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BY ARTHUR STRINGER JL W. N. U. Service /
Sidney Lander rescued Carol Coburn
from the annoyances of Eric (the Red)
Ericson. She Is returning to her native
Alaska to teach. Her father, a sourdough,
died with an unproven mine claim. Lander,
sn engineer for the Trumbull Co., which
But his voice, when he spoke, was
both suave and controlled.
“Don’t run away with the idea this
Chakitana claim is my only trou
ble,” he said. “I’ve got mine inter
ests that take me from the Circle
right down to Mexico. And I like
to clear things up as I go along.”
Once again I recognized the deep
rumble of big business. But the
thought of my father’s lone grave
somewhere out along the tangled
trails of the Chakitana confirmed me
In my own blind course of opposi
tion.
“We turn in here,” I explained,
Indicating the oozy path that led to
my shack front.
“Do you mean you’re satisfied
with this sort of thing?” he demand
ed, his contemptuous gaze on my lit
tered dooryard, left so unlovely by
the spring thaw.
“I’d like it better if I had a
school,” I said.
John Trumbull sat watching me as
I climbed down from the car seat.
“What would you say if I put a
few thousand into a school for you,”
he said with what impressed me as
a purely achieved matter-of-factness
“as good a school as they’ve got
anywhere in this Territory?”
It was my turn to remain silent
ns I looked up into those glacier
ice eyes of his. And 1 remembered
my old school maxim about fearing
the Greeks when they come bear
ing gifts.
“Does my claim impress you as
worth that much?” I found the cour
age to demand.
His color deepened, apparently
with the embarrassment of a con
testant who has underestimated the
power of his opponent.
“What it’s worth won’t be decided
by either you or me,” he said in an
unexpectedly sharpened voice.
“But I was hoping we could get to
gether on it in some friendlier way.”
“I happen to be Klondike Coburn’s
daughter,” I reminded him.
That brought a steelier look into
his averted eyes.
“I was trying to forget that,” ho
retorted, almost in a bark. “But
hate and stupidity, you’ll find, won’t
get you far.”
“I’ll get along,” I said, forcing a
smile of assurance. And as I stood
confronting him I began to nurse a
new and sharper fellow feeling for
Sidney Lander. He too had refused
to be crushed by that human car of
Juggernaut.
John Trumbull started his engine
and threw in his clutch.
"You may not last here as long
as you imagine,” he asserted as
he swung about my dooryard and
heraded for the road.
CHAPTER XIII
Saturday, of course, meant a day
off for the valley chalk-wrangler.
But a day off didn’t mean idle
ness. I had my mending and darn
ing to do, my sourdough sponge to
work into loaves, and my house to
put in order after six days of neg
lect. I’d baked my bread, and fin
ished my washing and ironing, and
with the fortitude of the true fron
tiersman was just filling my big
woodbox with neatly split spruce
boles when a truck rumbled up to
my door.
It was a rather official-looking
truck of battleship-gray, similar to
those I’d seen of late about the
Administration Camp at Palmer.
And it startled me a little when Lan
der swung down from the driver’s
seat. He looked tired and a trifle
solemn,
“I suppose you know what that
means?” he said as I continued to
stare at the truck. He laughed, rath
er curtly, when I told him I was
entirely in the dark. “It means I’m
field manager for the Matanuska
Valley Project.”
From my silence he seemed to
reap some final impression of dis
appointment.
“I suppose you think I’ve failed
you?” he said, more solemn than
ever.
"In what?” I asked, resenting his
power to interfere with my heart
action.
“In marking time this way about
your Chakitana claim,” he observed
«s he follbwed me into the shack.
“I can live without that mine,” I
found myself saying.
“But nobody likes to be robbed,”
Lander observed as he thrust some
papers into my hand. One of those
papers, I noticed, was my father’s
dog-eared certificate of citizenship.
And as I glanced down at the faded
portrait appended to it I realized I
was looking at the face of a fighter.
It made me stiffen my shoulders.
“We can’t, of course, pick our
ground for this particular fight,”
Lander was saying. “We have to
know our enemy’s line of attack.
And in this case he seems to be
playing safe and turning to court
procedure and trying to make ev
erything look legal.”
“Then what can we do?” I asked.
“I have Canby working for us at
Juneau,” Lander explained. “He’s
both dependable and resourceful.
