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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Alaskan," James Oliver Curwood offers a gripping narrative that beautifully intertwines themes of adventure, survival, and the profound connection between humanity and the natural world. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Alaska's pristine wilderness, the novel follows the journey of its protagonist, a dedicated young man striving to reconcile his dreams with the harsh realities of frontier life. Curwood employs a vivid, romantic prose style characteristic of early 20th-century American literature, capturing the essence of the rugged landscape while exploring the intricate dynamics of human emotion and ambition in a fiercely untamed environment. James Oliver Curwood was deeply influenced by his own experiences in the outdoors, having spent considerable time in the wilds of Canada and Alaska. His passion for nature and conservation is reflected in his writing, as he often advocated for the preservation of wildlife and wilderness areas. Curwood's commitment to environmentalism in his life and literature echoes throughout "The Alaskan," making it not only a tale of personal resilience but also a clarion call for respect toward the natural world. This novel is essential reading for those who appreciate adventure stories intertwined with ecological themes. Curwood's profound insights into human tenacity and the intricate beauty of nature will leave readers both inspired and contemplative, marking "The Alaskan" as a timeless exploration of the spirit of adventure in the heart of wild America. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Alaskan
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Alaskan charts the collision between human conscience and the raw immensities of the North, where survival, love, and integrity contend with the harsh landscape and the ambitions that would profit from it.
Written by James Oliver Curwood, a prolific American novelist known for northern adventure romances, The Alaskan is an early-twentieth-century work set against Alaska’s coasts and interior frontier. First published in the early 1920s, it blends elements of adventure, romance, and social drama characteristic of its era’s popular fiction. Curwood’s longstanding fascination with the North infuses the novel with atmospheric detail—ice-laden seas, mountain ranges, and remote settlements—while anchoring its conflicts in a recognizable historical moment when development, transportation, and political influence were reshaping the farthest reaches of the continent.
Without revealing more than the premise, the novel introduces travelers drawn northward and brings them into contact with rugged homesteads, isolated ports, and the testing ground of the wilderness. A personal crisis sparks a flight toward Alaska, and the ensuing encounters entangle private motives with public stakes. Curwood orchestrates a sequence of tense meetings, narrow margins, and hard-won trust, giving readers an experience that is at once swift and reflective. The voice is direct and earnest, the mood alternately bracing and tender, and the style favors crisp description and moral clarity over ambiguity, while leaving room for quiet, lyrical pauses.
Central to the book are themes of stewardship versus exploitation, community versus predation, and the dignity found in self-reliance measured against the claims of responsibility to others. The wilderness is not merely a backdrop but an ethical horizon that exposes motives and tests vows. Curwood contrasts the quick calculations of profit with the slower rhythms of place—ice breakup, migration, and seasonal scarcity—suggesting that integrity requires an allegiance to limits. Questions of justice, belonging, and the cost of safety recur, as characters discover that protection, whether of a person or a valley, demands both tenderness and resolve.
Curwood’s craft relies on vivid outdoor writing, brisk pacing, and scenes that pivot on moral decision as much as physical peril. The narrative often builds from quiet observation—light on water, wind in timber—to sudden reversals that clarify loyalties. While the plot carries the hallmarks of early twentieth-century popular fiction, including heightened stakes and dramatic confrontations, the prose frequently pauses to register the land’s textures and the solitude of great distances. This interplay of urgency and stillness sustains a romance thread without sacrificing the gravity of survival, making the novel accessible yet grounded in elemental challenges.
For contemporary readers, The Alaskan resonates through its engagement with resource appetite, political pressure, and the ethics of development in fragile environments. It invites reflection on what is owed to places that outlast individual lives and on how power operates where oversight is thin. The book’s insistence that character is revealed under duress remains relevant, as do its questions about responsibility—personal, communal, and ecological. Readers attuned to environmental literature will recognize early conservationist currents, while those seeking an immersive escape will find a landscape that sharpens attention, asks for humility, and rewards courage.
