The Rim of the Desert

attle; but there were a few members of the Arctic Circle in town that first evening in September to open the clubhouse on the Lake Boulev

room, and, lifting one of the lighter hangings of Indian-wrought elk leather, found the stairs and raced with a gentle rustle through the lower front entrance back into the night. It had caressed many familiar things on its way, for the walls were embellished with trophies from the big spaces where winds are born. There were skins of polar and Kodiak bea

iderable heat the rigors of the journey. The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed

er Yukon. Already the first problem has been solved; we have pierced the icy barrier of the Coast Range. All we are waiting for is further right of way; the right to the forests, that timber may be secured for construction work; the right to mine coal for immediate use. But, gentlemen, we may grow gray waiting. What do men four thousand

of his Alaska career in the service of the Government,

he surest chance of giving general satisfaction in the end. He is at least disinterested, while the best of us, no matter how big he is, how clear-visioned, is bound to

e only man present who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the column of throat rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening pose of the fine head, in relief against the bearskin on the wall behind his chair, suggested a Greek medallion. His brown hair, close-cut, waved at the temples; lines were chiseled at the corners of his eye

ing clutch of Conservation." He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the table, and the glasses jingled anew. "And, gentlemen, the day of the floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities, our cities; we are ready for a legislative body of our own; the time has come for Home Rule. But the men who m

mining engineer from Prince William Sound to the Tanana, had turned his eyes on Tisdale; and Banks, Lucky Banks, who had made the rich strike in the Iditarod wilderness, also looked that way. Then instantly the

lowness glowed in his face. He lifted his eyes, and the delegate, meeting that clear, direct gaze, dropped his own to his plate. "Think of it! Game from the other side of th

spended his fork in aston

"ptarmigan; and particularly th

Circle. He still held the attention of every one, but with a di

on some trip you made, while you were d

k, it would be smooth going straight to the Yukon. An old Indian I talked with at the mission told me he had made it once on a hunting trip, and Weatherbee-you all remember David Weatherbee-was eager to try it with me. The Tlinket helped us with the outfit, canoeing around the bay and up into the Arm to his s

rill, mirthless laugh, and added in a high

dded again, while the genial wrinkles deepened-"I've seen mountains grow. We had a shock once that raised the coast-line forty-five feet. And another time, while we were going back to the village for a load, a small glacier in a hanging valley high up, perhaps two thousand feet, toppled right out of its cradle into the sea. It stir

face. He looked off t

ontinued stress, and his eyes burned in his withered, weather-beaten face like the vents of buried fires. "But

s no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing but fog and ice, and it all looked alike. The surface was too hard to take my impressions, so I wasn't able to follow my own tracks back to the landing. But I had to keep moving, it was so miserably cold; I hardly let myself rest at night; and that fog hung on five days. The third evening I found myself on the water-front, and pretty soon I stumbled on my canoe. I was down to a mighty small allowance of crackers and cheese then, but I parcelled it out in rations for three days and started once more along the shore for Yakutat. The next night I was traveling by a sort of sedge when I heard ptarmigan. It sounded good to me, and I brought my canoe up and stepp

, and Banks piped his strained note. "And," he said after a moment, "of c

glacier. And before I reached the landing, I heard Weatherbee's voice booming out on the

ed. His eyes had rested on a Kodiak bearskin that hung against a pillar at the top of the gallery steps. The corner was unlighted, in heavy shadow, but a hand reaching from behind had drawn the rug slightly asid

et me, and he had waited so long he was down to his last biscuit. I was mighty reckless about that second ptarmigan, but the

was a great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whol

en me before. It had come to the last day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard. You all know what that means. In the end we just kept the trail, following the hummocks. Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff. Then it came

notes of the Arctic wind,

it came to a choice; always ready to share a good thing. Why, he made some of his friends rich, and yet i

" Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the surface stir of shaken depths cros

r the day Weatherbee sailed for Alaska. I was taking the same steamer, and she was on the dock, with all Seattle, to see the Argonauts away. It was a hazardous journey into the Unknown in those days, and scenes were going on all around-my own wife was weeping on my

aw the humor of the story, though the man with the maimed hand again gave an edge to the silenc

ms incredible that Weatherbee, who had won through so many times, handicapped by the waifs and strays of the trail,-Weatherbee, to whom

er time, Foster. It's a long stor

in his high, tense key; "I guess we can stand it. Most of

e struck Seward Peninsula and miserably cold, with gales sweeping in from Bering Sea. The grass had frozen, and before we reached a cache of oats I had relied on, most of our horses perished; we arrived at Nome too late for the last steamer of the year. That is how I came to winter there, and why a letter Weatherbee had written in October was so long f