But you can’t, of course hurry those
THE STORY SO FAR
Is fighting the Coburn claim, breaks with
Trumbull. But he remains engaged to
Trumbull’s daughter. Barbara. Carol tells
Barbara she is not after Lander. Salaria
Bryson, an outdoors girl, is also in love
with Lander. Trumbull invites Carol to fly
INSTALLMENT XI
Record Office chair-warmers. And
we’ll have to depend on Canby.”
“Trumbull’s going to lose out, re
member, on his first round,” Lan
der was explaining. “That report
shows your father’s naturalization
papers can be confirmed. It’ll leave
the issue hinging on the question
of clear or clouded title definition.
And that issue may have to be
decided out on the Chakitana.”
He then turned to the task in
Matanuska.
“Things are going to be different
around here,” he confidently af
firmed. “They’ve got to, or there’ll
be hell to pay. And it’ll be a man’s
size job, making this muddle ready
for those two hundred families.”
“Isn't it a trifle late for that?” I
asked as I filled my two crockery
cups with hot tea.
Lander admitted that it was. But
that, he contended, was just why
we had to pitch in and help.
“You’ll get a school, of course,”
he went on as he abstractedly stirred
his tea. “And we’ll have to have a
hospital of some sort. And a Red
Cross nurse. And a marshal to keep
order in those transient-camps. And
someone to speed up the building
gangs and stop all this bungling
about supplies and the eternal buck
passing that’s mainly responsible
for the mess they’re in.”
“I want to help,” I said. Some
thing in my voice brought an ap
proving smile from the man across
the bald pine table.
“In two weeks,” he said, “we’ll
have a radio station here, to link
“You’ll get a school, of course.”
us up with the outside world. That’ll
take us out of the wilderness, at
one jump. And before winter we’ll
have electric lights and telephones
and cold storage and a cannery and
snug homes for every one of those
two hundred families.”
1 thought of the undug wells and
the unfinished roads and the car
loads of cement that had been left
to harden along the railway siding.
“You know, of course, that your
friend Ericson is in the transient
camp here?” Lander asked.
I disclaimed any friendship be
tween Eric the Red and myself.
“That’s just the point,” proceeded
my visitor. “He’s as yellow as they
make them. And two days ago
he had a talk with John Trumbull
up at the Happy Day.”
“What’s that to me?” I asked
with what was only a pretense at in
difference.
“Trumbull,” he explained, “is
pretty ruthless. There are mighty
few road rules left when he starts
steamrolling toward his own self
ish ends.”
"I’ve been talking with Colonel
Hart,” he added. “And he agrees
with me we've got to have a medi
cal man here. There’s a chance
he’ll bring Doctor Ruddock over
from Toklutna. And I’ve put in a
word for your friend Katie O’Con
nell. There’s no reason she couldn’t
swing in as a Red Cross nurse.”
A wave of joy went through me.
Katie, I realized, would be an an
swer to prayer.
Just then Salaria appeared at my
door, brown and wind-blown. In the
crook of her arm she carried a rifle
and over one shoulder swung a full
game bag. Her dusky eyes rested
rather hungrily on the silent Lander.
“You goin’ my way, old-timer?”
she inquired, indicating the truck in
the dooryard.
Lander’s gaze met mine for a
moment. I could see the heat-light
ning smile that hovered about his
lips.
“Right to your door, S’lary,” Lan
der answered her, with a hand-wave
toward his truck.
It was while the Artemis with the
rifle was still frowning over some
faint tinge of mockery in his voice
that Lander turned back to me,
“How about coming to Wasilla to
night?” he asked. “They have a
roadhouse dance there, every Satur
HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL. PERRY, GEORGIA
with him to the scene to see that her fa
ther had no real claim. She declines, how
ever, and her manner nettles the mine
king. He Is used to having things his own
way. Father and daughter were both rath*
er imperious.
day night, for our relief-roll toilers.
And I want to get a line on the bad
actors in that bunch.”
' I’ll be seeing you,” I acquiesced
in the offhanded note of the frontier.
"Pine,” said Lander as he waited
for Salaria to climb into the truck.
