“What is it, sir?” chorused Tad and Ned in one voice.
“That accounts for Red Whiskers. That accounts for his presence on–” The skipper checked himself suddenly. “But no matter. 23It isn’t for me to say.” He lapsed into thoughtful silence. “Well, what do you think of the story?” he asked a few moments later.
“It is all very remarkable,” answered Butler. “Where are they going–their destination, I mean?”
“You never can tell. They have explored pretty much all of the country within a few hundred miles of here, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had stumbled over the right place dozens of times and didn’t know it. But there is one significant fact. They have brought up a lot of equipment this time. It looks as if they thought they had the place pretty well located. It certainly does look that way. There’s another thing I forgot to tell you. This place, this pass where the gold is supposed to lie, is the abode of a great and angry spirit.”
“A really, truly spirit?” questioned Walter wonderingly.
“I can’t say about the really-truly business,” replied Captain Petersen, with a grin. “I am telling you the story as I have heard it. Had Old Hoots’ tribe known that the Doctor went in there and dug out gold which he salted away they would have put him to death. It’s a sacred place. It was then, and I’ll wager it is now. You may believe that the superstition has been handed down.”
24“But the Indians up here now are not at all savage, are they?” asked Butler.
“Perhaps not where the white man has taken possession in force. But you get into the far interior–there is a great deal of Alaska that the white man knows very little about yet–and you will find them savage enough, provided they think they have you in a pocket, and especially so if you interfere with any of their religious customs or beliefs. In these respects they are simply human.”
“I should call them inhuman,” observed the fat boy.
“I don’t blame them,” nodded Tad.