Читать книгу Rocking Moon - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 4

Table of Contents

"Good Lord—no!" the man repeated, making an effort to get to his feet.

Colonel Jeff hastily thrust his pipe into his pocket, jabbed his cane into the earth, and stooped to lend his grunting assistance.

"Take it easy—easy, my boy. Just take it e-a-s-y," he entreated. "There!" He steadied the swaying figure with one hand, while with the other he carefully brushed some clinging grass from the stranger's damp clothing. "Now, what you need, my dear sir, is a wee drop of good liquor under your belt. Nothing like it to put a man on his feet. But—" he raised himself and laid hold of his cane again, "but—ar-r-um-pp—" He hesitated, and cocked a meaning look over his glasses to meet Nash's eye. "All I can offer you is—a cup of hot coffee."

The Colonel brought out the last words with the martyred air of one who reluctantly observes the Eighteenth Amendment; for, until new arrivals proved themselves, no citizen of Rezanoff would admit that the village was anything but dry. "Yes, my boy," he went on apologetically, "I'm sorry to say that though we live in the grandest country on God's green foot-stool, spiritually speaking, honest-to-goodness liquor is as rare here as holy water in hell. But then," he added with an airy wave of his cane, "there's nothing perfect in this world. The sun has its spots, the diamond its flaws, and the dog its fleas. Come, Nick! You're sitting there with as much animation as a sack of spuds. Take hold of this chap and we'll get him over to the hotel for a bit of lawful nourishment."

But the stranger did not seem in any further need of assistance. He filled his lungs with the tonic morning air, and, brushing the dark hair from his forehead, walked slowly over to the old cannon. He paused beside it, looking thoughtfully down on the dock below, where the Starr had so recently been moored.

"Well," he said at last, with an air of cheerful resignation, "she's gone, all right."

"She has, for a fact," came the Colonel's hearty agreement. "But never mind, my boy. There'll be another steamer along a month from now. And you'll find Alaska's not the worst place in the world to get stranded in," he continued, with a glance at the man's costume. "Looks to me as if you'd just got out of Siberia. They tell me that between the White Guards and the Bolsheviki over there, an American's a continual candidate for a front seat in Heaven."

As he ceased speaking both he and Nash looked expectant. When the man neither affirmed nor denied the statement, the Colonel went on:

"Oh, well, no matter where you're from, my boy, you've hit the right spot at last—the best country on God's green foot-stool, I repeat. By the way," Colonel Jeff leaned forward confidentially, "do you mind giving me a clue to the name you're using now?"

Something like a smile showed in the newcomer's gray eyes.

"Call me Tynan," he said. "Gary Tynan."

"And can you run a gas engine, Gary?"

"Absolutely!"

"Praise Heaven!" exclaimed the Colonel piously. "Now, I'm Jefferson Breeze, the best single-handed talker in the North, and the only sour-dough that knows nothing about a boat. And he—" with a wave of his hand toward the trader—"is Nicholas Nash—the High Mogul of Rezanoff."

Nash acknowledged the introduction carelessly. He shifted his long legs and rose from the chair, settling his cap forward over his light hair. There was a faint, indescribable look of danger about him as he thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and, with a shoulder-swinging gait, crossed over to the Colonel. He wore a suit of dark-green forestry cloth and leather puttees. His face was long and lean and of that ruddy hue that tells of freckles which fade after early boyhood. His eyes—it was difficult to tell whether Nick Nash's eyes were blue like those of his Irish father, or brown like those of his Russian mother, for though he was thirty years old, there was a vague, moist mistiness about them, such as is seen in the eyes of very young puppies, or in the eyes of natives who have drunk macoola many years.

People were divided in their opinion of Nicholas Nash. "Spawn of the Devil" some of them called him. Among those who used this term most frequently when young Nick was growing up, was his own father, Martin Nash, the owner and manager of the Rezanoff Trading Company. Motherless at the age of twelve, young Nick had been liberally supplied with money and kept in school in the States as much as possible. His vacations spent at home were remembered with sighs by his father and the dusky creole mothers of the village. When he was twenty, he came back to Rezanoff and announced that he was through with institutions of learning. His greatest desire was to make money.

