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Blue Envelope

<h2 id="id00268" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER IV</h2> <h5 id="id00269">FOR HE IS A WHITE MAN'S DOG</h5> Two months had elapsed since the mysterious college boy had passed on north with his dog-team. Many things could have happened to him in those months. As Marian sat looking away at the vast expanse of drifting ice which had been restless in its movements of late, telling of the coming of the spring break-up, she wondered what had happened to the frank-eyed, friendly boy. He had not returned. Had a blizzard caught him and snatched his life away? The rivers were overflowing their banks now, though thick and rotten ice was still beneath the milky water. Had he completed his mission north, and was he now struggling to make his way southward? Or was he securely housed in some out-of-the-way cabin, waiting for open water and a schooner? A letter had come, a letter in a blue envelope, and addressed as the other to Phi Beta Ki. That was after Lucile's return. Lucile had been away to the Nome market with her deer herd when the first letter had come, but had now been home for a month. The two of them had laughed and wondered about that letter. They had put it in the pigeon-hole, and there it now was. But Marian had not forgotten her promise to take it with her in case the boy did not return before she left the Cape. Now, as she watched-the restless ocean, she realized that it would not be many days before it would break its bonds. The ice would then float away to points unknown. Little gasoline schooners would go flitting here and there like sea-gulls, and then would come the hoarse voice of the Corwin, mail steamer for Arctic. She would take that steamer to Nome. Would the boy be back by then, or would she carry the mysterious letter with her? For a long time Marian gave herself up to speculation. As she sat dreaming of these things, she started suddenly. Something had touched her foot. "Oh;" she exclaimed, then laughed. The most forlorn-looking dog she had ever seen had touched her foot with his nose. His hair was ragged and matted. His bones protruded at every possible point. His mouth was set awry, one side hanging half-open. "So it's you," she said; "you're looking worse than common." The dog opened his mouth, allowing his long tongue to loll out. "I suppose that means you're hungry. Well, for once you are in luck. The natives caught a hundred or more salmon through the ice. I have some of them. Fish, Old Top, fish! What say?" The dog stood on his hind legs and barked for joy. He read the sign in her eyes if he did not understand her lip-message. In another moment he was gulping down a fat, four-pound salmon, while Marian eyed him, a curious questioning look on her face. "Now," she said, as the dog finished, "the question is what are we going to do with you? You're an old dog. You're no good in a team. Too old. Bad feet. No, sir, you can't be any good, or you wouldn't be back here in five days. We gave you to Tommy Illayok to lead his team. You were a leader in your day all right, and you'd lead 'em yet if you could, poor old soul!" There was a catch in her voice. To her dogs were next to humans. In the North they were necessary servants as well as friends. "The thing that makes it hard to turn you out," she went on huskily, "is the fact that you're a white man's dog. Yes, sir! a white man's dog. And that means an awful lot; means you'd stick till death to any white person who'd feed you and call you friend. Mr. Jack London has written a book about a white man's dog that turned wild and joined a wolf-pack. It's a wonderful book, but I don't believe it. A white man's dog wants a white man for a friend, and if he loses one he'll keep traveling until he finds another. That's the way a white man's dog is, and that's why you come back to us, poor old dear." She stooped and patted the shaggy head. "I'll tell you what," she murmured, after a moment's reflection. "If the fish keep running, if the wild ducks come north, or the walrus come barking in from Bering Sea, then you can stay with us and get sleek and fat. You can sleep by our door in the hallway every night, and if anyone comes prowling around, you can ask them what they want. How's zat?" The dog howled his approval. Marian smiled, and turning went into the cabin. The dog did not belong to them. He was an old and decrepit leader, deserted by a faithless master. He had adopted their cabin as his home. When food had become scarce, they had been forced to give him to an Eskimo traveling up the coast. Now, in five days he was back again. Marian was not sure that Lucile would approve of the arrangement she had made with the dog, but when her heart prompted her, she could only follow its promptings. She had hardly entered the cabin than she heard a growl from the dog, followed by the voice of a stranger. "Down, Rover!" she shouted, as she sprang to the door. The man who stood before her was badly dressed and unshaven. His eyes bore a shifty gleam. "Get out, you cur!" He kicked at the dog with his heavy boot. Marian's eyes flashed, but she said nothing. "This the post office?" The man attempted a smile. "Yes, sir." "'S there a letter here for me?" "I don't know," she smiled. "Won't you come in?" The man came inside. "Now," she said, "I'll see. What is your name?" "Ben—" he hesitated. "Oh—that don't matter. Won't be addressed to my name. Addressed like that." He drew from his pocket a closely-folded, dirt-begrimed envelope. Marian's heart stopped beating. The envelope was blue—yes, the very shade of blue of that other in the pigeon-hole. And it was addressed: Phi Beta Ki, Nome, Alaska. "Is there a letter here like that?" the man demanded, squinting at her through blood-shot eyes. It was a tense moment. What should she say? She loathed the man; feared him, as well. Yet he had asked for the letter and had offered better proof than the mysterious college boy had. What should she say? "Yes," she said, and then hesitated. Her heart beat violently. His searching eyes were upon her. "Yes, there was one. It came two months ago. A young man called for it and took it away." "You—you gave it to him!" The man lifted a hand as if to strike Marian. She did not flinch. There came a growl from the door. Looking quickly, Marian caught the questioning gleam in the old leader's eye. The man's arm fell. "Yes," she said