CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERIOUS PHI BETA KI
It was some months later that Marian stood looking down from asnow-clad hill. From where she stood, brushes and palette in hand, shecould see the broad stretch of snow-covered beach, and beyond that theunbroken stretch of drifting ice which chained the restless Arctic Seaat Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. She gloried in all the wealth oflight and shadow which lay like a changing panorama before her. Shethrilled at the thought of the mighty forces that shifted the massiveice-floes as they drifted from nowhere to nowhere. Now for thethousandth time she stood spellbound before it.
As she gazed out to sea, her mind went back over the year and a halfthat had passed since she and Lucile had spent that eventful month onMutineer's Island. But her thoughts were cut short. Throwing up herhands in wild glee, she exclaimed:
"The mail! The mail!"
The coming of the mail carrier was, indeed, a great event in thisout-of-the-way spot. Once a month he came whirling around the point,behind a swift-footed dog-team. He came unheralded. Conditions ofsnow and storm governed his time of travel, yet come he always did.
No throng greeted his coming. No eager crowd hovered about thelatticed window waiting for the mail to be "made up." If a dozenletters 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 woulddrop in from Tin City, which was a city only in name. This lone minerwould claim one of the letters. Two, perhaps, would go to anotherminer on Saw Tooth Mountain. Next week, an Eskimo happening down fromShishmaref Island, seventy-five miles north, would take three lettersto Ben Norton and his sister, the government teachers for the Eskimos.Two would go in a pigeon-hole, for Thompson, the teacher on LittleDiomede Island, twenty-two miles across the drifting ice. Later anative would be paid ten sacks of flour for attempting to cross thatfloe and deliver the contents of that box. There might be a scrawlednote for some Eskimo, a stray letter or two, and the rest would be forMarian. At the present moment, she was the only white person at CapePrince of Wales, a little town of three hundred and fifty Eskimos.
"Pretty light this time," smiled the grizzled mail carrier as hereached the cabin at the top of the hill; "mebby ten letters."
"Uncle Sam takes good care of his people," smiled Marian, "the teachersof his native children and the miners who search for his hiddentreasures."
"I'll say he does! Must have cost all of ten dollars apiece to deliverthem letters," chuckled the carrier. "And the people that mailed 'emstuck 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!" heexclaimed, suddenly remembering a bit of gossip, "did ye hear aboutTootsie 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 hadfound a letter that did interest her even more than those addressed toher. A very careful penman had drawn the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki,on the outside of an envelope, and beneath it had written, "Cape Princeof Wales, Alaska."
"Wha--"
She was on the point of sharing the mystery with the carrier, butchecked herself. Just some new gossip for him, was her mental comment.
"Here's the sack," she said, noting that he had finished drinking thecoffee she had prepared for him. "I hope there'll be more mail nexttime. 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 orthree months."
"That's right; it's fierce," said the carrier, taking the sack andturning toward the door.
"Phi Beta Ki," Marian pronounced the letters softly to herself as thedoor closed. "Now who could that be?"
She was still puzzling over the mysterious letter when, after a hastyluncheon, she again took up her palette and brushes and wound her wayaround the hill to a point where stood a cabinet, ten feet square andmade of fiber-board.
She returned to her painting. She was doing a mass of ice that waspiling 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 thepigeon-hole up in the cabin.
She was deep in the mystery of it when a voice startled her. It camefrom back of the cabinet.
"I say," the voice sang cheerily, "have you any letters in your littleP. 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 blueone she had seen for months.
"What name?"
"Well, you see," the young man flushed, "not--not any real name; justthe Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki."
He stepped into the cabinet and, with deft fingers, drew with charcoalthe characters.
"Like that," he smiled.
"Yes," she smiled back, "there is one."
"Grand!" he exclaimed. "Let's get it at once, shall we?"
They hastened up the hill. Marian wondered at herself, as she handedout the letter; wondered that she did not question him further to makesure he was really the rightful owner. But there was something freeand frank about his bearing. It disarmed suspicion.
After he had read the letter, she thought she caught a look ofdisappointment on his face. If she did, it quickly vanished.
While she was dispensing the accustomed hospitality of the Northland, asteaming plate of "mulligan" and a cup of coffee, she felt his eyesresting upon her many times.
When at last he had finished eating, he turned and spoke hesitatingly:
"I--I'd like to ask a favor of you."
"All right."
"If another letter like that comes to me here, you keep it for me, willyou?"
"Why, yes, only I won't be here much longer. I'm going to Nome afterthe break-up."
"I'm going north. I'll be back before then. But if I'm not, you keepit, will you?" There was a tense eagerness about him that stirred herstrongly.
"Why, yes--I--I--guess so. But what shall I do if you don't get backbefore I leave?"
"Take it with you. Leave word where I can find you and take it."
"You see," he half-apologized, after a moment's thought, "thesenorthern P. O.'s change hands so much, so many people handle the mail,that I--I'm afraid I might lose one of these letters, and--and--they'remighty important; at least, one of them is going to be. Will you doit? I--I think I'd trust you--though I don't just know why."
"Yes," Marian said slowly, "I'll do that."
Three minutes later she saw him skillfully disentangling his dogs andsending them on their way:
"One of those college boys," she whispered to herself. "They comeNorth expecting to find gold shining in the sand of the beach. I'veseen so many come up here as he is, happy and hopeful, and in three orfour years I've seen them go 'outside,' old beyond their years,half-blind with snow-blindness, or worse; broken in body and spirit. Ionly hope it does not happen to him. But what's all the mystery, I'dlike to know?"
She gave a sudden start. For the first time she realized that he hadnot given her his name.
"And I promised to personally conduct that mysterious mail of his!" sheexclaimed under her breath.