My one gift, besides my strength, is an aptness at languages. Soon I spoke the Cherokee as though I had been born in the Nation. Those years in college were the happiest I had ever known. It was during the last of them that America entered the World War. Together we had left Dartmouth, gone into training camp, sailed for France on the same transport.
Sitting there, under the slow–growing Alaskan dawn, my mind leaped over the years between…my mother's death on Armistice Day…my return to New York to a frankly hostile home…Jim's recall to his clan…the finishing of my course in mining engineering…my wanderings in Asia…my second return to America and my search for Jim…this expedition of ours to Alaska, more for comradeship and the wilderness peace than for the gold we were supposed to be seeking—
A long trail since the War—the happiest for me these last two months of it. It had led us from Nome over the quaking tundras, and then to the Koyukuk, and at last to this little camp among the spruces, somewhere between the headwaters of the Koyukuk and the Chandalar in the foothills of the unexplored Endicott Range. A long trail…I had the feeling that it was here the real trail of my life began.
A ray of the rising sun struck through the trees. Jim sat up, looked over at me, and grinned.
"Didn't get much sleep after the concert, did you?"
"What did you do to the ancestors? They didn't seem to keep you awake long."
He said, too carelessly: "Oh, they quieted down." His face and eyes were expressionless. He was veiling his mind from me. The ancestors had not quieted down. He had lain awake while I had thought him sleeping. I made a swift decision. We would go south as we had planned. I would go with him as far as Circle. I would find some pretext to leave him there.
I said: "We're not going north. I've changed my mind."
"Yes. why?"
"I'll tell you after we've had breakfast," I said—I'm not so quick in thinking up lies. "Rustle up a fire, Jim. I'll go down to the stream and get some water."
"Degataga!"
I started. It was only in moments of rare sympathy or in time of peril that he used the secret name.
"Degataga, you go north! You go if I have to march ahead of you to make you follow…" he dropped into the Cherokee…"It is to save your spirit, Degataga. Do we march together—blood–brothers? Or do you creep after me—like a shivering dog at the heels of the hunter?"
The blood pounded in my temples, my hand went out toward him. He stepped back, and laughed.
"That's better, Leif."
The quick rage left me, my hand fell.
"All right, Tsantawu. We go—north. But it wasn't—it wasn't because of myself that I told you I'd changed my mind."
"I know damned well it wasn't!"
He busied himself with the fire. I went after the water. We drank the strong black tea, and ate what was left of the little brown storks they call Alaskan turkeys which we had shot the day before. When we were through I began to talk.
Chapter II
Ring of the Kraken
Three years ago, so I began my story, I went into Mongolia with the Fairchild expedition. Part of its work was a mineral survey for certain British interests, part of it ethnographic and archeological research for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania.
I never had a chance to prove my value as a mining engineer. At once I became good–will representative, camp entertainer, liaison agent between us and the tribes. My height, my yellow hair, blue eyes and freakish strength, and my facility in picking up languages were of never–ending interest to them. Tartars, Mongols, Buriats, Kirghiz—they would watch while I bent horseshoes, twisted iron bars over my knees and performed what my father used to call contemptuously my circus tricks.
Well, that's exactly what I was to them—a one–man circus. And yet I was more than that—they liked me. Old Fairchild would laugh when I complained that I had no time for technical work. He would tell me that I was worth a dozen mining engineers, that I was the expedition's insurance, and that as long as I could keep up my act they wouldn't be bothered by any trouble makers. And it is a fact that they weren't. It was the only expedition of its kind I ever knew where you could leave your stuff unwatched and return to find it still there. Also we were singularly free from graft and shake–downs.
In no time I had picked up half a dozen of the dialects and could chatter and chaff with the tribesmen in their own tongues. It made a prodigious bit with them. And now and then a Mongol delegation would arrive with a couple of their wrestlers, big fellows with chests like barrels, to pit against me. I learned their tricks, and taught them ours. We had pony lifting contests, and some of my Manchu friends taught me how to fight with the two broadswords—a sword in each hand.
Fairchild had planned on a year, but so smoothly did the days go by that he decided to prolong our stay. My act, he told me in his sardonic fashion, was undoubtedly of perennial vitality; never again would science have such an opportunity in this region—unless I made up my mind to remain and rule. He didn't know how close he came to prophecy.
In the early summer of the following year we shifted our camp about a hundred miles north. This was Uighur country. They are a strange people, the Uighurs. They say of themselves that they are descendants of a great race which ruled the Gobi when it was no desert but an earthly Paradise, with flowing rivers and many lakes and teeming cities. It is a fact that they are apart from all the other tribes, and while those others cheerfully kill them when they can, still they go in fear of them. Or rather, of the sorcery of their priests.
Seldom had Uighurs appeared at the old camp. When they did, they kept at a distance. We had been at the new camp less than a week when a band of twenty rode in. I was sitting in the shade of my tent. They dismounted and came straight to me. They paid no attention to anyone else. They halted a dozen feet from me. Three walked close up and stood, studying me. The eyes of these three were a peculiar grey–blue; those of the one who seemed to be their captain singularly cold. They were bigger, taller men than the others.
I did not know the Uighur. I gave them polite salutations in the Kirghiz. They did not answer, maintaining their close scrutiny. Finally they spoke among themselves, nodding as though they had come to some decision.
The leader then addressed me. As I stood up, I saw that he was not many inches under my own six feet four. I told him, again in the Kirghiz, that I did not know his tongue. He gave an order to his men. They surrounded my tent, standing like guards, spears at rest beside them, their wicked long–swords drawn.
At this my temper began to rise, but before I could protest the leader began to speak to me in the Kirghiz. He assured me, with deference, that their visit was entirely peaceful, only they did not wish their contact with me to be disturbed by any of my companions. He asked if I would show him my hands. I held them out. He and his two comrades bent over the palms, examining them minutely, pointing to a mark or a crossing of lines. This inspection ended, the leader touched his forehead with my right hand.
And then to my complete astonishment, he launched without explanation into what was a highly intelligent lesson in the Uighur tongue. He took the Kirghiz for the comparative language. He did not seem to be surprized at the ease with which I assimilated the tuition; indeed, I had a puzzled idea that he regarded it as something to be expected. I mean that his manner was less that of teaching me a new language, than of recalling to me one I had forgotten. The lesson lasted for a full hour. He then touched his forehead again with my hand, and gave a command to the ring of guards. The whole party walked to their horses and galloped off.