“Him no come. Him go up river. Me no see him. You fadder, yaas.”
“What can the man mean?” asked Phil, in despair of obtaining any intelligible explanation and turning to the missionary for aid.
From that time until they reached the station, which they found in a state of excitement over the news, the missionary questioned Kurilla in his own tongue, and by the time they were inside the house he had gleaned all the information the Indian possessed.
“He says,” began the missionary, turning to his eager audience, “that he obtained his news from a Nulato Indian, who left St. Michaels only three days ago, and came by way of the Divide and the Anvik River. He is a friend of Kurilla, and spent a couple of hours with him this morning, after which he continued his journey. According to him, as understood by Kurilla, a schooner containing Phil’s father and another white man reached the Redoubt soon after the Chimo left. The other white man was sick, so that none of the natives saw him; but Phil’s father spent his whole time making inquiries of every one about the boys, and where they had gone, what sort of a man they had gone with, and what chance there was of overtaking them.”
“I am afraid he did not receive a very flattering description of the man they had gone with,” remarked Gerald Hamer, who was by this time out of the hospital and able to join the pleasant family circle.
“About that same time,” continued the missionary, “the revenue-cutter Bear came down from the northward, bringing the crew of a wrecked whaler, so that for a while there were many white men and much confusion at St. Michaels. Then both the Bear and the schooner sailed away, taking most of the white men with them, but Phil’s father stayed behind. By-and-by news came from Nulato that the Chimo had passed that point without stopping, on her way up the river.”
“Which is news indeed,” muttered Gerald Hamer, “seeing that Nulato is a good one hundred and fifty miles beyond here.”
“Isn’t it?” laughed the missionary. “And, to cap the climax, the same runner that brought that information announced that you would undoubtedly be frozen in before you had gone much farther, whereupon Phil’s father began making preparations to follow and overtake you by dog-sledges. He started the day before our informant left the Redoubt, and was accompanied by two other white men, though whether one of them was he who also came on the schooner, Kurilla did not find out. So there you have the whole story as straight as it can be obtained; but, considering the channels through which it has come, there is such an opportunity for errors that I should not be at all surprised if a number had crept into it.”
“Nor I,” admitted Phil, “though I can’t doubt that my father has arrived in this part of the country, impossible as it may seem, for surely no one else could have any object in announcing himself as my father, or going to such trouble in hunting me up. Nor can I doubt that, having conceived some absurd notion that I am likely to get into trouble, the dear old pop has set forth on a wild-goose chase after me. I fancy I can see him at this moment politely trying to breathe, or to swallow raw seal, in some native hut, or careering over the river behind a team of runaway dogs, or wrestling with the intricacies of an Eskimo whip, or having some of the other delightful experiences that he is certain to encounter. There is one thing that won’t bother him, though, and that is snow-shoeing, for he learned that long ago in Canada.”
“How fond he must be of you!” said the missionary’s wife.