The Blue Envelope Part 4

Returning to her tent, she hid the strange bit of jewelry, which, to its wearer, had doubtless been a charm, then waited the end of her watch to tell of the strange occurrence to her cousin. When Marian awoke Lucile told her story.

Together, in that early hour of the morning, they exclaimed over the rare treasure that had come into their hands; together agreed that, somehow, it must be returned to the original owner, and at last, after much talk on the subject, agreed that, on the whole, the departure of the brown boy reduced the possible complications to a considerable degree.

Next day their aunt arrived and with her a school-teacher friend. With their forces increased by two the girls were not afraid to maintain their camp. In fear of the return of the robbers they established a nightly watch. That this fear was not unfounded was proved by the events of the third night of vigil. It was again in the early morning when Marian was on guard, that heavy footsteps could be heard in the underbrush about the camp.

She had left the tent flap open, commanding a view of the sh.o.r.e line.

The gasoline schooner lay high and dry on the sandy beach, within her line of vision. This she watched carefully. A man who dared touch that boat was in danger of his life, for a rifle lay across her knees and, with the native hardihood of an Alaskan, she would not fail to shoot quick and sure.

But the man did not approach the boat. He merely prowled about the tents as if seeking information. Marian caught one glimpse of him over the cooking tent. Though he was gone in an instant, she recognized him as one of the men who had stolen their motorboat.

After a time his footsteps sounded far down the beach. Nothing more was heard from him.

"Guess he was looking for the brown boy, but became satisfied that he was not here," explained Marian next morning.

"Perhaps they'll let us alone after this," said Lucile.

This prophecy came to pa.s.s. After a few nights the vigil was dropped and the remaining days on the island were given over to the pleasures of camp life.

The discovery of a freshly abandoned fire on the beach some miles from camp proved that Lucile's belief that the brown boy could take care of himself was well founded. His footprints were all about in the sand.

Feathers of a wild duck and the heads of three good-sized fishes showed that he had fared well.

"We'll meet him again somewhere, I am sure," said Lucile with conviction, "and until we do, I shall carry his little present as a sort of talisman."

The weeks pa.s.sed all too quickly. One day, with many regrets, they packed their camp-kit in the motorboat and went pop-popping to Lucile's home.

Three weeks later saw them aboard the steams.h.i.+p _Torentia_ bound for Cape Prince of Wales by way of Nome. They were entering upon a new and adventure-filled life. This journey, though they little guessed it, brought them some two thousand miles nearer the spot where, once again under the strangest of circ.u.mstances, they were to meet the brown boy who had come swimming to them from the ocean.

CHAPTER III

THE MYSTERIOUS PHI BETA KI

It was some months later that Marian stood looking down from a snow-clad hill. From where she stood, brushes and palette in hand, she could see the broad stretch of snow-covered beach, and beyond that the unbroken stretch of drifting ice which chained the restless Arctic Sea at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. She gloried in all the wealth of light and shadow which lay like a changing panorama before her. She thrilled at the thought of the mighty forces that s.h.i.+fted the ma.s.sive ice-floes as they drifted from nowhere to nowhere. Now for the thousandth time she stood spellbound before it.

As she gazed out to sea, her mind went back over the year and a half that had pa.s.sed since she and Lucile had spent that eventful month on Mutineer's Island. But her thoughts were cut short. Throwing up her hands in wild glee, she exclaimed:

"The mail! The mail!"

The coming of the mail carrier was, indeed, a great event in this out-of-the-way spot. Once a month he came whirling around the point, behind a swift-footed dog-team. He came unheralded. Conditions of snow and storm governed his time of travel, yet come he always did.

No throng greeted his coming. No eager crowd hovered about the latticed window waiting for the mail to be "made up." If a dozen letters were in the sack, that was what might be expected.

But these letters had come eighteen hundred miles by dog-team.

Precious messages they were. Tomorrow, perhaps, a bearded miner would drop in from Tin City, which was a city only in name. This lone miner would claim one of the letters. Two, perhaps, would go to another miner on Saw Tooth Mountain. Next week, an Eskimo happening down from s.h.i.+shmaref Island, seventy-five miles north, would take three letters to Ben Norton and his sister, the government teachers for the Eskimos.

Two would go in a pigeon-hole, for Thompson, the teacher on Little Diomede Island, twenty-two miles across the drifting ice. Later a native would be paid ten sacks of flour for attempting to cross that floe and deliver the contents of that box. There might be a scrawled note for some Eskimo, a stray letter or two, and the rest would be for Marian. At the present moment, she was the only white person at Cape Prince of Wales, a little town of three hundred and fifty Eskimos.

"Pretty light this time," smiled the grizzled mail carrier as he reached the cabin at the top of the hill; "mebby ten letters."

"Uncle Sam takes good care of his people," smiled Marian, "the teachers of his native children and the miners who search for his hidden treasures."

"I'll say he does! Must have cost all of ten dollars apiece to deliver them letters," chuckled the carrier. "And the people that mailed 'em stuck on a measly red two-cent stamp. I git fifty dollars for bringin'

'em the last sixty miles."

"And it's worth it, too."

"You're just right. Pretty tough trail. Pretty tough! Say!" he exclaimed, suddenly remembering a bit of gossip, "did ye hear about Tootsie Silock?"

"No." Marian was busy with the mail.

"Jist gossip, I reckon, but they say she's left her Eskimo husband--"

Marian did not answer. Gossip did not interest her. Besides, she had found a letter that did interest her even more than those addressed to her. A very careful penman had drawn the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki, on the outside of an envelope, and beneath it had written, "Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska."

"Wha--"

She was on the point of sharing the mystery with the carrier, but checked herself. Just some new gossip for him, was her mental comment.

"Here's the sack," she said, noting that he had finished drinking the coffee she had prepared for him. "I hope there'll be more mail next time. Letters mean so much to these people up at the top of the world.

Spring thaw'll be here pretty soon, then they can't get mail for two or three months."

"That's right; it's fierce," said the carrier, taking the sack and turning toward the door.

"Phi Beta Ki," Marian p.r.o.nounced the letters softly to herself as the door closed. "Now who could that be?"

She was still puzzling over the mysterious letter when, after a hasty luncheon, she again took up her palette and brushes and wound her way around the hill to a point where stood a cabinet, ten feet square and made of fiber-board.

She returned to her painting. She was doing a ma.s.s of ice that was piling some two hundred yards out to sea. The work was absorbing, yet, eager as she was to work, her mind went back to that letter in the pigeon-hole up in the cabin.

She was deep in the mystery of it when a voice startled her. It came from back of the cabinet.

"I say," the voice sang cheerily, "have you any letters in your little P. O. on the hill?"

The voice thrilled her. It was new and sounded young.

"Yes," she said, throwing open the back of the cabinet and standing up, "we have, quite--quite a variety."

The visitor was young, not more than twenty, she thought.

"What color?" she said teasingly, as she stepped from her cabinet.

"Blue," he said seriously.

"Blue?" She started. The mysterious letter was blue; the only blue one she had seen for months.

"What name?"

"Well, you see," the young man flushed, "not--not any real name; just the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki."