Part 2 (2/2)

”Ye-ah, and then the officers are mighty hard on the ones they ketch--ketch desertin', I mean--officers are; when they ketch 'em, an'

they mostly do.”

”Do what?” Johnny tried to yawn again.

”Ketch 'em! They're fierce at that.”

There was a knowing grin on the sergeant's face, but no wink followed.

Johnny waited anxiously for the wink.

”But it's tough, now ain't it?” observed the sergeant. ”We can't go home and can't fight. What we here for, anyway?”

”Ye-ah,” Johnny smiled hopefully.

”Expected to go home long ago, but no transportation, not before spring; not even for them that's got discharges and papers to go home. It's tough! You'd think a lot of 'em 'ud try goin' north to Alaska, wouldn't you? Three days in G.o.d's country's worth three years in Leavenworth; you'd think they'd try it. And they would, if 't'wasn't so far. Gad!

Three thousand miles! I'd admire the pluck of the fellow that dared.”

This time the wink which Johnny had been so anxiously awaiting came; a full, free and frank wink it was. He winked back, then settled down in his corner to sleep.

A train rattled by. The ”Reindeer Special” b.u.mped back on the main track and went cras.h.i.+ng on its way. It screeched through little villages, half buried in snow. It glided along between plains of whiteness. It rattled between narrow hills, but Johnny was unconscious of it all. He was fast asleep, storing up strength for the morrow, and the many wild to-morrows which were to follow.

CHAPTER III

TREACHERY OUT OF THE NIGHT

Johnny moved restlessly beneath his furs. He had been dreaming, and in his dream he had traveled far over scorching deserts, his steed a camel, his companions Arabs. In his dream he slept by night on the burning sand, with only a silken canopy above him. In his dream he had awakened with a sense of impending danger. A prowling tiger had wandered over the desert, an Arab had proved treacherous--who knows what? The feeling, after all, had been only of a vague dread.

The dream had wakened him, and now he lay staring into utter darkness and marveling that the dream was so much like the reality. He was traveling over barren wastes with a caravan; had been for three days.

But the waste they crossed was a waste of snow. His companions were natives--who like the Arabs, lived a nomadic life. Their steeds the swift footed reindeer, their tents the igloos of walrus and reindeer skins, they roamed over a territory hundreds of miles in extent. To one of these ”fleets of the frozen desert,” Johnny had attached himself after leaving the train.

It had been a wonderful three days that he had spent in his journeying northward. These Chukches of Siberia, so like the Eskimos of Alaska that one could distinguish them only by the language they spoke, lived a romantic life. Johnny had entered into this life with all the zest of youth. True, he had found himself very awkward in many things and had been set aside with a growled, ”Dezra” (that is enough), many times but he had persevered and had learned far more about the ways of these nomads of the great, white north than they themselves suspected.

During those three days Johnny's eyes had been always on the job. He had not traveled a dozen miles before he had made a thorough study of the reindeer equipment. This, indeed, was simple enough, but the simpler one's equipment, the more thorough must be one's knowledge of its handling. The harness of the deer was made of split walrus skin and wood. Simple wooden hames, cut to fit the shoulders of the deer and tied together with a leather thong, took the place of both collar and hames of other harnesses. From the bottom of these hames ran a broad strap of leather. This, pa.s.sing between both the fore and hind legs of the deer, was fastened to the sled. A second broad strap was pa.s.sed around the deer's body directly behind the fore legs. This held the pulling strap above the ground to prevent the reindeer from stepping over his trace.

In travel, in spite of this precaution, the deer did often step over the trace. In such cases, the driver had but to seize the draw strap and give it a quick pull, sending the sled close to the deer's heels. This gave the draw straps slack and the deer stepped over the trace again to his proper place.

The sleds were made of a good quality of hard wood procured from the river forests or from the Russians, and fitted with shoes of steel or of walrus ivory cut in thin strips. The sleds were built short, broad and low. This prevented many a spill, for as Johnny soon learned, the reindeer is a cross between a burro and an ox in his disposition, and, once he has scented a rich bed of mosses and lichens, on which he feeds, he takes on the strength and speed of an ox stampeding for a water hole in the desert, and the stubbornness of a burro drawn away from his favorite thistle.

The deer were driven by a single leather strap; the old, old jerk strap of the days of ox teams. Johnny had demanded at once the privilege of driving but he had made a sorry mess of it. He had jerked the strap to make the deer go more slowly. This really being the signal for greater speed, the deer had bolted across the tundra, at last spilling Johnny and his load of Chukche plunder over a cutbank. This procedure did not please the Chukches, and Johnny was not given a second opportunity to drive. He was compelled to trot along beside the sleds or, back to back with one of his fellow travelers, to ride over the gleaming whiteness that lay everywhere.

It was at such times as these that Johnny had ample opportunity to study the country through which they pa.s.sed. Lighted as it was by a glorious moon, it presented a grand and fascinating panorama. To the right lay the frozen ocean, its white expanse cut here and there by a pool of salt water pitchy black by contrast with the ice. To the left lay the mountains extending as far as the eye could see, with their dark purple shadows and triangles of light and seeming but another sea, that tempest-tossed and terrible had been congealed by the bitter northern blasts.

When twelve hours of travel had been accomplished, and it had been proposed that they camp for the night, Johnny had been quite free to offer his a.s.sistance in setting up the tents. In this he had been even less successful than in his performance with the reindeer. He had set the igloo poles wrong end up and, when these had been righted, had spread the long haired deerskin robes, which were to serve as the inner lining of the shelters, hair side out, which was also wrong. He had once more been relegated to the background. This time he had not cared, for it gave him an opportunity to study his fellow travelers. They were for the most part a dark and sullen bunch. Not understanding Johnny's language, they did not attempt to talk with him, but certain gloomy glances seemed to tell him that, though his money had been accepted by them, there was still some secret reason why he might have been traveling in safer company.

This, however, was more a feeling than an idea based on any overt act of the natives, and Johnny tried to shake it off. That he might do this more quickly, he gave himself over to the study of these strange nomads.

<script>