Expect a journey that moves from sea to shore and into deep country, punctuated by encounters that test endurance, trust, and purpose without foreclosing mystery. The rewards are sensory and moral: snow-brittle mornings, long northern light, and the quiet that follows decisive action. Curwood offers suspense moderated by compassion, a romance tempered by restraint, and an exploration of place that becomes an examination of conscience. Read as an adventure, it is brisk and vivid; read as a meditation on responsibility, it is probing and timely. In either mode, the novel invites you to measure ambition against the scale of the North.
Synopsis
Set in early twentieth-century Alaska, The Alaskan presents a frontier defined by vast distances, extreme seasons, and a territory in transition. The story follows Alan Holt, a man rooted in the northern landscape and in the livelihoods of the people who depend on it. He is committed to sustaining local communities and wary of outside forces aiming to control resources. The narrative opens with travel northward by sea, where the varied passengers reflect competing visions for Alaska’s future. Through this lens, the book introduces questions of law, ownership, and responsibility that thread through the plot, balancing personal stakes with territorial politics.
Aboard the ship, Alan encounters Mary Standish, a quiet, determined young woman whose refined manner contrasts with the rugged world she is entering. Their early conversations are reserved, yet suggest shared integrity and differing experiences. Other travelers include representatives of powerful business interests whose ambitions focus on fisheries and transportation. The atmosphere is tense but polite, marked by guarded exchanges, veiled warnings, and a sense that choices made en route will matter on land. Curwood uses this confined setting to assemble motives and alliances, establishing conflicts that will unfold across broader landscapes as the story advances into the interior.
Mary hints at a troubling past linked to an influential figure with far-reaching control. She seeks distance from entanglements she will not fully name, and asks for a degree of trust she has difficulty claiming. Alan’s responses are principled yet careful, revealing a man more comfortable with action than conjecture. A sudden shipboard crisis brings matters to a head, leaving questions that follow the characters ashore. Rather than resolving the mystery, the incident deepens it, redirecting the narrative from social maneuvering to survival and consequence. From this point, the novel shifts attention from polite society to Alaska’s demanding terrain and communities.
On land, the narrative turns to Alan’s home region, where he works among Indigenous neighbors and settlers to develop sustainable herding and trade. The depiction of reindeer herds, seasonal movements, and cooperative labor grounds the story in practical detail. Alan’s efforts are framed as part of a larger resistance to monopolies that threaten local control of resources. He engages with territorial officials, traders, and families whose livelihoods depend on fair access to land and markets. In this environment, personal loyalties and public obligations intersect, and the scale of the struggle—between distant capital and local stewardship—becomes more explicit.
As the mystery surrounding Mary persists, unexpected encounters in Alaska bring her situation back into Alan’s life. Her presence in the north raises the stakes, connecting private histories to the public contest over fisheries, shipping routes, and political influence. Travel inland and along the coast exposes them to storms, difficult trails, and the necessity of partnership. Their relationship develops cautiously, with mutual respect tempered by unanswered questions. The novel maintains tension by revealing information selectively, allowing motives and connections to surface through action rather than exposition. The wilderness functions as both sanctuary and test, shaping decisions and revealing character.
The reach of outside power is seen in legal pressures, hired agents, and strategic control of supply lines. Meetings with territorial leaders and confrontations at trading posts underscore the theme that law can be wielded as a tool of fairness or coercion. Alan and his allies collect facts and testimonies to counter manipulation, seeking to make their case in ways that will withstand scrutiny. Mary’s knowledge of the networks behind these pressures gives her a critical role, even as she faces personal risk. The narrative balances the intricacies of policy and ownership with frontier pragmatism, maintaining forward momentum through concrete challenges.
