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A hundred questions he had to ask, and the tongues of Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were crowded with the things they desired to tell him. Their voices filled the room with a paean of triumph.
"Almost," admitted Stampede. "And I wouldn't have blamed you. She's that kind the kind that makes you feel anything said against her is a lie. And I'm going to believe that paper is a lie until tomorrow. Will you take a message to Tautuk and Amuk Toolik when you go out? I'm having breakfast at seven. Tell them to come to my cabin with their reports and records at eight.
From somewhere he had been given the priceless heritage of dreaming pleasantly, and Keok was very real, with her swift smile and mischievous face, and Nawadlook's big, soft eyes were brighter than when he had gone away. He saw Tautuk, gloomy as usual over the heartlessness of Keok.
"I would kill him," said Tautuk quietly. It was this night the temptation was strongest upon Alan. Why should Mary Standish go back, he asked himself. She had surrendered everything to escape from the horror down there. She had given up fortune and friends. She had scattered convention to the four winds, had gambled her life in the hazard, and in the end had come to him!
I know it. Only you are so stupid, and so slow, and so hopeless as a lover that she is punishing you while she has the right before she marries you. But if she should marry someone else, what would you do?" "My brother?" asked Tautuk. "No." "A relative?" "No." "A friend?" "No. A stranger. Someone who had injured you, for instance; someone Keok hated, and who had cheated her into marrying him."
He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer happiness.
It was joined by another, and still another, until there was such a sound that Alan knew Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and Topkok and Tatpan and all the others were splitting their throats in welcome, and with it very soon came a series of explosions that set the earth athrill under their feet. "Bums!" growled Stampede. "She's got Chink lanterns hanging up all about, too.
But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like that was in Alan's eyes. He opened the door. "I'll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight. Good night, Alan!" "Good night!" Alan watched Stampede's figure until it had disappeared before he closed the door.
But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the strange change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the question, for more than any others of his people did he love these two missing comrades of the tundras. It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened but he would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told him of that.
In that way, with the beautiful world swimming in sunshine and golden tundra haze until foothills and mountains were like castles in a dream, Alan Holt set off with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik, leaving Stampede and Keok and Nawadlook at the corral bars, with Stampede little regretting that he was left behind to guard the range.
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