He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself
carefully. He heard the popping of individual
firecrackers and the louder bang of one of the “giants”
that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through
a hollow, and then up again to the opposite crest.
It was as he had thought. He could see Keok a
hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen
tree, and as he looked, she tossed another bunch of
sputtering crackers away from her. The others
were probably circled about her, out of his sight,
watching her performance. He continued cautiously,
making his way so that he could come up behind a thick
growth of bush unseen, within a dozen paces of them.
At last he was as near as that to her, and Keok was
still standing on the log with her back toward him.
It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others.
And something about Keok puzzled him, too. And
then his heart gave a sudden throb and seemed to stop
its beating. It was not Keok on the log.
And it was not Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped
out from his hiding-place. The slender figure
of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw
the glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He
called out.
“Keok!”
Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned
his brain?
And then:
“Mary!” he called. “Mary Standish!”
She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt’s
face was the color of gray rock. It was the dead
he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish
who stood there on the old cottonwood log, shooting
firecrackers in this evening of his home-coming.
CHAPTER XIII
After that one calling of her name Alan’s voice
was dead, and he made no movement. He could not
disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth.
The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body,
even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And
then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some
force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his arms
hung limp. She was there, alive! He could
see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color
come into it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped
down from the log and came toward him. It had
all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed a long
time to Alan.
He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was
as if she were floating up to him out of the cold
mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in
his face. It must have been something that startled
her. Vaguely he realized this and made an effort
to recover himself.
“You almost frightened me,” she said.
“We have been expecting you and watching for
you, and I was out there a few minutes ago looking
back over the tundra. The sun was in my eyes,
and I didn’t see you.”
