Black gold

Chapter I The Quest

There was music in the swish of the paddle; but there was revolt in the pose of Rupert Harne as he sat in the bow of the canoe and looked moodily out over the placid expanse of the Copper River as it ambled its way to the South before him.

At his back was the long-lived northern sun hugging close to the horizon’s rim, like a golden coin poised against the grey haze of a turquoise sky. All about was the strange conflict of the Alaskan night, and in the dying hues of the day-night there was a definite lingering flavor of something gone, like flowers that have been crushed and thrown aside.

“Five years off the end of my life, Hart, for another year of this cursed Alaska now!”

The words were outflung; for Harne spoke abruptly, as though mere thought could crystallize the vagrant currents of the past; but there was no answer, other than the soothing swish of the paddle as it rose and fell lightly in the hands of the man behind him.

He had not looked for any answer, for this matter had been thrashed out long ago; though that did not lessen the sting of defeat nor soften the fact that there was revolt in his brain against all those circumstances which were driving them out of the North.

Harne looked slowly and measuredly about him, like one who bids farewell to old scenes.

Already the northern sun, hugging close to the horizon’s rim, was slipping behind the tips of the Chitina, and with this warning of a decaying summer there was a vague, ineffable something which had stolen into the air, a harbinger of the iron-bound nights, the sunless days, when nature, smiling now, would be swept swiftly with the violence of anger. Here and there, by the river’s edge, where the dwarfed trees crowded back the rolling hills, the willows were already taking on the sickly yellow of age. In the air above, a flock of wild fowl droned their bullet-like way straight to the South, as though vitalizing the crisp expanse with the virility of a newer and a sterner life. Here, on the water-trail below, on the level of mankind, was a mystic glamour hushing the noiseless solitudes. There was this river, filled with liquid glacier, shining through the twilight like polished silver, ambling its way from the North to the blue Pacific, along those straits which the dominant hills prescribed.

“Five years off the end of your life,” Hartley Garry spoke from the stern of the canoe. “Five years! It is a wonderful land . . . wonderful. . . . Yet damned!”

Harne shivered. It was a wonderful land, this . . .

THE QUEST

But damned. For it was the land which had brought to him his first real defeat, at the hands of man or of circumstances.

It was easy to sit here now, caught in the drift of the drifting river, and watch those mileposts of the past as they floated up and before his vision. It was simple to picture himself as he had been three years ago when Swedevaris Pellinger, cold old money-king of the East, had believed in him.

Even as Harne looked upon the growing twilight, he recalled how he had gone to Pellinger, fresh from his mining course, at the almost-tender years of twenty-five, with that double plea upon his lips. There was his adoration of Edith Pellinger, the daughter; and there was that great, vivid hope that he would find in the northland the coal-mining areas which would feed the half of a continent. He recalled how brilliant had been that vision. He could still feel some of the thrill of those days which three years in the North had hardened into a far-off youth; he remembered how Pellinger, shrewd and far-seeing, had been ready to finance him for this expedition; he could all but hear the words with which Swedevaris Pellinger had commended his resolution; he could see, even, the cold cynicism upon the lips of Ramsey Doolittle, money-king even as Pellinger was king, and he recalled how he laughed at the way in which Doolittle’s eyes wandered towards Edith Pellinger at the very moment he was speaking of the folly of Harne’s undertaking.

It was clear to him now, like sharp vignettes cut from the pages of memory. That was the past, poign¬ ant and goading; yet now it had become a tragedy, per¬ sonal and undoubted. For it could all be reduced to a few simple words. He had been given his chance, and he had failed.

He had failed only to the extent that he and Hart¬ ley Garry had been the victims of circumstances. Three years, sacrificed upon the altar of the North, had not been enough to lure from the goddess of the hostile slopes the key to hidden wealth. Well, it was the end.

“There is a chance that Pellinger will stretch the time a bit,” Garry suggested, as he had done a thou¬ sand times before. “He is a plunger. He has financed you for three years; surely he will add another, and without taking the price of five years ofiF the end of your life.”

