up with a broken arm just in the busiest season on the fox-ranch, no help to be found for love nor whiskey on account of the herring run, and me not knowing the fu-fu valve from the ash-pan on that blasted launch of Sasha's."

"Well, I wouldn't worry about it, Colonel Jeff." Nash lolled back in his chair and laughed again as if at the other's distress. "The Providence that looks out for drunken men and fools will provide. I got two extra men in from the West'ard today. Sasha knows I'm always glad to help her out—if she'll ask me. I—but cast an eye on your whiskered friend, Jeff. I think he's coming back to earth."

It was true. Even as the Colonel stepped toward him, the man on the grass stirred and opened his eyes. A moment later he was sitting up gingerly placing a slender, well-formed hand to his jaw.

"Jee-ru-sa-lem!" he mumbled in a distinctly American voice. "What a wallop!"

Pivoting his body at the waist, he looked about him as if in search of some one. "What became of that blamed fool?" he queried.

"He's all right, my boy! Feodor's all right!" assured the Colonel heartily, a deep relief in his voice. "How are you, sir? How are you? Permit me to assist you to your feet." The Colonel, when making an acquaintance, used his most polite phraseology.

"E-a-s-y ... easy there, Chief!" The stranger, still holding his jaw with one hand, waved the Colonel off with the other. "Not so fast ... I feel as if I were fastened to the edge of a buzz-saw." He drew his knees up, and resting his elbows on them, sank his dark head in his hands. A battered wristwatch, like those worn by officers during the war, caught the light as he moved.

Nicholas Nash sat up in his steamer-chair. His eyes, with their habitual look of somnolent disdain, passed deliberately over the stranger's smock and the foreign boots. For a moment it seemed as if he might speak of them. But he did not. He said instead:

"The Starr has pulled out without whistling, Colonel. Your friend here has missed his boat."

The newcomer raised his hairy face from his hands with a jerk.

"Good—Lord!" he ejaculated.