Frederick R. Bechdolt

“ Red Larson spent his money over this here bar. He blowed it, went to sea, come back, paid me, and run a score ag'in. That was the way of it with him and me. A big, red-headed chunk of a man—wild in port and stiddy at sea! And he was that careful to settle up first thing whenever he come back. Ye get me?
“He went to cod fishing; then he went out with the salmon-packer's fleet. He was a net fisher and got good wages fer the summer. ”

“ I figure the Star of Austria must have foundered out to sea some time last month. There's a hundred dollars on the book here, went down with her. Let me see—let me see.”
He peered at the thumb-worn account book, turning the pages, muttering names: “Pet Olson, Three Fingered George, Manuel, Boots Leary.” He picked out a half-dozen who had drunk and roistered here, and had departed from his doors in his debt. “Good men!” said he and sighed. “Lord love ye, lad, I had it give and take with them over this here bar, not six months ago. That's the way it goes when ye're a sailor-man. ”

“ I told ye the woman was good to look at; and ye remember Red Larson: big as a horse and built from the ground up. Well that there boy was as fine as the two of them together. A good breed, all right, they had made. I give him my jack-knife before his mother had the fish hot fer me. It got me the only pleasant look she handed me.
“She had cooked the salmon white man's style all right; and there was some mountain goat meat, and high bush cranberries, fixed up without any seal grease or other of them Siwash trimmings. I eat until I could not put more inside of me—until I could hardly wiggle. ”

“ But ye have heard yarns in this here place before, a-many yarns, and some of them was main strange. Why this here book of mine”—he waved his hand toward the bar where the worn ledger reposed—“has carried a many a man. And money has come back to me sometimes after years has gone by. From far ports, too—Singapore, Vladivostock, Port Said, Antwerp. And onct a Kanaka fetched me four bits from Boots Leary, him that went down with the Star of Austria; Leary had given him the money up in the Arctic, ice bound. Yes, sir! The sea is big.” ”

“ And, though she was all for Red Larson, she had too much sense to let him go back to his own kind. She put it up to him straight. Either go away with her, or leave her. No two ways about it. He could have her for his klootchman.
“He was crazy fer her. So he made his ch'ice. He went.
“That summer she got him to come to this cabin on Groundhog Harbor. They never left the place. And she was happy, always. Happy and a good woman to him. Only one thing ever come up between them. She was jealous—so jealous that it made her like a tiger-cat. ”

“ The only craft that ever passed was Siwash canoes on their way from Sitka or up around Yakutat. Red Larson and the other net men used to go out every day in their dories after the fish and come back every arternoon when they got their catch. ”

“ Fer just then, as we was a-comin' up to the cabin, between the two totem poles that was a-makin' faces out in front, the door opened and a woman stepped out.
“She was a Siwash. But she was a fine figure of a woman. I would say that she was as fine a figure of a woman as I ever laid eyes on. Past twenty, but she had not growed fat like Siwash women does. She was straight as a ship's mast and just round enough. A fine, upstanding woman! ”

“ It looked like Red Larson had landed there and been blowed away in the winds.
“Well, the summer went by and the men fished fer the salmon, and they heard no word from him. And the Indians down to Hoonah knew nothing of him. He had rowed out into Cross Sound; they had found his empty dory, beached on the island. That was all.
“They told me when they come back in the fall. I do not know any more about it. And neither does any man that ever come into this port. Seven years ago! Most people has fergot about it. And still ye cannot tell. Things happen different on salt water than they do on land ”

“ They paid me my summer's wages and I come here on a lumber carrier.”
The little man was silent for a moment. Then he raised his head. “The last I seen of Red Larson, he was standin' with his woman and his kid in the cabin door, with the black woods behind the place and the totem poles in front. The kid hollered after me and waved his hand. The other two said nothin'.”
Windy Davis stopped talking. The three of us sat, busy with our thoughts. I was the first to speak. The idea bothered me; the white man alone there at Groundhog Harbor with a savage woman, cut off from his own race. ”

“ It was when he wanted to go to Sitka the first year they was together. She said that if he did, he never would come back.
“She kept him at Groundhog Harbor. No schooners ever comes in there. He never seen a white face. The baby was born there. And things was going peaceful. And then I blowed along. Ye understand? I did, when he had told me. And after he had done talking, neither one of us said a word fer a long time. Then I up and asked him a question that was on my mind.
“'Red Larson,' says I, 'are ye satisfied?'
“He looked at me fer a minute and he made no answer. ”

“ Not of women! There was none, only when some Siwashes would camp in passing. She was afraid of his own kind. He never darst to talk to her of the ports to the south'ard, or of white men.
“And she lived in a fright of the day when some white men would cross their course. ”