“Perhaps,” Harne conceded, “and in the mean¬ time, we go to Valdez. We bow, temporarily, to the goddess Defeat; and yet, were there Indian blood in my veins, I think I would say that my arrow had been lost in its flight to the sun. The face of the Manitou is turned against me.”

They paddled, listlessly, drifting with the current of the river, watching, as they went, the glories of the twilight night, as though it were some friendship they were wounding with each stroke of the paddle’s blade. Along the placid stretches of the Copper they glided, past jagged rocks which broke at times into miniature rapids, past the dun walls of the river which stood out

THE QUEST sombre and uninviting against the brilliance of the sun¬ set.

For an hour or more they traveled thus, until the rocky walls drew narrower, and far beyond they could see the break of the rapids.

Garry rose to his knees and stared towards the crimson of the midnight sun. For a peculiar, distorted shaft of light had caught his gaze, a shaft which shot from below the horizon and reached far into the heavens above them. It seemed to reach upward like a broken arc, and immediately in front, in line with their eyes, was a great boulder by the river’s edge.

“Your rainbow,” Garry exclaimed youthfully. “We have followed it for three years, but it is still shining.”

Harne laughed easily.

“Youth and imagination,” he returned; then a little exclamation slipped from his lips.

When first he looked, there had been only the bar¬ ren rock jutting against the flame of sky. Yet now, upon the top of the cliff, there stood a human figure, wrapped in a halo of light.

“The goddess of the rainbow, of course,” Garry de¬ cided. “Just one flick of her little finger and our for¬ tunes are made.”

The figure was that of a girl, dressed in the garb of the Nootka Indians. She stood there, with arms out¬ stretched; and so confusing was the glow in the sky beyond, so fantastically did it play about the brown silhouette, that the girl’s feet seemed scarcely to touch the face of the rock. Rather did it seem that she was poised in the air, that she stood out as the chrysalis of that flaming sunset, as the spirit of its death and of the crisper vitality of the north.

“Just one little twist of the finger,” Garry muttered, half laughing. “She doesn’t seem to have seen us yet.”

The girl’s arms were outstretched and suddenly she raised them above her head, in the spirit of worship, or as though trying in vain abandon to draw to herself all the intoxicating glory of the blazing sky. The tab¬ leau was a flaming one, filled with beauty; and even as Garry’s laugh rang out across the water, there came to them another sound.

It was the cry of human voices. And in those voices was an echo which rang like the haunting cry of the chase. Then, in swift contrast, all the spirituality which had seemed to invest the girl was swept away. Her cloak of radiance fell, and she became subject to nature’s laws; she stumbled, then fell headlong.

Down the grey face of the rock the body plunged. Then, with a sound which smote them sharply, it struck the water beneath.

“She’ll drown!” Garry exclaimed, “after a fall like that.”

Experience told him that close to the rock the cur¬ rent must be quick and deep, while onward, down the river had some hundreds of yards, it ran rumpling and treacherous towards the break of the rapids.

Already the body was floating with the current, to¬ wards the rapids; and from the snarling of the water

THE QUEST as it broke upon the rocks, Garry knew that the pass¬ age was not one to be taken lightly or in the heat of rescue.

It was not work for a canoe, for if the girl were to be saved, it must be through the daring of a man will¬ ing to risk the rapids below.

“I will jump for her,” he decided. “Strike for that first cove, and throw me a rope.”

“It was my rainbow,” Harne checked him with a gesture; and already he was slipping over the bow of the canoe into the chilling current.

Harne caught the floating body at the fringe of the rapids, as it lodged for a moment against the shelving rocks; and for a brief instant he held the face to his. The eyes were closed and the flesh was cold; and then, with a little cry of protest, he fought the line of the rapids as they broke away towards the shore line.

An outflung rope drew across his shoulder, and a minute later Harne was carrying the burden in his numbing arms from rock to rock as he followed the guiding of the rope held in Hartley Garry’s hands. At the brink of the river, where the last snarling of the rapids loosened its grip upon his limbs, Harne placed the still form upon a bed of tundra moss; and as the girl lay there, the brown of the cushioned moss blended with the faded tints of a Nootka face.

