A TICKET TO
ADVENTURE

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT 1937
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Little Man in Black 11

II The Indian Girl’s Warning 19

III Seven Golden Candlesticks 37

IV The Great Stump 59

V Happy Landing 68

VI A Wanderer Returns 76

VII And Then Came Adventure 87

VIII A Secret Is Told 101

IX Help from the Sky 112

X In Search of a Grandfather 121

XI The Fresh-Dough Club 131

XII Her Great Discovery 139

XIII A Bright New Dream 149

XIV “They Are Off” 157

XV The Phantom Leader 165

XVI The Golden Quest 178

XVII The Black Seal’s Tooth 194

XVIII To Be or Not to Be 206

XIX Coasting Up Hill 216

XX Black Waters and Gray Dogs 227

XXI The Secret of the Great Stump 237

A TICKET TO ADVENTURE

CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK

Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage, Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors, groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than she.

“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.

Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could do about that. So—

“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”

To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.

“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.

“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”

“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.

“Then you—”

Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke in upon them. “Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That’s good!” The man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was surprised and startled would not express it at all.

She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight. There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.

Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just now she stood quite still and waited.

“So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?” The stranger stopped laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his appearance.

“Shouldn’t want to meet him in the dark!” the girl thought with another shudder.

“Want to know what he is, Miss?” the white man turned to Mary. “He’s an Eskimo.”

“Oh, an—” Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.

“Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo.” The man filled his voice with suggestions of loathing and utmost contempt. “Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating, greasy