The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “It seems very real,” said Marian. “How long ago could it have been?”

  “Mebbe twenty years,” said Terogloona.

  “The white man was a prospector.”

  “And the yellow pebbles and dust must have been gold!” exclaimed Patsy. “Oh, Marian! If we could find that place we’d be rich. Terogloona, could you find the place?”

  Again the Eskimo studied the ancient picture-writing.

  “Eh-eh,” he said at last. “Mebbe could.”

  “Oh, Marian! We’ll go back,” said Patsy, doing a wild dance on her sleeping bag. “We’ll go back for gold!”

  “For the present,” said Marian, quietly, “we have work enough. We must get our herd to Fort Jarvis. Looks as if that will be a difficult enough task.”

  “But tell me,” she turned suddenly to Terogloona, “there were more than fifty reindeer with old Omnap-puk, were there not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “My master’s herd.”

  “They are the deer we have been missing all winter, the ones we thought had been killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, then—” she leaped suddenly to her feet in her excitement, “then those people can not have killed our deer at all!”

  “No. Not kill.”

  “Then why did they follow us? Are they following us now? What was it they killed that night, if not our deer? Oh! it’s too perplexing for words.”

  Terogloona looked at her and smiled a droll smile. “Many strange things on hill and tundra. Some time mebbe know; mebbe not. Terogloona must go watch; you sleep. Tomorrow mebbe very hard.” Taking up the rifle, he left the tent.

  Before creeping into her sleeping bag, Marian stepped out of the tent to cool her heated brow in the crisp night air. Above her the stars gleamed like tiny camp-fires; beyond her the dark forest loomed. From the distance she caught the bump and grind of ice crowding the banks of the river.

  Morning came, and with it the problem of crossing the river. They had been traveling by compass. As far as Marian could tell, to go either up or down the river would be to go out of their direct path. Terogloona advised going north. Some signs unintelligible to the girls, but clear enough to him, appeared to promise a crossing two or three miles above.

  For once the canny instincts of the Eskimo failed. He was no longer in his own land of barren hills, tundra and sea; perhaps this caused him to err. One thing was certain, as they traveled northward the hills that lined the stream grew more rugged and rocky, and the river more turbulent.

  “We won’t find a crossing for miles,” Marian said, with a tone of conviction.

  Even Terogloona paused to ponder and scratch his head.

  It was just at the moment when despair appeared about to take possession of them that Patsy, chancing to glance away at the hills that loomed above the opposite banks, suddenly cried:

  “Look! A man!”

  All looked in the direction she had pointed. The man was standing perfectly still, but his right hand was pointing. Like a wooden signboard, it pointed downstream. Three times the arm dropped. Three times it was raised to point again.

  “He is an Indian,” said Terogloona, stoically. “It is his country. He knows. We must go back. The crossing lies in that direction.”

  As the man on the hill saw them turn their herd about and start back, he began to travel slowly downstream. All that day, and even into the night, he went before them, showing the way.

  “Like the pillar of fire,” said Marian, with a little choke in her voice.

  There was no doubt in her mind that this benefactor was the Indian they had befriended when he was starving. To her lips there came a line she had long known, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat.”

  Not wishing to camp again at the edge of the forest, they traveled without rest or food for eight hours. At last, when they were so hungry and weary that they felt they must drop in their tracks and fall asleep, they came suddenly to a place where the troubled rush of waters ceased; where the river spread out into a broad, quiet, icebound lake.

  “Thank God!” Marian murmured reverently as she dropped exhausted upon her sled.

  After resting and eating a cold lunch of hardtack, frozen boiled beans, and reindeer steak, they headed the herd across the lake. Having passed through the narrow forest that skirted the lake, they came upon a series of low-lying, barren hills. Here, in a little gully lined with willows whose clinging dead leaves rustled incessantly in the breeze, the girls made camp.

