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HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL. PERRY. GEORGIA
K n, Lamp » rf^Valle#
BY ARTHUR STRINOER X W. N. U. Service 0
Sidney lender rescued Carol Coburn
from the annoyances of Eric (the Red)
Erlcson. She is returning to her native
Alaska to teach. Her father, a sourdough,
died with an unproven mine claim. Lander,
an engineer for the Trumbull Co., which is
CHAPTER XIV
Matanuska was now on the map.
The colonists had arrived.
But that Promised Land, appar
ently, didn’t live up to their expec
tations. For all they found were un
finished roads and harried officials
and lumber piles and an impromptu
city of tents along the valley flats,
army tents in rows as regular as a
a wooden floor and boarded side
walls and a smoke pipe going up
from its roof.
There was no teaching for the
chalk - wrangler yesterday when
word went round that the first train
load of the colonists was on its way
up from Seward, and Katie O’Connell
was hurried over from Toklutna
to look after the women and chil
dren. And since I was detailed to
stand right-hand man to Katie, I
was there to help make boilers of
coffee and watch the disembarking
of the disheveled and sea-worn
army.
But the note they struck was not
always epic.
I could see women still petulant
over their weeks of homelessness,
surrounded like ship-wrecked sailors
by what they could salvage from
their long-traveled belongings. I
doled out coffee and sandwiches to
toil-hardened tillers of the plains
and drouth-wizened cattle-raisers
from valley farms and Mackinawed
ax-wielders from wooded slopes. I
tried to give them a welcoming word
or two as they stared gloomily
about at their Arctic El Dorado and
herded their children up to the grub
tables. The fact they were to live
in tents, it was plain, didn’t appeal
to them.
It was the young people, to whom
Alaska meant excitement and Mata
nuska spelled romance, who crowd
ed about the cameras—lanky youths
and laughing girls, not in the slatted
sunbonnets of earlier froe-soilers,
but in the sweaters and slacks of
their own blithe generation. And
there were children, slathers of chil
dren, with tousled heads and toys
in their hands, staring wide-eyed at
the white peaks of the Talkeetnas
and lustily proclaiming to the world
they were hungry.
“You belong in those parts?” a
petulant voice inquired of me as I
refilled the coffeepots. I found my
self confronted by a rotund matri
arch with a terrace of chins and
eight obstreperous children.
I said that Matanuska was now
my home.
“Can’t say you look like a girl
who’d been brought up on whale
blubber,” observed my new friend,
who asserted that her name was
Betsy Sebeck. “But them cock-eyed
bureaucrats, of course, nin’t got
anything ready. There ain’t even
water, they tell me, in them two-by
four tents. And they ain’t got lamps
—when they told us we was to
be steam-heated and lit by elec
tricity!”
“Things will straighten out,” I
said as I caught sight of Lander
haranguing a group of grumbling
free-soilers.
“But there ain’t even blankets
enough to go round,” persisted Bet
sy. “And if I don’t get at a wash
tub before the week’s out them kids
o’ mine will have to go naked.”
The bureaucrats, I discovered,
bad declined to bring in a piano for
her, had lost two of her trunks, and
were now trying to stow her away
in a back-row tent which her man
wouldn’t accept. They'd even failed
to stock the Commissary up proper
ly, she lamented, and that’d mean,
i f course, going without grapefruit
and ice cream.
But even In the midst of all that
confusion and complaining I wanted
to cling to the claim there was
something epic about the migration.
That fact came home to me more
than ever when I stood under an
azure Alaskan sky that arched above
the blue-ravincd slopes of mountains
towering up to stately peaks of white
and watched the two hundred fam
ily heads draw’ lots for their farm
plots. For fate, of course, reposed
in that little wooden box that held
the plot numbers, since a few’ of the
farmsites w r ere already cleared and
fenced and blessed with cabins,
while others were swampy and un
broken forest. And as the lucky and
the unlucky crowded about a big
map of the valley, to determine the
position and state of their tracts,
there was much cheering and grum
bling and groaning.
Salaria, deep-bosomed and Indian
brown, drifted up to my table and
viewed the scene with a lip curl of
contempt. There she was joined by
Sock-Eye, waiting and watchful for
the first open jeer from one of those
preoccupied checchakos.
“Looks like a potlatch t’ me,” ob
served Salaria. “A potlatch w’ith
Uncle Sam passin’ out forty-acre
farms instead o’ two-bit knives. And
most o’ these poor coots don’t even
know what they’re gittin’.”
Sock-Eye spat dourly into the road
dust.
