<h2 id="c26"><br/>CHAPTER XXVI <br/>THE MYSTERIOUS DELIVERER</h2>
<p>Accustomed as they were to the presence of
men, the reindeer, not at all frightened by the
shots, held their position in the impregnable
circle. The cowardly wolves began to slink away
at the first shot. It seemed no time at all until
the only sound to be heard was the rattle of
antlers as the deer broke ranks and began to
scatter again for feeding.</p>
<p>Some moments before the girls could make
their way out of the center of the herd the firing
ceased.</p>
<p>“Who could it have been?” Patsy asked.</p>
<p>“Don’t know,” said Marian. “Whoever it
was, we must find them and thank them.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_224">[224]</div>
<p>This task she found to be more difficult than
she had supposed. There had doubtless been
tracks left by the strange deliverer, but these
had already been trampled by the deer. Search
as they might, they could find no trace of the
person who had fired the shots. Mute testimony
of his skill as a marksman, two dead wolves
lay on the snow close to the spot where the
defensive circle had been formed.</p>
<p>“What did you make of that?” Marian asked
at last in great bewilderment. “Terogloona,
where could they have gone?”</p>
<p>“<i>Canok-ti-ma-na</i>” (I don’t know), Terogloona
shook his head soberly.</p>
<p>One of Marian’s sleds had been left at the
edge of the forest. Upon returning to this, they
experienced another great surprise. Lying across
the sled was a rifle, and in a pile beside it were
five boxes of cartridges.</p>
<p>“A rifle!” exclaimed Marian, seizing it and
drawing it from his leather sheath. “A beauty!
And a new one!”</p>
<p>The two girls sat down on the sled and stared
at one another in speechless silence.</p>
<p>Terogloona and Attatak soon joined them.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_225">[225]</div>
<p>“It was the Indian, the one we saved from
starving!” exclaimed Patsy at last, “I just know
it was.”</p>
<p>Terogloona shook his head. “Old rifle, mebby
all right,” he mumbled; “new rifle, mebby Indian
not give.”</p>
<p>The girls, not at all convinced that this conclusion
was a correct one, still clung to the
belief that their protector had been the Indian.</p>
<p>Since it was impossible to cross the river, it
was decided that they should make camp at the
edge of the forest; that Terogloona, with the
rifle, was to keep watch over the herd the first
part of the night; and Marian, who was a good
shot, the latter half.</p>
<p>It was while Marian was packing away the
dishes after supper that the piece of old ivory
with the ancient engraving on it, the newest
piece which they had found in the mountain
cave, fell out of her sleeping bag. Without
knowing it, she had saved this, the least of their
treasures.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_226">[226]</div>
<p>“Look!” she said to Terogloona, who sat
cross-legged before the fire, “we found this in
a mountain cave. What does it say? Surely
you can read it.”</p>
<p>For a long time Terogloona studied the crude
picture in silence. When at last he spoke, it was
to inform her that the ivory had once belonged
to his great-uncle; that it told of a very successful
hunt in which twenty caribou had been driven
into a trap and killed with bows and arrows;
that shortly after that they had come upon a
white man with a long beard, starving in a cabin
beside a stream. They had given the man caribou
meat. He had grown strong, then had gone
away. As pay for their kindness he had offered
them heavy yellow pebbles and dust from a
moosehide sack. This they had not taken because
they did not know what it was good for. They
had asked two cups and a knife instead.</p>
<p>As he explained this, the Eskimo showed each
picture that told the part of the story narrated.</p>
<p>“It seems very real,” said Marian. “How
long ago could it have been?”</p>
<p>“Mebby twenty years,” said Terogloona.</p>
<p>“The white man was a prospector.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_227">[227]</div>
<p>“And the yellow pebbles and dust must have
been gold!” exclaimed Patsy. “Oh, Marian!