It was many a year since I’d
seen an Alaska jamboree of that
kind, and it left me wondering if
life hadn't rather spoiled me for
such affairs. For along with the
dancing was much brawling and
lovemaking and the imbibing of a lo
cal brand of hooch known as moose
milk. The orchestra was merely
a tinny old piano helped out by a
fiddle and accordion. Even as we
pushed our way into that crowded
roadhouse with its open bar I won
dered if the natives weren’t doing
the best to revive the old Klondike
days. Men in flannel shirts aird high
tops gyrated about with gum-chew
ing white women in slacks or held
well-rouged and sloe-eyed half-breed
girls in calico close to their Macki
nawed bosoms.
Lander danced with a smooth «e
-dateness that left us almost conspic
uous in that swarm of jigging bod
ies and flying heels. And I felt odd
ly small and passive in that strong
arm of his. The sense of his near
ness, I suppose, should have made
me happy.
But I couldn’t drum up any en
thusiasm for that falsetto and loose
jointed hilarity born of bad music
and worse whisky.
I tried to tell my partner that
there was something pathetic in
such childlike efforts to escape the
isolation of wilderness life. But Lan
der only laughed.
“This is easy,” he said. “There’ll
be a broken head or two before
the night’s over.” There’d even been
a stabbing, the week before.
But I had no craving to see fist
fights and knifeplay.
“I want to go home,” I said at
the end of our dance. For along the
line that crowded the bar I’d caught
sight of Eric the Red, surrounded
by a circle of transients. He was
too busy drinking and talking to give
any thought to dancing. Rut his
sardonic smile as we passed within
six paces of him confirmed my dis
taste for the place.
“All right,” said Lander. Yet 1
knew by the way his gaze lingered
on the flushed and bleary-eyed faces
all about him that he would have
preferred to stay.
The air outside was sweet with a
small wind that blew down from the
Talkeetnas.
“I guess this is better,” he said as
he lucked a blanket about my knees
and climbed in beside me. He was
silent for a while, tooling the truck
along the spectral ribbon of a road.
“I’m afraid I took you away from
your work,” I ventured.
Lander laughed as that none-too
even road kept our swaying bodies
in rough but friendly contact.
“That’s about the best I can ask
of life,” he said. “To be next to
you like this.”
My answering laugh, I suppose,
was largely defensive.
“While we both remember to keep
to the center of the road,” I sug
gested.
“It’ll be a better road before
we’re through with it,” the resonant
low voice beside me announced. He
was speaking in riddles, of course.
Yet I knew well enough what ha
meant.
“But where will it lead to?” I
asked.
“I don’t know, yet,” he answered
after a moment’s silence. “But I
don’t want it to lead me from you.”
“Hasn’t it already done that?” I
questioned.
It may have sounded a bit cruel.
He turned and made an effort to
study my face in the none-too-cer
tain light.
“I thought we meant something
to each other,” he said with a quick
and boylike candor that was more
disarming than all the earlier rid
dles. “I rather thought you liked
me.”
“I do,” I said in an effort to
match casualness with casualness.
But that, plainly, didn’t solve his
problem. He drove on in silence
until he came to the narrower trail
that led in to my shack.
“I suppose there’s somebody
else?” he finally ventured, coming
to a stop in the cabin clearing.
“There’s nobody else,” I was hon
est enough to acknowledge.
“That’s all I wanted to know,”
he said with a new resoluteness in
his voice.
I was more afraid of myself, I
think, than I was of him. I didn’t
like the way my heart was pounding
as he got down from his seat and
crossed to my side of the truck.
“With me there is nobody else,” I
compelled myself to say.
I knew, by the way he stiffened,
that my shot had hit its mark.
“You’re right,” he quietly ac
knowledged. Then he laughed his
curt laugh. “I guess I’m running a
little ahead of the game.”
I felt like calling after him, as h«
backed and turned and went lurch
ing out to the highway.
(TO BE CONTIMEDJ
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IMPROVED
UNIFORM INTERNATIONAL
SUNDAY I
chool Lesson
I By HAROLD L. LUNDQUIST, D. D.
Dean o i The Moody Bible Institute
of Chicago.
| (Released by Western Newspaper Union.»
Lesson for June 8
Lesson subjects and Scripture texts se-
I lectcd and copyrighted by International
Council of Religious EducaUon; used by
permission.
BEGINNING OF WORLD
MISSIONS
LESSON TEXT—Acts 12:25-13:12.
GOLDEN TEXT—And he said unto them.
Go ye Into all the world, and preach the
! gospel to every creature.—Mark 16:15.