Still, he refused to work in the store, saying it was slow. He had brought back with him the fastest, best-equipped launch that ever cut the waters along the Aleutian Islands. In a land of reckless men he soon became notorious for his dare-devil exploits. Natives and white men alike talked of him from Prince William's Sound, with its hundred winding bays, to the end of the Aleutian chain stretching toward Asia across the shallow green of Bering Sea.

For half a dozen years the appearance of Nash's Seal Pup off any of the sleepy old Russian villages was a signal for the convivial ones to get out barrels of macoola, the viciously potent sourdough beer of the North. But—if it was summer—the dark village mothers gathered in their pretty creole daughters from outdoor tasks of berry-picking and hay-cutting on the hills, and put them to stirring bubbling pots of jam, or some other work that kept them in the copper-hung kitchens, where the maternal eye was never absent.

In those days honest old Martin Nash swore that when Death took him, his son should never inherit one cent. Rather would he leave the business of the trading-post to his friend, Father Anton, for the building and support of the orphanage the Russian priest was ever hoping to establish at Rezanoff.

But the war changed all that. Nick Nash's bitterest enemy could not, with truth, accuse him of lack of courage. He was among the first to enlist in Alaska. After three years overseas with the 41st Engineers, he returned with a splendid record, and Martin Nash, for the first time, welcomed him home with tears of pride.

"He's a changed lad—a changed lad," he assured his cronies who gathered in the store of an evening. "He's that quiet—why, the fella actually comes to me, mind you, and takes the work of me bookkeeping off me hands—and me never askin' him at all!" he would invariably finish, looking about him with dim eyes alight with happiness.

The glamour of war dimmed, for a time, the memory of those other years. People wanted to like Nicholas Nash for his father's sake. "Nick? Oh, he was a bit wild," they'd say, "but the war took that all out of him. He'll settle down and make good, all right."

Old Martin had been dead a year now, and Nick was making good. He carried on the business of the Rezanoff Trading Company as well as his father had, though his helpers were all strangers to the village, men whom Nash had known in his restless days. He had even enlarged the scope of his territory. Since fox-farming was fast becoming the leading industry of the Aleutian Islands, he himself visited the various fur-farms to establish trading relations with the owners. He marketed nearly all the furs produced in that section, and fox-farmers as far east as Seward were beginning to depend on him for the best supplies, and often for hired help.

Nash made a specialty of fox-ranch supplies and his years of roving in the Seal Pup had given him a knowledge of the whole northwestern coast. As he stood beside the Colonel now, his humid eyes missed no detail of the stranger's appearance, though his manner was casual.

Colonel Jeff proceeded, in his most orotund manner, to express his thanks and appreciation of the rescue of Feodor. "But you're feeling pretty skookum now, Gary, aren't you?" he finished. "Good! All right, then, I've got a little proposition to put up to you. Come along, boys, we'll toddle over to the hotel and see if Zoya can't give us a hot snack while I talk."

Without waiting for assent, he slipped a hand through the arm of each, and still talking, led them off down the flagged path, past a Russian sundial, to the roadway.

The only street tranquil old Rezanoff knows is the wide thoroughfare which leads up from the trading-post on the beach, and ambles its way through the village skirting half a mile of the crescent Harbor. Knoll-tops and hollows were dotted with small pink and white and yellow houses, all with window-boxes bright with flowers. Narrow silver paths made lines across the green downs and furnished sunny drowsing places for old dogs who slumbered on regardless of grazing cows and their tinkling bells. Clothes-lines on the tops of knolls waved banners in the morning breeze—faded reds, vivid blues and orange, a gay defiance to the flame of nasturtiums and the softer color of blue-bells, which painted the tiny yards fenced off with discarded herring-nets.

As the trio walked, they met pretty creole girls who smiled shyly while passing, with linked arms, toward the trading-post. Old, brown-faced women in trailing skirts and kerchiefs tied beneath their chins, plodded stolidly along, now and again making a detour to avoid Aleut boys, half-buried under back-loads of wild hay. These jolly young harvesters came caroming along the road, laughing and exchanging quips with loquacious Colonel Jeff as they passed.

