The Alaskan | Page 2

away--and chance had brought her under his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him,
and he had discovered a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since
then he had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom of years.
And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant poise of her head with which
she was regarding the cabin windows now.
She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives in Nome. She
had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was impossible not to believe her,
and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in coming aboard.
In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience, he gathered
the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some way she was making a fight,
but, influenced by the wisdom of three and sixty years, he did not let her know he had
guessed the truth.
He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very pretty in a quiet and
unusual way. There was something irresistibly attractive about her, appealing to old
memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had
observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely
smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of
puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had
said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused
speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others
might not see--and hold his tongue.

"We are not quite alone," she was saying. "There are others," and she made a little
gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
"Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway," he said. "And the other is Alan Holt."
"Oh, yes."
She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the moon. Gently her
hand touched the old captain's arm. "Listen," she whispered.
"Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the shore, and there
are glaciers all the way up."
"And that other sound, like low wind--on a night so still and calm! What is it?"
"You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss Standish. It is made by
the water of a thousand streams and rivulets rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is
melting snow in the mountains, you hear that song."
"And this man, Alan Holt," she reminded him. "He is a part of these things?"
"Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska before Nome
or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in Eighty-four, I think. Let me see,
that would make him--"
"Thirty-eight," she said, so quickly that for a moment he was astonished.
Then he chuckled. "You are very good at figures."
He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
"This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He said he was lonely
and wanted to talk with someone--like me. He almost frightened me, with his great, gray
beard and shaggy hair. I thought of ghosts as we talked there in the dusk."
"Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse ate up men's
lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to Klondike, Miss Standish," said
Captain Rifle. "You will meet many like him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see
it in their faces--always the memory of those days that are gone."
She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. "And Alan Holt? You know him well?"
"Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have sometimes thought
him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All northern Alaska knows Alan
Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the Endicott Mountains and is always seeking
the last frontier."
"He must be very brave."

"Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish."
"And honorable men--men you can trust and believe in?"
"Yes."
"It is odd," she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a bird-note in her throat. "I
have never seen Alaska before, and yet something about these mountains makes me feel
that I have known them a long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I
am going home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan."
"And you are--"
"An American," she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her voice. "A