Nineteen hundred years of “front
line action” for Christ began that
day in Antioch when the first mis
sionaries of the cross were sent
forth. There is no more thrilling
story in all history than that of mis
sions. The glorious thing is that it
goes on year after year, and will do
so as long as the Lord of the harvest
continues to send forth workers.
The writer of these notes is glad to
be associated with a training center
which in its half century of operation
has prepared for service about 2,300
men and women who have been sent
to the foreign field by their churches
and missions, and of whom approxi
mately 1,600 are still active on the
field in spite of “peril, toil and pain.”
Our lesson teaches us how “to
fight the good fight of faith” (I Tim.
6:12). First we must have
I. The Base of Operations (vv.
1-3).
Every army must have a home
base; just so, the army of the Lord
looks to the home church, the local
gathering of God’s people. An army
would fail if those at the base of its
action were asleep, or so interested
in the pleasures of this world, or so
Indifferent to their responsibility,
that they would not work hard in
support of the active army. So the
cause of Christian missions cannot
go ahead if it has to depend on a
home church which is spiritually
asleep, indolent, indifferent, and
worldly minded.
The church at Antioch prayed and
fasted. It ministered the Word of
God. It was responsive to the guid
ance of the Holy Spirit and ready
to sacrifice by giving its leaders to
the missionary cause. Is your
church that kind of a church? If
not, why not?
Observe also that it is from such
a church that God calls His workers.
Sunday school teacher, you may
have in your class next Sunday one
of the missionary leaders of the next
generation. See to it that the mes
sage from God reaches that heart.
11. Good Soldiers of the Cross
(vv. 2-4).
The army does not call for the
weak or physically handicapped to
serve. Just so, God’s service calls
for the strongest men and women of
the church, not the misfits or fail
ures. A girl was once heard to re
mark: “If I can’t get married, I
will be a missionary.” Fortunately
for God’s work, she did get mar
ried. Some men who cannot suc
ceed in business think that means
they should be missionaries.
God wants our best (Deut. 15:2)
and He wants the best a church can
give, which means the best spiritu
ally, but in other ways as well.
Note also in verses 3 and 4 that the
messengers of the Lord must be con
stantly led of the Holy Spirit.
111. The Heat of Battle (vv. 5-10).
Warfare is not a Sunday school
picnic. It means conflict with the
forces of the enemy. So the mis
sionary of the cross must be pre
pared to meet Satanic opposition.
Saul and Barnabas met this “son of
the devil” (by the way, reader, we
trust you do not belong to that fam
ily) who opposed the work of grace
which had begun in the heart of the
governor (vv. 8-10).
However, there are those who do
seek to hear the Word of God (v. 7)
as did Sergius Paulus. The business
of the missionary is to preach to
them, but not only to them. The
city of Paphos was really a minia
ture of the world of that day. It was
a Greek city of high culture and low
morals. It was ruled by the Roman
governor, a man of noble character
and a “man of understanding” (v.
7). But right with him was Elymas
the sorcerer, a wicked and ungodly
Jew, a disgrace to his own people
and a hindrance to the work of God.
The messenger of God rejoices in the
opportunity to minister the Word,
whether to Roman, Jew, or Greek,
of high or low estate, wicked or
good, interested or antagonistic.
They all need God’s Word.
IV. Victory for Christ (vv. 11, 12).
The army goes into battle with the
purpose of winning a victory, or it
is defeated before it starts. The
Lord’s army is on a victorious
march, certain of success, because
He that is in us is “greater than ho
that is in the world” (I John 4:4).
In dealing with the sorcerer, Paul
brought down the drastic judgment
of God. Note that this was not done
because Elymas opposed Paul, or
because he had some different be
lief, but because he in his wickedness
opposed God. Those who fight
against God are in a losing battle,
the victory is always on His side.
There was another kind of victory
here, and the soldiers of the cross
are (or should be) far more inter
ested in that type of victory; namely,
the surrender of a sinner at the foot
if the cross. God won a victory in
‘he heart of Sergius Paulus.
HjHIK/i /I
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5. “Les Miserables” (by Victor
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Prepare yourself for the world,
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Bearing Ills
There are three modes of bear
ing the ills of life; by indifference,
which is the most common; by
, philosophy, which is the most os
tentatious; and by religion, which
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Result of All
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Necessity and Satiety
Necessity reforms the poor, and
satiety reforms the rich.—Tacitus.
manners, to give them the neces
sary suppleness and flexibility;
strength alone will not do.—Ches
terfield.