The Purple Flame Part 22

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

As he explained this, the Eskimo showed each picture that told the part of the story narrated.

"It seems very real," said Marian. "How long ago could it have been?"

"Mebby twenty years," said Terogloona.

"The white man was a prospector."

"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?"

Again the Eskimo studied the ancient picture-writing.

"_Eh-eh_," he said at last. "Mebby could."

"Oh, Marian! We'll go back," said Patsy, doing a wild dance on her sleeping bag. "We'll go back for gold!"

"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."

"But tell me," she turned suddenly to Terogloona, "there were more than fifty reindeer with old Omnap-puk, were there not?"

"Yes."

"Where did they come from?"

"My master's herd."

"They are the deer we have been missing all winter, the ones we thought had been killed?"

"Yes."

"Why, then-" she leaped suddenly to her feet in her excitement, "then those people can not have killed our deer at all!"

"No. Not kill."

"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."

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.

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 b.u.mp and grind of ice crowding the banks of the river.

Morning came, and with it the problem of crossing the river. They had been traveling by compa.s.s. 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.

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.

"We won't find a crossing for miles," Marian said, with a tone of conviction.

Even Terogloona paused to ponder and scratch his head.

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:

"Look! A man!"

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.

"He is an Indian," said Terogloona, stoically. "It is his country. He knows. We must go back. The crossing lies in that direction."

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.

"Like the pillar of fire," said Marian, with a little choke in her voice.

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."

Not wis.h.i.+ng 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.

"Thank G.o.d!" Marian murmured reverently as she dropped exhausted upon her sled.

After resting and eating a cold lunch of hardtack, frozen boiled beans, and reindeer steak, they headed the herd across the lake. Having pa.s.sed 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.

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 sh.o.r.e 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.

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.

"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?"

Sleep that night was long and refres.h.i.+ng. 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 s.h.i.+ps might pa.s.s you by night or day, so a thousand herds, taking other courses, might pa.s.s this one on its way to Fort Jarvis and no owner know of the others pa.s.sing.

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?

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.

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.

"To-morrow," said Terogloona, throwing out his hand in a sweeping gesture, "we must cross."