The Rim of the Desert | Page 6

probable that, failing to hear
from me, he had sold out to any one else. From his description, the
Aurora was isolated; hundreds of miles from the new Iditarod camp; he
hadn't a neighbor in fifty miles. So I forwarded his price and arranged
with the mail carrier to send a special messenger on from the nearest
post. In the letter I wrote to explain my delay, I sketched a plan of my
summer's work and told him how sorry I was I had missed seeing him
while the party was camped below Rainy Pass. Though I couldn't have
spared the time to go to the Aurora, he might have found me, had I sent
an Indian with word. It was the first time I had gone through his orbit
without letting him know.
"But after that carrier had gone, Weatherbee's letter kept worrying me.
It wasn't like him to complain, yet he had written he was tired of the
eternal winters; he couldn't stand those everlasting snow peaks
sometimes, they got to crowding him so; they kept him awake when he
needed sleep, threatening him. 'I've got to break away from them,
Hollis,' he said, 'and get where it's warm once more; and when my
blood begins to thaw, I'll show you I can make a go of things.' Then he
reminded me of the land he owned down here on the eastern slopes of
the Cascade Mountains. The soil was the finest volcanic ash; the kind
that grew the vineyards on Vesuvius, and he meant to plant it with
grapes; with orchards, too, on the bench levels. All the tract needed was
water, but there was a natural reservoir and spring on a certain high
plateau that could be easily tapped with a flume."
Tisdale paused while his glance moved slowly, singling out those who
had known Weatherbee. A great gentleness rested on his face, and
when he went on, it crept like a caress through his voice. "Most of you
have heard him talk about that irrigation scheme; some of you have
seen those plans he used to-work on, long Alaska nights. It was his
dream for years. He went north in the beginning just to accumulate
capital enough to swing that project. But the more I studied that letter,
the more confident I was he had stayed his limit; he was breaking, and

he knew it. That was why he was so anxious to turn the Aurora over to
me and get to the States. Finally I decided to go with the mail carrier
and on to the mine. If Weatherbee was still there, as I believed, we
would travel to Fairbanks together and take the Valdez trail out to the
open harbor on Prince William Sound. I picked up a team of eight good
huskies--the weather was clear with a moon in her second quarter--and
I started light, cutting my stops short; but when I left Nome I had lost
four days."
Hollis paused another interval, looking off again through the open door,
while the far-sighted expression gathered in his eyes. It was as though
his listeners also in that moment saw those white solitudes stretching
limitless under the Arctic night.
"I never caught up with that carrier," he went on, "and the messenger he
sent on broke trail for me all the way to the Aurora. I met him on his
return trip, thirty hours out from the mine. But he had found
Weatherbee there, and had a deed for me which David had asked him
to see recorded and forwarded to me at Nome. It was a relief to hear he
had been able to attend to these business matters, but I wondered why
he had not brought the deed himself, since he must come that way to
strike the Fairbanks trail, and why the man had not waited to travel
with him. Then he told me Weatherbee had decided to use the route I
had sketched in my letter. The messenger had tried to dissuade him; he
had reminded him there were no road-houses, and that the traces left by
my party must have been wiped out by the winter snows. But
Weatherbee argued that the new route would shorten the distance to
open tide-water hundreds of miles; that his nearest neighbors were in
that direction, fifty miles to the south; and they would let him have
dogs. Then, when he struck the Susitna Valley, he would have miles of
railroad bed to ease the last stage. So, at the time the messenger left the
Aurora, Weatherbee started south on his long trek to Rainy Pass. He
was mushing afoot, with Tyee pulling the sled. Some of you must
remember that big husky with a strain of St. Bernard he used to drive