The Alaskan

by James Oliver Curwood

“And remember,” Sandy told each of them, “the chances are she’ll wash ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes ashore at all.”

In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.

Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy’s wife were in the cabin when he returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the others had been. He knew. The woman’s eyes told him, the almost mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not one of them spoke of Mary Standish.

Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River, and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children—a lot of them. Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman’s face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.

“We’re building a new cabin,” he said, “and there’s two rooms in it specially for kids.”

There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf’s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt, should think of such a matter at all.

The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with Olaf at the wheel of the Norden. It was sunset when they returned, and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and the treachery of them.

Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days—probably weeks—if it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea. That was what he called it—“a peaceful resting-place”—and in his earnestness to soothe another’s grief he blundered still more deeply into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick cabin.

Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.

“You—you didn’t find her?” she asked.