If we could find that place we’d be rich. Terogloona,
could you find the place?”</p>
<p>Again the Eskimo studied the ancient picture-writing.</p>
<p>“<i>Eh-eh</i>,” he said at last. “Mebby could.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Marian! We’ll go back,” said Patsy,
doing a wild dance on her sleeping bag. “We’ll
go back for gold!”</p>
<p>“For the present,” said Marian, quietly, “we
have work enough. We must get our herd to
Fort Jarvis. Looks as if that will be a difficult
enough task.”</p>
<p>“But tell me,” she turned suddenly to Terogloona,
“there were more than fifty reindeer
with old Omnap-puk, were there not?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Where did they come from?”</p>
<p>“My master’s herd.”</p>
<p>“They are the deer we have been missing all
winter, the ones we thought had been killed?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_228">[228]</div>
<p>“Why, then—” she leaped suddenly to her
feet in her excitement, “then those people can
not have killed our deer at all!”</p>
<p>“No. Not kill.”</p>
<p>“Then why did they follow us? Are they
following us now? What was it they killed
that night, if not our deer? Oh! it’s too perplexing
for words.”</p>
<p>Terogloona looked at her and smiled a droll
smile. “Many strange things on hill and tundra.
Some time mebby know; mebby not. Terogloona
must go watch; you sleep. To-morrow mebby
very hard.” Taking up the rifle, he left the tent.</p>
<p>Before creeping into her sleeping bag, Marian
stepped out of the tent to cool her heated brow
in the crisp night air. Above her the stars
gleamed like tiny camp-fires; beyond her the
dark forest loomed. From the distance she
caught the bump and grind of ice crowding the
banks of the river.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_229">[229]</div>
<p>Morning came, and with it the problem of
crossing the river. They had been traveling by
compass. As far as Marian could tell, to go
either up or down the river would be to go out
of their direct path. Terogloona advised going
north. Some signs unintelligible to the girls, but
clear enough to him, appeared to promise a
crossing two or three miles above.</p>
<p>For once the canny instincts of the Eskimo
failed. He was no longer in his own land of
barren hills, tundra and sea; perhaps this caused
him to err. One thing was certain, as they
traveled northward the hills that lined the stream
grew more rugged and rocky, and the river more
turbulent.</p>
<p>“We won’t find a crossing for miles,” Marian
said, with a tone of conviction.</p>
<p>Even Terogloona paused to ponder and scratch
his head.</p>
<p>It was just at the moment when despair
appeared about to take possession of them that
Patsy, chancing to glance away at the hills that
loomed above the opposite banks, suddenly cried:</p>
<p>“Look! A man!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_230">[230]</div>
<p>All looked in the direction she had pointed.
The man was standing perfectly still, but his
right hand was pointing. Like a wooden signboard,
it pointed downstream. Three times the
arm dropped. Three times it was raised to point
again.</p>
<p>“He is an Indian,” said Terogloona, stoically.
“It is his country. He knows. We must go
back. The crossing lies in that direction.”</p>
<p>As the man on the hill saw them turn their
herd about and start back, he began to travel
slowly downstream. All that day, and even into
the night, he went before them, showing the way.</p>
<p>“Like the pillar of fire,” said Marian, with a
little choke in her voice.</p>
<p>There was no doubt in her mind that this
benefactor was the Indian they had befriended
when he was starving. To her lips there came
a line she had long known, “I was an hungered,
and ye gave me meat.”</p>
<p>Not wishing to camp again at the edge of the
forest, they traveled without rest or food for
eight hours. At last, when they were so hungry
and weary that they felt they must drop in their
tracks and fall asleep, they came suddenly to a
place where the troubled rush of waters ceased;
where the river spread out into a broad, quiet,
icebound lake.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_231">[231]</div>
<p>“Thank God!” Marian murmured reverently
as she dropped exhausted upon her sled.</p>
<p>After resting and eating a cold lunch of hardtack,
frozen boiled beans, and reindeer steak,
they headed the herd across the lake. Having
passed through the narrow forest that skirted
the lake, they came upon a series of low-lying,
barren hills. Here, in a little gully lined with
willows whose clinging dead leaves rustled incessantly
in the breeze, the girls made camp.</p>
<p>Before going to sleep, Marian walked out into
the night to view her herd. The sky was clear.
The golden moon made the night light as day.
The herd was resting peacefully. She wondered
vaguely if other human beings might be near.
Their mysterious guide had left them at the
shore of the lake. At no time had he come
close enough to be identified. She was wondering
about him, and as her gaze swept the horizon
she saw the red and yellow gleam of a camp-fire.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_232">[232]</div>
<p>Her feeling toward that camp-fire had
changed. There had been a time when it filled
her with fear. Now, as she gazed steadily at it,
it seemed a star of hope, a protecting fire that
was perhaps to go with them all their long
journey through.</p>
<p>“The Indian’s camp, I suppose. And yet,”
she asked herself, “is it? It might be the tent
of the purple flame, and if it is, do they mean
us good or ill?”</p>
<p>Sleep that night was long and refreshing.
