The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Sun Swings North, by Barrett Willoughby

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Title: Where the Sun Swings North

Author: Barrett Willoughby

Release Date: November 10, 2006 [eBook #19747]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE SUN SWINGS NORTH***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

WHERE THE SUN SWINGS NORTH

by

BARRETT WILLOUGHBY

A. L. Burt Company
Publishers ——— New York
Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons

Printed in U. S. A.
Copyright, 1922
by
Florance Willoughby

This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York And London

TO

MY MOTHER

WHO CAN MAKE A TENT IN THE WILDERNESS

SEEM LIKE HOME

In this book I write of my own country and its people as I know them—not artfully, perhaps, but truthfully.

BARRETT WILLOUGHBY.

Katalla, Alaska.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER

I.—THE WHITE CHIEF OF KATLEEAN II.—THE CHEECHACO III.—THE LITTLE SQUAW WITH WHITE FEET IV.—BAIT V.—THE FUNERAL CANOES VI.—THE WHITE CHIEF MAKES MEDICINE VII.—THE POTLATCH DANCE VIII.—THE OUTFIT IX.—HARLAN WAKES UP X.—THE PIGEON

PART II

XI.—THE ISLAND OF THE RUBY SANDS XII.—THE LANDING XIII.—THE CABIN XIV.—THE CASTAWAY XV.—THE GIANT BALLS OF STONE XVI.—THE STORM XVII.—THE MYSTERIOUS PRESENCE XVIII.—THE PERIL OF THE SURF XIX.—HOME MAKING XX.—GOLD XXI.—KOBUK XXII.—AT THE LONE TREE XXIII.—ELLEN XXIV.—MAROONED

PART III

XXV.—ON RATIONS XXVI.—WINTER DAYS XXVII.—SPRING XXVIII.—THE CLEFT XXIX.—THE SECRET OF THE CLIFFS XXX.—THE PIGEON'S FLIGHT XXXI.—THE JUSTICE OF THE SEA XXXII.—BENEATH THE BLOOD-RED SUN XXXIII.—ANCHORS WEIGHED

WHERE THE SUN SWINGS NORTH

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE WHITE CHIEF OF KATLEEAN

It was quiet in the great store room of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company's post at Kat-lee-an. The westering sun streaming in through a side window lighted up shelves of brightly labeled canned goods and a long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough clothing. Back of the big, pot-bellied stove—cold now—that stood near the center of the room, lidless boxes of hard-tack and crackers yawned in open defiance of germs. An amber, mote-filled ray slanted toward the moss-chinked log wall where a row of dusty fox and wolverine skins hung—pelts discarded when the spring shipment of furs had been made, because of flaws visible only to expert eyes.

At the far end of the room the possessor of those expert eyes sat before a rough home-made desk. There was a rustle of papers and he closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped his hands smartly. Almost on the instant the curtain hanging in the doorway at the side of the desk was drawn aside and a small, brown feminine hand materialized.

"My cigarettes, Decitan."

The man's voice was low, with that particular vibrant quality often found in the voices of men accustomed to command inferior peoples on the far outposts of civilization.

The curtain wavered again and from behind the folds a brown arm, bare and softly rounded, accompanied the hand that set down a tray of smoking materials.

With a careless nod toward his invisible servitor, the man picked up a cigarette and lighted it. He took one long, deep pull. Tossing it aside he swung his chair about and faced the open doorway that gave on a courtyard and the bay beyond.

He readjusted the scarlet band about his narrow hips. Flannel-shirted, high-booted, he stretched his six-foot length in the tilting chair and clasped his hands behind his head. The movement loosened a lock of black hair which fell heavily across his forehead. His eyes, long, narrow and the color of pale smoke, drowsed beneath brows that met above his nose. Thin, sharply defined nostrils quivered under the slightest emotion, and startling against the whiteness of his face, was a short, pointed beard, black and silky as a woman's hair. When Paul Kilbuck, the white trader of Katleean, smiled, his thin, red lips parted over teeth white and perfect, but there was that in the long, pointed incisors that brought to mind the clean fangs of a wolf-dog.

He closed his pale eyes now and smiled to himself. His work on the Company's books was finished for the present. He hated the petty details of account keeping, but since the death of old Add-'em-up Sam, his helper and accountant, who had departed this world six months before during a spell of delirium tremens, the trader had been obliged to do his own.

Queer and clever things had Add-'em-up done to the books. Down in San Francisco the directors of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company had long suspected it no doubt, but it was not for nothing that Paul Kilbuck was known up and down the coast of Alaska as the White Chief. No other man in the North had such power and influence among the Thlinget tribes. No other man sent in such quantities of prime pelts; hence the White Chief of Katleean had never been obliged to give too strict an accounting of his stewardship. Taking what belongs to a company is not, in the elastic code of the North, considered stealing. "God is high above and the Czar is far away," said the plundering, roistering old Russians of Baranoff's day, and the spirit in the isolated posts had not changed, though Russian adventurers come no more to rape Alaska of her riches, and the Stars and Stripes now floats over the old-time Russian stronghold at Sitka.

For eighteen years Kilbuck had been the agent of the Company. In trading-posts up and down the coast where the trappers and prospectors gather to outfit, many tales of the White Chief were afloat: his trips to the Outside[1]; his lavish spending of money; his hiring of private cars to take him from Seattle to New York; his princely entertainment of beautiful women. In every story told of Paul Kilbuck there were women. Sometimes they were white, but more often they were dusky beauties of the North.

Among the several dark-eyed Thlinget women who occupied the mysterious quarters back of the log store, there was always rejoicing when the White Chief returned from his visits to the States. He was a generous master, bringing back with him many presents from the land of the white people—rings, beads, trinkets, and yards of bright colored silks. The favorites of his household fondled these gifts for a time with soft, guttural cries