The Purple Flame Part 10

"_Sulee!_" (another), said Attatak, as she took down a larger object of the same general shape.

A few feet farther on was a ledge fairly covered with curious objects; strange shaped dishes; bits of ivory, black as coal; pieces of copper, dulled with age. Such were the treasures of the past that lay before them.

"Someone's pantry of long ago," mused Marian.

"Very, very old," said Attatak, holding up a bit of black ivory. "Mebby two hundred, mebby five hundred years. Ivory turn black slow; very, very slow. By and by, after long, long time, look like that."

As Attatak uttered these words Marian could have hugged her for sheer joy. She knew now that they had made a very rare find. The objects had not been left there by a white man, but by some native. Broken bits of ancient Eskimo pottery had been found in mounds on the Arctic coast.

Those had been treasured. But here were perfect specimens, such as any museum in the world would covet.

And yet, had she but known it, the rareness and value of some of these were to exceed her fondest dreams. But this discovery was to come later.

Drawing off her calico parka, Marian tied it at the top, and using it as a sack, carefully packed all the articles.

"Let's go back," she said in an awed whisper.

"_Eh-eh_," Attatak answered.

There was a strange spookiness about the place that made them half afraid to remain any longer.

They had turned to go, when Marian, chancing to glance down, saw the bit of ivory they had found by the outer camp-fire. At first she was tempted to let it remain where it lay. It seemed an insignificant thing after the discovery of these rarer treasures. But finally she picked it up and thrust it into her bag.

Well for her that she did. Later it was to prove the key to a mystery, an entirely new mystery which had as yet not appeared above their horizon, but was, in a way, a.s.sociated with the mystery of the purple flame.

"Listen!" said Marian, as they came nearer to the mouth of the cave, "I do believe the storm is pa.s.sing. Perhaps we can get off the mountain to-day. Oh, Attatak! We'll win yet! Won't that be glorious?"

It was true; the storm was pa.s.sing. Attatak was dispatched to investigate, and soon came hurrying back with the report that they could be on their way as soon as they had eaten breakfast and packed.

Marian was possessed with a wild desire to inspect her newly discovered treasure-to wash, scrub and sc.r.a.pe it and try to discover how it was made and what it was made of. Yet she realized that any delay for such a cause would be all but criminal folly. So, after a hasty breakfast, she rubbed as much dust as she could from the strange treasures and packed them carefully in the folds of the sleeping bags.

Soon the girls found themselves beside their deer, picking their way cautiously forward over the remaining distance to the divide; then quite as cautiously they started down the other side.

During the day they halted for a cold lunch while their reindeer fed on a broad plateau, a protected place where they were safe from the wild blizzards of the peaks that loomed far above them.

"From now on," said Marian, "there will be little rest for us. Our bold stroke has saved us nothing. It is now a question of whether reindeer are trustworthy steeds in the Arctic; also whether girls are capable of solving problems, and of enduring many hardships. As for me," she shook her fist in the general direction of Scarberry's herd, "I'll say they are. We'll win! See if we don't!"

To this declaration Attatak uttered an "_Eh-eh_," which to Marian sounded like a fervent "Amen!"

CHAPTER XIII THE LONG TRAIL

At nightfall of the following day, worn from the constant travel, and walking as if in their sleep, the two girls came to the junction of the two forks of a modest sized river. The frozen stream, coated as it was by a hard crust of snow, had given them a perfect trail over the last ten miles of travel. Before that they had crossed endless tiers of low-lying hills whose hard packed and treacherously slippery sides had brought grief to them and to their reindeer. Twice an overturned sled had dragged a reindeer off his feet, and reindeer, sled and driver had gone rolling and tumbling down the hill to be piled in a heap in the gully below.

Those had been trying hours; but now they were looking forward to many miles of smooth going between the banks of this river.

First, however, there must be rest and food for them and for their deer.

They were watching the shelving bank for some likely place to camp, where there was shelter from the biting wind and driftwood lodged along the bank for a fire. Then, with a little cry of surprise, Marian pointed at a bend in the river.

