The Alaskan Part 13

His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that. Their love had been a part of his life, and the knowledge that his response to this love would be at best a poor and broken thing filled him with dread. A strange sickness crept through his blood; it grew in his head, so that when noon came, he did not trouble himself to eat.

It was late in the afternoon when he saw far ahead of him the clump of cottonwoods near the warm springs, very near his home. Often he had come to these old cottonwoods, an oasis of timber lost in the great tundras, and he had built himself a little camp among them. He loved the place.

It had seemed to him that now and then he must visit the forlorn trees to give them cheer and comradeship. His father's name was carved in the bole of the greatest of them all, and under it the date and day when the elder Holt had discovered them in a land where no man had gone before.

And under his father's name was his mother's, and under that, his own.

He had made of the place a sort of shrine, a green and sweet-flowered tabernacle of memories, and its bird-song and peace in summer and the weird aloneness of it in winter had played their parts in the making of his soul. Through many months he had antic.i.p.ated this hour of his home-coming, when in the distance he would see the beckoning welcome of the old cottonwoods, with the rolling foothills and frosted peaks of the Endicott Mountains beyond. And now he was looking at the trees and the mountains, and something was lacking in the thrill of them. He came up from the west, between two willow ridges through which ran the little creek from the warm springs, and he was within a quarter of a mile of them when something stopped him in his tracks.

At first he thought the sound was the popping of guns, but in a moment he knew it could not be so, and the truth flashed suddenly upon him.

This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was shooting firecrackers!

A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok's mischievous habit of lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness Nawadlook never failed to scold her. They had prepared for his home-coming with a celebration, and Tautuk and Amuk Toolik had probably imported a supply of "bing-bangs" from Allakakat or Tanana. The oppressive weight inside him lifted, and the smile remained on his lips.

And then as if commanded by a voice, his eyes turned to the dead cottonwood stub which had sentineled the little oasis of trees for many years. At the very crest of it, floating bravely in the breeze that came with the evening sun, was an American flag!

He laughed softly. These were the people who loved him, who thought of him, who wanted him back. His heart beat faster, stirred by the old happiness, and he drew himself quickly into a strip of willows that grew almost up to the cottonwoods. He would surprise them! He would walk suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing that would amaze and delight them.

He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one of the "giants" that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his sight, watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his way so that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen, within a dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her, and Keok was still standing on the log with her back toward him.

It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.

"Keok!"

Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?

And then:

"Mary!" he called. "_Mary Standish_!"

She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt's face was the color of gray rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his home-coming.

CHAPTER XIII

After that one calling of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pa.s.s out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, _alive!_ He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color come into it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log and came toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed a long time to Alan.

He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made an effort to recover himself.

"You almost frightened me," she said. "We have been expecting you and watching for you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking back over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes, and I didn't see you."

It seemed incredible that he should be hearing her voice, the same voice, unexcited, sweet, and thrilling, speaking as if she had seen him yesterday and with a certain reserved gladness was welcoming him again today. It was impossible for him to realize in these moments the immeasurable distance that lay between their viewpoints. He was simply Alan Holt--she was the dead risen to life. Many times in his grief he had visualized what he would do if some miracle could bring her back to him like this; he had thought of taking her in his arms and never letting her go. But now that the miracle had come to pa.s.s, and she was within his reach, he stood without moving, trying only to speak.

"You--Mary Standish!" he said at last. "I thought--"

He did not finish. It was not himself speaking. It was another individual within him, a detached individual trying to explain his lack of physical expression. He wanted to cry out his gladness, to shout with joy, yet the directing soul of action in him was stricken. She touched his arm hesitatingly.

"I didn't think you would care," she said. "I thought you wouldn't mind--if I came up here."

Care! The word was like an explosion setting things loose in his brain, and the touch of her hand sent a sweep of fire through him. He heard himself cry out, a strange, unhuman sort of cry, as he swept her to his breast. He held her close, crushing kisses upon her mouth, his fingers buried in her hair, her slender body almost broken in his arms. She was alive--she had come back to him--and he forgot everything in these blind moments but that great truth which was sweeping over him in a glorious inundation. Then, suddenly, he found that she was fighting him, struggling to free herself and putting her hands against his face in her efforts. She was so close that he seemed to see nothing but her eyes, and in them he did not see what he had dreamed of finding--but horror.

It was a stab that went into his heart, and his arms relaxed. She staggered back, trembling and swaying a little as she got her breath, her face very white.

He had hurt her. The hurt was in her eyes, in the way she looked at him, as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his hands mutely.

"You think--I came here for _that?_" she panted.

"No," he said. "Forgive me. I am sorry."

It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him, which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together.

Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him was centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the astonishment growing in her eyes.

"You are alive," he said, giving voice again to the one thought pounding in his brain. "_Alive!_"

It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to the girl.

"Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?" she asked.

"Your letter? At Nome?" He repeated the words, shaking his head. "No."

"And all this time--you have been thinking--I was dead?"

He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form of speech.

"I wrote you there," she said. "I wrote the letter before I jumped into the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle's ship."

"I didn't get it."

"You didn't get it?" There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he had observed it, understanding.

"Then you didn't mean that just now? You didn't intend to do it? It was because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief to find me alive. That was it, wasn't it?"

Stupidly he nodded again. "Yes, it was a great relief."

"You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn't help me," she went on. "So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I wrote. To all the world but you I am dead--to Rossland, Captain Rifle, everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ash.o.r.e while the boats were making their search."

In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made it impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.

"Now I am here," she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. "I didn't think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the _Nome_. And so--I am your guest, Mr. Holt."

There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pa.s.s away from him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her own in them confidently.

"It was like a bolt of lightning," he said, his voice free at last and trembling. "Day and night I have been thinking of you, dreaming of you, and cursing myself because I believed I had killed you. And now I find you alive. And _here!_"

She was so near that the hands he clasped lay against his breast. But reason had returned to him, and he saw the folly of dreams.

"It is difficult to believe. Out there I thought I was sick. Perhaps I am. But if I am not sick, and you are really you, I am glad. If I wake up and find I have imagined it all, as I imagined so many of the other things--"

He laughed, freeing her hands and looking into eyes shining half out of tears at him. But he did not finish. She drew away from him, with a lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.

"I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step," he said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come. "Then I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag. It is almost as if I had created you!"