A pivotal section reveals more about Mary’s identity and the choices that brought her north, reframing earlier impressions without discarding them. This turn clarifies why certain men are intent on finding her and why she approaches trust cautiously. A public moment forces competing claims into view, setting terms for a confrontation that must be navigated carefully to avoid violence and ensure accountability. The story highlights the importance of reputation and proof in a place where distance complicates oversight. Alan’s commitment to principled action is tested, as is Mary’s resolve to face the consequences of truth made visible.
The climax develops across two fronts: the physical ordeal of Alaska and the procedural demands of justice. Travel through storm, river, and tundra coincides with the gathering of documents and witnesses. Allies step forward, while intimidation and offers of compromise attempt to divert them. The narrative keeps outcomes uncertain, emphasizing endurance and clarity of purpose rather than force. Key scenes hinge on what can be shown openly and what must be kept safe until the right moment. Without disclosing specific resolutions, the sequence sets up consequences for the misuse of power and protection for those who stood their ground.
In its closing movement, the novel affirms a vision of Alaska guided by stewardship, lawful process, and respect for those who live with the land. Personal stories intersect with public outcomes, suggesting paths toward stability without claiming easy victories. The romance remains understated and aligned with the broader ethical questions the book raises. The Alaskan thus offers a narrative of survival, accountability, and responsibility, framed by a landscape that demands humility. Its central message emphasizes that the future of a place depends on choices made by individuals and communities, and on the fair limits placed on those who would control it.
Historical Context
The Alaskan takes place in the U.S. Alaska Territory during the early 1920s, when wilderness distances still governed daily life. Steamships linked Seattle with Juneau, Skagway, and Nome, while dog teams, riverboats, and the just-completed Alaska Railroad stitched together interior hubs like Fairbanks and the new port of Anchorage. The setting spans forested Southeast, treeless tundra on the Bering and Arctic coasts, and glaciated fjords, all under extreme light and weather. Economically, the region was shifting from boomtown prospecting to corporate extraction in copper, salmon, and transport. This transitional frontier, politically subordinate to distant capitals, frames the novel’s conflicts between local independence and outside dominance.
Alaska’s passage from Russian America to a U.S. territory set the institutional backdrop. Purchased from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars, the transfer at Sitka on 18 October 1867 ushered in Army rule until 1877, then a long period of neglect. The First Organic Act of 1884 created the District of Alaska; a nonvoting congressional delegate was authorized in 1906; and the Second Organic Act of 1912 established the Territory and a legislature seated in Juneau. This evolving but still limited self-government, vulnerable to absentee capital and patronage, informs the novel’s depiction of territorial politics dominated by powerful outside interests and political bosses.
The great gold rushes reshaped Alaska’s society and infrastructure. The Klondike strike on Bonanza Creek in 1896 triggered the 1897–1899 stampede through ports like Skagway, where the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad opened in 1900. The Nome rush, sparked in 1899, drew thousands to the Seward Peninsula until about 1909. These booms created shipping circuits controlled from Puget Sound, spawned boomtown justice, and left a legacy of transient wealth and entrenched transport companies. The novel’s opening aboard a Seattle–Alaska steamer, its gallery of speculators and professionals, and its wary frontier ethos echo the social world forged by these rush-era networks.
Corporate consolidation around copper mining is central to the period. The Alaska Syndicate, formed in 1906 by J. P. Morgan and the Guggenheims, developed the Kennecott mines near McCarthy and built the Copper River and Northwestern Railway from Cordova (1907–1911). Between 1911 and 1938, Kennecott’s rich Bonanza and Jumbo deposits yielded hundreds of thousands of tons of copper from millions of tons of ore. Fear of monopoly power spurred federal counterweights, notably the Alaska Railroad, authorized in 1914 and completed in 1923, when President Warren G. Harding drove the golden spike at Nenana on 15 July 1923. The novel mirrors these tensions in its portrayal of a trust-like magnate mastering transport and resources.
