CHAPTER

     I the man who never came back
    II the question
   III Foster too
    IV Snoqualmie pass and A broken axle
     V apples of Eden
    VI nip and tuck
   VII A night on the mountain road
  VIII the bravest woman he ever knew
    IX the dunes of the Columbia
     X A woman’s heart-strings
    XI the loophole
   XII “Whom the gods would destroy”
  XIII “A little streak of luck”
   XIV on board the Aquila
    XV the story of the tenas papoose
   XVI the alternative
  XVII “All these things will I give thee”
 XVIII the option
   XIX lucky banks and the pink chiffon
    XX kernel and peach
   XXI Foster’s hour
  XXII as man to man
 XXIII the day of publication
  XXIV snowbound in the rockies and “Fit as A moose”
   XXV the ides of march
  XXVI the everlasting door
 XXVII Kismet, an act of god
XXVIII surrender
  XXIX back to Hesperides vale
   XXX the junior defendant
  XXXI Tisdale of Alaska—­and Washington, D.C. 
 XXXII the other document
XXXIII the calf-bound notebook

THE RIM OF THE DESERT

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME BACK

It is in October, when the trails over the wet tundra harden, and before the ice locks Bering Sea, that the Alaska exodus sets towards Seattle; but there were a few members of the Arctic Circle in town that first evening in September to open the clubhouse on the Lake Boulevard with an informal little supper for special delegate Feversham, who had arrived on the steamer from the north, on his way to Washington.

The clubhouse, which was built of great, hewn logs, with gabled eaves, stood in a fringe of firs, and an upper rear balcony afforded a broad outlook of lake and forest, with the glaciered heights of the Cascade Mountains breaking a far horizon.  The day had been warm, but a soft breeze, drawing across this veranda through the open door, cooled the assembly room, and, lifting one of the lighter hangings of Indian-wrought elk leather, found the stairs and raced with a gentle rustle through the lower front entrance back into the night.  It had caressed many familiar things on its way, for the walls were embellished with trophies from the big spaces where winds are born.  There were skins of polar and Kodiak bear; of silver and black fox; there were antlered heads set above the fireplace and on the rough, bark-seamed pillars that supported the unceiled roof.  A frieze of pressed and framed Alaska flora finished the low gallery which extended around three sides of the hall, and the massive chairs, like the polished banquet board, were of crocus-yellow Alaska cedar.

The delegate, who had come out to tide-water over the Fairbanks-Valdez trail, was describing with considerable heat the rigors of the journey.  The purple parka, which was the regalia of the Circle, seemed to increase his prominence of front and intensified the color in his face to a sort of florid ripeness.