To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once
more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering
of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of
coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him.
He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he
mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A
thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when
Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the
next range.
Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor,
and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old
days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always
the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for
thirty years. He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and he
was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova much
longer. Siberia was dragging him--that forbidden world of adventure and
mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles across the
strait from the Seward Peninsula. In his enthusiasm he forgot Alan's
tragedy. He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep
Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been dreamed of in
Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was going if
he lived another year or two--going to find his fortune or his end in
the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes.
Pages:
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137