The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-11-24

 afternoon when you landed" she broke their silence. My name is Sonya Nichols"
 Curt was surprised. Ralph Nich- ols sister! He hadn't connected those two at all wasn't that foreign? It might be French or Rus sian or German or anything, but hardly Canadian. Her voice, name and whole air were distinctly alien.
 He recollected himself. Mines Ralston. Curt Ralston. A prospec- tor"
 She eyed him narrowly. As he felt her gaze upon him Curt knew she was forming her private opinion of him as man. To be studied. labeled ad put into a pigeon-hole by her was 6 bit irritating. That was how Nich- ols the entomologist would study a new insect.
 T wouldn't have taken you for a prospector, Mir. Ralston."
 Curtis paddle missed stroke. What makes you say that?"
 Well. just because"
 "I suppose I'm not the sourdough type, with trousers stuffed into my boots and a laurel thicket on my faee," he explained with a casual laugh. "Im a book-learned geologist of sorts. My partner and try to put some method into our prospecting. Does fellow have to fry pancakes in his shovel and chew tobacco in his sleep before you consider him an elghteen-carat bush-loper?"
 Sonya smiled "Oh. not at all" She slapped a mosquito on her ankle. What meant was that-well. l just wouldn't have put you down as a prospector."
 Curt detected an overtone of dis paragement in the way she spoke the word. She seemed to imply that she had considered him above that carefree bush-loping type and that he had dropped in her estimation when she found he was a mere will derness roamer.
 4 s he drove the canoe along he \ wondered just who and what she was. Ralph Nichols sister. yes; no doubt accompanying her brother En1d ri hut fhnco surface facts. not explaining the girl herself.
 She was so full of contradictions that he could not classify her at all. She wore no jewels. her clothes were decidedly inexpensive, her rod was cheap dollar thing that he would not have carried home: yet she had the gracious easy refine ment of good birth and culture.
 Back yonder on the island sh, had stood up.to an ugly danger lik, man, yet she was exquisitely femi nine-by comparison Rosalie Marlin seemed almost unladylike.
 IlC Wiclitu uc COulu olOU so unfavorably of Rosalie.
 Are you intending to be here a Russian Lake very long, Mis- Nichols?"
 Were leaving tomorrow morn ing"
 Curt felt disappointed to hear sh, was going away so soon. Asid, from her being girl, she was person worth getting better ac quainted with. The strangenesi about her baffled and fascinated him She was like the breath of somt rare perfume, delicate, unforgetable Her old-world manner. the Spartan courage she had shown. and hel splendor of brownish-golden hair made him think of girl out of somt old Scandinavian saga.
 They drew near. the shore. Some where among the Russian ruins horned owl hooted it's weird eight noted call. Curt pointed at the din outlines of the post and tried tt make talk.
 s"I suppose you've heard the wiii yarns about that place, Miss Mich ols?"
 Those yarns aren't half as wild as the real facts. Father Lesperance was telling me yesterday about the actual history of this old fort. You see, he discovered the records. They were hidden in a niche above the main door. and,a stone tumbled dur ing a thunderstorm. and that's how he happened to find them"
 While they drifted on in she sketched him few high lights from the story. A hundred and forty years ago a tribe of Indians. the Kloso hees. had lived around the shores of Russian Lake. The Cossacks came subjugated them by trick. cry, forced them to bring stone and make the buildings: and then began robbing. extorting. torturing.
 In single generation the Kloso- hees dropped from a tribe of four hundred people to mere remnant of eighty. But then an avalanche fell upon the fort one night. an ava lanche of vengeance, which had been damning up for twenty years. fCopyIight. l9ss. Valiam B. Noi6ery)
 
 Tomorrow. Curt and sonya do
 little expiorfnu.