Sea-gulls, sailing on lazy wings, jeered down at some solemn ravens perched on the jade-colored roof of the old Russian Church. Quaint and Muscovian, the little house of God dominated the village from a semi-circle of alders. In the niches of the white belfry hung a chime of bells which had been cast in the foundries of Sitka when Baranoff ruled the North, and the Byzantine spire held aloft the glittering, three-barred cross of the Russians. But the shutters on the windows were closed, and three planks were fastened across the doorway. Behind the Church the old parish-house of squared logs was likewise shuttered and nailed up.

"Yes," trumpeted the Colonel, who had been pointing out these objects of interest with his cane, "yes, look at it—completely out of business. The war in Russia certainly played hob with the priests of the Greek-Russian Church, even here in Alaska. Since the disorganization over there, the poor devils don't get enough to bless themselves with, let alone keep up the work of the Church. Their followers here have never been trained, you know, to support it. The Czar attended to that—played the Little White Father stuff, and all that sort of thing. By the lord, I, for one, feel sorry for the priests. I do, for a fact!"

Nick's laugh, with its scornful undertone, interrupted the Colonel.

"Colonel Jeff, your heart's as soft as their hands! Why shouldn't they get out and work like the rest of us, instead of psalm-singing all the time in front of a lot of Tin Peters?" Thus Nick disrespectfully designated the holy icons of his mother's Church.

"Well, they're doing it now, aren't they?" retorted the old man. "Yes, sir, every last one of 'em is at some kind of work—and they not knowing any more about manual labor than a baby, and everyone giving them the laugh, too, by the lord! They not only get out and hustle every day of the week, but in the evenings and on Sunday you'll find 'em attending to their Church doings—for not a darned cuss of 'em will give up his Church—no sir! Not one! And it costs real money to keep the candles burning and all that monkey business that makes religion pretty to the natives." Colonel Jeff turned aside to make room for an Aleut boy wheeling a huge barrow-load of salmon. "And there's the marrying and the burying and the sick that's everlastingly with us. Who goes good at the store, even now, for a native's grub, when he's got T.B. and can't work? Eh, Nick? Why, Father Anton of course, just as he always did. Though in the old days your dad was mighty good to the Aleuts himself, my boy," he added.

"Yes, and a pretty bit of money he lost by trusting the thieving beggars," commented the trader shortly.

"Well, the old days are gone," continued the Colonel, with the suspicion of a sigh. "When I was talking with Spider aboard the Starr this morning, he told me that Father Ivan, up at Karluk, cashed in the other day. The old fellow had a job as watchman on one of the fishtraps up there, Gary, and mighty dangerous work it is, too, climbing about on those high, spindling piles. I know I couldn't do it, starve or no starve! Father held his job down fine last year, for all he was one of those gentle chaps who'd never been on anything higher than his own pulpit. But this year—well, I reckon he was pretty old for that kind of work, besides being crippled some with rheumatism. He fell off the trap last week and was drowned, poor devil. Luckily he was not a married priest, so he left no young ones behind.

"Now our Father Anton here at Rezanoff's a bit different. He's an up-and-coming little son-of-a-gun—I guess you thought so, Nick, ha! ha! ha! that time he nailed you stealing his sacramental wine when you was a kid, and beat the tar outten you!" The Colonel's hearty laugh rolled out as he hit the unresponsive Nash a mighty crack on the back. "Gosh! I'll never forget that day, Nick, ha! ha! ha! Nor how Sasha—but I'll have to tell you that story some other time, Gary. Here's the hotel."

The road took a turn and disclosed a long, hewed-log house built in the Russian style with a wide gable in the center. It looked like a comfortable frontier home, rather than a hostelry. The Colonel stepped carefully over a couple of dogs dreaming on the sun-warmed porch, and led the way into a large room which was lobby, lounge and dining-room combined.

