Chapter XXXII

The next morning Jeff and Big Eagle started down river with their prisoners. Jeff sat in the stem of the skin-boat, paddling and guiding, and Staritsa was permitted to help the boat along with his rather awkward paddling in the bow. Since the nobleman’s feet were securely confined, he was not in the least inclined to rock the boat and escape from his captor by swimming. Templeton, also comfortably but securely confined, paddled in the bow of his own canoe—left by the natives the previous day—and Big Eagle guided from the stern. The winter was impending, so they did not loiter along the way. Traveling early and late, they reached the mouth of the Iskut in a single day’s travel and camped on its green bank for a short rest. For four days thereafter they paddled and lined the boats up the wild waters of the Iskut, fetching up at last at the fall fish camp of a small tribe of friendly Indians.

Five days’ delay would have brought them in too late for the success of Jeff’s plan. The natives were even then breaking camp preparatory to going into winter quarters beyond the mountains. At this point Jeff gave the prisoners into the complete charge of Big Eagle, at once turning back toward his cabin where Molly had been left alone. There was no need to concern himself further about Templeton and Staritsa. He had left them in safe hands, and Sitka would know them no more, at least until spring.

They were to go with the tribe into winter quarters, and since the ranges would soon be overspread with thirty feet of soft snow, they could not readily retrace their steps until the late winter winds crusted the drifts and reopened the passes. Big Eagle had plenty of men to help guard them—natives who looked up to him as Chief—but the white captives would require little guarding after the great cold closed down in earnest. As Jeff had hinted, the white sea could maroon a man beyond any hope of delivery. The natives were told to feed and care for them, and when the day and night were again of equal length, to turn them loose.

The winter was breaking swiftly now; and Jeff raced it back to Molly. The four-day climb to the fish camp was retraced in one day with the Iskut’s surging waters behind him; and traveling light, he made phenomenal time up the Stikine toward home. Only the great river’s depth and power kept it open now to the easy passage of his craft. The shallow, glittering, woodland pools had died, their sweet vivacity repressed by the dour frost; and the little rivulets flowed under gray ice. Every night the Great Cold encroached further on to the land.

One bitter twilight he saw his familiar landing through the softly falling snow. Paddling swiftly, the boat soon touched the shore. The snow-laden branches of the underbrush lashed at him as he trotted up the dear, familiar trail—as if they hated him and resented his safe arrival and it had been the wood gods’ plan to snare him in some distant covert and still with frost the red rivulets of his veins. The gleam from an open doorway guided him home, as it would always lead him through the forest and the night. And now he saw Molly standing waiting.

Winter had little terror for the two exiles in the rude cabin in the Stikine. The fire was bright on the hearth, they had abundant food of a rough, coarse, but healthful kind, and their companionship was known and tried aforetime. On snowshoes or skis, fabricated rather clumsily by their combined efforts, they tasted all the rough joys loved of old by a hardy, Northern people; they hunted wild game, eating the meat and sewing the skins into garments; they trapped the fur bearers; they tracked the small, shy, forest people over the snow. When the blizzards swept the land or when they were tired of forest adventure they had pleasant, comfortable hours before their cheery hearth; and they knew hushed nights of wonder and mystery.

The river became a hard road to walk on, and the late winter winds blew off the snow and left it glare ice, on which a sled moved almost of itself. The nights lengthened and the twilight lingered long under the trees; but the tide slacked and changed, and they began to grow long again. Neither of them dreamed that the weeks could fly so fast. It was no wonder that the calculations Jeff made one clear morning of sunlit, glittering snow was a revelation to them both.

He came to table for breakfast with something on his mind; Molly had learned to interpret the sparkle in his black eyes and the grave, rather boyish wonderment in plain sight about his lips. Presently he smiled at her; and she walked about the table and stood at his chair. “Molly, have you any idea what day this is?” he asked solemnly.

She puzzled a moment. “It must be late in January.”

“It is the sixth day of February, that’s what! I’ve just been counting the notches on my calendar. Molly, what does that mean?”

“It means—you have won. It means Alaska is ours.”

“I think so, Molly. Unless some unforeseen thing has come up, the Russian Company’s time limit in which to renew their charter has expired, and the Russian minister is on his way to Washington, authorized by the Czar to sell Alaska to us. I don’t doubt but that the deal is practically settled by now.”

“It is a great victory!” she told him solemnly.

“Yes, I think it is,” he agreed thoughtfully. “Just the same, Molly—there won’t be any firecrackers shot off, or flares lighted on the streets of Washington. Alaska means very little to most of our people. They think it is just an iceberg, and will probably call Seward a fool for buying it. But we know, don’t we, Molly?”

“A territory equal in size to the original thirteen States! Surely they won’t make light of that.”

“They won’t know any better; but they’ll find out in time. Molly, posterity will be mighty glad we own Alaska. It is a new land for us to tame. It is a frontier to go to—to try our thews on—when the rest of the continent is fenced and under the plow! We are a pioneer nation, Molly—as you once told me yourself. We can’t cage ourselves up in cities if we are going to maintain the breed; we must have a mountain to climb, a trail to follow, a new horizon to beckon us on. If the old, daring, fighting, mastering strain is to survive, there must be something to dare, a foe to fight, a new world to master! The restless ones must have a far country, Molly—and Alaska is the answer.”

“I suppose it will be a long, long time before it comes into its own.”

“A century, perhaps. In the meantime Sitka will probably almost die away, just as you prophesied not long ago. As you say, Americans are not spoilers; and the great fur-bringing system that made Sitka will pass away with the departing Muscovite. But Sitka will be born again, when the home-makers come to stay.

“There’s one thing more, Molly, that I don’t believe Seward has given much thought to: that Alaska can be America’s great playground. There are thousands upon thousands of square miles of territory that will never grow wheat and can never support a dense population. Here the rivers will always swarm with trout, the waterfowl will fly in flocks to blacken the sun over the marshes, and the moose and bear, caribou and sheep will roam at will in the forests and the ranges. These things are worth more than gold, Molly; never doubt that for a minute. We are naturally an adventurous people, a race of hunters who perish if kept too long indoors; and here we can find our recreation. Our great leaders, tired and sick, can come here to forget their worries, to shoot and fish and gather strength to come back and lead us again. I think that in this we may find Alaska’s greatest value.”

It transpired that Molly made no immediate answer. These two had reckoned without their host if they had dreamed that their Alaskan affair had run its course. As Jeff’s earnest, ringing tone trailed off, both quickened to a subdued sound just outside the cabin door. It was not the way of wild beasts to come so close, even in this land where man had not yet proved mastery. The pack had fed well and ranged far from the pungent wood smoke; the dour old grizzly slept deeply in a distant cavern. Jeff turned to get his rifle from its rack of caribou horn; but he was to miss the feel of the trusted steel. The door suddenly opened.

A bearded soldier in the winter uniform of a sergeant of the Russian army stood on the threshold. His squad with ready rifles behind him.

Karl’s wound smarted still, and even here his hate had found its way.