A Ticket to Adventure / A Mystery Story for Girls

Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage, Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors, groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than she.

"A Japanese," she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. "But no, a Jap wouldn't look like that." She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.

Together with hundreds of other "home-seekers"-she smiled as she thought of herself as a home-seeker-she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could do about that. So-

"I am Mister Il-ay-ok."

To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.

"Oh," she breathed. She was thinking, "Now perhaps I am to know about this little man." She was, but not too much-at least not for some time.

"Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok," she encouraged. "Is this your home?"

"Oh no, no indeed!" He spoke as if he were reading from a book. "My home is quite distant. North," he pointed away.

"Then you-"

Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke in upon them. "Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That's good!" The man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was surprised and startled would not express it at all.

She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight. There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.

Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just now she stood quite still and waited.

"So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?" The stranger stopped laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his appearance.

"Shouldn't want to meet him in the dark!" the girl thought with another shudder.

"Want to know what he is, Miss?" the white man turned to Mary. "He's an Eskimo."

"Oh, an-" Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.

"Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo." The man filled his voice with suggestions of loathing and utmost contempt. "Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating, greasy Eskimo that lives in a hole in the ground. That's what he is to me. But to you he's Mister Il-ay-ok. Bah!" The man turned and walked away.

For a full moment nothing further was said. At last, in a steady, school-book voice the little man in black said, "Do you know what my people did to the first white man who visit our village?"

"No. What?" Mary stared.

"Shot him," the little man's voice dropped. "Shot him with a whale gun. Very big gun. Shoot big shell. Like this!" He held up a clenched fist. "Very bad man like this one. He talked too big," the little man scowled.

"And would you like to shoot that one?" Mary asked, nodding toward the retreating figure.

"Not now. Mebby byum bye. You see," the little man smiled, "I go to visit your country. I am-"

At that moment Florence Huyler, Mary's big cousin came booming along from behind the pile of goods, to cry: "Ah! There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Florence," Mary stopped her, "this is Mr. Il-ay-ok. He's from Alaska, and he wants to kill a white man, but not just now." She laughed in spite of herself.

"But this is Alaska." Florence, who was big and strong as a man, looked at the little man and smiled as she asked, "Is this your home?"

"No-no," the little man bowed. "Much more north my home. Cape Nome sometimes and sometimes Cape Prince Wales."

"Oh you've been in Nome?" Florence's eyes shone. "My grandfather went there years and years ago. He never came back."

"Name please?" the little man asked.

"Tom Kennedy."

"Ah yes," the little man beamed. "I know him. Big man. Very good man."

"What?" the big girl's eyes fairly bulged. "You, you know my grandfather? No! No! He is dead. He must have died years ago."

"Not dead please. Tom Kennedy not dead," the little man appeared puzzled. "No not dead. Let me tell you." He took a step toward them. "Very big man. Very straight. Always smile. Let me show you." To their vast surprise the girls saw the little man produce from an inside pocket a small, ivory paper knife. On its blade had been carved the likeness of a man's face. It may not have been a very accurate picture, there was, however, one touch that could not be wrong, a scar above the left eye. "Tom Kennedy my friend," the native said simply.

"Tom Kennedy, my long-lost grandfather!" Florence stared in unbelief. "He is dead. And yet, he-he must be alive!" She closed her eyes as she tried to think clearly. Often and often as a small child she had heard her mother describe this man, her grandfather. Often too she had seen his picture. Always there had been that scar over the left eye.

"Mary!" she exclaimed, her voice rising high. "My grandfather is alive, somewhere away up there!" she faced north. "I'm going."

"Oh, but you couldn't leave us!" Mary's tone vibrated with consternation. "You couldn't leave us, not just now!"

"That-that's right. I couldn't-not just now." The big girl's hands dropped limply to her side.

From the distance came the long drawn hoarse hoot of a steamboat whistle.

"Excuse please," the little man who called himself Mr. Il-ay-ok bowed low. "My boat please. I go to visit America. Perhaps please, we meet again."

With the swift, sure movement of one who has followed a dog team over long, long miles or has hunted on the treacherous ice-floes, he was gone.

"No," Florence repeated slowly as if to herself, "I can't leave you now."

For one full moment she stood staring at the spot from which the little man had vanished. Here indeed was a strange situation. All her life she had believed her grandfather dead. From her mother's lips she had heard vague stories of how he had gone into the north and never returned. Now here was a little Eskimo saying, "Tom Kennedy my friend. Yes, I know him. He is alive."

"And he proved it too," the girl whispered to herself.

Then, of a sudden, her thoughts came back to the present and to her immediate surroundings.

"What a jumble!" she said, looking at the heap of goods that, as moments passed, grew higher and higher. "How will they ever get them sorted out?"

Turning to her cousin, bright-eyed, eager Mary, she said: "'A ticket to adventure,' that's what the man back there in San Francisco called it, 'a ticket to adventure.' Will it truly be an adventure? I wonder."

"I hope so!" Mary's eyes shone.

Turning, the two girls walked away toward a distant spot on the long dock where a boy, who had barely grown into a young man, was struggling at the task of setting up a small umbrella tent.

"See!" the big girl cried, "there's Mark. He's setting up our first home in a wilderness."