Sunlight streamed through the many-paned windows, throwing upon the sand-scoured floor golden patches of light and the shadows of flowers that bloomed in pots on the deep sills. A wide couch ran along one side, its depressions and humps indicating long service. Three tables covered with white oil-cloth lined the other. On the wall above them was a large calendar which performed its first duty of advertising a well-known rifle by means of a colored picture showing a man and a dog out hunting—both immaculately groomed. A small shelf near it contained half a dozen packages of assorted breakfast food, and some tins of condensed milk. The most striking object in the room was the icon which every Russian house knows. It occupied a shelf in the East corner—a beautifully hammered copper representation of the Saviour. Suspended by thin brass chains before it hung a lampada—a small brass holder for a half-burned but now unlighted candle.

"Ah-a-a! Here we are!" exclaimed the Colonel, hanging his cap and cane on the nail which held the calendar. He squeezed himself in at one of the tables, making room for Nick on the end. "Sit down, boys.... Anyone out there in the kitchen?" he called cheerily, looking over his glasses at the open door which led off from the room. "Oh, how are you, Zoya, my dear? You look pretty as a rice-lily this morning!"

In the doorway appeared a creole girl, tall, slender, round of limb. She leaned against the casing, looking in, smiling a crooked little smile that revealed a hint of white teeth. The crisp pink of her house-dress set off the clear olive of her skin and her cloud of dark hair parted in the middle and done in a simple knot at the back of her small head. Her eyes, dark and lustrous, were half-veiled by heavy lashes as her glance, passing swiftly over the Colonel and Gary lingered at last on Nick.

"Splice the coffee, Zoya, please, and bring us something piping hot—clam chowder would be about right," the Colonel went on as the girl approached. She stood close to Nash, placing both hands on the table and leaning over as she waited for the order. "We have a new, though reluctant, addition to Rezanoff here. Mr. Gary Tynan. And you'll have to be mighty nice to him, Zoya, because it was he who pulled that obfuscated lummox of a brother of yours out of the bay this morning, after the Big Swede knocked him out."

Zoya murmured her appreciation of Gary's act, and then with more spirit, went on to tell that the stricken and repentant Feodor was even then upstairs in bed with his arm in a cast, undergoing a lecture from their mother. The girl's voice was pleasant, but had the slight heaviness and deliberation characteristic of the half-breed.

"Of course, my dear," announced the Colonel, "this accident cuts off your visit with your mother, you know. I came over to tell you that you'll have to go back to Rocking Moon with me this afternoon. With Feodor laid up, Sasha will need you more than ever."

Involuntarily the girl's eyes sought Nicholas Nash's face and she stood back from the table. "I—I—yes. I'll be ready to go this afternoon," she agreed quietly. "And I'll hurry the chowder, Colonel Jeff." As she moved toward the kitchen the eyes of all three men followed her graceful figure.

"Never mind bringing me anything, Zoya," Nash called after her. To the others he added, "I had a late breakfast."

After a few minutes of desultory talk, he rose nonchalantly from the table and sauntered into the kitchen, where all sounds of culinary activity ceased.

"Nick's got a natural bent for the ladies." The Colonel shook his head slowly as he brought his pipe from his pocket again. "And where most of them are concerned he's got a code of morals like a rubber band. With Zoya, though, you understand, it's different, she being raised almost like a daughter in the house of Father Anton. Nick has his good points, and the war cured him of a lot of his deviltry, but, by the lord, the fellow still goes in for too much of his goo-goo work." The old man blew experimentally through the stem of his pipe.

