The Rim of the Desert | Page 2

the hall, and the massive chairs, like the
polished banquet board, were of crocus-yellow Alaska cedar.
The delegate, who had come out to tide-water over the
Fairbanks-Valdez trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors
of the journey. The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle,
seemed to increase his prominence of front and intensified the color in
his face to a sort of florid ripeness.
"Yes, gentlemen," he continued, thumping the table with a stout hand
and repeating the gesture slowly, while the glasses trembled, "Alaska's
crying need is a railroad; a single finished line from the most northern
harbor open to navigation the whole year--and that is Prince William
Sound-- straight through to the Tanana Valley and the upper Yukon.
Already the first problem has been solved; we have pierced the icy
barrier of the Coast Range. All we are waiting for is further right of
way; the right to the forests, that timber may be secured for
construction work; the right to mine coal for immediate use. But,
gentlemen, we may grow gray waiting. What do men four thousand
miles away, men who never saw Alaska, care about our needs?" He
leaned back in his chair, while his glance moved from face to face and
rested, half in challenge, on the member at the foot of the board. "These
commissioners appointed off there in Washington," he added. "These
carpet-baggers from the little States beyond the Mississippi!"
Hollis Tisdale, who had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska
career in the service of the Government, met the delegate's look with a
quiet humor in his eyes.
"It seems to me," he said, and his deep, expressive voice instantly held
the attention of every one, "that such a man, with intelligence and
insight, of course, stands the surest chance of giving general
satisfaction in the end. He is at least disinterested, while the best of us,
no matter how big he is, how clear-visioned, is bound to take his own
district specially to heart. Prince William Sound alone has hundreds of

miles of coast-line and includes more than one fine harbor with an
ambitious seaport."
At this a smile rippled around the table, and Miles Feversham, who was
the attorney for one of the most ambitious syndicates of promoters in
the north, gave his attention to the menu. But Tisdale, having spoken,
turned his face to the open balcony door. His parka was thrown back,
showing an incongruous breadth of stiff white bosom, yet he was the
only man present who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the
column of throat rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening
pose of the fine head, in relief against the bearskin on the wall behind
his chair, suggested a Greek medallion. His brown hair, close-cut,
waved at the temples; lines were chiseled at the corners of his eyes and,
with a lighter touch, about his mouth; yet his face, his whole compact,
muscular body, gave an impression of youth--youth and power and the
capacity for great endurance. His friends said the north never had left a
mark of its grip on Tisdale. The life up there that had scarred, crippled,
wrecked most of them seemed only to have mellowed him.
"But," resumed Feversham quickly, "I shall make a stiff fight at
Washington; I shall force attention to our suspended land laws; demand
the rights the United States allows her western territories; I shall ask for
the same concessions that were the making of the Oregon country; and
first and last I shall do all I can to loosen the strangling clutch of
Conservation." He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the
table, and the glasses jingled anew. "And, gentlemen, the day of the
floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities,
our cities; we are ready for a legislative body of our own; the time has
come for Home Rule. But the men who make our laws must be familiar
with the country, have allied interests. Gentlemen,"--his voice,
dropping its aggressive tone, took a honeyed insistence,--"we want in
our first executive a man who knows us intimately, who has covered
our vast distances, whose vision has broadened; a man big enough to
hold the welfare of all Alaska at heart."
The delegate finished this period with an all-embracing smile and,
nodding gently, leaned back again in his chair. But in the brief silence

that followed, he experienced a kind of shock. Foster, the best known
mining engineer from Prince William Sound to the Tanana, had turned
his eyes on Tisdale; and Banks, Lucky Banks, who had made the rich
strike in the Iditarod wilderness, also looked that way. Then instantly
their thought was telegraphed from face to face. When Feversham
allowed his