  Before going to sleep, Marian walked out into the night to view her herd. The sky was clear. The golden moon made the night light as day. The herd was resting peacefully. She wondered vaguely if other human beings might be near. Their mysterious guide had left them at the shore of the lake. At no time had he come close enough to be identified. She was wondering about him, and as her gaze swept the horizon she saw the red and yellow gleam of a camp-fire.

  Her feeling toward that camp-fire had changed. There had been a time when it filled her with fear. Now, as she gazed steadily at it, it seemed a star of hope, a protecting fire that was perhaps to go with them all their long journey through.

  “The Indian’s camp, I suppose. And yet,” she asked herself, “is it? It might be the tent of the purple flame, and if it is, do they mean us good or ill?”

  Sleep that night was long and refreshing. They awoke next morning with renewed courage. Before them lay great sweeping stretches of tundra. For days, without a single new adventure, they pushed on toward Fort Jarvis. Sometimes, beside a camp-fire of willows, Marian sat wondering how they were coming on with their race. Were Scarberry and his herd nearer the Fort than they? There was no way to tell. Traveling the trackless Arctic wilderness is like sailing the boundless sea. As a thousand ships might pass you by night or day, so a thousand herds, taking other courses, might pass this one on its way to Fort Jarvis and no owner know of the others passing.

  Sometimes, too, she thought of those mysterious camp followers—the people of the purple flame. She no longer feared them; was curious about them, that was all. No longer did she catch the gleam of their light by night. Had they turned aside, gone back, or had they merely extinguished their unusual light?

  The Indians, she thought, must have been left behind. They would not travel far from their hunting ground. They had been served, and had served in turn. Now they might safely be forgotten.

  Then there came a time that called for all the courage and endurance their natures could command. One night they found themselves camped among the foothills of a range of mountains. The mountains, a row of alternating triangles of deep purple and light yellow, lay away to the east and at their peaks the snow, tossed high in air by the incessant gales that blew there, made each peak seem a smoking volcano.

  “Tomorrow,” said Terogloona, throwing out his hand in a sweeping gesture, “we must cross.”

  “Is there no other way?” asked Patsy.

  “Must do!” said Terogloona as he turned to the task of putting all in readiness.

  Two o’clock in the afternoon of the following day found them engaged in a terrific battle with the blizzard that ever raged up the mountain pass which they must cross.

  “‘Try not the pass,

  The old man said,

  The storm is lowering overhead,’”

  Patsy chanted bravely as, with snow encrusted head and with cheeks that must be rubbed incessantly to prevent them from freezing, she struggled forward.

  A moment later, as a fiercer shock seemed about to lift her from her feet and hurl her down the mountain side, Marian heard her fairly shriek into the teeth of the gale:

  “Excelsior! Excelsior!”

  Many hard battles had Marian fought out on the tundra, but nothing had ever equaled this. The snow, seeming never to stop, shot past them, or in a wild whirling eddy dashed into their faces. The wind tore at them. Now it came in rude gusts, and now poured down some narrow pass with all the fo
rce of the waterfall. Only by bending low and leaping into it could they make progress.

  The herd plunged stumblingly forward in a broad line. The dogs, incessantly at their heels, urged them forward. Terogloona, and even the brave Attatak, did all in their power to keep the herd moving.

  “If they stop; oh, if they do!” panted Marian. “If they refuse to go on we are lost! If only we reach the summit I am sure we will be safe. It must be calm on the other side.”

  Now Gold, the master collie, completely exhausted and blinded by the snow, came slinking back to his mistress. Marian rubbed the snow from the eyes of the faithful dog and, patting his side, bade him go back into the fight. Tears came to her eyes as the dog bravely returned to his task.

  The time came at last when all three dogs seemed done in; when the deer all but stopped; when it seemed impossible that they might be kept moving another five minutes. Then it was that the indomitable Marian sank down upon her sled in the depths of despair.

  “Look! Look!” cried Patsy, who had turned about to rub the frost from her cheeks. “Wolves! A whole pack of them!”

  Marian wheeled about for one look; then, digging into her pack, drew forth her rifle.