stoutly, "I gave it to him. Why should I not? He offered no real proof that he was the right person, it is true—" "Then why—" "But neither have you," Marian hurried on. "You might have picked that envelope up in the street, or taken it from a wastepaper basket. How do I know?" "What—what sort of a boy was it?" the man asked more steadily. "A good-looking, strapping young fellow, with blue eyes and an honest face." "That's him! That's him!" the man almost raved. "Honest-lookin', yes, honest-lookin'. They ain't all honest that looks that way." Again came the growl from the door. Marian's eyes glanced uneasily toward the pigeon-hole where the latest blue envelope rested. She caught an easy breath. A large white legal envelope quite hid the blue one. "Well, if another one comes, remember it's mine! Mine!" growled the man, as he went stamping out of the room. "Old Rover," Marian said, taking the dog's head between her hands. "I'm glad you're here. When there are such men as that about, we need you." And yet, as she spoke her heart was full of misgivings. What if this man's looks belied his nature? What if he were honest? And what if her good-looking college boy was a rascal? There in the pigeon-hole was the blue envelope. What was her duty? Pulling on her calico parka, she went for a stroll on the beach. The cool, damp air of Arctic twilight by the sea was balm to her troubled brain. She came back to the cabin with a deep-seated conviction that she was right. She was not given many days to decide whether she should take the letter with her or leave it. A sudden gale from the south sent the ice-floes rushing through the Straits. They hastened away to seas unknown, not to return for months. The little mail steamer came hooting its way around the Point. It brought a letter of the utmost importance to Marian. While in Nome the summer before she had made some hasty sketches of the Chukches, natives of the Arctic coast of Siberia, while they camped on the beach there on a trading voyage in a thirty-foot skin-boat. These sketches had come to the notice of the ethnological society. They now wrote to her, asking that she spend a summer on the Arctic coast of Siberia, making sketches of these natives, who so like the Eskimos are yet so unlike them in many ways. The pay, they assured her, would be ample; in fact, the figures fairly staggered her. Should she complete this task in safety and to the satisfaction of the society, she would then be prepared to pay her way through a three years' course in the best art school of America. This had long been a cherished dream. Marian's eyes shone with happiness. When she had read the letter through, she went for a five-mile walk down the beach. Upon returning she burst in on her companion. "Lucile," she exclaimed, "how would you like to spend the summer in Siberia?" "Fine! Salt mine, I suppose," laughed Lucile. "But I thought all political prisoners had been released by the new Russian government?" "I'm not joking," said Marian. "Explain then." Marian did explain. At the end of her explanation Lucile agreed to go as Marian's traveling companion and tent-keeper. In two weeks her school work would be finished. It would be a strange, a delightful summer. Their enthusiasm grew as they talked about it. Long after they should have been asleep they were still making plans for this, their most wonderful adventure. "But how'll we go over?" exclaimed Lucile suddenly. "Gasoline schooner, I suppose." "I'd hate to trust any men I know who run those crafts," said Marian thoughtfully. Lucile considered a moment. "Native skin-boat, then." "That would be rather thrilling—to cross from the new world into the old in a skin-boat." "And safe enough too," said Marian. "Did you ever hear of a native boat being lost at sea?" "One. But that one turned up at King's Island, a hundred and fifty miles off its course." "I guess we could risk it." "All right, let's go." Marian sprang to her feet, threw back the blankets to her couch, and fifteen minutes later was dreaming of a tossing skin-boat on a wild sea of walrus monsters and huge white bears. Her wild dreams did not come true. When the time came to cross the thirty-five miles of water which separates the Old World from the New, they sailed and paddled over a sea as placid as a mill-pond. Here a brown seal bobbed his head out of the water; here a spectacled eiderduck rode up and down on the tiny waves, and here a great mass of tubular seaweed drifted by to remind them that they were really on the bosom of the briny ocean. Only one incident of the voyage caused them a feeling of vague unrest. A fog had settled down over the sea. They were drifting and paddling slowly forward, when the faint scream of a siren struck their ears. It came nearer and nearer. "A gasoline schooner," said Marian. The natives began shouting to avert a possible collision. Presently the schooner appeared, a dark bulk in the fog. It took shape. Men were seen on the deck. It came in close by. The waves from it reached the skin-boat. They were passing with a salute, when a strange thing happened. Rover, the old dog-leader, who had been riding in the bow standing well forward, as if taking the place of a painted figurehead, suddenly began to bark furiously. At the same time, Marian caught sight of a bearded face framed in a porthole. Involuntarily she shrank back out of sight. The next instant the schooner had faded away into the fog. The dog ceased barking. "What was it?" asked Lucile anxiously. "Only a face." "Who?" "The man who wanted the blue envelope; Rover recognized him first." "You don't suppose he knew, and is following?" "How could he know?" "But what is he going to Siberia for?" "Perhaps to trade. They do that a great deal. Let's not talk of it." Marian shivered. The incident was soon forgotten. They were nearing the Siberian shore which was to be their summer home. A million nesting birds came skimming out over the sea, singing their merry song as if to greet them. They would soon be living in a tent in the midst of a city of tents. They would be studying a people whose lives are as little known as were those of the natives in the heart of Africa before the days of Livingstone. As she thought of these things Marian's cheeks flushed with excitement. "What new thrill will come to us here?" her lips whispered. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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