CHAPTER XVII

THE BLACK SEAL’S TOOTH

Florence stopped short in her tracks. It was early next morning. She had wandered some distance from camp. Bending over, she picked something from the snow. That something was brightly colored orange and green. It had shone out of the solid white of snow at her feet.

“Tracks,” she thought, “Eskimo tracks, and now this.” The thing she held in her hand was strange. A small leather packet, it was decorated with masses of bright beads. As she examined it she saw that it had been sewn up tight, but she could feel some small hard objects within.

“Gold nuggets, perhaps,” her imagination soared. Two bits of leather thong led out from the bag. That they had been one piece she knew at once. “Worn about the neck,” she concluded, “and the thong broke.”

Next instant she was calling, “At-a-tak!”

“Let’s see.” The Eskimo girl burst through a clump of evergreens. “Ah-ne-ca!” she exclaimed at sight of the little sack. “Came from Russia, this one. Not Eskimo, no! no! _Chuckches_ from Russia. What you call it? Charm! Keep bad spirits away, think that, this _Chuckche_ man.”

“Well,” said Florence, “it might keep bad spirits away, but it didn’t keep bad ideas out of his mind. He and his friends tried to steal five hundred of John Bowman’s reindeer, that’s plain.

“Now—” her tone changed, “looks as if these natives had become frightened, leaving us with the reindeer on our hands. Two hundred miles from anywhere. What are we going to do about it?”

“Yes,” said At-a-tak. What she meant was, ‘Yes, here’s a situation for you!’ And Florence agreed with her. Here they were on a golden quest, marching with dog teams and supplies into the uncharted North in search of a lost and hidden mine, and now of a sudden they found themselves encamped with a whole herd of reindeer belonging to a friend.

“Anyway, we won’t starve,” the girl laughed. “Plenty of reindeer steak.”

“Yes,” said At-a-tak.

“We won’t go back,” Florence decided suddenly.

“No,” agreed the Eskimo girl.

“We’ll go on north,” said Florence. “We’ll take the deer with us. We’ve just got to!”

“Yes,” said At-a-tak.

It was the day after the storm. All was white and quiet now. Florence and the Eskimo girl had gone in search of a clue that would give them a reason for the presence of this valuable herd of reindeer in such a place. Apparently they had found the answer. Here and there were snow-blown tracks of dogs, sleds and natives. These led away from the narrow valley. Without question, these natives, overcome by a desire to live easily off that which belonged to another, had driven these deer into the hills. At sight of white men they had fled. Would they return? Florence shuddered. “Have to be on the watch,” she told herself. To At-a-tak she said:

“Come! Let’s go back to camp.”

When their report had been made, Tom Kennedy agreed that they should take the deer with them. “We’ll camp here until tomorrow morning, give the deer a chance to feed, then we’ll press on up the fork to the mine.

“The mine,” his voice rose, “it’s still there. Bound to be! Joe and me, we hid it, hid it good and plenty.”

“Hid it?” Florence wanted to ask. “How can you hide a gold mine?” She did not ask. She would wait and see for herself. Long ago she had learned the uselessness of asking questions when a little patient waiting would permit one to answer them for oneself.

A short time later, in the shadow of a fir tree, she cut the threads that closed that small beaded bag, then shook into her hand three bits of ivory. Two were white, the long, sharp teeth of a fox, and one was black as night, the tooth of a seal. This black one had been buried perhaps for hundreds of years beneath the sands of the sea.

“Good luck charm,” she murmured. “Wonder if it will bring good luck to us.”

Hours later, in a dreamy sort of way she was wondering this all over again. There was need at this moment for luck.

She was seated beside the coals of a campfire. The moon in all its glory hung above her. Stretching across the sky the Milky Way seemed a scarf of finest lace.

Her eyes, however, were not much upon the sky. They roved the snowy slopes. They took in every clump of fir and spruce. They rested with pleasure upon the brown spots that were, she knew, sleeping reindeer. She was guarding camp. They had decided that it was best to keep a watch. Jodie had all but insisted upon keeping her watch, but to this she would not listen.

“I’m as good a man as you are, even if I am a girl,” was her laughing challenge.

“_Chuckches_,” she was thinking, “how would natives of Siberia come so far?” And yet, the charm in her pocket had come from Russia—Siberia—the Arctic coast of Asia. At-a-tak had assured her of that. How strange!

Then she thought of the hidden mine. They would be there tomorrow. A feeling of pleased excitement, like the day before Christmas, ran through her being. Be there tomorrow. Would they? Perhaps there was no mine worthy of the name—only an old man’s dream. Well, even this had to be proved tomorrow. Tomorrow—

She started from this reverie, then listened sharply. Had there come an unaccustomed sound, like someone talking low in the distance?

A sound did reach her ears, a short, sharp barking. White foxes barking in the night. But this other sound—could it be some wild creature, perhaps a wolf, grumbling to his mate?

After that the night was still. She thought there had never before been such silence—the great white silence of the North. She imagined one might hear the rush of stars in their orbits.

Then again that silence was broken. The sound this time was very near, like the low mush-mush of footsteps on the snow, it seemed to come from the ridge above. Three clumps of spruce trees were there. Anyone passing from one to the other would be hidden. The nearest was not twenty yards from the camp. Her hands moved nervously as she sat watching those low spruce trees.

