“And something was wrong?” asked Annabel, breaking the pause.
Banks nodded again. “You remember that sheepman down in Oregon they brought in from the range. The one that ripped up his comforter that night at the hotel and set the wool in little rolls around the floor; thought he was tending sheep? Well, that's what was happening. And Hollis was two days late. Dave had started for the coast; not the regular way to Fairbanks and out by stage to Valdez, but a new route through the Alaska Range to strike the Susitna and on to Seward. And he had fresh dogs. He was through Rainy Pass when Tisdale began to catch up.”
“He did catch up?” Annabel questioned again hurriedly.
Banks nodded once more. He drew his hand away and rose from his seat on the chair arm. His eyes were shining like blue glacier ice. “It was in a blizzard; the same as the day I lost my fingers—only—Hollis—he was too late.” He turned and walked unsteadily to the door and stood looking out. “I wasn't three hundred miles from the Aurora,” he added. “I could have been in time. I can't ever forget that.”
Annabel rose and stood watching him, with the emotion playing in her face. “Johnny!” she exclaimed at last. “Oh, Johnny!” She went over and put her arm protectively around his shoulders. “I know just how you feel; but you didn't drive him to it. You were just busy and interested in your work. You'd have gone in a minute, left everything, if you had known.”
“That's it; I ought to have known. I ought to have kept track of Dave; run over once in a while to say hullo. I'd have likely seen it was coming on, then, in time. When Tisdale found him, he'd been setting out little pieces of spruce, like an orchard in the snow. You see,” he added after a moment, “Dave always expected to come back here when he struck it rich and start a fruit ranch. He was the man who owned this pocket.”
A sudden understanding shone in Annabel's face. “And that's why you got an option on it; you want to carry out his scheme. I'll help you, Johnny, I'll do my level best.”
Banks turned and looked at her. “That's all I want, Annabel. I was a little afraid you'd be sick of the place. But, my, we can go right ahead and set a crew of men to grubbing out the sage on both sections to once. Folks might have said, seeing you take up with a undersized, froze-up fellow like me, you was marrying me for my money; but they can't, no, ma'am, not when they see the valuable claim you are developing in your own right.”
Annabel laughed. “I guess you're entitled to your turn making fun of me. But have you got money, Johnny? I never thought of that.”
“Likely not. But the Annabel sure brought me luck; that name worked better than a rabbit's foot. Here's a little bunch of nuggets I saved out of the first clean-up.” He paused to take a small new poke from an inner pocket and, untying the string, poured the contents in her hand. “I thought likely you'd want 'em made up in a necklace with a few diamonds or mebbe emeralds mixed in.”
She stood looking at the shining rough pieces of gold in her palm, while a certain pride rose through the wonder in her face. “My gracious!” she exclaimed, and a spark of her lost youth revived. “My gracious. And you named your mine after me. I bet it was on account of that billy and the ewes.”
“Likely,” the little man beamed. “But more than likely it was because that strike was a sure thing, and you was behind it, Annabel. My, yes, you was responsible I ever got to Alaska; let alone stuck it out. Sure as a grubstake, you gave me my start. Now come take a look at this outfit I brought.”
He held the poke open while she poured the nuggets back. “I like them plain,” she said, “but I never saw any made up. I leave it to you.”
“Then I make it emeralds to match the Green, and mebbe a few sparklers thrown in.” He laughed gayly and, taking her arm, drew her back across the room to the open trunk; when she was seated again in the armchair, he knelt to remove the first layer of tissue packing. She took the precaution to spread one smooth sheet of it on her lap and, leaning forward, saw him uncover the plume, the entire hat. “Gracious goodness!” she exclaimed tremulously, as he lifted it awkwardly to her eager hands, “ain't it splendid? I didn't know they were making them like this. I never saw such roses; why, they look alive and ready to smell; and ain't they pretty fixed this way under the brim?” She paused, turning the masterpiece slowly, like a connoisseur. “I bet I could have worn it when I was in Oregon. It would have been my style. Do you suppose”—she glanced at Banks timidly—“I'd dare to try it if my hair was done real nice, and I had on a better dress?”