She lay like death, human and appealing, with some of the pink of life still stealing through the bronze of her cheeks. She was in the garb of the Nootka In¬ dians, with face and hands as dark and stained as the natives; but where the dress was torn away from the throat there was the gleaming patch of a skin as soft and white, as pure and clear-blooded as their own.

“What a tragedy, in life as well as in death,” Garry muttered; and when Harne replied, his voice was harsh and strained.

“Tragedy? It is the North. Poor girl. Who can she be?”

He spoke, and stooped above her; and then he pressed his lips against hers as reverently as one kisses the face of a sleeping child.

As he did so, the girl’s wide brown eyes opened in wonderment.

Chapter II

The girl’s eyes were brown and dreamy, and for a time they peered into Harne’s face with a mixture of weariness and wonder. Then amazement, incompre¬ hension, the fear of a child, became imprinted upon her features; and back of that was a touch of sadness.

For long moments she stared into the man’s face, studying every line and curve; then abruptly she caught her hands before her eyes and began to sob bro¬ kenly. In that action was womanly emotion, a sorrow beyond her years, a tracery of sentiment which could not be all childish.

“Ease up a bit, you little brown Iris,” Harne began, totally unprepared for the handling of tears. “You are not in the camp of the enemy, whoever that happens to be. Suppose you forget about the tears, and tell us where you live.”

Then whimsically, as quickly as she had broken down, the girl became calm again. She brushed a hand across her eyes, and with a gesture of defiance she shook her head arrogantly.

“ ’Tain’t that,” she burst out, “I ain’t afraid of you, but when I woke up I thought you was an angel. But you ain’t. Angels don’t wear whiskers, do they ?

IO

And you’ve got clothes like the missioner up the river. But your eyes were so nice, I thought you must be an angel. You looked at me nicer than anybody’s done for a long while, unless it’s Old Maneto; and he’s an Indian.”

Garry laughed with relief.

“No. Old Rupe hasn’t qualified yet,” he offered, “unless it’s for the particular kind of angel you’re not talking about. So, young Iris, just give up the idea of promoting your esteemed servant.”

“Who’s Iris?” the girl demanded. “That ain’t my name.”

“It fits, for the lack of anything better,” Harne replied. “You see, we have become rapidly converted to believe in legends and rainbows. While we haven’t found the Golden Fleece, we seem to have found the Brown Hide.”

“Legend? What’s that?” the brown-eyed one de¬ manded. “The missioner never told me about that. He never talks the way you do, but I guess that’s be¬ cause I poke fun at him. You seem to screw up your eyes and laugh when you talk, and he always looks like he’s sorry for somebody. He says I’m a little brown witch and that my soul’s gone to damnation. What’s that?”

“It means, I think, that he is a dub missionary,” Harne decided. “But let us forget that long enough to find out how you got here, and mostly how you are going to get back again, wherever that is.”

“Oh, me. I don’t count. I’ll be right fit when I ii dry out. You fellows go ’long your ways, and I’ll get back home. But I’m right glad I met you, ’cause there ain’t many nice people come up this way. . . .”

The words broke sharply, and the girl bent her head quickly to listen through the rarefied night. For there was ringing once more in the ears of all the long-drawn cry of a human voice. It came more like the wail of sorrow than the utterance of any single word, and it struck all the more forcibly because of the sudden shrinking in the girl’s manner and the startled gleam in her brown eyes.

Then the bronzed hands reached out impulsively to¬ wards Harne’s shoulders.

“What is it, child?” he exclaimed.

“Nothing but Old Maneto and Dad,” she replied sullenly. “They’ll tell you where I live, all right.”

Suddenly the girl’s lightness returned. She looked into Harne’s eyes and smiled; and if fright there had been, it was swiftly swept aside.

“I guess I scared you,” she said. “I ain’t got over my ducking yet, and it made me jump when Old Maneto yelled like that. You’d better yell back, for it’s me they’re looking for.”

Two figures were outlined upon the cliff which frowned by the river’s edge; and even at first glance Harne knew them for an Indian and a white.