National debates over conservation versus development sharpened through the Ballinger–Pinchot affair. Under Theodore Roosevelt, vast reserves were created, including the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in 1907, to check rapid privatization. In 1909–1910, Interior Secretary Richard A. Ballinger’s handling of the Cunningham coal claims in Alaska led to a public rupture with U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot, who was dismissed in 1910 by President Taft. The episode galvanized public suspicion of resource giveaways. Curwood, increasingly a conservation advocate by the 1910s, channels this climate: the novel dramatizes ethical stewardship against profiteering, aligning its protagonists with a national conservation ethos applied to Alaskan lands and wildlife.
Industrial fisheries and shipping policy framed livelihoods on the coast. The Alaska Packers Association, organized in 1893 and based largely in San Francisco, along with other firms, dominated salmon canning using fixed fish traps that by the 1910s captured a majority of harvests. Regulatory response culminated in the White Act of 1924, imposing seasons and closed periods, though traps endured until statehood. Simultaneously, the Jones Act of 1920 restricted domestic trade to U.S.-flag ships, reinforcing Seattle-centered lines and freight rate power. In the novel, cannery and transport monopolists exert economic and political control over communities, reflecting contemporary anxieties about corporate consolidation in salmon and shipping.
Reindeer herding and Indigenous policy provide another decisive context. Presbyterian educator Sheldon Jackson arranged importations of Siberian reindeer between 1891 and 1902 to support Native subsistence, and herds exceeded 100,000 animals by the mid-1910s. Commercialization by firms such as Lomen Brothers of Nome (active from 1914) sparked conflicts over ownership and markets, prompting a federal Reindeer Service by the late 1910s and, later, the Reindeer Act of 1937 reserving the industry to Native Alaskans. Parallel activism by the Alaska Native Brotherhood, founded in Sitka in 1912, and the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act broadened rights. The novel’s sympathetic reindeer-keeping protagonist and alliances with Native families echo these struggles over autonomy and livelihood.
As social and political critique, the book indicts absentee control that treated the Territory as a resource colony. It exposes how canning trusts, shipping cartels, and allied political bosses manipulated law, credit, and transport to subordinate small producers and Native communities. By foregrounding a frontier ethic of stewardship, communal reciprocity, and local self-determination, it challenges the era’s extractive capitalism and the class divide between Seattle financiers and Alaskan workers. Its representation of a woman confronting patriarchal financial power underscores the gendered dimension of control. The wilderness, not merely scenic, becomes a moral counterweight, urging regulation, fair access, and recognition of Indigenous rights within territorial governance.
THE ALASKAN
To the strong-hearted men and women of Alaska, the new empire rising in the North, it is for me an honor and a privilege to dedicate this work. JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
Chapter I
Captain Rifle, gray and old in the Alaskan Steamship service, had not lost the spirit of his youth along with his years. Romance was not dead in him, and the fire which is built up of clean adventure and the association of strong men and a mighty country had not died out of his veins. He could still see the picturesque, feel the thrill of the unusual, and--at times--warm memories crowded upon him so closely that yesterday seemed today, and Alaska was young again, thrilling the world with her wild call to those who had courage to come and fight for her treasures, and live--or die.
Tonight, with the softly musical throb of his ship under his feet, and the yellow moon climbing up from behind the ramparts of the Alaskan mountains, something of loneliness seized upon him, and he said simply:
"That is Alaska."
The girl standing beside him at the rail did not turn, nor for a moment did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds lay like shimmering draperies.
Then she turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in her voice. "Your Alaska, Captain Rifle."
Out of the clearness of the night came to them a distant sound like the low moan of thunder. Twice before, Mary Standish had heard it, and now she asked: "What was that? Surely it can not be a storm, with the moon like that, and the stars so clear above!"
