The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-10-20

When you come back she said.
there VIII be another-a little boy-and
he viii grow mighty and strong like
| his father. She hung her arms around
me, Can, and | left with her kisses
warm on my lips.
1T was terrible trip, the river Wet
with overflows and the cut-offs drift
ed deep, so l drove back into Holy
Cross a week late. with bleeding dogs
and frozen Indians strain'n' at the sled
ropes.
Il heard the wall of the old women
before l came to the cabin. and when
Meta had Sobbed the story out in her
weakness | went back into the dark
and down to the mission. | remember
how the northern lights flared over the
hills above. and the little sDruces on
the summit looked to me like head
stones. black against the mOon-and |
laughed when l saw the snow red in
the night glare. for it meant blood and
death.
1T was as lusty a babe as ever
crOwed, but Orloff had come to the
sick bed and sent her squaws away.
Baptism and such things he said he'd
do. The little fellow died that night.
''They say the mission door was
locked and barred. but l pushed
through it like paper. and came into
Father Barnum's house, where they
sat Fifty blows is bad for the naked
flesh. l broke il, bare-headed, mitten-
less, and I'd fTOZe some on the way
down. He saw murder in my eyes and
tried to run, but l got him as he went
out of the room. He tore his throat
loose from my stiffened fingers and
went into the church, but | beat down
the door with my naked fists, hooking
al his inside i
be closer to death that Orloff was that
night.
Then a Squaw tugged at my parka.'
She is dying, Anguk,' she said, AMI
I ran back up the hill with the cold
bitin' at my heart.
There was no death that night in
Holy Cross, though God knows one
naked soul was due to walk out onto
the snow. At daylight, when / came
back for him, he had fed down the
river with the fastest dogs, and to this
day I've never seen his face. though
it's often Tvet felt his hate
Hes grown into the strongest mis-
sionary on the coast, and he never lets
a chance go by to harry me or the girl.
Dye mind the time 'Skagway' Ben
net died? We was pardners up Nor
ton sound way when he was killed.
They thought he suicided. but / know.
| found a caribOo belt in the brush
near camp-the kind they make on the
KuskOkwin, Father OrlOff's country.
His men took the wrong one. that's all
I'm sorry | didn't tell We this, Cap,
before we started. for now we're into
the south country, where he owns the
natives. He knows we've come, as the
blood token of the guide showed He
wants my life, and there's great trou-
~ in H.
get your sight, for by now there's a
runner twenty miles into the hills with
the news that we're blind in the church
at Togiak. Three days he'll be eoin'
and on the fifth vel hear the jingle of
Russian dog bells. He'll kill the fast
est team in Nushagak in the comm,
and God help us if We're here"
George scraped a bit of frost lace
from the lone window pane Dark fig
ures moved over the snow, circling the
chapel, and he knew that each was
armed. Only their reverence for the
church held them from doing the task
set by Orloff. and he sighed as he
changed the bandages on his suffering
mate.
They woke the next morning to the
moan of the wind and the sift of snow
clouds past their walls Staring
through his peephole. George distin-
guished only a seethe of whirling
flakes that grayed the view, blotting
even the neighboring huts. and when
the early evening brought a rising note
in the storm the trouble lifted from his
face.
"A three-day blizzard" he reJoiced
land the strongest team on the coast
can't wallow through it under a week.
These onshore gales is beauts"
For three days the wind tore from off
the sea into the open blight at whose
head lay Togiak, and it's violence
wrecked the armor of shore ice in the
bay till it beat and roared against the
spit, a threshing maeistrom of shat
tered bergs. The waters piled into the
inlet. driven by the lash of the Storm
till they overlooked the river ice be-
hind the village, submerging and
breaking it into ragged. dangerous con-
fusion.
On the third day. with Arctic vaga-
ry. the wind gasped reluctantly and
scurried over the range. In its wake
the surging ocean churned loudly and
the back water behind the town, held
by the dam of freezing slush ice at the
river mouth, was skinned by a thin
ice paper, pierced here and there by
the appended piles from beneath. This
held the nights snow. so that morning
showed the village girt on three sides
by stream soft-carpeted and safe to
the eye bur failing beneath the feet
OF q child.
your eyes are comm along mighty