The Rim of the Desert

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK

It is in October, when the trails over the wet tundra harden, and before the ice locks Bering Sea, that the Alaska exodus sets towards Seattle; but there were a few members of the Arctic Circle in town that first evening in September to open the clubhouse on the Lake Boulevard with an informal little supper for special delegate Feversham, who had arrived on the steamer from the north, on his way to Washington.

The clubhouse, which was built of great, hewn logs, with gabled eaves, stood in a fringe of firs, and an upper rear balcony afforded a broad outlook of lake and forest, with the glaciered heights of the Cascade Mountains breaking a far horizon. The day had been warm, but a soft breeze, drawing across this veranda through the open door, cooled the assembly 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 bear; of silver and black fox; there were antlered heads set above the fireplace and on the rough, bark-seamed pillars that supported the unceiled roof. A frieze of pressed and framed Alaska flora finished the low gallery which extended around three sides of the hall, and the massive chairs, like the polished banquet board, were of crocus-yellow Alaska cedar.

The delegate, who had come out to tide-water over the Fairbanks-Valdez trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors of the journey. The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed to increase his prominence of front and intensified the color in his face to a sort of florid ripeness.

"Yes, gentlemen," he continued, thumping the table with a stout hand and repeating the gesture slowly, while the glasses trembled, "Alaska's crying need is a railroad; a single finished line from the most northern harbor open to navigation the whole year—and that is Prince William Sound— straight through to the Tanana Valley and the upper 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 miles away, men who never saw Alaska, care about our needs?" He leaned back in his chair, while his glance moved from face to face and rested, half in challenge, on the member at the foot of the board. "These commissioners appointed off there in Washington," he added. "These carpet-baggers from the little States beyond the Mississippi!"

Hollis Tisdale, who had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska career in the service of the Government, met the delegate's look with a quiet humor in his eyes....