They awoke next morning with renewed courage.
Before them lay great sweeping stretches of
tundra. For days, without a single new adventure,
they pushed on toward Fort Jarvis. Sometimes,
beside a camp-fire of willows, Marian sat
wondering how they were coming on with their
race. Were Scarberry and his herd nearer the
Fort than they? There was no way to tell.
Traveling the trackless Arctic wilderness is like
sailing the boundless sea. As a thousand ships
might pass you by night or day, so a thousand
herds, taking other courses, might pass this one
on its way to Fort Jarvis and no owner know
of the others passing.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_233">[233]</div>
<p>Sometimes, too, she thought of those mysterious
camp followers—the people of the purple
flame. She no longer feared them; was curious
about them, that was all. No longer did she
catch the gleam of their light by night. Had
they turned aside, gone back, or had they merely
extinguished their unusual light?</p>
<p>The Indians, she thought, must have been left
behind. They would not travel far from their
hunting ground. They had been served, and had
served in turn. Now they might safely be
forgotten.</p>
<p>Then there came a time that called for all the
courage and endurance their natures could command.
One night they found themselves camped
among the foothills of a range of mountains.
The mountains, a row of alternating triangles of
deep purple and light yellow, lay away to the
east and at their peaks the snow, tossed high in
air by the incessant gales that blew there, made
each peak seem a smoking volcano.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_234">[234]</div>
<p>“To-morrow,” said Terogloona, throwing out
his hand in a sweeping gesture, “we must
cross.”</p>
<p>“Is there no other way?” asked Patsy.</p>
<p>“Must do!” said Terogloona as he turned to
the task of putting all in readiness.</p>
<p>Two o’clock in the afternoon of the following
day found them engaged in a terrific battle with
the blizzard that ever raged up the mountain
pass which they must cross.</p>
<div class="verse">
<p class="t0">“‘Try not the pass,</p>
<p class="t0">The old man said,</p>
<p class="t0">The storm is lowering overhead,’”</p>
</div>
<p>Patsy chanted bravely as, with snow encrusted
head and with cheeks that must be rubbed incessantly
to prevent them from freezing, she
struggled forward.</p>
<p>A moment later, as a fiercer shock seemed
about to lift her from her feet and hurl her
down the mountain side, Marian heard her fairly
shriek into the teeth of the gale:</p>
<p>“Excelsior! Excelsior!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_235">[235]</div>
<p>Many hard battles had Marian fought out on
the tundra, but nothing had ever equalled this.
The snow, seeming never to stop, shot past them,
or in a wild whirling eddy dashed into their
faces. The wind tore at them. Now it came in
rude gusts, and now poured down some narrow
pass with all the force of the waterfall. Only
by bending low and leaping into it could they
make progress.</p>
<p>The herd plunged stumblingly forward in a
broad line. The dogs, incessantly at their heels,
urged them forward. Terogloona, and even the
brave Attatak, did all in their power to keep
the herd moving.</p>
<p>“If they stop; oh, if they do!” panted Marian.
“If they refuse to go on we are lost! If only
we reach the summit I am sure we will be safe.
It must be calm on the other side.”</p>
<p>Now Gold, the master collie, completely exhausted
and blinded by the snow, came slinking
back to his mistress. Marian rubbed the snow
from the eyes of the faithful dog and, patting
his side, bade him go back into the fight. Tears
came to her eyes as the dog bravely returned to
his task.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_236">[236]</div>
<p>The time came at last when all three dogs
seemed done in; when the deer all but stopped;
when it seemed impossible that they might be
kept moving another five minutes. Then it was
that the indomitable Marian sank down upon her
sled in the depths of despair.</p>
<p>“Look! Look!” cried Patsy, who had turned
about to rub the frost from her cheeks. “Wolves!
A whole pack of them!”</p>
<p>Marian wheeled about for one look; then,
digging into her pack, drew forth her rifle.</p>
<p>“We’ll die fighting!” she murmured as she
took steady aim at the foremost member of the
pack that came tearing up the trail.</p>
<p>She was about to press the trigger when
Patsy gave her arm a sudden pull.</p>
<p>“Wait!” she cried. “Wait! Those are not
wolves. They’re dogs; great big, wonderful
dogs!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_237">[237]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />