Charles de Remusat - "Abelard, Tome I."

F. Haverfield - "Ancient Town Planning"

L. W. Rogers - "Self Development and the Way to Power"

Various - "Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914"

Student wins New York Times book review accolade
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The Art of Short Selling: Book Review
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The Rim of the Desert written by Ada Woodruff Anderson

A >> Ada Woodruff Anderson >> The Rim of the Desert



[Illustration: He worked tirelessly, as though he was determined to
infuse her numb veins with his own vigor. FRONTISPIECE.]


THE RIM OF THE DESERT

BY

ADA WOODRUFF ANDERSON

AUTHOR OF "THE STRAIN OF WHITE," "THE HEART OF THE RED FIRS," ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY MONTE CREWS



1915



_To the Memory of_

MY MOTHER

A gentle and appreciative critic, the only one, perhaps, who re-read my
previous books with pleasure and found no flaw in them, and who would have
had a greater interest than any other in this publication.




FOREWORD


The desert of this story is that semi-arid region east of the upper
Columbia. It is cut off from the moisture laden winds of the Pacific by
the lofty summits of the Cascade Mountains which form its western rim, and
for many miles the great river crowds the barrier, winding, breaking in
rapids, seeking a way through. To one approaching this rim from the dense
forests of the westward slopes, the sage grown levels seem to stretch
limitless into the far horizon, but they are broken by hidden coulees; in
propitious seasons reclaimed areas have yielded phenominal crops of wheat,
and under irrigation the valley of one of the two tributaries from the
west, wherein lies Hesperides Vale, has become a garden spot of the world.

To the initiated I wish to say if in the chapters touching on the Alaska
coal cases I have followed too literally the statements of prominent men,
it was not in an effort to portray them but merely to represent as clearly
as possible the Alaska situation.

ADA WOODRUFF ANDERSON.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK
II THE QUESTION
III FOSTER TOO
IV SNOQUALMIE PASS AND A BROKEN AXLE
V APPLES OF EDEN
VI NIP AND TUCK
VII A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD
VIII THE BRAVEST WOMAN HE EVER KNEW
IX THE DUNES OF THE COLUMBIA
X A WOMAN'S HEART-STRINGS
XI THE LOOPHOLE
XII "WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY"
XIII "A LITTLE STREAK OF LUCK"
XIV ON BOARD THE AQUILA
XV THE STORY OF THE TENAS PAPOOSE
XVI THE ALTERNATIVE
XVII "ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE"
XVIII THE OPTION
XIX LUCKY BANKS AND THE PINK CHIFFON
XX KERNEL AND PEACH
XXI FOSTER'S HOUR
XXII AS MAN TO MAN
XXIII THE DAY OF PUBLICATION
XXIV SNOWBOUND IN THE ROCKIES AND "FIT AS A MOOSE"
XXV THE IDES OF MARCH
XXVI THE EVERLASTING DOOR
XXVII KISMET, AN ACT OF GOD
XXVIII SURRENDER
XXIX BACK TO HESPERIDES VALE
XXX THE JUNIOR DEFENDANT
XXXI TISDALE OF ALASKA--AND WASHINGTON, D.C.
XXXII THE OTHER DOCUMENT
XXXIII THE CALF-BOUND NOTEBOOK


THE RIM OF THE DESERT




CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK


It is in October, when the trails over the wet tundra harden, and before
the ice locks Bering Sea, that the Alaska exodus sets towards Seattle; but
there were a few members of the Arctic Circle in town that first evening
in September to open the clubhouse on the Lake Boulevard with an informal
little supper for special delegate Feversham, who had arrived on the
steamer from the north, on his way to Washington.

The clubhouse, which was built of great, hewn logs, with gabled eaves,
stood in a fringe of firs, and an upper rear balcony afforded a broad
outlook of lake and forest, with the glaciered heights of the Cascade
Mountains breaking a far horizon. The day had been warm, but a soft
breeze, drawing across this veranda through the open door, cooled the
assembly room, and, lifting one of the lighter hangings of Indian-wrought
elk leather, found the stairs and raced with a gentle rustle through the
lower front entrance back into the night. It had caressed many familiar
things on its way, for the walls were embellished with trophies from the
big spaces where winds are born. There were skins of polar and Kodiak
bear; of silver and black fox; there were antlered heads set above the
fireplace and on the rough, bark-seamed pillars that supported the
unceiled roof. A frieze of pressed and framed Alaska flora finished the
low gallery which extended around three sides of the hall, and the massive
chairs, like the polished banquet board, were of crocus-yellow Alaska
cedar.

The delegate, who had come out to tide-water over the Fairbanks-Valdez
trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors of the journey.
The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed to increase
his prominence of front and intensified the color in his face to a sort of
florid ripeness.

"Yes, gentlemen," he continued, thumping the table with a stout hand and
repeating the gesture slowly, while the glasses trembled, "Alaska's crying
need is a railroad; a single finished line from the most northern harbor
open to navigation the whole year--and that is Prince William Sound--
straight through to the Tanana Valley and the upper Yukon. Already the
first problem has been solved; we have pierced the icy barrier of the
Coast Range. All we are waiting for is further right of way; the right to
the forests, that timber may be secured for construction work; the right
to mine coal for immediate use. But, gentlemen, we may grow gray waiting.
What do men four thousand miles away, men who never saw Alaska, care about
our needs?" He leaned back in his chair, while his glance moved from face
to face and rested, half in challenge, on the member at the foot of the
board. "These commissioners appointed off there in Washington," he added.
"These carpet-baggers from the little States beyond the Mississippi!"

Hollis Tisdale, who had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska
career in the service of the Government, met the delegate's look with a
quiet humor in his eyes.

"It seems to me," he said, and his deep, expressive voice instantly held
the attention of every one, "that such a man, with intelligence and
insight, of course, stands the surest chance of giving general
satisfaction in the end. He is at least disinterested, while the best of
us, no matter how big he is, how clear-visioned, is bound to take his own
district specially to heart. Prince William Sound alone has hundreds of
miles of coast-line and includes more than one fine harbor with an
ambitious seaport."

At this a smile rippled around the table, and Miles Feversham, who was the
attorney for one of the most ambitious syndicates of promoters in the
north, gave his attention to the menu. But Tisdale, having spoken, turned
his face to the open balcony door. His parka was thrown back, showing an
incongruous breadth of stiff white bosom, yet he was the only man present
who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the column of throat
rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening pose of the fine head,
in relief against the bearskin on the wall behind his chair, suggested a
Greek medallion. His brown hair, close-cut, waved at the temples; lines
were chiseled at the corners of his eyes and, with a lighter touch, about
his mouth; yet his face, his whole compact, muscular body, gave an
impression of youth--youth and power and the capacity for great endurance.
His friends said the north never had left a mark of its grip on Tisdale.
The life up there that had scarred, crippled, wrecked most of them seemed
only to have mellowed him.

"But," resumed Feversham quickly, "I shall make a stiff fight at
Washington; I shall force attention to our suspended land laws; demand the
rights the United States allows her western territories; I shall ask for
the same concessions that were the making of the Oregon country; and first
and last I shall do all I can to loosen the strangling clutch of
Conservation." He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the
table, and the glasses jingled anew. "And, gentlemen, the day of the
floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities,
our cities; we are ready for a legislative body of our own; the time has
come for Home Rule. But the men who make our laws must be familiar with
the country, have allied interests. Gentlemen,"--his voice, dropping its
aggressive tone, took a honeyed insistence,--"we want in our first
executive a man who knows us intimately, who has covered our vast
distances, whose vision has broadened; a man big enough to hold the
welfare of all Alaska at heart."

The delegate finished this period with an all-embracing smile and, nodding
gently, leaned back again in his chair. But in the brief silence that
followed, he experienced a kind of shock. Foster, the best known mining
engineer from Prince William Sound to the Tanana, had turned his eyes on
Tisdale; and Banks, Lucky Banks, who had made the rich strike in the
Iditarod wilderness, also looked that way. Then instantly their thought
was telegraphed from face to face. When Feversham allowed his glance to
follow the rest, it struck him as a second shock that Tisdale was the only
one on whom the significance of the moment was lost.

The interval passed. Tisdale stirred, and his glance, coming back from the
door, rested on a dish that had been placed before him. "Japanese
pheasant!" he exclaimed. The mellowness glowed in his face. He lifted his
eyes, and the delegate, meeting that clear, direct gaze, dropped his own
to his plate. "Think of it! Game from the other side of the Pacific. They
look all right, but--do you know?"--the lines deepened humorously at the
corners of his mouth--"nothing with wings ever seems quite as fine to me
as ptarmigan."

"Ptarmigan!" Feversham suspended his fork in astonishment. "Not
ptarmigan?"

"Yes," persisted Tisdale gently, "ptarmigan; and particularly the ones
that nest in Nunatak Arm."

There was a pause, while for the first time his eyes swept the Circle. He
still held the attention of every one, but with a difference; the
tenseness had given place to a pleased expectancy.

Then Foster said: "That must have been on some trip you made, while you
were doing geological work around St. Elias."

Tisdale shook his head. "No, it was before that; the year I gave up
Government work to have my little fling at prospecting. You were still in
college. Every one was looking for a quick route to the Klondike then, and
I believed if I could push through the Coast Range from Yakutat Bay to the
valley of the Alsek, it would be smooth going straight to the Yukon. An
old Indian I talked with at the mission told me he had made it once on a
hunting trip, and Weatherbee--you all remember David Weatherbee--was eager
to try it with me. The Tlinket helped us with the outfit, canoeing around
the bay and up into the Arm to his starting point across Nunatak glacier.
But it took all three of us seventy-two days to pack the year's supplies
over the ice. We tramped back and forth in stages, twelve hundred miles.
We hadn't been able to get dogs, and in the end, when winter overtook us
in the, mountains, we cached the outfit and came out."

"And never went back." Banks laughed, a shrill, mirthless laugh, and added
in a higher key: "Lost a whole year and--the outfit."

Tisdale nodded slowly. "All we gained was experience. We had plenty of
that to invest the next venture over the mountains from Prince William
Sound. But--do you know?--I always liked that little canoe trip around
from Yakutat. I can't tell you how fine it is in that upper fiord; big
peaks and ice walls growing all around. Yes."--he nodded again, while the
genial wrinkles deepened--"I've seen mountains grow. We had a shock once
that raised the coast-line forty-five feet. And another time, while we
were going back to the village for a load, a small glacier in a hanging
valley high up, perhaps two thousand feet, toppled right out of its cradle
into the sea. It stirred things some and noise"--he shook his head with an
expressive sound that ended in a hissing whistle. "But it missed the
canoe, and the wave it made lifted us and set us safe on top of a little
rocky island." He paused again, laughing softly. "I don't know how we kept
right side up, but we did. Weatherbee was great in an emergency."

A shadow crossed his face. He looked off to the end of the room.

"I guess you both understood a canoe," said Banks. His voice was still
high-pitched, like that of a man under continued stress, and his eyes
burned in his withered, weather-beaten face like the vents of buried
fires. "But likely it was then, while you was freighting the outfit around
to the glacier, you came across those ptarmigan."

Tisdale's glance returned, and the humor played again softly at the
corners of his eyes. "I had forgotten about those birds. It was this way.
I made the last trip in the canoe alone, for the mail and a small load,
principally ammunition and clothing, while Weatherbee and the Tlinket
pushed ahead on one of those interminable stages over the glacier. And on
the way back, I was caught in fog. It rolled in, layer on layer, while I
felt for the landing; but I managed to find the place and picked up the
trail we had worn packing over the ice. And I lost it; probably in a new
thaw that had opened and glazed over since I left. Anyhow, in a little
while I didn't know where I was. I had given my compass to Weatherbee, and
there was no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing
but fog and ice, and it all looked alike. The surface was too hard to take
my impressions, so I wasn't able to follow my own tracks back to the
landing. But I had to keep moving, it was so miserably cold; I hardly let
myself rest at night; and that fog hung on five days. The third evening I
found myself on the water-front, and pretty soon I stumbled on my canoe. I
was down to a mighty small allowance of crackers and cheese then, but I
parcelled it out in rations for three days and started once more along the
shore for Yakutat. The next night I was traveling by a sort of sedge when
I heard ptarmigan. It sounded good to me, and I brought my canoe up and
stepped out. I couldn't see, but I could hear those birds stirring and
cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first
that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote,
and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the
rafter above an electric lamp. "When it did, and I blazed, the whole flock
rose. I winged two. I had to grope for them in the reeds, but I found
them, and I made a little fire and cooked one of them in a tin pail I
carried in the canoe. But when I had finished that supper and pushed off--
do you know?"--his look returned, moving humorously from face to face--"I
was hungrier than I had been before. And I just paddled back and cooked
the other one."

There was a stir along the table; a sighing breath. Then some one laughed,
and Banks piped his strained note. "And," he said after a moment, "of
course you kept on to that missionary camp and waited for the fog to
lift."

Tisdale shook his head. "After that supper, there wasn't any need; I
turned back to the glacier. And before I reached the landing, I heard
Weatherbee's voice booming out on the thick silence like a siren at sea;
piloting me straight to that one dip in the ice-wall."