"It is ice breaking from the glaciers and falling into the sea. We are in the Wrangel Narrows, and very near the shore, Miss Standish. If it were day you could hear the birds singing. This is what we call the Inside Passage. I have always called it the water-wonderland of the world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken--for we are almost alone on this side of the ship. Is it not proof? If I were right, the men and women in there--dancing, playing cards, chattering--would be crowding this rail. Can you imagine humans like that? But they can't see what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things. Ah, do you catch that in the air, Miss Standish--the perfume of flowers, of forests, of green things ashore? It is faint, but I catch it."
"And so do I."
She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy; she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in her face which he could not understand.
She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last minute--defying the necessity of making reservation where half a thousand others had been turned away--and chance had brought her under his eyes. In desperation she had appealed to him, and he had discovered a strange terror under the forced calm of her appearance. Since then he had fathered her with his attentions, watching closely with the wisdom of years. And more than once he had observed that questing, defiant poise of her head with which she was regarding the cabin windows now.
She had told him she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in coming aboard.
In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience, he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others might not see--and hold his tongue.
"We are not quite alone," she was saying. "There are others," and she made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
"Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway," he said. "And the other is Alan Holt."
"Oh, yes."
She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain's arm. "Listen," she whispered.
"Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the shore, and there are glaciers all the way up."
"And that other sound, like low wind--on a night so still and calm! What is it?"
"You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the mountains, you hear that song."
"And this man, Alan Holt," she reminded him. "He is a part of these things?"
"Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him--"
"Thirty-eight," she said, so quickly that for a moment he was astonished.
Then he chuckled. "You are very good at figures."
He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.
"This evening, just after dinner, old Donald found me sitting alone. He said he was lonely and wanted to talk with someone--like me. He almost frightened me, with his great, gray beard and shaggy hair. I thought of ghosts as we talked there in the dusk."
"Old Donald belongs to the days when the Chilkoot and the White Horse[1] ate up men's lives, and a trail of living dead led from the Summit to Klondike, Miss Standish," said Captain Rifle. "You will meet many like him in Alaska. And they remember. You can see it in their faces--always the memory of those days that are gone."
She bowed her head a little, looking to the sea. "And Alan Holt? You know him well?"
"Few men know him well. He is a part of Alaska itself, and I have sometimes thought him more aloof than the mountains. But I know him. All northern Alaska knows Alan Holt. He has a reindeer range up beyond the Endicott Mountains and is always seeking the last frontier."
"He must be very brave."
"Alaska breeds heroic men, Miss Standish."
"And honorable men--men you can trust and believe in?"
"Yes."
"It is odd," she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a bird-note in her throat. "I have never seen Alaska before, and yet something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan."
"And you are--"
"An American," she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her voice. "A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going north--to learn."
"Only that, Miss Standish?"
His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer. His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
"I must press the question," he said. "As the captain of this ship, and as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to tell me--in confidence, if you will have it so?"
For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. "There is nothing, Captain Rifle."
"And yet--you came aboard very strangely," he urged. "You will recall that it was most unusual--without reservation, without baggage--"
"You forget the hand-bag," she reminded him.
"Yes, but one does not start for northern Alaska with only a hand-bag scarcely large enough to contain a change of linen, Miss Standish."
"But I did, Captain Rifle."
"True. And I saw you fighting past the guards like a little wildcat. It was without precedent."
"I am sorry. But they were stupid and difficult to pass."
"Only by chance did I happen to see it all, my child. Otherwise the ship's regulations would have compelled me to send you ashore. You were frightened. You can not deny that. You were running away from something!"
He was amazed at the childish simplicity with which she answered him.
"Yes, I was running away--from something."
Her eyes were beautifully clear and unafraid, and yet again he sensed the thrill of the fight she was making.
"And you will not tell me why--or from what you were escaping?"
"I can not--tonight. I may do so before we reach Nome. But--it is possible--"
"What?"
"That I shall never reach Nome."