"I tell him—and I'm telling you now, Gary, that it absolutely ain't right to monkey round with native women. It ain't fair to 'em, in the first place and no—well, they just don't seem to understand our ways. There's two things a white man in Alaska has no business with whatsoever. One's an Outside dog, and the other's an Inside woman. A dog from the States ain't worth his salt on a sled, and a native woman—" He paused to light the remainder of the cigar in the bowl of his pipe. "Well, to come to the point, young fellow, being as you're a cheechako, I'll just tell you about Pete Scidmore—Skysail Pete they called him down Seward way where he worked for me on a little prospect I had there once. You see, Skysail married an Indian woman there—a pretty little baggage she was, too—and then he goes away on a stampede and being sort of absent-minded like, he stays for four years. When he comes home, my boy, he finds a wireless station has been put up at Seward. Also that his wife has three little red-headed kids. Skysail ponders, looking at the kids and then at his wife. Then he says, dubious like: 'W-e-l-l, Annie, it's getting things down to a pretty fine point when you can have 'em by wireless!'" Colonel Jeff shot a fountain of smoke into the air and slanted an eye kitchenward. "Chowder!" he bellowed. "Chowder!"

A moment later Zoya, flushed and glowing-eyed, appeared with a tray from which two bowls and a coffee pot sent up appetizing wreaths of steam. She deposited her burden and left the room again.

Colonel Jeff laid aside his pipe and addressed himself to his chowder, but allowed its consumption in no way to interfere with his monologue. "Now, when Father Anton is here—God bless him," he added heartily, "he keeps his whole blamed flock stampeding on the trail of virtue. No macoola, no philandering, but plenty parties, and marriage bells and dancing every week where he can drop in and see the Devil ain't hornin' in anywhere. I say he knows his business, even though I was raised a good Methodist, with my father a minister and seven kids, and the wolf always at the door. But Father Anton's been away a month now, and well—you saw Feodor today. That brings me to the point, Gary—" the Colonel stopped eating and emphasized his next remarks with baton-like motions of his spoon. "I'm in a hellauva mess. I'm representing Father Anton—oh, not in the Church!" he explained hastily, seeing the other's surprised look. "Only in a business, and you may say, a domestic way. I've got to get a man to run that blasted launch of Sasha's and help us out on the fox-ranch at Rocking Moon until Feodor is O. K. again. Just got to do it, man! Now, see here—" he leaned confidentially across the table, "—you can't possibly get away from here for a month, so what's the matter with your taking the job, eh?" He stabbed at his companion's chest with the spoon.

"I'm your man, Colonel," accepted Gary Tynan, with a promptness that suggested empty pockets. "Anyway, until a steamer comes along. But ... Sasha, and Rocking Moon ... Sounds interesting, only it's like so much Hindoo to me."

"Well, well, you surely must have come from the North Pole if you never heard about Sasha." The Colonel scraped the bottom of his bowl to get the last morsel, and then waved the dish back and forth, looking in the direction of the kitchen. "Chowder! A little more service here, Zoya, my dear!" he called. "Two more chowders!"

When these had been supplied, he leaned across to Gary again and continued, with the air of one imparting information of vast importance: "Sasha, my dear sir, is the girl who upset the traditions of the orthodox Greek-Russian Church. Sasha is Father Anton Larianoff's only offspring, and the owner and manager of the fox-ranch on Rocking Moon."

He allowed this statement to sink in before he went on: "Yes, sir, when the war came, and no more money came trickling in from Russia to keep things going here in the Church line, that little girl—I've known her ever since she was knee-high to a grasshopper—that little girl sat right down to talk things over with her dad. Her mother's dead, you know. And, by the lord, in spite of all the arguments Father Anton could advance against it, and there were a-plenty, two years ago she ups and makes arrangements to start a fox-ranch on the Island of Rocking Moon, about fifteen miles from here. Last year, of course, she didn't have any stock to sell, as she started in with just a few pairs, but this fall she stands to clear up a bunch of money and set her dad on his feet again, even to beginning that orphanage the old man's so crazy to build."

"But why, Colonel, is Father Anton himself so mysteriously absent at this time, and his church nailed up?" asked the young man. "If the Island is only fifteen miles away, I should think he could attend to the work of each place."

