“Il-a-can-a-muck! Il-a-can-a-muck!” (Thank you! Thank you!) they shouted in a chorus.
It goes without saying that the entire party attended the Christmas tree festival and all enjoyed it to the full. Surely nothing could have been more delightful than the privilege of watching the eyes of a hundred Eskimo children as they saw the tree for the first time.
“See!” Mary heard little No-wad-luk exclaim to her small friend. “See! There are all the little people who can walk and talk and go to sleep.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” was Kud-lucy’s proud reply. “They did come. They did walk all the way miles and miles. And they did get here just in time.”
Florence and Mary were scarcely expecting presents. They got them all the same. They were long, slim socks made of fur taken from the legs of a spotted reindeer fawn and they were filled with gold nuggets. On Florence’s was a tag saying “From a long-lost grandfather,” and on Mary’s “To little Miss Santa Claus.” Never, I am sure, had there been a merrier Christmas Eve than this.
Christmas morning broke bright and clear. After bidding their new-found friends good-bye and listening to the Eskimos’ “A-lin-a-muck” (Good-bye) and “Il-a-can-a-muck” (We thank you) the happy party sailed away for Nome, where they enjoyed a late evening feast of roast venison, wild cranberry sauce, plum pudding and all the trimmings.
Three days later Mary and Florence were back in the rustic cabin on Rainbow Farm. Florence had urged her grandfather to accompany her to the valley. He had refused, one airplane ride had been quite enough, and then, when one has lived in the far north thirty-five years—ah, well, perhaps next spring he would come down on the boat and they would buy a claim in her happy valley, who could tell? So she had left him, happy in the realization that his dream of a lifetime had at last come true.
And now since they had used up their tickets to adventure, a long winter in a peaceful valley lay before them.
But there was still Madam Chicaski to wonder about.
On a wintry morning, three days after her last happy landing, chancing to look out of the kitchen window, Florence, to her unbounded surprise, saw the powerful Madam Chicaski wielding Bill’s pick in a most surprising manner. What was more surprising still, she was executing a vigorous attack upon the great stump over which bright flowers had cascaded all summer long.