“They think they’re gittin’ some
thing for nothing,” he averred. “But
them gilootsTl be about as happy
THE STORY SO FAR
fighting the Coburn claim, breaks with
Trumbull. But he remains engaged to
Trumbull's daughter, Barbara. Salaria Bry
son, an outdoors girl, is also In love with
Lander. Lander becomes field manager for
the Matanuska Valley project. He takes
INSTALLMENT XII
in this valley as blacksnake on an
ice block.”
“Lander says there’s a shortage
of axes and work tools,” I was
prompted to explain.
“Of course there is,” exulted Sa
laria. “They’ve got grand electric
coffee-grinders but no power t’ run
’em. They’ve got a string o’ thresh
in’ machines, but no crops in t’
thresh.”
“And stoves over there rustin’ in
the rain,” added Sock-Eye, “but no
wheres t’ put ’em. And a mountain
o’ them new-fangled enamel sinks
and no kitchens t’ set ’em up in.
And a carload o’ harness, by gad,
and no workhorses t’ buckle it on.”
The tumult had subsided and the
shadows were growing longer and
I could see smoke going up from the
unbroken line of smoke pipes before
Katie was able to join me at my
alfresco coffee table.
“They’re pretty well settled,” she
said as she munched a sandwich
between her strong white teeth.
“But I wish Ruddy was here.”
I asked her why. She postponed
her answer until she had polished
off her sandwich and reached for
her second cup of coffee.
“There’s a baby over there I don’t
like the looks of,” she finally an
nounced.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ques
tioned.
“I don’t know, yet,” she said as
she bit into a sandwich. Then her
eyes became ruminative. “Wouldn’t
it be sweet if measles got into this
little family circle. Or scarlatina!
Or even whooping cough.” Her tired
“They’re pretty well settled,”
she said.
looking eyes surveyed the row of
white-walled tents. “There’s six hun
dred kids in that camp, in one mad
huddle, and not a roof over their
head if a bug or two got into their
blood!”
I asked if they all hadn’t had
medical inspection.
“They’re supposed to,” admitted
Katie. “But if I know my onions
there’s a father of seven over in that
line-up who won’t last long. He’s
plainly tubercular. And there’s a
Michigan woman who’s been having
labor pains all the way up from Sew
ard.”
“What does that mean?” I asked
with a qualm of dismay.
“It means,” said the wearyt-eyed
Katie, “that we can’t sit here en
joying the scenery. You’ll have to
scrub up, old-timer, and help me
with the delivery.”
Two hours later I heard the first
faint wail of the first baby born in
the Matanuska Colony.
CHAPTER XV
If I’m the lamp in the valley I’ve
got to burn with a brighter wick.
Colonel Hart called me into Head
quarters and told me I was to have
a schoolhouse as soon as they could
find a building that would suit the
purpose. The real school, he ex
plained, couldn’t go up until next
year. But if the Colony children
could be grouped into classes of
some sort, and a teacher rotated
among them, there might be less
grumbling from the parents and less
hell-raising by the youngsters.
So for two or three weeks, he
proceeded, I'd have to do the best
I could as a circuit-rider teacher.
The first call on the workers, of
course, was to get homes built.
I suggested that a portable black
board would be a help, since a
blackboard was to a teacher what
a throne was to a king, the seat and
symbol of his power.
“All right,” the man at the desk
answered across his mountain of
blueprints. “Tell that bunch of tran
sient workers out there to make
your board and make it pronto. Tell
them I said so.”
So I sallied forth to where six
flannel-shirted CCC workers were
languidly piling lumber at the track I
side. I ignored a quite audible,
Carol to a camp dance and he tells her
of his love. She reminds him of Barbara.
Truly, their paths have crossed many |
times by now. but Barbara still remain*
a barrier to their romance.
Their future seems far from clear.
“Pipe the peach!” as I approached [
them. I merely informed them of
the Administrator’s order for the
concoction of a four-by-six portable
blackboard.
“You can have anything we’ve
got, baby-eyes,” said one. And still
another coyly observed that his own
schooling wasn’t all it should have
been and it seemed about time to
be starting over.
It wasn’t, of course, as bad as it
sounded, being carried on with that
half-respectful and heavy-jointed
jocularity peculiar to the regions
where life is rough and chivalry is
apt to stay in its shirt-sleeves.
And, for all their banter, they as
sured me I’d have my board, neatly
nailed together and ebonized with
a flat coat of lampblack. They even
promised to have it at my cabin the
next day.
