North

The Gordon dogs win! The Gordon dogs win! All Nome rang with the cry. Like wildfire the words leaped from lip to lip.

Lying upon her bed in the hospital with eyes half-closed, Lou Gordon heard the boom of the signal gun at Fort Davis. “What is it?” she asked of a nurse, who at the sound had taken her position at a window that overlooked the street.

“It’s the gun! The first of the racers has got to Fort Davis! It won’t be long, now, till we hear the news. I’ll bet it’s John Johnson—he’s just grand! So big and strong. But, it might be Scotty Allen. He’s an awful good man on the trail, they say. I’ll tell you as soon as I hear.”

On the bed, the girl’s eyes closed, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks. Other tears followed until two damp places appeared upon the pillow. Well—it would soon be over. She had been a fool to leave the Koyukuk. Bitterly, the panorama of events of the past few weeks floated through her brain. The high hope with which she had set out from the little cabin on Myrtle. The hardships of the long snow-trail. Her joy and wonder in the splendors of Nome. Her meeting with The Stranger, and their two weeks together, during which life had seemed to take on new meaning for her. Then—the strange premonition of evil that came over her as she witnessed his meeting with Dalzene. The arrest of the father on a trumped-up charge. Her violent illness, by means of which the plotters had eliminated her from all chances of winning the race. And, last of all—the realization that there would be no money left when the bills were paid. She vaguely wondered if there would be enough to pay the bills.

A thunderous roar of voices filled the air. Louder, and louder swelled the sound, until it seemed as though everybody in the world was trying to out-yell his neighbor. With tight-pressed lips the girl waited. What difference did it make who won? Nevertheless she found herself waiting for the words of the nurse. A young doctor charged into the room. “The Gordon dogs win!” he cried, “Eighty-three hours and three minutes! They all got lost in the blizzard——”

Lou Gordon found herself sitting bolt upright in bed. What was he saying? He is crazy! Wide eyed she stared at the white coated figure that was hurrying toward her. “Lie down! Please lie down!” His hands were upon her shoulders trying to force her gently back upon the pillow. But she resisted his efforts.

“What—what did you say?” she demanded, her fists clenching and unclenching.

“Oh, come now. If I had thought you would get so excited about it, I wouldn’t have told the news. But you were the only patient in the convalescent ward, and——”

“Tell me!” the girl’s voice was almost a shriek, “Tell me who won!”

“The Gordon dogs won,” soothed the man, “They’re a team nobody thought had a chance. Why, the odds were ten-to-one against ’em.”

The girl’s eyes slowly closed, and she allowed herself to be lowered to the pillow, where for some moments she lay with her head in a whirl while the voices of the doctor and the nurse sounded very far away. Suddenly, she again tried to raise herself, but the nurse held her back. “Who drove them?” she asked. “Tell me! Who drove my dogs?”

“Your dogs?” cried the young doctor, “What do you mean?”

“They’re my dogs, I tell you! I’m Lou Gordon! They’re my dogs! Who drove them?”

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the young doctor, “I didn’t know! Doctor Steele will murder me if he finds out I caused all this excitement. Oh, say, calm yourself, Miss Gordon! Honestly I didn’t know?” The man’s perturbation was so evident, that Lou Gordon despite her impatience, found herself smiling.

“I won’t be excited any more—really. But—please tell me!”

“Well, that’s just what everyone else wants to know,” smiled the doctor. “He’s entered as Huloimee Tilakum—and that means The Stranger. Everyone is asking ‘Who is The Stranger?’ You tell me, Miss Gordon? Who is he?”

The girl shook her head: “Huloimee Tilakum,” she answered, “That’s all I know,” and struggled frantically to raise herself. “Go find him!” she cried.

“But—I’m on duty. I——”

“Send someone, then! Send everyone! I’ve got to find him. Oh, I was a fool! A fool! I’ll go myself! I must find him! Oh, how can I ever look him in the face again? But, I will find him! I must!”

It took the combined efforts of the young doctor and the nurse to prevent the girl from leaping from the bed. “I’ll go! I’ll start a search for him!” cried the doctor in desperation, “Only, please, Miss Gordon—for your own good, as well as mine—please be quiet. I’ll have him here in no time!” and with that, he was gone, as with a sigh of resignation, the girl sank back upon her pillow.

Over and over she repeated the wonderful words, “They won! My dogs won! And, he drove them!” The weakness that had held her listless for three days was gone. She could feel the strength returning to her body—flowing through its fibres in a life-giving current of warmth. Her heart seemed bursting with happiness, and in her brain the face of Huloimee Tilakum shone through a chaos of whirling thought. What would she say to him? What could she say. Would he ever forgive her?

The young doctor appeared in the doorway.

“Where is he?” cried the girl.

“No one seems to have seen him since the race,” he explained, “but they’ll find him. I’ve got a dozen men hunting for him. Told ’em to comb Nome with a fine-tooth comb until they did find him. They say you’ll clean up big!”

