Where the Sun Swings North | Page 5

back the tumbled mass of his brown hair and alone his mellow baritone continued the whaler's song:
"Up into the Polar Seas, Where the greasy whalers be, There's a strip of open water Reaching north to eighty-three----"
The White Chief, with his eyes on the singer, spoke to Kayak Bill.
"Our gentleman-bookkeeper takes to your liquid dynamite like an Eskimo to seal oil, Kayak. He's been at Katleean three months now, and I'll be damned if he's been sober three times since he landed. Seems to be hitting it up extra strong now that the Potlatch is due--" Kilbuck lowered his voice--"I want nothing said to him of the prospector and his white wife, understand?"
At the dictatorial tone flung into the last sentence there came a narrowing of the old hootch-maker's eyes. It was seldom that Paul Kilbuck spoke thus to Kayak Bill.
The singer was crossing the courtyard now with steps of exaggerated carefulness. Suddenly he paused. His dark eyes, in vague, alcoholic meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery. Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach where the canoes were landing.
Kayak Bill moved over on the step, indicating the space beside him.
"Come along side o' me, son, and get yore bearin's!" he called.
"Yes, Harlan, stop your mooning and come here. I want to talk to you."
Gregg Harlan turned, and the smile that parted his lips, though born in a liquor-fogged brain, was singularly winning.
"Chief," his words came distinctly but with careful deliberation, "an outsider would think--that I am--a--fellow of rare--judgment and s-sound phil-os-ophy from the way--you're always--wanting to talk--to--me."
He advanced and seated himself on the steps near the base of the flag-pole, leaning heavily against it. The gay recklessness that is the immediate effect of the fiery native brew of the North was evidently wearing away, and preceding the oblivion that was fast coming upon him, stray glimpses of his past, bits of things he had read or heard, and snatches of poetry flashed on the screen of his mind.
"It doesn't go with me--Chief. Don't--bring on--your--little forest--maiden--Naleenah--again. Tired--hearing about--her. Know--what you say: Up here--my people--never know. Me--a squaw man! Lord! What do I want--with--a squaw?" He laughed as at some blurred vision of his brain. "It's not that--I'm so damned virtuous, Chief. But I'm--fas-fas-tid-ious. That's it--fastidious----"
Paul Kilbuck's eyes flashed a cold steel grey. "We'll see how fastidious you'll be a year from now." His lip lifted on one side exposing a long, pointed tooth. "That'll be enough, now, Harlan."
"Sure, 's enough--for me, Chief," admitted the young man with drowsy good nature, as his tousled head sought a more comfortable place against the flagpole. "Pardon--casting aspersions--on your--taste in women, Chief. Wouldn't do--it--if sober. Hate to be sober. Makes me feel--re-responsible for so--many things. . . . Hence flowing bowl. 'Member old Omar--unborn Tomorrow and dead--Yesterday. . . . Why fret 'bout it--if--if--today--be--sweet." His voice trailed off in a murmur and his boyish chin with its look of firmness despite his dejection, sank slowly on his breast.
The canoes had made a landing. A dozen or more Thlinget women came straggling up the beach laden with the fruits of their afternoon labors: gay-colored baskets of wild strawberries, red and fragrant from the sand-dunes along the lagoon. From the Indian Village, a short distance down the curve of the beach where the smokes of evening fires were rising, a welcoming buck or two came to accompany the softly laughing squaws.
Slightly in advance of the shawled figures moving toward the group on the steps walked one whose slenderness and grace marked her from the rest. A scarlet shawl splashed the cream of her garments. Unlike the other women, she wore no disfiguring handkerchief on her head. Her face, oval and creamy-brown, was framed by two thick braids that fell over her shoulders. In the crook of her arm rested a basket of berries. At her side, rubbing against her now and then, came a powerful huskie, beautiful with the lean grace of the wolf and paw-playing as a kitten.
"Mush on,[1] Kobuk! Mush--you!" She laughed, pushing him aside as she advanced.
When she smiled up at the white men her face was lighted by long-lashed childish eyes, warm and brown as a sun-shot pool in the forest.
The White Chief rose. With an imperious gesture he motioned the other Indians back.
"Ah cgoo, Naleenah! Come here!" In rapid, guttural Thlinget he spoke to the girl, pointing from time to time to the now unconscious Harlan.
As she listened the smile faded from her face. Her smooth brow puckered. . . . She turned troubled eyes to Kayak Bill, sitting silent, imperturbable, in a cloud of tobacco smoke, his interest apparently fixed where the slight breeze was