The Blue Envelope Part 12

But even as she said this, she saw again the downhearted expression on his face, heard his mournful, "I couldn't find it. It's not there."

With that she relented, and ere she slept resolved to take up the matter of the mysterious disappearance with him the first thing in the morning.

But morning found the boy in quite a different mood. He laughed and chatted gayly over his sour-dough pancakes.

"Now you know," he said, as he shoved back his stool, "I like your company awfully well, and I'd like to keep this up indefinitely, but truth is I can't; I've got to get across the Straits."

"We'll be sorry to lose you," laughed Marian; "but just you run along.

And when you get there tell the missionary breakfast is ready. Ask him to step over and eat with us."

"No, but I'm serious."

"Then you're crazy. No white man has ever crossed thirty-five miles of floeing ice."

"There's always to be a first. Natives do it, don't they?"

"I've heard they do."

"I can go anywhere a native can, providing he doesn't get out of my sight."

"A guide across the Straits! It's a grand idea!" Marian seized Lucile about the waist and went hopping out on deck. "A guide across the Straits. We'll be home for Christmas dinner yet!"

"What, you don't mean--" The boy stared in astonishment.

"Sure I do. We can go anywhere you can, providing you don't get out of our sight."

"That--why, that will be bully."

He said this with lagging enthusiasm. It was evident that he doubted their power of endurance.

"We'll have to go to East Cape to start," he suggested.

"East Cape?" Marian exclaimed in a startled tone.

"Sure. What's wrong with East Cape?"

"Nothing. Only--only that's where that strange white man is."

"What's so terrible about him?"

Marian hesitated. She had come to the end of a blind alley. Should she tell him of her experience with the miner who demanded the blue envelope, and of her suspicion that this man at East Cape was that same man?

She looked into his frank blue eyes for a moment, then said to herself, "Yes, I will."

She did tell him the whole story. When she had finished, there was a new, a very friendly light in the boy's eyes.

"I say," he exclaimed, "That was bully good of you. It really was.

That man--"

He hesitated. Marian thought she was going to be told the whole secret of the blue envelope.

"That man," he repeated, "he won't hurt you. You need have no fear of him. As for yours truly, meaning me, I can take care of myself. We start for East Cape today. What say?"

"All right."

Marian sprang to her feet, and, after imparting the news to Lucile, who had by this time fully recovered from the shock of the previous day, set to work packing their sled for the journey.

All the time she was packing her mind was working. She had meant to discuss the mysterious disappearance of the blue envelope with the college boy. Even as she thought of this, there flashed through her mind the question, "Why is he so cheerful now? Why so anxious to get across the Straits?"

One explanation alone came to her. He had deceived them. The envelope was secure in his possession. It had imparted to him news of great importance. He was eager to cross the Straits and put its instructions into execution. What these instructions might be, she could not tell.

The North was a place of rare furs, ivory and much gold. Anything was possible.

"No," she almost exploded between tight-set teeth, "no, I won't talk it over with him, I won't."

One thing, however, she did do. Under pretense of missing some article from her wardrobe when on the beach ready to start for East Cape, she hastened to the cabin on the beach, and executed a quick search for the missing envelope. The search was unrewarded.

One thing, though, arrested her attention for a moment. As she left the cabin she noticed, near the door, the print of a man's skin-boot in the snow. It was an exceedingly large print; such as is made by a careless white man who buys the first badly-made skin-boots offered to him by a native seamstress. The college boy could not have made that track. His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability. She had fitted them to his high-arched and shapely feet, as she might have done had he been her Eskimo husband.

"Oh, well," she exclaimed, as she raced to join her companions, "probably some native who has pa.s.sed this way."

Even as she said it, she doubted her own judgment. She had never in her life seen a native wear such a clumsy and badly-shaped skin-boot.

CHAPTER VIII

THE VISIT TO THE CHUKCHES

It was with a feeling of strange misgiving that Marian found herself on the evening of the day they left the wreck entering the native village of East Cape. Questions continually presented themselves to her mind.

What of the bearded stranger? Was he the miner who had demanded the blue envelope? If it were he; if he appeared and once more demanded the letter, what should she say? For any proof ever presented to her, he might be the rightful owner, the real Phi Beta Ki. What could she say to him? And the natives? Had they heard of the misfortunes of the people of Whaling? Would they, too, allow superst.i.tious fear to overcome them? Would they drive the white girls from their midst?

This last problem did not trouble her greatly, however. They would find a guide at once and begin their great adventure of crossing from the Old World to the New on the ice-floe.

An interpreter was not hard to find. Many of the men had sailed on American whalers. They were told by one of these that there was but one man in all the village who ever attempted the dangerous pa.s.sage of Bering Straits. His name was...o...b..-gok.

O-bo-gok was found sitting cross-legged on the sloping floor of his skin-igloo, adjusting a new point to his harpoon.

"You tell him," said the smiling college boy, "that we want to go to Cape Prince of Wales. Can he go tomorrow?"

The interpreter threw up his hands in surprise, but eventually delivered his message.

The guide, a swarthy fellow, with s.h.a.ggy, drooping moustache and a powerful frame, did not look up from his work. He merely grunted.

"He say, that one, no can do," smiled the interpreter.

The college boy was not disturbed. He jingled something in his hand.

Marian, who stood beside him, saw that he held three double eagles.

She smiled, for she knew that even here the value of yellow disks marked with those strange pictures which Uncle Sam imprints upon them was known.