  “We’ll die fighting!” she murmured as she took steady aim at the foremost member of the pack that came tearing up the trail.

  She was about to press the trigger when Patsy gave her arm a sudden pull.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Wait! Those are not wolves. They’re dogs; great big, wonderful dogs!”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE END OF THE TRAIL

  Troops of conflicting hopes and fears waged battle in Marian’s brain when she realized that the pack approaching them on the run up the trail in the teeth of the storm were not wolves, but dogs. There are two types of dogs in Alaska; one, more wolf than dog, is the native wolf dog. This type, once he is loosed, leaps at the throat of the first reindeer he sees. A pack of these dogs, in such a crisis as the girls were now facing, would not only destroy many of the feebly struggling, worn-out and helpless younger deer, but beyond doubt would drive the remainder of the herd into such a wild panic as would lose them to their owners forever.

  Were the dogs of this or the other type—white men’s dogs, who treat the reindeer as they might cattle or sheep, and merely bark at them and drive them forward? If they were white men’s dogs they might save the day; for the barking of such a pack, as fresh for the struggle they appeared to be, would doubtless drive the exhausted deer to renewed efforts and carry them on over the top.

  With bated breath and trembling heart Marian watched their approach. Once hope fell as she thought she caught the sharp ki-yi of a wolf dog. In this she must have been mistaken, for as they came closer she saw that they were magnificent shaggy-coated fellows, with an unmistakable collie strain in their blood.

  “Oh!” she cried, “‘the chariots of the Lord, and the horsemen thereof.’”

  It was a strange expression, but fitted the occasion so well that Patsy felt her heart give a great leap of joy.

  Indeed the steeds of the Arctic, if not the horsemen, had come to their aid in a time of great need, and, passing them with a wild leap, the dogs burst upon the deer with a rush and roar that sent them forward by leaps and bounds.

  Staggering forward, the girls followed as best they could. Now they were a thousand yards from the summit, now five hundred, now three, now two. And now the first deer were disappearing over the top. Enheartened by this, the others crowded forward until with one final rush they all passed over the top and started down on the other side.

  Just as the girls reached the crest and were peering over the summit, a shrill whistle smote their ears. It sounded again, and yet again. There was a movement just before them. Then the snow-covered pack of dogs rushed pell-mell past them on the back trail down hill.

  “Someone whistled to them. They are going back. How wonderfully they must be trained!” exclaimed Patsy.

  “They were someone’s team,” Marian said slowly, as if for the first time realizing they had not really been sent direct from Heaven to save them. “They’re somebody’s team. He knew we were in trouble and turned the dogs loose to help us. I wonder who he could have been?”

  For the present the question must remain unanswered. The herd had gone on before them. It was all important that they join them. So, having straightened out the draw-straps to their sleds, they began making their way down the hard packed and uncertain descent.

  It was not long before they came upon the herd feeding on a little mountain plateau. Terogloona was already busy making camp, and Attatak thawing out food over a fire of tiny scrub fir trees.

  “Isn’t it wonderful to think that the great struggle is over?” whispered Marian, contentedly, as they lounged on their sleeping bags an hour later. “This is really the worst of it, I hope. Fort Jarvis can’t be more than four days away now, over a smoother down trail.”

  “If only we are in time!” sighed Patsy.

  “We must be. Oh, we must!” exclaimed Marian passionately. “Surely it would be too much to struggle as we have, and then lose!”

  Before Marian fell asleep she set her mind to meet any outcome of their adventure. She thought of the wonderful opportunities the sale of the herd would bring to her father and herself. Near some splendid school they must rent a bungalow. There she would keep house for him and go to school. In her mind she saw the wonderful roses that bloomed around their door-step, and pictured the glorious sunsets they would view from their back door.

  “Perhaps, too,” she told herself, “Patsy could live with us for a year or two and attend my school.”

  When she had pictured all this, she saw in her mind that the race had been lost; that Scarberry had sold his herd to the Canadian officials; that she was to turn the heads of her leading reindeer toward the home tundra.