Suddenly she caught one of his hands in both her own. Her fingers clung to him, and with a little note of fierceness in her voice she hugged the hand to her breast. "I know just how good you have been to me," she cried. "I should like to tell you why I came aboard--like that. But I can not. Look! Look at those wonderful mountains!" With one free hand she pointed.
"Behind them and beyond them lie the romance and adventure and mystery of centuries, and for nearly thirty years you have been very near those things, Captain Rifle. No man will ever see again what you have seen or feel what you have felt, or forget what you have had to forget. I know it. And after all that, can't you--won't you--forget the strange manner in which I came aboard this ship? It is such a simple, little thing to put out of your mind, so trivial, so unimportant when you look back--and think. Please Captain Rifle--please!"
So quickly that he scarcely sensed the happening of it she pressed his hand to her lips. Their warm thrill came and went in an instant, leaving him speechless, his resolution gone.
"I love you because you have been so good to me," she whispered, and as suddenly as she had kissed his hand, she was gone, leaving him alone at the rail.
Chapter II
Alan Holt saw the slim figure of the girl silhouetted against the vivid light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle. To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that went to make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first ships of the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the purser, had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the others; that was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had been at the same table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst. Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For him silence was not a burden.
In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill him, but merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even more than her gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to discuss the matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one thing, it would have been her hair--not so much the color of it as the care she evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He noted that it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the dinner lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth, silky coils in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense relief after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his six months' visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking, because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.
He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of him--with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his thick, blond hair. His interest had not reached anywhere near that point.
Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested him, except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship Nome under his feet at Seattle. He was going home. And home meant Alaska. It meant the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which civilization had not yet come with its clang and clamor. It meant friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he loved. Such was his reaction after six months of exile, six months of loneliness and desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.
"I'll not make the trip again--not for a whole winter--unless I'm sent at the point of a gun," he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after Mary Standish had left the deck. "An Eskimo winter is long enough, but one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer--for me."
"I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means[3] at Washington."
"Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to listen to him. We may get action."
"May!" Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. "Alaska has been waiting ten years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you'll get anything. When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and what we need north of Fifty-eight--why, what's the use? Alaska might as well shut up shop!"
"But she isn't going to do that," said Alan Holt, his face grimly set in the moonlight. "They've tried hard to get us, and they've made us shut up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites in the Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven out nine thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left are hard-boiled. We're not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are Alaskans, and we are not afraid to fight."
"You mean--"
"That we'll have a square deal within another five years, or know the reason why. And another five years after that, we'll he shipping a million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty years we'll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons, eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation systems."
One of Alan Holt's hands was clenched at the rail. "Until I went down this winter, I didn't realize just how bad it was," he said, a note hard as iron in his voice. "Lomen is a diplomat, but I'm not. I want to fight when I see such things--fight with a gun. Because we happened to find gold up here, they think Alaska is an orange to be sucked as quickly as possible, and that when the sucking process is over, the skin will be worthless. That's modern, dollar-chasing Americanism for you!"
"And are you not an American, Mr. Holt?"
So soft and near was the voice that both men started. Then both turned and stared. Close behind them, her quiet, beautiful face flooded with the moon-glow, stood Mary Standish.
"You ask me a question, madam," said Alan Holt, bowing courteously. "No, I am not an American. I am an Alaskan[1q]."
The girl's lips were parted. Her eyes were very bright and clear. "Please pardon me for listening," she said. "I couldn't help it. I am an American. I love America. I think I love it more than anything else in the world--more than my religion, even. America, Mr. Holt. And America doesn't necessarily mean a great many of America's people. I love to think that I first came ashore in the Mayflower[2]. That is why my name is Standish. And I just wanted to remind you that Alaska is America."
Alan Holt was a bit amazed. The girl's face was no longer placidly quiet. Her eyes were radiant. He sensed the repressed thrill in her voice, and he knew that in the light of day he would have seen fire in her cheeks. He smiled, and in that smile he could not quite keep back the cynicism of his thought.
