The Purple Flame

Marian Norton started, took one step backward, then stood staring. Startled by this sudden action, the spotted reindeer behind her lunged backward to blunder into the brown one that followed him, and this one was in turn thrown against a white one that followed the two. This set all three of them into such a general mix-up that it was a full minute before the girl could get them quieted and could again allow her eyes to seek the object of her alarm.

As she stood there her pulse quickened, her cheeks flushed and she felt an all but irresistible desire to turn and flee. Yet she held her ground. Had she seen a flash of purple flame? She had thought so. It had appeared to shoot out from the side of the dark bulk that lay just before her.

"Might have been my nerves," she told herself. "Perhaps my eyes are seeing things. T'wouldn't be strange. I came a long way to-day."

She had come a long way over the Arctic tundra that day. Starting but two mornings before from her reindeer herd, close to a hundred miles from Nome, Alaska, she had covered fully two-thirds of that distance in two days.

Her way had lead over low hills, across streams whose waters ran clear and cold toward the sea, down broad stretches of tundra whose soft mosses had oozed moisture at her every step. Here a young widgeon duck, ready to begin his southward flight-for this was the Arctic's autumn time-had stretched his long neck to stare at her. Here a mother white fox had yap-yaped at her, insolently and unafraid. Here she had paused to pick a handful of pink salmon berries or to admire a particularly brilliant array of wild flowers, which, but for her passing, might have been "Born to blush unseen and waste their fragrance on the desert air." Yet always with the three reindeers at her heels, she had pressed onward toward Nome, the port and metropolis of all that vast north country.

The black bulk that loomed out of the darkness before her was a deserted dredging scow, grounded on a sand bar of the Sinrock River. At least she had thought the scow deserted. Until now she had believed and hoped that here she might spend the night, completing her journey on the morrow.

"But now," she breathed. "Yes! Yes! There can be no mistake. There it is again."

Sinking wearily down upon the damp grass, she buried her face in her hands. She was so tired she could cry, yet she must "mush" on through the dark, over the soft, oozing tundra, for fifteen more weary miles. Fifteen miles further down the river was the Sinrock Mission. Here she might hope to find a corral for her deer, and food and rest for herself.

Marian did not cry. Born and bred in the Arctic, she was made of such stern stuff as the Arctic wilderness and the Arctic blizzard alone can mould.

She did not mean to take chances with the occupants of the old dredge. There was something mysterious and uncanny about that purple flame which she now saw shoot straight out, a full two feet, to instantly disappear. She had seen nothing like it before in the Arctic. As she studied the outlines of the dredge, she realized that the light was within it; that it flashed across a small square window in the side of the old scow.

"No," she reasoned, "I can't afford to take chances with them. I must go on down the river. I can make Sinrock."

Speaking to her reindeer, she tugged at their lead straps. One at a time they started forward until at last they again took up the weary swish-swish across the tundra.

Once Marian turned to look back. Again she caught the flash of a purple flame.

Had she known how this purple flame was to be mixed up with her own destiny, she might have paused to look longer. As it was, she gave herself over to wondering what sort of people would take up their habitation in that half tumbled-down dredge, and what their weird light might signify.

She had heard of the strange rites performed by those interesting child-people, the Eskimos, in the worship of the spirits of dead animals. For one of these, the "Bladder Festival," they saved all the bladders of polar bears, walrus and seals which they had killed, and at last, after four days of ceremony, committed them again to the waters of the ocean.

"They burn wild parsnip stalks in that festival," Marian mused, "but that purple flame was not made by burning weeds. It was the brilliant flame of a blue-hot furnace flaring up, or something like that. Probably wasn't Eskimo at all. Probably-well, it may be some Orientals who have stolen away up here to worship their idols by burning strange fires."

She thought of all the foreign people who had crossed the Pacific to take up their homes in the far north city of Nome, which was just forty miles away.

"Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Russians, and members of nameless tribes," she whispered to herself, as if half afraid they might hear her. "Might be any of these. Might-"

Suddenly she broke off her thinking and stopped short. Just before her a form loomed out of the dark. Another and yet another appeared.

For a moment she stood there rigid, scarcely breathing. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

"Reindeer," she exclaimed. "I was frightened by some reindeer. Oh, well," she said, after a moment's reflection, "I might excuse myself for that. I'm tired out with marching over this soggy tundra. Besides, I guess that purple flame got on my nerves. All the same," she avowed stoutly, "I'll solve that mystery yet. See if I don't."

There for the time the subject was dismissed. The presence of these few reindeer before her told of more not far away, a whole herd of them. Where there were reindeer there would be herders, and herders lived in tents. Here there would be a warm, dry place to rest and sleep.

"Must be the Sinrock herd," she concluded.

In this she was right. Soon, off in the distance, she caught the yellow glow of candlelight shining through a tent wall. Fifteen minutes later she was seated upon a rolled-up sleeping bag, chatting gayly with two black-eyed Eskimo girls who were keeping their brothers' tents while those worthies were out looking for some stray fauns.

After her three reindeers had been relieved of their packs and set free to graze, Marian had dined on hardtack and juicy reindeer chops. Then she crawled deep down into her soft reindeer skin sleeping bag, to snatch a few hours of rest before resuming her journey to Nome.