“My, yes.” Banks laughed again excitedly, and with growing confidence opened the next compartment to display the chiffon gown. “Wait till you get this on. You'll be a sight. You always was in pink.” He paused to take the hat and, wheeling, placed it on the old dresser, and so made room for the frock on her lap. “Now, ain't that soft and peachy and—and rich?”
But Annabel was silent. She lifted her eyes from the gown to Johnny, and they were full of mist. Then her lip quivered, and a drop splashed down on the delicate fabric. “My gracious!” she cried in consternation and, rising, held the gown off at arm's-length. “Do you suppose it's going to spot?”
And Banks' laugh piped once more. “I guess it can stand a little salt water,” he replied. “But if it can't, we can get a duplicate. And now you just take your time and pick out what you want to wear. I am going up the bench to look around and find Dave's springs. It'll likely take me an hour or so, and you can be ready to start soon's I get back.”
“Start?” she repeated. “Was you counting on going somewhere?”
“My, yes. I was counting on taking you a little spin down to Wenatchee the first thing, and having a chicken dinner to the hotel. Then, soon's we get a license and hunt up a sky man, we are going to run down to Oregon and have a look at the old Corners.”
“I never rode in an automobile,” she said, glowing, “but I think I'd like it fine.”
“I bet you will. I bet, coming home, you'll be running the machine yourself half the time.”
He hurried away then, laughing his shrillest key, and Annabel laid the pink chiffon back in the tray to follow him to the door. She stood smiling, though the mist alternately gathered and cleared in her eyes, watching him up the vale and waiting to see him reappear on the front of the bench. But he found her ready when he returned; and the hat was becoming beyond her hopes. It brought back in a measure the old brightness that was half a challenge in her air, so that, to the mining man, she seemed to have gone back, almost, those lost years. Still, his satisfaction was tempered, and instantly she understood the cause. “The roses seemed enough pink today,” she said tactfully, “till I wear off some of this tan. But I like this tan cloth awful well, don't you? It's a nice color for out-of-doors and won't show the dust. And doesn't it fit perfectly splendid? And look at these shoes. I don't see how you remembered my size. You've thought of everything. There's even an automobile veil. A lady that came out here with Mr. Tisdale had one about the same shade. But you'll have to help me put it on so I won't spoil this plume.”
She pushed the pongee coat, which was carefully folded across the back of a chair, a little aside and, seating herself before the mirror, reached to take the scarf and exposed a folded paper on the dresser. “I found that envelope pinned inside the hat,” she said still diplomatically, though a touch of humor shaded her lips. “There's a ten dollar piece in it and two and a half in silver. Probably it's your change.”
But Banks turned the envelope and read pencilled across the front: “There isn't any duplicate, but thanks just the same.”
CHAPTER XX. KERNEL AND PEACH
After that little wedding journey down in Oregon, Banks returned to Seattle to engage a crew for the first step to reclamation; combining pleasure with business, he brought Annabel and registered at the New Washington Hotel. And here Daniels, detailed to learn something in regard to the Iditarod strike where, it was rumored, the Morgansteins were negotiating for the miner's valuable holdings, finally traced him.
“Sure we
have a Banks of Alaska with us,” the clerk responded, smiling, and turned the page to show the Press representative the strained, left-handed signature. “He's a sawed-off specimen with a face like a peachstone; but he said if he put down his regular name, the boys likely would miss his trail.”
“Mrs. Annabel Green Banks Hesperides Vale,” read Jimmie.
“Lucky Banks Iditarod and Hesperides Vale.
“This looks like my man, sure; but who is Mrs. Green-Banks? His wife or mother?”
“Bride,” the clerk replied laconically. “It's a sort of overdue honeymoon. But she's rather smart looking; fine eyes and tall enough to make up for him. They're a pair.”
“I see. Kernel and peach. But Hesperides Vale,” Daniels went on thoughtfully. “Why, that's in the new fruit belt over near Wenatchee, my old stamping-ground.”