At the brink the men paused; they dropped upon their knees to peer into the current below, as if through instinct they divined a tragedy. The Indian sprang to his feet, and with arms raised to the dulling sky, he sent out once more upon the keen air the leaping wail of death.

“He thinks I’m a gonner,” the girl whispered; and Harne was conscious of a queer sensation because of the strange delight in her eyes.

But before he could do more than wonder at the mood, the white man upon the rock was pointing out their position to the Indian.

Maneto, the Indian, outran the white, and when he burst upon them, it was plain that the characteristic stoicism of his race had broken down temporarily beneath some strain. Though well up in years, the Nootka was still straight and athletic, with a definite amount of command and personality in his bear¬ ing, and now, in one quick glance, his narrow, snap¬ ping eyes seemed to embrace them all . . . the girl’s wet garments, the man’s sodden clothing, the canoe, the rapids which began to fall away almost at their feet. Then his alert gaze swung back to the cliff by the river’s edge.

“You’re right, Maneto,” the white was the first to speak, “that is just what happened. She ... ah . . . fell from the rock, and this gentleman was for¬ tunate enough to save her from the rapids.” Then, turning to Harne, he added, “To whom are we in¬ debted for this kindness which gave us back the life of our little Marcile?”

Even while conscious of a certain culture in the man's manner, Harne noted with a touch of anger that after the Indian’s first eagerness, neither paid any attention to the girl. Marcile, in her turn, lay back upon her elbows, and a certain bold, reckless defi¬ ance was leaping from her eyes.

“1 am called Rupert Harne,” he replied shortly, “voyageur, gentleman, and what not. All you call it here in the North. And my partner here is Hartley Garry. We are only too glad to have saved Marcile.”

“The language of a gentleman, though a bit worn in the looks,” the white returned. “Yet all we pros¬ pectors come to the same end.”

Studying the face of the white man before him, the first theory which rushed to Harne’s brain was that he belonged to that breed of unclassified men, whose numbers were all too many, who had drifted into the North on the high tide of its fortune, and who had remained stranded there, devoid of ethics or ambi¬ tion. Outwardly, the man was much like any other prospector of the hills, being distinguished by a care¬ lessness of costume and a certain air of braggadocio. His pose was that of accustomed self-gratification, of arrogant rule, of the imposition of one man’s will to the exclusion of others; and though Harne’s hostility was aroused in some inexplicable manner, he tried to overlook the abrupt arrogance.

“From Tanana, I suppose,” the stranger continued. “You look about as wealthy, or about as poor, as some others I’ve seen from up that way. It’s only greenhorns who look for gold there, as I could have told them if they had been wise enough to ask me.”

“Sort of oracle ?” Harne returned, as he fought for

H a grip upon his hostility. “No, it wasn’t Tanana. And it wasn’t gold.”

The obvious unpleasantness was a shock to Harne, who had come to look upon the casual wanderer of the trails as an oasis in the desert of humanity; yet this attitude of the stranger, so strikingly in contrast with what the circumstances might have produced, but tended now to sooth his rising anger.

“Going to Valdez?” the white asked a moment later.

“Perhaps we will first see that Marcile gets home.”

“Who is going to show you the way?” the man demanded, half-angered, half-shamed at the failure of his insolence.

“She might,” Harne attempted a placating smile.

Maneto turned about, with the beckoning of author¬ ity in his manner, lifted the girl to her feet, and led the way in silence down the river-bank; the white followed, but in his attitude there was no encouragement.

“I move that we accept that wave of the old boy’s arm as an invitation,” Garry proposed. “It was at least friendly. Besides, who knows? Adventure may be beckoning. Remember your rainbow.”

“Youth and Folly, lead on,” Harne agreed.

Maneto’s winding course followed the general line of the river, past the rapids and through the dwarfed clusters of alder; and when the white stranger glanced from time to time across his shoulder, he seemed to be struggling with the conflict of desires. At length he dropped back, and for a period he walked in silence at Harne’s side. When he spoke his voice had swung over from rudeness to humanity.

“Don’t think I am not grateful/’ he said, “but this is a straight warning I am giving you. Keep out. Maneto is a bad Indian. He doesn’t take to strangers.”