Before her eyelids closed in sleep her tireless brain went over the problem before her and the purpose of her fatiguing journey. She had come all this way to meet a relative whom she had never seen-a cousin, Patsy Martin, from Louisville, Kentucky.

"Kentucky," she whispered the word for the hundredth time. "Way down south. Imagine a girl who was brought up down there coming here for a winter to endure our cold, snow, and blizzards. She's probably slim, willowy, and tender as a baby; dresses in thin silks, and all that. Why did father send her up here? Looks like it was bad enough to have four hundred reindeer to herd, without having a sixteen year old cousin from Ken-tuck-ie to look after."

She yawned sleepily, yet her mind went on thinking of her reindeer herd and her problems. Though she had lived all but one year of her life in the far north, she had never, until two months before, spent a single night in a reindeer herder's camp. But it was no longer a novel experience.

Until recently her father had been a prosperous merchant in Nome. Financial reverses had come and he had been obliged to sell his store. The reindeer herd, which he had taken as payment for a debt, was the only wealth he had saved from the crash. Following this, his doctor had ordered him to leave the rigorous climate of the North and to seek renewed health in the States. Much as he regretted it, he had been obliged to ask his daughter to give up her studies and to take charge of the herd until a favorable opportunity came for selling it.

"And that won't be soon, I guess," Marian sighed. "Reindeer herds are a drug on the market. Trouble is, it's too hard to dispose of the meat. And if you can't sell reindeer meat you can't make any money. Now, added to this, comes this cousin, Patsy Martin."

Her father had written that Patsy was given to over-study, and that Mr. Martin, her uncle, thinking that a year in the northern wilds would do her good, had asked permission to send her up to be with Marian. Marian's father had consented, and Patsy was due on the next boat.

"She'll be company for you," her father had written.

"I do wonder if she will?" Marian sighed again. "Oh, well, no use to be a pessimist," and at that she turned over and fell asleep.

It was a surprised Marian who three days later found herself caught in the firm embrace of her cousin, Patsy. Patsy was two years younger than Marian. There could be no missing the fact that she was much slimmer and more graceful, and that there was strength in her slender arms was testified to by her warm embrace.

When at last Marian got a look at Patsy's face, she found it almost as brown as her own. And as for freckles, there could scarcely have been a greater number on one person's face. Her mouth, too, had lines that Marian liked. It was a firm, determined little mouth that said: "When I have a hill to climb I run up it."

Never had Marian beheld such a wealth of color as was displayed in Patsy's winter wardrobe. Orange and red sweaters; great, broad scarfs of mixed grays; gay tams; short plaid skirts; heavy brown corduroy knickers; these and many other garments of exquisite workmanship and design were spread out before her.

"And the fun of it all is," giggled Patsy, "we're going to play we're twins and wear one another's clothes. You've got a spotted fawnskin parka, I know you have. I'm going to wear that, right away-this afternoon. Going to have my picture taken in it and send it back to my school friends."

"All right," agreed Marian. "You can have anything I own. I'm heavier than you are, but arctic clothing doesn't fit very tight, so I guess it will be all right."

As if to clinch the bargain, she wound an orange colored scarf about her neck and went strutting across the room.

A half hour later, while Patsy was out having her picture taken, Marian walked slowly up and down the room. She was thinking, and her thoughts were long, long thoughts.

"I like her," she said at last. "I'm going to like her more and more. But it's going to be hard for her sometimes, fearfully hard. When the blizzards sweep in from the north and we're all shut in; when no one comes and no one goes, and the nights are twenty hours long; when the dogs howl their lonesome song-it's going to be hard for her then. But I'll do the best I can for her. Her father was right-it will do her a world of good. It will teach her the slow and steady patience of those who live in the North, and that's a good thing to know."

Three weeks later the two girls, toiling wearily along after two reindeer sleds, approached the black bulk of the old scow in the river, the one in which Marian had seen the mysterious purple flame. Again it was night. They were on their way north to the reindeer herd. Traveling over the first soft snow of winter, they had made twenty miles that day. For the last hour Patsy had not uttered a single word. She had tramped doggedly after the sled. Only her drooping shoulders told how weary she was. Marian had hoped against hope that they would this time find the old dredge deserted.

"It would make a nice dry place to camp," she said to herself, as she brought her reindeer to a halt and stood studying the dark bulk. Patsy dropped wearily down upon a loaded sled.

Just as Marian was about to give the word to go forward, there flashed across the square window a jet of purple flame.

"Oh!" exclaimed Marian.

"What is it?" asked Patsy.

"The purple flame!"

"The purple flame? What's that?"

"You know as much as I do; only I know it's there in that old dredge. And since it's there, we can't stop here for the night. We must go on."

"Oh, but-but I can't!" Patsy half sobbed. "You don't know, you can't know how tired I am."

"Yes, I know," said Marian softly. "I've been just that way; but we dare not stop here. The people in the old scow might have dogs and they would attack our reindeer. We must go on; five miles more."

"And then-"

"Camp beneath the stars."

"All right," said Patsy, with a burst of determination. "Let's get it over quick."

Again they moved slowly forward, but neither of them forgot the purple flame. Three times they saw it flash across the window.

"That place must be haunted," Marian sighed as she turned to give her full attention to the lagging reindeer.