"At this point," she said, "the river runs southwest."

Attatak looked straight down the river and at the low sweeping banks beyond, then uttered a low: "_Eh-eh_," in agreement.

"That means that we cannot follow the river," said Marian. "Our course runs northwest. Every mile travelled on the river takes us off our course and lessens our chance of reaching our goal in time."

"What shall we do?" asked Attatak, in perplexity.

"Let me think," said Marian. "There is time enough to decide. We must camp here. The deer must have food and rest. So must we. There is not much danger of wolves. If any come prowling around, the deer will let us know soon enough. We will sleep on our sleds and if anything goes wrong, the deer, tethered to the sleds, will tumble us out of our beds. Anyway, they will waken us."

Soon supper was over. The deer, having had their fill of moss dug from beneath the snow, had lain down to rest. The girls spread their sleeping bags out upon the sleds and prepared for a few hours of much needed rest.

Attatak, with the carefree unconcern that is characteristic of her race, had scarcely buried her face in an improvised pillow when she was fast asleep.

Sleep did not come so quickly to Marian. Many matters of interest lingered in her mind. It was as if her mind were a room all littered up with the odds and ends of a day's work. She must put it to rights before she could sleep.

She thought once more of the strange treasures they had brought from the cave. Tired as she was, she was tempted to get out those articles and look at them, and to brush them up a bit and see what they were like.

"I know it's foolish," she told herself, "but it's exactly as if I had hung up my stocking on Christmas Eve, and then when Christmas morning came, had been obliged to seize my stocking without so much as a glance inside, and forced to start at once on a long journey which would offer me no opportunity to examine my stocking until the journey was at an end.

But I won't look; not now. It's too cold. Brr-r," she shivered.

As she drew herself farther down into the furry depths of her sleeping bag, she was reminded of the time she and Patsy had slept together beneath the stars. She could not help wishing that Patsy was with her now, sharing her sleeping bag, and looking up at the gleaming Milky Way.

She wondered vaguely how Patsy was getting on with the herd, but the thought did not greatly disturb her. She was about to drift off to the land of dreams, when a thought popped into her mind that brought her up wide awake again. Their morning's course was not yet laid. What should it be?

She closed her eyes and tried to think. Then, like a flash, it came to her.

"It's the hard way," she whispered to herself. "Seems as if it were always the hard way that is safe and sure."

The thought that had come to her was this: In order to reach their destination, they must still travel several miles north. The river they were following flowed southwest. To go south was to go out of their way.

Were they to strike due north, across country, they might in the course of a day's travel come to another stream which did not angle toward the south. That would mean infinitely hard travel over snow that was soft and yielding, and across tundra whose frozen caribou bogs were as rough as a cordwood road.

"It's the long, hard way," she sighed, "but we may win. If we follow this river we never can."

Then, with all her problems put in order, she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIV MYSTERIOUS MUSIC

Two days later Marian and Attatak found themselves tramping slowly along behind their tired deer. It was night. Now and again the moon shot a golden beam of light across their trail. For the most part that trail was dark, overshadowed by great spruce and fir trees that stood out black against the whiteness of the snow, each tree seeming a gown clad monk-silent witnesses of their pa.s.sing.

There was now a definitely marked trail. An ax cut here and there on a tree told them this trail had been made by men, and not by moose and caribou. They had seen no traces of man. No human habitation had sent its gleam of light across their trail to bid them welcome. Scarcely knowing whether she wished to see the light of a cabin, Marian tramped doggedly on. It was long past camping time, yet she feared to make camp. Several times she had caught the long drawn howl of a wolf, faint and indistinct in the distance.

With a burst of joy and hope she thought of the progress they had made.

The tramp across open tundra had been fearfully hard. They had, however, reaped from it a rich reward; the river they had found was larger than the other and its surface had offered an almost perfect trail. It flowed north by west instead of southwest. It took them directly on their way.

Even now Marian was wondering if this were not the very river at whose junction with the great Yukon was located the station they sought to reach before the Government Agent had pa.s.sed.