Harne nodded in agreement.

“Looks bad, like a Christmas tree,” he admitted. “Why vilify the old boy’s character, for if he isn’t a good sort he is at least a good actor.”

An explosive disgust slipped from the other’s lips.

“Take it or leave it,” he returned impatiently, “I’m warning you, that’s all. My skirts are clean.”

“You make me curious,” Harne confessed. “I have seen considerable Nootkas in my time, and a rough one is about the last thing I have on my list. Sup¬ pose you drop the mask, stranger, and let me get one real good peep at that friendly heart of yours.”

Silence again, while they tramped the pathway laid by the Nootka’s feet; and when they came to a little cluster of willows the stranger looked about cautiously, and drew closer, as though to stage some mystery.

“The Nootkas are queer ones,” he reflected. “What do you say if we go dickers on this?”

Harne faced the other squarely, but he kept the astonishment from his countenance.

“In the language of the land, I don’t get you,” he i6 returned calmly. “What there is for us to go dickers on is more than I can imagine. Come across with the idea, and we may get somewhere.”

The other merely grumbled some inaudible reply and tramped on. As Harne kept pace at his side, his won¬ der grew. First, there had been insolence; now there was this insinuation even more difficult to understand than the hostility had been.

“Who are you?” Harne came out of his reverie abruptly, “and what are you doing in the North?”

“Answering the second question first, I’ll say that is something for you to find out,” the stranger showed no astonishment. “As to the first, my name is Abner Gilvert, and I’m prospector, voyageur and what not, all you called yourself a moment ago.”

“Sounds interesting, Mr. Gilvert,” Harne admitted. “But what is the little mystery snuggling around that dicker of yours?”

Gilvert laughed in a friendly way.

“Wrong track, perhaps. I’ll think it over again.”

Harne did not attempt to reply, and soon they came to a Nootka village hugging so close to the foothills that its bark houses rested against the base of cliffs by the river’s edge. Clustering about the small dwell¬ ings were the silver birches, splashed with the heavy green of spruce and the polar tint of Oregon alder. In this moment it seemed to Harne to be one of the most picturesque corners of the world he had ever seen. He knew that in the broad light of day it would be drab enough, but now, under the softening

THE GIFT OF THE POTLATCH ly light, it was cleansed of all its rudeness, for though it was near midnight, the sky was still clear and crimson in the west, and mellowing the whole atmosphere was a soft, southern twilight.

Abruptly, through the silence, there came a long-drawn cry in the Nootka tongue. It was old Maneto, calling to his tribe his imperial summons.

Harne became conscious of sudden activity in the huts of the Indians; but Abner Gilvert deliberately turned his back upon the scene.

“Down yonder you see two huts,” he volunteered, “that’s my shebang, where me and my girl Marcile hangs out. The Nootkas stick to the hills, but give me the water. . . . Strange bird, old Maneto. Looks as though he was going to rout out the whole tribe. Know what it means?”

Gilvert’s voice was casual, a trifle too casual; so Harne found himself searching for the under-current of significance.

“Can’t say that I do,” he admitted. “They are a bit ceremonious to-night, a trifle more than I ever saw them before.”

Gilvert stole a curious glance at him, then looked away. For a time, as far as Harne could judge, the man gave his full attention in an interested and per¬ sonal manner to the strange actions of the Nootkas.

“About that dicker,” he suggested at length, “we may as well go through with it now.”

“I seldom go through with anything without know¬ ing what it is,” Harne reminded. “A weakness of i8 mine, I suppose. I have queer streaks like that. But suppose you come down to earth and talk my language.”

This time Gil vert eyed him fairly, with frankness in his manner.

“You say you didn’t mooch along here for gold?” he asked.

“You got me right, stranger.”

“Then if I guess it the first time will you ad¬ mit it?”

“It seems to be the only way to understand what we’re talking about,” Harne conceded. “Guess away.”

“First, I will tell you I have been picking around this valley all summer looking for coal deposits,” Gilvert admitted, with a frankness which seemed surprising. “Now, admit it. You’re after the same. . .