He looked off again to the end of the room, absently, with the far-sighted
gaze of one accustomed to travel great solitudes. It was as though he
heard again that singing voice. Then suddenly his expression changed. His
eyes had rested on a Kodiak bearskin that hung against a pillar at the top
of the gallery steps. The corner was unlighted, in heavy shadow, but a
hand reaching from behind had drawn the rug slightly aside, and its
whiteness on the brown fur, the flash of a jewelled ring, caught his
attention. The next moment the hand was withdrawn. He gave it no more
thought then, but a time came afterward when he remembered it.

"Weatherbee had noticed that fog-bank," he went on, "from high up the
glacier. It worried him so he finally turned back to meet me, and he had
waited so long he was down to his last biscuit. I was mighty reckless
about that second ptarmigan, but the water the birds were cooked in made a
fine soup. And the fog broke, and we overtook the Tlinket and supplies the
next morning."

There was another stir along the table, then Foster said: "That was a
great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean
trail, like the bugle and fife of a regiment."

"So have I." It was Lucky Banks who spoke. "So have I. And Weatherbee was
always ready to stand by a poor devil in a tight place. When the frost got
me"--he held up a crippled and withered hand--"it was Dave Weatherbee who
pulled me through. We were mushing it on the same stampede from Fairbanks
to Ruby Creek, and he never had seen me before. It had come to the last
day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard. You all know
what that means. In the end we just kept the trail, following the
hummocks. Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and
sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff. Then
it came my turn, and I lay down in my tracks. But Weatherbee stopped to
work over me. He wouldn't go on. He said if I was determined to stay in
that cemet'ry, I could count on his company. And when he got me on my
feet, he just started 'Dixie,' nice and lively, and the next I knew he had
me all wound up and set going again, good as new."

His laugh, like the treble notes of the Arctic wind, gave an edge to the
story.

Presently Foster said: "That was Weatherbee; I never knew another such
man. Always effacing himself when it came to a choice; always ready to
share a good thing. Why, he made some of his friends rich, and yet in the
end, after seven years of it, seven years of struggle of the worst kind,
what did he have to show?"

"Nothing, Foster; nothing but seven feet of earth up there on the edge of
the wilderness." Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the
surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face. "And a tract of unimproved
desert down here in eastern Washington," he added.

"And Mrs. Weatherbee," supplemented Feversham quickly. "You mustn't forget
her. Any man must have counted such a wife his most valuable asset. Here's
to her! Young, charming, clever; a typical American beauty!" He stopped to
drain his glass, then went on. "I remember the day Weatherbee sailed for
Alaska. I was taking the same steamer, and she was on the dock, with all
Seattle, to see the Argonauts away. It was a hazardous journey into the
Unknown in those days, and scenes were going on all around--my own wife
was weeping on my shoulder--but Mrs. Weatherbee, and she had just been
married then, bridged the parting like a little trump. 'Well, David,' she
said, with a smile to turn a priest's head, 'good-by and good luck. Come
back when you've made your fortune, and I'll help you to spend it.'"

The delegate, laughing deeply, reached for the port decanter to refill his
glass. No one else saw the humor of the story, though the man with the
maimed hand again gave an edge to the silence that followed with his
strained, mirthless laugh. Presently he said: "But he never came back."

"No." It was Foster who answered. "No, but he was on his way out to the
States at last, when the end came. I don't understand it. It seems
incredible that Weatherbee, who had won through so many times, handicapped
by the waifs and strays of the trail,--Weatherbee, to whom the Susitna
country was an open scroll,--should have perished as he did. But it was
you who found him, Hollis. Come, tell us all about it."

Tisdale shook his head. "Some other time, Foster. It's a long story and
not the kind to tell here."

"Go on! Go on!" The urging came from many, and Banks added in his high,
tense key; "I guess we can stand it. Most of us saw the iron side of
Alaska before we saw the golden."

"Well, then," Tisdale began reluctantly, "I must take you back a year. I
was completing trail reconnaissance from the new Alaska Midway surveys in
the Susitna Valley, through Rainy Pass, to connect with the mail route
from the interior to Nome, and, to avoid returning another season, kept my
party late in the field. It was the close of September when we struck
Seward Peninsula and miserably cold, with gales sweeping in from Bering
Sea. The grass had frozen, and before we reached a cache of oats I had
relied on, most of our horses perished; we arrived at Nome too late for
the last steamer of the year. That is how I came to winter there, and why
a letter Weatherbee had written in October was so long finding me. It was
forwarded from Seattle with other mail I cabled for, back to Prince
William Sound, over the Fairbanks-Valdez trail, and out again by the
winter route three thousand miles to Nome. It was the middle of March when
I received it, and he had asked me to buy his half interest in the Aurora
mine. He needed the money to go out to the States."