"And what do you know about Alaska, Miss Standish?"
"Nothing," she said. "And yet I love it." She pointed to the mountains. "I wish I might have been born among them. You are fortunate. You should love America."
"Alaska, you mean!"
"No, America." There was a flashing challenge in her eyes. She was not speaking apologetically. Her meaning was direct.
The irony on Alan's lips died away. With a little laugh he bowed again. "If I am speaking to a daughter of Captain Miles Standish, who came over in the Mayflower, I stand reproved," he said. "You should be an authority on Americanism, if I am correct in surmising your relationship."
"You are correct," she replied with a proud, little tilt of her glossy head, "though I think that only lately have I come to an understanding of its significance--and its responsibility. I ask your pardon again for interrupting you. It was not premeditated. It just happened."
She did not wait for either of them to speak, but flashed the two a swift smile and passed down the promenade.
The music had ceased and the cabins at last were emptying themselves of life.
"A remarkable young woman," Alan remarked. "I imagine that the spirit of Captain Miles Standish may be a little proud of this particular olive-branch. A chip off the old block, you might say. One would almost suppose he had married Priscilla and this young lady was a definite though rather indirect result."
He had a curious way of laughing without any more visible manifestation of humor than spoken words. It was a quality in his voice which one could not miss, and at times, when ironically amused, it carried a sting which he did not altogether intend.
In another moment Mary Standish was forgotten, and he was asking the captain a question which was in his mind.
"The itinerary of this ship is rather confused, is it not?"
"Yes--rather," acknowledged Captain Rifle. "Hereafter she will ply directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we're doing the Inside Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven't seen fit to explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to do with it. We're landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays, Holt. I can remember--"
"So can I," nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. "I remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there. He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget."
"Men don't forget such women as Jane Hope," said the captain softly.
"You knew her?"
"Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn't it? And when I look at Mary Standish and hear her voice--" He hesitated, as if betraying a secret, and then he added: "--I can't help thinking of the girl Donald Hardwick fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It's too bad she had to die."
"She isn't dead," said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. "She isn't dead," he repeated. "That's the pity of it. She is as much a living thing to him today as she was twenty years ago."
After a moment the captain said, "She was talking with him early this evening, Alan."
"Miss Captain Miles Standish, you mean?"
"Yes. There seems to be something about her that amuses you."
Alan shrugged his shoulders. "Not at all. I think she is a most admirable young person. Will you have a cigar, Captain? I'm going to promenade a bit. It does me good to mix in with the sour-doughs."
The two lighted their cigars from a single match, and Alan went his way, while the captain turned in the direction of his cabin.
To Alan, on this particular night, the steamship Nome was more than a thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names represented more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he loved, its heart's blood, its very element--"giving in." He knew that with the throb of those engines romance, adventure, tragedy, and hope were on their way north--and with these things also arrogance and greed. On board were a hundred conflicting elements--some that had fought for Alaska, others that would make her, and others that would destroy.
He puffed at his cigar and walked alone, brushing sleeves with men and women whom he scarcely seemed to notice. But he was observant. He knew the tourists almost without looking at them. The spirit of the north had not yet seized upon them. They were voluble and rather excitedly enthusiastic in the face of beauty and awesomeness. The sour-doughs were tucked away here and there in shadowy nooks, watching in silence, or they walked the deck slowly and quietly, smoking their cigars or pipes, and seeing things beyond the mountains. Between these two, the newcomers and the old-timers, ran the gamut of all human thrill for Alan, the flesh-and-blood fiber of everything that went to make up life north of Fifty-four. And he could have gone from man to man and picked out those who belonged north of Fifty-eight.
Aft of the smoking-room he paused, tipping the ash of his cigar over the edge of the rail. A little group of three stood near him, and he recognized them as the young engineers, fresh from college, going up to work on the government railroad running from Seward to Tanana. One of them was talking, filled with the enthusiasm of his first adventure.