“Oh, never mind that!” cried the girl, “Why doesn’t he come?”

A form appeared in the doorway behind the doctor, and the bluff voice of Bill Ames rang through the room: “They win, Miss Gordon! I know’d they could do it!”

At the words the youthful physician whirled on the speaker: “Get out of here!” he ordered, “How in the devil did you get through the office?”

“Let him come!” cried Lou Gordon, “Come, Mr. Ames, tell me all about it!”

“It’s against the rules!” vociferated the doctor, barring the way, and the next moment the strong arm of Bill Ames was brushing him aside.

“That’s what they claimed down stairs,” quoth Bill, as he stepped into the room, “An’ if you don’t shut up yer pesterin’ young feller, I’ll jist nach’ly pick you up an’ chuck you through that winder, sash an’ all,” and, without further ado, he advanced to the girl’s bed, his peg leg loudly tapping the floor.

“I know’d you’d want to hear about it, so I come——”

“But, where is he—Huloimee Tilakum?” interrupted the girl.

The grin broadened on the face of Bill Ames: “Oh, him—I guess he’s poundin’ his ear, somewheres. Eighty-three hours on the trail, an’ part of it through a blizzard, calls fer a good long sleep. He was wobblin’ when he crossed the finish line. They hung the big wreath on his neck, an’ do you know what he done? He tore it off an’ hung it on the neck of that there Skookum dog! That’s what he done! An’ By God, Miss Gordon, that’s what I call a man! Givin’ the dogs the credit. ‘It was the Skookum dog done it,’ he says to me, after he’d axed how was you gittin’ on, ‘The lead dog, an’ the gal that had sense enough to run ’em over the trail. We was lost,’ he says, ‘An’ that Skookum dog found the trail because he’s be’n over it.’ Them’s the words he says to me, an’ then he was gone. The best team won, Miss Gordon—an’ the best man won. An’ now all Alasky is wonderin’ who is he? Why, they ain’t sayin’ ‘Hello,’ no more, down there in the streets, nor ‘How be you?’ It’s who the hell is Huloimee Tilakum? But, they won’t never find out from me——”

“Do you know?” cried the girl, half rising from her pillow, “Tell me! Do you know?”

“Who—me?” exclaimed Bill Ames, “Not me, Miss Gordon. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’! Honest I don’t. I never seen him or heerd tell of him till you brung him to the corral that day! So long, Miss Gordon! I gotta go!” And without waiting for another word, Bill Ames vanished from the room as swiftly as his peg leg would permit.

Down in the jail they rimmed Old Man Gordon’s cell demanding to know who drove the Gordon dogs. The old man paused long enough in his denunciation of the police, the court, and all Nome in general, to roar his answer at them: “My daughter drove ’em! Con blast ye! That’s the breed of us Koyukukers! Our women over there can beat the best mushers ye got!’Twas my wee lass of a daughter that won ye’re race!”

“Hell of a lookin’ daughter!” exclaimed a man in the crowd, “You ort to saw him hurlin’ them dogs down the street to the finish, an’ all Nome lookin’ on an’ yellin’ their head off! Believe me, old timer! It was a he-man won that race!”

That very day they turned Gordon loose with apologies so evidently sincere that the old man’s ruffled temper was completely mollified. For, upon further questioning the Indian admitted that Dalzene, and not Gordon had furnished the hooch. Whereupon Dalzene was apprehended and promptly sentenced to six months at hard labor.

The following day Lou Gordon was discharged from the hospital. During the week which they remained at the hotel for the girl to fully regain her strength both she and her father used every means at their command to locate the mysterious Huloimee Tilakum. But all to no purpose. The man had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. In the prosecution of this search, Bill Ames was her most indefatigable henchman. Try as she would, the girl could not rid herself of the impression that the dog keeper knew more than he would tell. But despite her utmost endeavors to extract information, the man denied all knowledge of the vanished Stranger. And, even as he lied, nobly and desperately, Bill Ames silently cursed himself for promising silence, and bitterly he cursed MacShane for the fool he was. For he guessed rightly that no aftermath of her recent illness had caused the girl suddenly to lose all interest in life. He knew that she loved her dogs—knew her pride in them. And he knew that she should have thrilled to the heart at the vociferously expressed admiration of the crowds that came daily to visit those dogs in the corral. And knowing these things he cursed mightily under his breath as he watched her gaze upon these men in dull apathy, her eyes searching, always searching for a face that was not there.

As the miserable week wore to its close hope died within the girl’s breast, for even the indefatigable Bill Ames was at last forced to admit that Huloimee Tilakum was no longer in Nome.

“He has gone—gone,” she murmured to herself, as she stared wide-eyed into the darkness of her room upon her last night in the hotel. “And—it’s all my fault! Oh, how could I have been such a fool? He is a man! The best man in all the world! I love him! I do love him! And—he has—gone!” Then the tears came, and for a long time the sound of muffled sobbing penetrated the darkness of the room.