I rather overlooked their eager
ness to know just where that cabin
was. And it would all have worked
out better, I imagine, if they hadn’t
first gone over to Wasilla where
flourishes the valley’s only open
bar, and where they were joined by
a dozen or two other transients.
There, at any rate, they plainly
drank more moose-milk than was
good for them. I could hear them
as they came in a body toward my
cabin clearing, singing as they
came:
‘‘Oh, then, my Booska,
Don’t you cry for me,
For I’m off to Matanuska
With the teacher on my knee.”
Someone with an accordion was
leading them in that familiar old pi
oneer tune. But I didn’t find the
newer wording altogether to my
liking.
I closed and fastened my door.
I pretended to be writing at my
table end, sitting there, rather anx
iously, as they worked pole ends
under the sill logs and tried to im
part a ship-at-sea motion to my
small cabin. But they soon tired of
that, finding the shack too heavy to
be converted into a rocking chair.
So they proceeded to serenade me,
more noisily than ever And to the
general din they added a salvo or
two of revolver shots. When I real
ized that one of the faces peering
in at the window was that of the
fire-eating Efic Ericson I found the
last of my patience ebbing away.
When they started to pound on the
door again, this time with one of
their heavier poles, I could see that
it would soon go down under their
blows. And that not only brought
the light of battle into my eye but
prompted me to cross to the dish
shelf and reach for Sock-Eye’s old
revolver. Then I lifted away the
crossbar and swung the door opc-n.
But instead of shrinking back they
began to laugh at me and my threat
ening firearm. They could see hesi
tation, I suppose, in the very way
I held that old six-gun.
It was Eric the Red who swayed
closest to me.
“Mightn’t it go off, angel-eyes?”
he taunted.
“It will,” I warned him, “unless
you stand back.”
I could even feel an impulse to
resent his mockery stiffen my finger
on the trigger. But he was too
quick for me.
With an unexpected upsweet of
his hand he knocked my arm above
my head. The shock of that blow
made the revolver go off, high in
the air, and before the smoke
cleared away they were crowding
in closer, pretending to be fighting
for its possession. I could see, by
their laughing faces, that they rath
er liked my struggles. But they
made it a point to keep my right
hand pinioned above my head.
“It mustn’t lose its temper,” said
Ericson, with his face close to mine.
He even passed mockingly admiring
fingers across my tumbled forelock.
And as I shrank back from that
odious touch a motor truck of bat
tleship-gray came clattering across
the clearing.
It wasn t until I saw him pushing
in through the crowd that I realized
the newcomer was Lander. He scat
tered the startled transients right
and left as he came. A heavier
bodied man, who tried to block his
way, went suddenly flat on the door
yard soil as my rescuer’s fist thud
ded against his jaw. The crowd
was no longer laughing.
Ericson, close to me in the door,
way, half-turned to fathom the rea
son for the sudden silence. And I
could see Lander’s mouth harden
into a grimmer line as he saw
and recognized that half-turned
face. The mallet-like fist, swinging
for the second time, sent my tor
mentor sprawling in across the cab
in floor. He lay there, face-down, as
Lander turned on the resentful
group behind him.
They fell back a little, milling and
shouting as they went. But they at
least fell back. Lander, stooping
down from his towering height, lift
ed Ericson from the floor and flung
him out through the open door. Then
he reached for the revolver still
clutched in my hand and took it
I away from me.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
_v*wW (MpROVED
UNIFORM INTERNATIONAL
SUNDAY I
chool Lesson
By HAROLD L. LUNDQUIST, D. D.
Dean of The Moody Bible Institute
of Chicago.
(Released by Western Newspaper Union.)
Lesson for June 15
| Lesson subjects and Scripture texts se-
I (ected and copyrighted by International
Council of Religious Education; used by
j permission.
PROGRESS IN WORLD MISSIONS
LESSON TEXT—Acts 13:44-52; Galatian*
3:26-29,
GOLDEN TEXT—For ye are all the chil
dren of God by faith In Christ Jesus.—
Galatians 3:26.
“All people” are included in God’s
plan of redemption. When the angel
of the Lord announced the birth of
Christ to the shepherds he said,
“Fear not: for behold I bring you
good tidings of great joy, which shall
be to all people” (Luke 2:10). The
invitation is: “Let him that is
athirst come. And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely”
(Rev. 22:17). The disciples natural
ly and properly first preached the
gospel to the Jews, but the time
came when God was ready to send
them to the Gentiles, that they too
might hear the message of redemp
tion. That historic turning point is
found in our lesson. As Paul and his
fellow workers proceeded from
Paphos on the isle of Cyprus to the
mainland with their message of
Christ’s redemption, they met both
I. Popularity and Persecution
(Acts 13:44, 45).