"That's just what I say," exclaimed Colonel Jeff. "He could, but Sasha won't let him. You see he's one of these enthusiastic little cusses, always trying to advance the cause of Alaska—he being Alaska born from the real old Russian stock, you know. Now, all his life he's been rooting round in Russian archives and books—English ones, too, for that matter, both in Alaska and San Francisco. And he's writing a history of this country from the year one. He thinks Alaska schools should have real Alaska histories and geographies for Alaska children, instead of using school books from the States that picture this whole country as a frozen waste inhabited by Eskimos and Polar bears. Sasha is just as crazy about the idea as he is, and when she found that three months' research work in the Territorial Library at Juneau would about finish the thing up, nothing would do her, but he must go down there before it came time for shipping foxes away this fall. When Father gets this history done, he thinks he'll get money enough from it so that Sasha can give up the ranch—but I'm not so sure about that. Between you and me I don't think she wants to give up the ranch. Anyway, that's how it is. Father is off down in Juneau now, and we're here, where we have no business being if we're going to get a load of salmon on this tide," he finished, looking at a black-faced watch he drew from his shirt-pocket. "Shake a leg, my boy. Let's go!"

The two men shoved their chairs back from the table and rose, just as Nicholas Nash—his cap still on his head—sauntered in from the kitchen.

"Oh, I say, Nick," the Colonel hailed him. "You needn't bother about finding a man to substitute for Feodor. Everything's hunky-dory. Gary, here, is going to take the scoundrel's place."

Nick turned quickly toward Gary, a flicker of displeasure showing in his eyes.

"Know anything about foxes, Tynan?" he asked, with a hint of suspicion.

"Not a thing in the world," replied the stranger cheerfully, "except the story about the fox and the grapes."

"Ha! ha!" laughed the Colonel. "My boy, if that old party, Esop, was writing that story now, it wouldn't get by. He'd have to make something else the matter with those grapes. In these days of Prohibition it makes 'em too darned suggestive. Um-umm! Sets me to slavering at the mouth just thinking of 'em!"

The trader ignored the interruption. "Well, Tynan," he invited casually, "drop in at the store any time you're in town, and let me know how you like your job as hired man." His long stride covered the distance to the open door where he stood looking down the road. "See you again, Tynan." He drew a package of cigarettes from his pocket. "So long, Jeff. Be careful you don't fall overboard." He lighted a cigarette and with an impatient movement of his foot, shifted one of the sleeping dogs aside as he crossed the porch.

Gary watched the tall figure disappear round a turn in the road.

"Sort of a queer, smoldering eye, our friend Nash has," he remarked as if to himself.

The answer on Colonel Jeff's lips was cut short by the entrance from the kitchen of Zoya. "Ah-a-a, here you are, my dear!" he said, drawing a worn wallet from his pocket to settle his bill. "We'll return for you in a couple of hours, so have your ditty-bag all ready. It'll be mighty good to have you back cooking for us at the ranch again, Zoya. Between Sasha and me both trying our hands at the job, my indigestion's about ruined." He turned to take his cane from the nail. "Come Gary. We'll stagger down to the store now and get you a few things, for of course the Starr went off with all your duds." He cast a speculative eye on the young man's beard. "An' I'll trim up that brush heap of yours with the scissors, too, while we're there," he added. "Otherwise, you ain't bad-looking."

Half an hour later, as the two men emerged from the door of the trading-post with their purchases under their arms, a low rakish, cabined launch shot out from the dock near by. It headed across the sparkling blue bay, throwing water high on each side of its prow. The loud, arrogant put-put-put of its unmuffled exhaust struck the green hillside back of Rezanoff like a tangible thing, the echo rebounding to smite the ears of the listeners. Before the two men had reached the dock where the Simmie and Ann lay, the intensity of the sound had diminished until it was but a hum on the air.

"That fellow can go some!" exclaimed Gary, with a man's admiration for speed.

"Yes. That's Nick in his Seal Pup. Swiftest thing this side of Seattle." The Colonel stood a moment looking out over the island-dotted bay where the launch was growing small in the distance. "He's going over to Rocking Moon to see Sasha, I reckon."

The old man's bemused eyes lingered on the disappearing craft. "Nick has always had everything he wanted in life, seems to me—except Sasha," he meditated as if he had forgotten the presence of his companion. "His father was one of my oldest friends ... but—" He paused, then finished with sudden fierceness, "By God, I hope he never gets her!"