Part 4 (1/2)
Returning to her tent, she hid the strange bit of jewelry, which, to its wearer, had doubtless been a chare occurrence to her cousin When Marian awoke Lucile told her story
Together, in that early hour of the , they exclaiether agreed that, soinal owner, and at last, after reed that, on the whole, the departure of the brown boy reduced the possible coree
Next day their aunt arrived and with her a school-teacher friend With their forces increased by two the girls were not afraid to maintain their camp In fear of the return of the robbers they established a nightly watch That this fear was not unfounded was proved by the events of the third night of vigil It was again in the early uard, that heavy footsteps could be heard in the underbrush about the ca a view of the shore line
The gasoline schooner lay high and dry on the sandy beach, within her line of vision This she watched carefully A er of his life, for a rifle lay across her knees and, with the native hardihood of an Alaskan, she would not fail to shoot quick and sure
But the man did not approach the boat Heinfor tent Though he was gone in an instant, she recognized him as one of the men who had stolen their motorboat
After a tifor the brown boy, but became satisfied that he was not here,” explained Marian next
”Perhaps they'll let us alone after this,” said Lucile
This prophecy cail was dropped and the reiven over to the pleasures of camp life
The discovery of a freshly abandoned fire on the beach some miles from camp proved that Lucile's belief that the brown boy could take care of himself ell founded His footprints were all about in the sand
Feathers of a wild duck and the heads of three good-sized fishes showed that he had fared well
”We'll ain somewhere, I am sure,” said Lucile with conviction, ”and until we do, I shall carry his little present as a sort of talisman”
The weeks passed all too quickly One day, with rets, they packed their ca to Lucile's home
Three weeks later saw them aboard the steamshi+p _Torentia_ bound for Cape Prince of Wales by way of No upon a new and adventure-filled life This journey, though they little guessed it, brought theain under the strangest of circumstances, they were toto them from the ocean
CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERIOUS PHI BETA KI
It was so down from a snow-clad hill From where she stood, brushes and palette in hand, she could see the broad stretch of snow-covered beach, and beyond that the unbroken stretch of drifting ice which chained the restless Arctic Sea at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska She gloried in all the wealth of light and shadohich lay like a changing panorahty forces that shi+fted the massive ice-floes as they drifted from nowhere to nowhere Now for the thousandth tiazed out to sea, her mind went back over the year and a half that had passed since she and Lucile had spent that eventful hts were cut short Throwing up her hands in wild glee, she exclai of the reat event in this out-of-the-way spot Once aaround the point, behind a swift-footed dog-teaoverned his tireeted his co for the mail to be ”made up” If a dozen letters were in the sack, that hat hteen hundred es they were Tomorrow, perhaps, a bearded miner would drop in from Tin City, which was a city only in name This lone o to anotherdown from shi+shmaref Island, seventy-five miles north, would take three letters to Ben Norton and his sister, the governeon-hole, for Thompson, the teacher on Little Dio ice Later a native would be paid ten sacks of flour for atte to cross that floe and deliver the contents of that box There ht be a scrawled note for some Eskimo, a stray letter or two, and the rest would be for Marian At the present moment, she was the only white person at Cape Prince of Wales, a little town of three hundred and fifty Eskirizzled mail carrier as he reached the cabin at the top of the hill; ”ood care of his people,” smiled Marian, ”the teachers of his native children and the miners who search for his hidden treasures”