Where the Sun Swings North | Page 2

had Add-'em-up done to the books. Down in
San Francisco the directors of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company
had long suspected it no doubt, but it was not for nothing that Paul
Kilbuck was known up and down the coast of Alaska as the White
Chief. No other man in the North had such power and influence among
the Thlinget tribes. No other man sent in such quantities of prime pelts;
hence the White Chief of Katleean had never been obliged to give too
strict an accounting of his stewardship. Taking what belongs to a
company is not, in the elastic code of the North, considered stealing.
"God is high above and the Czar is far away," said the plundering,
roistering old Russians of Baranoff's day, and the spirit in the isolated
posts had not changed, though Russian adventurers come no more to
rape Alaska of her riches, and the Stars and Stripes now floats over the
old-time Russian stronghold at Sitka.

For eighteen years Kilbuck had been the agent of the Company. In
trading-posts up and down the coast where the trappers and prospectors
gather to outfit, many tales of the White Chief were afloat: his trips to
the Outside[1]; his lavish spending of money; his hiring of private cars
to take him from Seattle to New York; his princely entertainment of
beautiful women. In every story told of Paul Kilbuck there were
women. Sometimes they were white, but more often they were dusky
beauties of the North.
Among the several dark-eyed Thlinget women who occupied the
mysterious quarters back of the log store, there was always rejoicing
when the White Chief returned from his visits to the States. He was a
generous master, bringing back with him many presents from the land
of the white people--rings, beads, trinkets, and yards of bright colored
silks. The favorites of his household fondled these gifts for a time with
soft, guttural cries of delight and gentle strokings of their slim, brown
hands, and then laid them away in fantastically carved Indian chests of
yellow cedar.
Perhaps the strangest of these gifts had been a pair of homing pigeons,
which had thrived and multiplied under the care of Add-'em-up Sam. A
fluttering of wings now outside the doorway bespoke the presence of
some of them, and Kilbuck stirred in his chair and opened his eyes.
He had been many hours alone in the store, but he had been prepared
for that today. The entire post of Katleean was getting ready for the
Potlatch, an Indian festival scheduled for the near future. For this
occasion Kayak Bill, in his carefully secreted still across the lagoon,
had completed a particularly potent batch of moonshine, known locally
as hootch. The arrival, earlier in the afternoon, of the jocose old
hootch-maker with a canoe-load of his fiery beverage, had been a
signal for a gathering at his cabin across the courtyard. From the
sounds that now floated out on the late afternoon air, he must already
have distributed generous samples of his brew.
The White Chief rose from his chair and reached for another cigarette.
As usual, he tossed it away after one long, deep inhalation. Before the
smoke cleared from his head, he was crossing the store room with his

easy panther tread--the result of former years of moccasin-wearing.
In the open doorway he paused, leaned against the portal and hooked
one thumb beneath his scarlet belt. His narrow eyes swept the scene
before him. Across the bay, between purple hills, a valley lay dreaming
in rose-lavender mist. Blue above the August haze was a glimpse of a
glacier, and farther back, peaks rose tier upon tier in the vague,
amethystine distance.
Suddenly the quiet beauty was shot through with the sound of loud
voices and snatches of song issuing from the cabin of Kayak Bill. The
trader listened with a smile that was half a sneer. He himself never
drank while at the post, deeming that it lessened his influence with the
Indians. But among the secrets of his own experience were memories
of wild days and nights aboard visiting schooners, at the end of which
prone in the captain's bunk, he had lain for hours in alcoholic oblivion.
The voices from the cabin ceased abruptly. Then like the bellow of a
fog horn on a lonely northern sea came Kayak Bill's deep bass:
"Take me north of old Point Barrow Where there ain't no East or West;
Where man has a thirst that lingers And where moonshine tastes the
best; Where the Arctic ice-pack hovers 'Twixt Alaska and the Pole,
And there ain't no bloomin' fashions To perplex a good man's soul."
There was a momentary pause followed by a hubbub of masculine
voices apparently in a dispute as to how the song should