Tisdale's voice broke a little; and for a moment he looked off through the
open door. "Perhaps some of you remember I grub-staked him for a half
share when he left the Tanana to prospect down along the Alaska Range.
After he located, I forwarded him small amounts several times to carry on
development work. I never had been on the ground, but he explained he was
handicapped by high water and was trying to divert the channel of a creek.
In that last letter he said he had carried the scheme nearly through; the
next season would pay my money back and more; the Aurora would pan out the
richest strike he had ever made. But that did not trouble me. I knew if
Weatherbee had spent two years on that placer, the gravels had something
to show. The point that weighed was that he was willing to go home at last
to the States. I had urged him before I put up the grub-stake, but he had
answered: 'Not until I have made good.' It was hardly probable that,
failing to hear from me, he had sold out to any one else. From his
description, the Aurora was isolated; hundreds of miles from the new
Iditarod camp; he hadn't a neighbor in fifty miles. So I forwarded his
price and arranged with the mail carrier to send a special messenger on
from the nearest post. In the letter I wrote to explain my delay, I
sketched a plan of my summer's work and told him how sorry I was I had
missed seeing him while the party was camped below Rainy Pass. Though I
couldn't have spared the time to go to the Aurora, he might have found me,
had I sent an Indian with word. It was the first time I had gone through
his orbit without letting him know.

"But after that carrier had gone, Weatherbee's letter kept worrying me. It
wasn't like him to complain, yet he had written he was tired of the
eternal winters; he couldn't stand those everlasting snow peaks sometimes,
they got to crowding him so; they kept him awake when he needed sleep,
threatening him. 'I've got to break away from them, Hollis,' he said, 'and
get where it's warm once more; and when my blood begins to thaw, I'll show
you I can make a go of things.' Then he reminded me of the land he owned
down here on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. The soil was the
finest volcanic ash; the kind that grew the vineyards on Vesuvius, and he
meant to plant it with grapes; with orchards, too, on the bench levels.
All the tract needed was water, but there was a natural reservoir and
spring on a certain high plateau that could be easily tapped with a
flume."

Tisdale paused while his glance moved slowly, singling out those who had
known Weatherbee. A great gentleness rested on his face, and when he went
on, it crept like a caress through his voice. "Most of you have heard him
talk about that irrigation scheme; some of you have seen those plans he
used to-work on, long Alaska nights. It was his dream for years. He went
north in the beginning just to accumulate capital enough to swing that
project. But the more I studied that letter, the more confident I was he
had stayed his limit; he was breaking, and he knew it. That was why he was
so anxious to turn the Aurora over to me and get to the States. Finally I
decided to go with the mail carrier and on to the mine. If Weatherbee was
still there, as I believed, we would travel to Fairbanks together and take
the Valdez trail out to the open harbor on Prince William Sound. I picked
up a team of eight good huskies--the weather was clear with a moon in her
second quarter--and I started light, cutting my stops short; but when I
left Nome I had lost four days."

Hollis paused another interval, looking off again through the open door,
while the far-sighted expression gathered in his eyes. It was as though
his listeners also in that moment saw those white solitudes stretching
limitless under the Arctic night.

"I never caught up with that carrier," he went on, "and the messenger he
sent on broke trail for me all the way to the Aurora. I met him on his
return trip, thirty hours out from the mine. But he had found Weatherbee
there, and had a deed for me which David had asked him to see recorded and
forwarded to me at Nome. It was a relief to hear he had been able to
attend to these business matters, but I wondered why he had not brought
the deed himself, since he must come that way to strike the Fairbanks
trail, and why the man had not waited to travel with him. Then he told me
Weatherbee had decided to use the route I had sketched in my letter. The
messenger had tried to dissuade him; he had reminded him there were no
road-houses, and that the traces left by my party must have been wiped out
by the winter snows. But Weatherbee argued that the new route would
shorten the distance to open tide-water hundreds of miles; that his
nearest neighbors were in that direction, fifty miles to the south; and
they would let him have dogs. Then, when he struck the Susitna Valley, he
would have miles of railroad bed to ease the last stage. So, at the time
the messenger left the Aurora, Weatherbee started south on his long trek
to Rainy Pass. He was mushing afoot, with Tyee pulling the sled. Some of
you must remember that big husky with a strain of St. Bernard he used to
drive on the Tanana."