A moment passed, another, and yet another. The silence appeared to deepen. Blue-gray shadows of trees seemed to creep toward her. Absurd! She shook herself free of the illusion.

Then of a sudden she saw it—a face. One instant it was there among the spruce boughs. The next it was gone.

“A native?” A prickly sensation raced up her spine. It was night. She was alone, was awake. Should she waken the others?

“It’s my watch,” she told herself resolutely. “The face is gone. The reindeer are safe. So-o—” with a sigh she settled back in her place.

When she awoke next morning she was tempted to believe that her seeming to see that face among the trees was the result of an overworked imagination.

It was At-a-tak who soon changed her mind about this. The native girl had stood a short watch in the early morning. The face among the trees had reappeared. The man had spoken to her in his native tongue. The story she had to tell was strange.

This man she said was indeed a native of Russia. He and his people had visited America in a big skin boat. When they started on the homeward journey, ice drove them back. In America, they had no food. They must hunt. Finding this herd, and knowing little of American laws, they had driven it into the hills.

“But now,” At-a-tak concluded, “no more drive reindeer, those Russian natives. I say, ‘Go away quick. White man will catch you, put in jail, maybe shoot you.’ He say, ‘Go away quick.’ That one go away far. So,” she sighed, “not bother reindeer more.”

“And so,” Jodie laughed, “we have one fine reindeer herd on our hands. What shall we do with it?”

“Take them along; eat them one by one if we must,” was Tom Kennedy’s reply. “But now the cry is ‘On to the mine!’

“On to the gold mine!” he shouted.

“On to the mine! On! On to the mine!” came echoing back.

Not so fast. There was the herd of reindeer, they must be driven on before. In spite of the fact that this herd in an emergency would save them from starvation, Florence felt inclined to bewail the fact that this extra responsibility had been thrust upon them.

“Friends,” she said to her grandfather as they ate a hurriedly prepared breakfast of sourdough pancakes, “friends are fine, but sometimes they are a lot of trouble. If John Bowman hadn’t been our friend, we might have left those deer to shift for themselves.”

“N-no,” the old man spoke slowly, “no, girl, that’s where you’re wrong. It does give us an added responsibility, our friendship with John. But reindeer are property, valuable property. Many a man in this cold white world would have starved had it not been for the reindeer. So we’ll have to look after ’em the best we can.”

“Grandfather,” the girl thought with increased admiration, “surely is a fine old man! If everyone was like him, what a world this would be!”

“We’ll get there all the same!” exclaimed Tom. “You watch and see.”

“Come on, Phantom, old boy!” Florence shouted to the collie dog a few moments later. “We’ve got to get this Arctic caravan on the move.”

The dog let out a joyous yelp and they were on their way.

It was growing dusk on that short day of the Northland when, on crossing a low ridge, they sighted a large oval spot that seemed jet black against the surrounding white.

“A frozen lake,” said Jodie.

For one full moment they stood there in silence. The scene that lay before them was beautiful beyond compare. The sun setting behind white and purple mountains, the frozen oval of water that in summer must seem a mirror, the graceful reindeer wandering down over the sloping field of white—all this beauty would remain with Florence as long as she lived. Yet the words of her grandfather would linger longer. What he said was:

“Yes, girl, that’s the lake. In fact, it’s _the_ lake! And yonder—” his voice broke with emotion, “yonder is the cabin Joe and I put up so long ago.”

Sure enough, as the girl looked closely, she did see a small cabin, half buried in snow, nestling among the trees.

“The cabin!” she exclaimed. “The cabin! And now, where’s the mine?”

“Time enough for that, girl.” With eager stride the old man started down the hill. “Time enough. The cabin comes first.” At that they all went racing away.

“It’s strange,” the old man murmured a half hour later, “fifteen years have gone. And yet here is our cabin, just as we left it. Even the flour in that big can is good. No one has been here since we left. Surely this is a strange, mysterious, empty land.”

“But the gold mine?” The words slipped unbidden from Florence’s lips.

At that her grandfather did a curious thing. With one long bony finger that trembled slightly, he pointed straight down at the center of the floor:

“We hid it. Hid it good.”

“But wh—where is it?” the girl stammered.

“The two middle planks we hewed out of a spruce log,” was the answer. “Lift ’em up and you’ll see.”

Florence and Jodie did lift the planks. They did see. Beneath the cabin floor was a dark cavity.

“Not very deep,” the old man laughed happily. “Not far down to the bed rock. Flash your light down there, son.”

Jodie threw the gleam of his electric torch to the bottom of the cavity. Then an exclamation escaped his lips. Casting back the gleam of his torch, some tiny objects appeared to turn the place into an inverted sky, all full of stars.

“Gold!” the old man murmured. “It’s gold, son. Gold!”

After Florence had crept into her sleeping bag that night, she found her mind filled with many questions. Would they truly find gold, much gold, down there in that dark hole? For her grandfather’s sake, she hoped so. What of the reindeer? They were feeding and sleeping now in that narrow valley. Would they be able to drive these all the way to Nome? Would those Russian natives truly remain away, or would hunger drive them back?

“There’ll be trouble if they come back,” she thought. “Trouble. Troub—” At that she fell fast asleep.