CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Tell in your own words the part of the story which interested you most.

2. What were the most pressing and important needs of the lost man? Name the one which caused him the greatest difficulty. Which of his needs do we all experience?

3. Name the different ways in which his knife was useful. Were any of the other articles in his pockets except his handkerchief of help to him?

4. Did any of the special human powers mentioned on p. 10 help the lost man?

5. Volunteer work for Boy Scouts or Camp Fire Girls:

a. Show the class how to make fire with flint and steel.

b. Show the class how to make fire with a bow-drill.

c. Explain how to find directions by examining trees (see p. 14). d. Put on the blackboard a drawing which will explain the rabbit

trap described on p. 14.

ADDITIONAL READINGS. - I. "The Discovery of the North," R. E. Peary, in National Geographic Magazine, 20: 896–915. 2. Adrift on an Ice Pan," W. T. Grenfell. 3. "Dr. Grenfell's Winter Practice," N. Duncan, in Book One, pp. 278-282. 4. "Peary as a Leader," D. B. MacMillan, in National Geographic Magazine, 37: 293-322. 5. "Roald Amundsen," M. H. Wade, Light Bringers, 196-242. 6. "Robert Edwin Peary," ibid., 1–63.

2. TURKEY RED

FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD

This story is made up of four main parts which are put together somewhat like the links in a chain, as follows:

See if you can tell where each link ends and a new one begins.

The old mail-sled running between Haney and Le Beau, in the days when Dakota was still a Territory, was nearing the end of its hundred-mile route.

Dakota was a desolate country in those days: geographers

still described it as The Great American Desert. Never was there anything as lonesome as that endless stretch of snow, excepting the same desert burned brown by the hot wind of summer. Nothing but sky and plain and its voice, the wind, unless you might count a lonely sod shack, miles away from a neighbor, miles from anywhere.

There were three men in the sled: Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty, belligerently Western; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a boy, living on his claim near the end of the stageline; the third, a stranger from "the East." He had given his name as Smith, and was as inquisitive about the country as he was silent about his business there. Dan plainly disapproved of him.

They had driven the last cold miles in silence when the stage-driver turned to his neighbor. "Letter didn't say anything about coming out to look over the country, did it?"

Hillas shook his head. "It was like all the rest, Dan. Don't want to build a railroad until the country's settled." "Can't they see the other side? What it means to the folks already here to wait for it?”

The stranger thrust a suddenly interested face above the handsome collar of his fur coat. He looked out over the waste of snow.

"You say there's no timber here?"

Dan maintained unfriendly silence, and Hillas answered: "Nothing but scrub on the banks of the creeks."

The boy shook his head. "We're too busy rustling for something to eat first. And you can't develop mines without tools."

"Tools?"

"Yes, a railroad first of all."

Dan shifted the lines from one fur-mittened hand to the other, as he looked along the horizon a bit anxiously. The stranger shivered visibly.

"It's a God-forsaken country. Why don't you get out?"

Hillas, following Dan's glance around the blurred sky-line, answered absently: "Usual answer is, 'Leave? It's all I can do to stay here.""

Smith looked at him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen this frozen wilderness?"

Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the spring." "I see!" The edged voice snapped. "Visionaries!” Hillas's eyes opened again, wide. He spoke under his breath as if he were alone.

"Visionary, pioneer, American. Perhaps that is what we are." Suddenly the endurance in his voice went down before a wave of bitterness. "The first pioneers had to wait, too. How could they stand it so long!"

The young shoulders drooped as he thrust stiff fingers deep into his coat pockets. He slowly withdrew his right hand holding a parcel wrapped in brown paper. He tore a flap in the cover, looked at the brightly colored contents, and returned the parcel, his chin a little higher.

Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly. "It won't be snow. Look like a blizzard to you, Hillas?"

The traveller sat up. "Blizzard?"

"Yes," Dan drawled, "the real Dakota article, where blizzards are made. None of your eastern imitations, but a ninety-mile wind. Only one good thing about a blizzard it's over in a hurry. You get to shelter or you freeze to death."

A gust of wind flung a powder of snow stingingly against their faces. The traveller withdrew his head turtle-wise within the handsome collar in final condemnation. "No man in his senses would ever have deliberately come here to live." Dan turned. "Wouldn't, eh?"

"No."

"You're American ?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was born here. It's my country."

"Frontiersmen, same as we. You're living on what they did. We're getting this frontier ready for those who come after. Want our children to have a better chance than we had. Our reason's same as theirs. Country's all right if we had a railroad."

"Humph!" With a contemptuous look across the desert. "Where's your freight, your grain, cattle"

"West-bound freight, coal, feed, seed-grain, and more neighbors."

"One-sided bargain. A road that hauls empties one way doesn't pay."

The angles of Dan's jaw showed white. "Maybe. Ever get a chance to pay your debt to those Pilgrim pioneers? Ever take it? Think the stock was worth saving?"

He lifted his whip-handle toward a pin-point of light across the stretch of snow. "Mis' Clark lives there, a mile back from the stage-road. Clark's down in Yankton earning money to keep them going. She's alone with her baby, holding down the claim."

The whip-stock followed the empty horizon half round the compass to a lighted red square, two miles away. "Mis' Carson died in the spring. Carson stayed until he was too poor to get away. There are three children — oldest's Katy, just eleven." Dan's words failed, but his eyes told. "Somebody will brag of them as ancestors some day."

Dan's jaw squared as he levelled his whip-handle straight at the traveler. "I've answered your questions, now you answer mine! We know your opinion of the country — you're not traveling for pleasure or your health. What are you here for?"

"Business. My own!"

"There's two kinds of business out here this time of year. 'Tisn't healthy for either of them." Dan's words were measured and clipped.

A gray film dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked over the heads of the horses, and they broke into a quick trot.

66

'Hillas," Dan's voice came sharply, "stand up and look for the light on Clark's guide-pole about a mile to the right. God help us if it isn't burning."

Hillas struggled up, one clumsy mitten thatching his eyes. "I don't see it, Dan. We can't be more than a mile away. Hadn't you better break toward it?"

"Got to keep the track 'til we

see

light!"

The wind tore the words from his mouth. The leaders disappeared in a wall of snow, but Dan's lash whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull. "See it, Hillas ?"

"No, Dan."

Tiger-like the storm leaped again. The horses swerved, bunched, backed, tangled. Dan stood up shouting his orders above the storm.

Again a breathing space. As it came, Hillas shouted: "I see it there, Dan! It's a red light. She's in trouble."

The sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the leaders swung sidewise before the lashing wind. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them with far-reaching lash, then the off leader went down. Dan felt behind him for Hillas and shoved the reins against his arm.

-

"I'll get him up or cut leaders - loose! If I don't come back-drive to light. Don't get out!"

Dan disappeared in the white fury. There were sounds of a struggle; the sled jerked sharply and stood still. Slowly it strained forward.

Hillas was standing, one foot outside on the runner, as they traveled a team's length ahead. He gave a cry: "Dan! Dan!" and gripped a furry bulk that lumbered up out of the drift.

"All right son." Dan reached for the reins.