In the synagogue of Antioch of
Pisidia they were invited to preach,
and Paul was blessed in the presen
tation of a powerful gospel message.
Read it in Acts 13:16-41. It met with
such a response that the people “be
sought that these words might be
preached to them the next Sabbath”
(v. 42), So great was the popularity
of Paul’s message that the whole
city came the next Sabbath “to hear
the Word of God.” What a won
derful sight that must have been
and how the disciples must have re
joiced as they preached the Word.
But wait—there’s a worm in that
red apple of popularity, and its
name is jealousy (v. 45), It caused
the Jews to blaspheme as they con
tradicted Paul’s preaching. Jeal
ousy always makes a fool out of the
one who yields to it. Yet this green
eyed monster is permitted to go
right on destroying, hindering, hurt
ing. In the church and the home,
as well as in the social order, we
let jealousy come in and wreck
friendship, break down reputations,
yes, even block the work of God.
May someone learn the lesson of our
text and turn away from that evil
way—right now!
11. Rejection and Acceptance
(Acts 13:46-52),
All through the record of Scripture
and the history of man to this day
we find some rejecting the grace of
God—others accepting. Those who
reject only prove themselves “un
worthy of eternal life” (v. 46) and
are themselves rejected of God.
The disciples now turn from the
Jews to minister to the Gentiles,
even as had been prophesied (Isa.
42:6; 49:6; Luke 2:31, 32). They
accepted the word of truth and
“were glad, and glorified the word
of God.” Rejection brought eternal
death, but acceptance brought eter
nal life and joy.
They could not keep the good news
to themselves, but had to spread it
abroad. A lighted candle begins at
once to shine. A redeemed soul
longs to bring others to Christ.
Persecution continued; in fact, was
intensified to the point of physical
ejection of the disciples. Were they
downhearted? No! for the joy of
the Lord filled their Holy Spirit-filled
lives. Being filled with the Spirit
means being filled with joy, even in
the midst of persecution.
It really works! Have you given
God a chance to prove it in your
life?
111. Neither Jew nor Greek (Gal.
3:26, 27).
This selection from the letter
which Paul wrote some ten years
later to the people of the area in
which he had now preached reveals
the same truth, that faith in Christ
is primary—and essential—in Chris
tian experience.
In this early life we recognize
distinctions based on nationality,
sex, social position, aad many other
grounds. While these are overem
phasized by most people, they are
legitimate and necessary distinc
tions. But in Christ—ah! there the
differences disappear. We are all
one in Him (v. 28). This is a lesson
which we have not learned even yet,
but our slowness of heart and mind
does not alter God’s truth.
The church is talking much these
days about ecumenicity, which in
plain words means the unity of the
people of the various branches of the
church all over the world. All too
often, however, the proposed basis
of unity rests on a surrender or a
partial surrender of what Paul de
clares to be the essential (the sine
qua non if you wish), which is faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. No other
unity but that which centers in Him,
and a personal relationship to Him,
is sufficient either for this life or for
the life to come.
Wonders of God
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footstep in the sea
And rides upon the storm.
—William Cow-per.
t- 1 - 'V .‘M
\\T ANT to win a prize? This
* * crochet design wins it re
peatedly wherever shown. The
six-inch square, so easily cro
cheted, forms lovely large and
small accessories.
Fighting Bird
One of the most powerful of all
birds', and able to fly long dis
tances, the great skua is seldom
caught, but a dead specimen has
been presented to the museum at
the Smithsonian Institute in Wash
ington. It was brought down in
the Atlantic. The skua lives on
penguins’ eggs and chicks, and
scores of half-eaten birds may be
seen near the sites of penguin col
onies during the hatching season.
A famous British aircraft is
named after the fierce, killing
skua.
New Problems
You can never plan the future
by the past.—Burke.
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Spread of Evil
There are many that despise
half the world; but if there be
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Blind Impulse
Unhappily, in the scales of hu
man judgment the clear dictates
of reason are too often outweighed
by the blind impulse of the pas
sions.—Sir James Frazer.
Imorok
Muon-skid bottle io<-25«
Reasonable Facts
It is not necessary to retain
facts that we may reason concern
ing them.—Beaumarchais.
Safest Investment
Goodness is the only investment
that never fails.—Thoreau.
Apply in Life
To live is not to learn, but to
apply.—Legouve,
any that despise the whole of it, it
is because the other half despises
them.—Colton.