“Why deny the obvious ?” Harne asked. “But what has that to do with the dicker you talked about?”

“Just this. I’m giving away a pet secret when I say I know there must be coal along the Copper some¬ where, and I think that tight-lipped boy, Maneto, knows where it is. You get me now?”

“Just half of it. What is the rest?”

“I have been here all summer and haven’t found the deposit. Winter is coming along now, so you won’t find it, unless . . .”

“Go on,” Harne urged.

“If Maneto knows, you can twist it out of him. He seems to be a bit taken with you for having saved

Marcile’s life. He doesn’t show it, but he is. Sly ones, these Nootkas.”

From the bare words, Gilvert’s argument was sane enough; yet, back of the warning, there were cunning little ,shiftings in his eyes.

“Doubtless, but where do you come into it ?” Harne asked.

“We work together, to squeeze the secret out of Maneto. Then we split.”

Past Gilvert’s shoulder there was the swarming of the Nootkas, herding from their huts and deploying over a broad, flat area in the center of the village. There was hurrying about, and the collecting of fire¬ wood ; and there was some strange scene being enacted about a totem pole at one edge of the compound. Back of that was the message of a ceremony which seemed but a traditional trait of the northern tribes, of which Harne had heard all manner of disturbing stories, but which he had never witnessed.

So he laughed abruptly.

“Sorry, Gilvert,” he decided. “We can talk it over to-morrow.”

“But it must be to-night,” Gilvert protested.

Harne turned away, conscious, as he went, of the keen eyes of Gilvert turned upon him; and when he strolled about the village compound, he detected little betraying signs which began to give body and mean¬ ing to the seemingly aimless activity of the Nootkas.

“Rather bright, Gilvert,” he complimented the shadow which followed. “You just failed in your purpose. That, if I am any judge of tradition, is the beginning of the potlatch dance.”

He had heard of the potlatch, a Nootka ritual which even the tellers of its stories had defined as mostly mythical; but now all about him were the evidences of reality. The Potlatch; the heart-opener of the Nootkas, the giving of a gift for a gift, the baring of the heart in gratitude!

“The Potlatch, Gilvert,” he repeated; and the other turned away with a scowl which he barely noticed.

For Maneto had taken up his place by the totem pole, and as he threw out his arms with an imperious gesture, the Nootkas swept into the slow rhythm of the dance. With an abrupt, mechanical exactitude, as though the scene had been rehearsed a hundred times, the half-garbed, naked-limbed Nootkas broke into the swinging movement of some living poem, and smiles leaped out on faces which before had been lifeless masks.

Harne dropped upon a rock, buried his chin in his hands and gave himself up entirely to the magnetic sway of those semi-barbaric feet. The strange, in¬ tense sorcery of the midnight gloom began to creep through his veins like molten fire, gripping him with some of the intimacy of the primitive belief, until after a time he felt the primal call of barbarity deep down in the blood of all.

It was true, after all, this whirling dance. It was dramatically real to these childish minds. There was premonition in it. It was the natural sequence to

Hartley Garry’s whim, that it was the goddess Iris who had led them at last to that which lay hidden at the foot of the rainbow; and over and above it all, insinuating its magic power into his veins, was the crude, yet fiercely-compelling worship of the Nootka tribe.

Like contorted spectres, the chain of their human pattern threaded itself through the sublimating twi¬ light. For this moment, all their coarseness and vul¬ garity had fallen away. They shone through the semi-gloom as creatures invested with a new vision of life and its hidden meaning. To Rupert Harne, as he watched the Indians glide through each move of their intricate dance, they were no longer ignorant, uncultured natives dancing a meaningless ritual. They had suddenly become the symbols of his success.

For many minutes that strange pattern of human figures twisted its course about a fire blazing dully in the center of their circle, while it seemed that the whole world about had become silent and barren as the grave. Only from that whirling group of Nootkas did there come a low note of music, like the dom¬ inating strain of an olio, a low, singing drone of voices, rising at times like the noble swell of music, then falling again until it became soft and hushed as the love of a woman.