  With great difficulty at first, but with ever increasing enthusiasm, in her imagination she drove the herd all the way back to enter once more upon the wild, free, life of the herder.

  “It really does not matter,” she told herself; “it’s really only for father. He is so lonely down there all by himself.”

  In her heart of hearts she knew that it did matter, mattered a very great deal indeed. Brave girl that she was, she only prepared her mind for the shock that would come if the race were really lost.

  Four days later the two girls found themselves approaching a small village of log cabins and long, low-lying buildings. This was Fort Jarvis. They had made the remainder of the journey in safety. Leaving their herd some ten miles from the Fort, where the deer would be safe, they had tramped in on snowshoes.

  Marian found her heart fluttering painfully as her feet fell in the hard-packed village path. Had Scarberry been there? Was the race lost? Had the man of the purple flame been there? Had he anything to do with the deal?

  Twice they asked directions of passing Indians. At last they knocked at a door. The door swung open and they found themselves inside a long, low room. At a table close to an open fire sat a man in uniform. He rose and bowed as they came toward him.

  “You—you are the agent for the Canadian Government?” Marian faltered, addressing the man in uniform.

  The man nodded his head and smiled a little welcome.

  “You wish to buy a reindeer herd?” Marian asked the question point-blank.

  “I believe,” the man answered quietly, “that I have already agreed to purchase one—”

  “You—you—” Marian sank to a chair. The shock was too much.

  “You see, the truth is,” smiled the Major, as though there had been no interruption, “I believe I have agreed to purchase your herd.”

  “My herd!” exclaimed Marian, unable to believe her ears. “But how did you know of my herd—how did you know I was on the way? Who told you—”

  “One question at a time, young lady,” laughed the Major. “I think I have a number of surprises for you. As to your first question, I will say that I have never hea
rd of your herd until two days ago. That day, two days after the great storm, a half famished Indian reached Fort Jarvis, driving a splendid team of white men’s dogs. They had been hard driven.

  “After we had fed him, he jerkily told us the story of your race against a man named Scarberry. He told us of the treatment you had given him; of your kindnesses to his people. Then he told of Scarberry. Told how Scarberry’s herd had been delayed and held up along the trail, and how he had tried to be of help to you. Then he told of your battle against the storm, and how, once you were safely over the pass, he had driven night and day to reach here. His hope was to get here ahead of any other herd and intercede for you. Such loyalty is not to be denied. And I told him that should your herd reach here in good shape, that I would give it preference, even should Scarberry get here ahead of you. I believe that answers one of your questions.”

  “But how in the world did this Indian know that the Government had agreed to purchase a herd?” asked Marian.

  “In the North,” answered the Major, “rumor flies fast, even over seemingly uninhabited places. And you may depend upon it that the Indian will know what is going on; even if he does have but little to say. Now, to business. I understand you have brought the herd with you?”

  “Yes,” answered Marian, “they are at our camp about ten miles out.”

  “Then we may consider the deal closed. There remains but to count the deer; to weed out those that are too old or too weak for the final drive, then to make out your order on our Government. We have Lapland herders who will assist in the work. You may rest here with us until the count is completed. After that I will see that you have guides and dog-teams for the passage south to the rail head.”

  “Oh! how wonderful!” exclaimed Patsy, impulsively leaping to her feet. “But Bill Scarberry,” she asked suddenly, “did he really win?”

  “No,” smiled the Major, “he has not yet been heard from. So you won the race after all.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Patsy, “I could never have been happy again if we had lost, even if Marian did sell her herd.”

  After a night’s rest at the post, Marian and Patsy felt like they had come into a new life. They had lain awake long into the night, exchanging excited whispers over their good luck. The next morning, as Marian was passing down the street, she noticed a dog team. There was something about the leader that looked familiar. One glance at the driver brought an exclamation of surprise to her lips. He was none other than the Indian she had saved from starvation, and who in turn had served as her guardian angel.