The clerk nodded. “She owns some orchard lands over there and to hear him talk, you'd think she had the money; Until it comes to ordering; then the Queen of Sheba isn't in it. 'I guess we can stand the best room in the house,' he says. And when I showed them the blue suite and told them Tarquina, the prima donna opening at the Metropolitan to-night, had the companion suite in rose, it's: 'Do you think you can put up with this blue, Annabel?' But there comes the cameo now. No, the other way, from the street.”
Jimmie met the prospector midway across the lobby. “Mr. Banks?” he began genially. “I am the lucky one this time; I came in purposely to see you. I am Daniels, representing the Seattle Press. My paper is particular about the Alaska news, and I came straight to headquarters to find out about the Iditarod camp.”
Banks kept on to the desk, and Jimmie turned to walk with him. The clerk was ready with his key. “Mrs. Banks hasn't come in yet,” he said, smiling.
“She's likely been kept up at Sedgewick-Wilson's. I introduced her to a friend of mine there. I had to chase around to find a contractor that could ship his own scrapers and shovels across the range, and I thought the time would go quicker, for her, picking out clothes. But,” he added, turning to the reporter, “we may as well sit down and wait for her here in the lobby.”
“I understand,” began Daniels, opening his notebook on the arm of his chair, “that your placer in the Iditarod country has panned out a clear one hundred thousand dollars.”
“Ninety-five thousand, two hundred and twenty-six,” corrected the mining man, “with the last clean-up to hear from.”
Jimmie set these figures down, then asked: “Is the rumor true that the Morgansteins are considering an offer from you?”
“No, sir,” piped the little man. “They made me an offer. I gave 'em an option on my bunch of claims for a hundred and fifty thousand. Their engineer has gone in to look the property over. If they buy, they'll likely send a dredger through by spring and work a big bunch of men.”
There was a silent moment while Jimmie recorded these facts, then: “And I understand you are interested in fruit lands east of the mountains,” he said. “It often happens that way. Men make their pile up there in the frozen north and come back here to Washington to invest it.”
“Likely,” replied Banks shortly. “Likely. But it's my wife that owns the property in the fruit belt. And it's a mighty promising layout; it's up to me to stay with it till she gets her improvements in. Afterwards—now I want you to get this in correct. Last time things got mixed; the young fellow wrote me down Bangs. And I've read things in the newspaper lately about Hollis Tisdale that I know for a fact ain't so.”
“Hollis Tisdale?” Jimmie suspended his pencil. “So you know the Sphynx of the Yukon, do you?”
“That's it. That's the name that blame newspaper called him. Sphynx nothing. Hollis Tisdale is the best known man in Alaska and the best liked. If the Government had had the sense to put him at the head of the Alaska business, there'd been something doing, my, yes.”
The reporter finished his period. “Don't let this interview bother you,” he said. “It's going into my paper straight, Mr. Banks, and in your own words.”
While he spoke, his vigilant glance rested lightly on one of the several guests scattered about the lobby. He was a grave and thoughtful man and had seemed deeply engrossed in a magazine, but he had changed his seat for a chair within speaking distance, and Jimmie had not seen him turn a page.
“What I was going to say, then,” resumed Banks, “was that afterwards, when the orchards are in shape, I am going back to Alaska and take a bunch of those abandoned claims, where the miners have quit turning up the earth, and just seed 'em to oats and blue stem. Either would do mighty well. The sun shines hot long summer days, and the ground keeps moist from the melting snow on the mountains. I've seen little patches of grain up there and hay ripening and standing high as my shoulder. But what they need most in the interior is stock farms, horses and beeves, and I am going to take in a fine bunch of both; they'll do fine; winter right along with the caribou and reindeer.”
“Well, that's a new idea to me,” exclaimed Daniels. “Alaska to me has always stood for blizzards, snow, glaciers, impregnable mountains, bleak and barren plains like the steppes of Russia, and privation, privation of the worst kind.”