ey back and more; the Aurora would pan out the richest strike he had ever made. But that did not trouble me. I knew if Weatherbee had spent two years on that placer, the gravels had something to show. The point that weighed was that he was willing to go home at last to the States. I had urged him before I put up the grub-stake, but he had answered: 'Not until I have made good.' It was hardly probable that, failing to hear from me, he had sold out to any one else. From his description, the Aurora was isolated; hundreds of miles from the

eatening him. 'I've got to break away from them, Hollis,' he said, 'and get where it's warm once more; and when my blood begins to thaw, I'll show you I can make a go of things.' Then he reminded me of the land he owned down here on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. The soil was t

ears. He went north in the beginning just to accumulate capital enough to swing that project. But the more I studied that letter, the more confident I was he had stayed his limit; he was breaking, and he knew it. That was why he was so anxious to turn the Aurora over to me and get to the States. Finally I decided to go with the mail carrier and on to

far-sighted expression gathered in his eyes. It was as though his listeners also in

t come that way to strike the Fairbanks trail, and why the man had not waited to travel with him. Then he told me Weatherbee had decided to use the route I had sketched in my letter. The messenger had tried to dissuade him; he had reminded him there were no road-houses, and that the traces left by my party must have been wiped out by the winter snows. But Weatherbee argued that the new route would shorten the distance to open tide-water hundreds of miles; tha

left to starve on the trail with a broken leg. And he camped right there, pitched his tent for a hospital, and went to whittling splints out of a piece of willow to set that bone. 'I am sorr

e gorge. To turn the high water from his placer, he had made a bore of nearly one thousand feet and practically through rock. I followed a bucket tramway he had rigged to lift the dump and found a primitive lighting-plant underground. The whole tunnel was completed, with the exception of a thin wall left to safeguard against an early thaw in the stream, while the bore was being equipped with a five-foot flume. You all know what that means, hundreds of miles from navigation or a main traveled road. To ge

n; but it was Tisdale's magnetic personality, the unstudied play of expression in his rugged face, the undercurrent of emotion quickening through infinite tones of his voice, that plumbed the depths and in every listener struck the dominant chord. And, too, these men had bridged subconsciously those vast distances between Tisdale's start from Nome in clear weather, "with a moon in her second quarter," and that stop at the deserted mine, when his dogs

up once in awhile to see how he was getting along. But I never thought of Dave's needing help himself, and nobody told me he was around. I'd ought to have kept track of

I had to leave him there, and before I reached the summit of Rainy Pass, I was carrying his mate on my sled. But I had a sun then,-the days were lengthening fast into May,-and by cutting my stops short I managed to hold my own to the divide. After that I gained. Finally, one morning, I came to a rough place where his outfit had upset, and I saw his dogs were giving him trouble. There were blood stains all around on the snow. It looked like the pack had broken open, and the huskies had

I missed his camp-fire. It was plain he was afraid to sleep any more. But he knew the Susitna country; he kept a true course, and sometimes, in swampy places, turned back to the main thoroughfare. At last, near the crossing of the Matanuska, I was caught in the first spring thaw. It was heavy going. All the streams were out of banks; the valley became a network of small sloughs undermining the snowfields, creating innumerable ponds

h the open door. Every face was turned to him, but

hin ice in an overflow, and the sled had mired in muck. The cold wave set them tight

"Dave hadn't cut the traces t

arly filled. In a little while I noticed the spaces were shorter between the prints of the left shoe; they made a dip and blur. Then I came into a parallel trail, and these tracks were clear, made since the snowstorm, but there was the same favoring of the left foot. He was traveling in a circle. Sometimes in unsheltered places, where the wind swept through an avenu

ed; two vertical lines like clefts divided his brows. It was as though the iron in

lps towards a clump of young trees a few yards off. The rim of a drift formed a partial wind

undreds of miles over tundra and mountains, through thaw and frost, felt with him in that moment the heart-br

s, and the machine stopped in front of the clubhous

s up with yours, the ones that were fit, and brought him t

n like that, lost on a main traveled thoroughfare! But the toll will go on every year until w

teaches a man to listen; the distant voice of running water; the teasing note of the breeze; the complaint of a balsam-laden bough; the restless stir of unseen wings; the patter of diminutive feet. A wooded point that formed the horn of a bay was etched in black on the silve

you sent a force of men back to the Aurora to finish Weatherbee's work and begin operations. And the diverting of that stream exposed gravels that a

he had lived-and recovered-I should have made him take back that half interest in the Aurora. You've got to believe that; and I

was s

e a promising discovery that he wasn't forced to sell. She spent his money faster than he made it; kept him handicapped. And all she ever gave him was a friendly letter now and then, full of herself and the gay life she led, and showing clearly how happy she could be without h

ay." He smiled a little and looked off at the golden path on the lake. "So," he said after a moment, and his glance returned to