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A Lomen power-boat, run by Lapps, carried them to Choris Peninsula, where for a week Alan remained with Lomen and his huge herd of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on to greater haste.
Romance and glamor and the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs. But they were beginning to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even the Government was waking up, after proving there was something besides graft in railroad building north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen at Washington had listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen.
A number of things occurred to him all at once, as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck. Then he went to his cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau. These were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington. It was nearly midnight when he had finished. He wondered if Mary Standish was asleep.
He remembered it had been that way with his father, who was always happiest when in the deep mountains or the unending tundras. And so Alan thrilled with an inner gladness when his business was finished and the day came for him to leave Nome. Carl Lomen went with him as far as the big herd on Choris Peninsula.
He did nothing but lie on the Lomen porch on a soft rug, or wander about with a doll in his mouth, much as a certain type of woman lolls through life carrying a lap dog. Then there was the tramp Nomie, the pet of the Miners' Union, and the Fire Department.
And he began thinking of the Range. That was pleasanter. For the tenth time he figured out how long it would be before the glacial-twisted ramparts of the Endicott Mountains rose up in first welcome to his home-coming. Carl Lomen, following on the next ship, would join him at Unalaska. They would go on to Nome together.
There were moments when her eyes were shining softly upon him, her lips smiling, her presence so real he might have spoken to her if Lomen had not been at his side. He did not fight against these visionings.
Nomie was everywhere, barking delightedly, and giving each team an impartial greeting. Oolik Lomen with his latest doll, acquired that very morning from some careless mother more intent upon sporting affairs than domestic duties, paraded superciliously up and down, plainly bored by the proceedings; but attending because it was the correct thing to do.
They, too, were builders. Fear of God and love of land lay deep in their souls, and side by side with their men-folk they went on in this epic struggle for the building of a nation at the top of the world. Many times during this week Alan felt it in his heart to speak of Mary Standish. But in the end, not even to Carl Lomen did word of her escape his lips.
Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it to his amazement was a pistol. He recognized the weapon one of a brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented to him several Christmas seasons ago.
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