Banks nodded grimly. “That's because the first of us got caught by winter unprepared. Why, men freeze to death every blizzard right here in the States; sometimes it's in Dakota; sometimes old New York, with railroads lacing back and forth close as shoestrings. And imagine that big, unsettled Alaska interior without a single railroad and only one wagon-road; men most of the time breaking their own trails. Not a town or a house sometimes in hundreds of miles to shelter 'em, if a storm happens to break. But you talk with any Swede miner from up there. He'll tell you they could make a new Sweden out of Alaska. Let us use the timber for building and fuel; let a man that's got the money to do it start a lumber-mill or mine the coal. Give us the same land and mineral laws you have here in the States, and homeseekers would flock in thick as birds in springtime.”
The stranger closed his magazine. “Pardon me,” he said, taking advantage of the pause, “but do you mean that Conservation is all that is keeping home-seekers out of Alaska?”
Banks nodded this time with a kind of fierceness; his eyes scintillated a white heat, but he suppressed the imminent explosion and began with forced mildness, “My, yes. But you imagine a man trying to locate with ninety-five per cent. of the country reserved. First you've got to consider the Coast Range. The great wall of China's nothing but a line of ninepins to the Chugach and St. Elias wall. The Almighty builds strong, and he set that wall to hold the Pacific Ocean back. Imagine peaks piled miles high and cemented together with glaciers; the Malispina alone has eighty miles of water front; and there's the Nanatuk, Columbia, Muir; but the Government ain't found names for more'n half of 'em yet, nor a quarter of the mountains. Now imagine a man getting his family over that divide, driving his little bunch of cattle through, packing an outfit to keep 'em going the first year or so. Suppose he's even able to take along a portable house; what's he going to do about fuel? Is he going to trek back hundreds of miles to the seaport, like the Government expects, to pack in coal? Australian maybe, or Japan low grade, but more likely it's Pennsylvania sold on the dock for as high as seventeen dollars a ton. Yes, sir, and with Alaska coal, the best kind and enough to supply the United States for six hundred years, scattered all around, cropping right out of the ground. Think of him camped alongside a whole forest of spruce, where he can't cut a stick.”
The little man's voice had reached high pitch; he rose and took a short, swift turn across the floor. The stranger was silent; apparently he was weighing this astonishing information. But Daniels broke the pause.
“The Government ought to hurry those investigations,” he said. “Foster, the mining engineer, told me never but one coal patent had been allowed in all Alaska, and that's on the coast. He has put thousands into coal land and can't get title or his money back. The company he is interested with has had to stop development, because, pending investigation, no man can
mine coal until his patent is secured. It looks like the country is strangled in red tape.”
“It is,” cried Banks. “And one President's so busy building a railroad for the Filipinos, and rushing supplies to the Panama Canal he goes out of office and clear forgets he's left Alaska temporarily tied up; and the next one has his hands so full fixing the tariff and running down the trusts he can't look the question up. And if he could, Congress is working overtime, appropriating the treasury money home in the States. There's so many Government buildings to put up and harbors and rivers to dredge, it can't even afford to give us a few lights and charts, and ships keep on feeling their way and going to destruction on the Alaska coast. Alaska is side-tracked. She's been left standing so long she's going to rust.”
“If some of our senators could listen to you,” said the stranger, with a swift and vanishing smile, “their eyes would be opened. But that is the trouble; Alaska has had no voice. It is true each congressman has been so burdened with the wants of his own State that session after session has closed before the Alaska bills were reached. We have been accustomed to look on Alaska as a bleak and forbidding country, with a floating population of adventurers and lawless men, who go there with the intention to stay only long enough to reap a mineral harvest. If she had other great resources and such citizens as you, why were you not in Washington to exploit her?”
Lucky Banks shook his head. “Up to this year,” he said and smiled grimly, “I couldn't have made the trip without beating my way, and I guess if I went to some of those senators now and escaped being put down for an ex-convict, they'd say I was engineering a trust. They'd turn another key on Alaska to keep me out.”
The Rim of the Desert Page 23
