Dick Kent with the Malemute Mail
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Dick Kent with the Malemute Mail, by Milo Milton Oblinger
By MILTON RICHARDS
AUTHOR OF “Dick Kent with the Mounted Police” “Dick Kent in the Far North” “Dick Kent with the Eskimos” “Dick Kent, Fur Trader”
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York
Copyright MCMXXVII THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Made in the United States of America
A discouraged, dishevelled human figure crossed a narrow woodland to the west of a chain of hills, thence made his way slowly down to a sun-baked valley or depression, many miles in extent. The valley was rough, broken, repellent to the eye. For the most part unverdant, it ran in a northeasterly direction—bleak, uninviting, monotonous—here and there rutted with long gray drifts of silt and sand.
No trail of any sort traversed that sinister, malevolent wild. Except for an occasional poplar or charred, broken stump of spruce or jack-pine, there were few landmarks to relieve the discouraging prospect. However, at one end of the valley, scintillating like a silver coin in the bright rays of the sun, the traveller discerned a small lake, fringed with green.
In the center of the narrow green strip, on one side of the lake, stood the cabin of a prospector. The traveller regarded it impassively for a moment before he went on.
Still hours high, the sun struck its bright rays across the land: a glare of white in the somnolent valley, a sheen of mirrored brilliance where it radiated over the placid, blue waters of the lake. A deep hush had fallen over the earth. Below the wide, azure arch of the sky feathered voyagers of the air coasted silently to unknown haunts, apparently the only living things in the dead gray world around them.
The figure hurried on. The sight of the cabin had acted as a slight spur to his jaded body. He pushed forward steadily until he had made his way over the narrow strip of green and up the path to the house. He knocked listlessly at the door, then stood silently, as might a criminal awaiting the heavy hand of the law.
