of the Saw-Tooth Range, looking as if one might walk
to them in half an hour, and over all the world between
seemed to hover a misty gloom. But it was where
he had lived, where happiness and tragedy and unforgetable
memories had come to him, and the welcoming of its
frame buildings, its crooked streets, and what to
others might have been ugliness, was a warm and thrilling
thing. For here were his
people. Here
were the men and women who were guarding the northern
door of the world, an epic place, filled with strong
hearts, courage, and a love of country as inextinguishable
as one’s love of life. From this drab little
place, shut out from all the world for half the year,
young men and women went down to southern universities,
to big cities, to the glamor and lure of “outside.”
But they always came back. Nome called them.
Its loneliness in winter. Its gray gloom in springtime.
Its glory in summer and autumn. It was the breeding-place
of a new race of men, and they loved it as Alan loved
it. To him the black wireless tower meant more
than the Statue of Liberty, the three weather-beaten
church spires more than the architectural colossi
of New York and Washington. Beside one of the
churches he had played as a boy. He had seen the
steeples painted. He had helped make the crooked
streets. And his mother had laughed and lived
and died here, and his father’s footprints had
been in the white sands of the beach when tents dotted
the shore like gulls.
When he stepped ashore, people stared at him and then
greeted him. He was unexpected. And the
surprise of his arrival added strength to the grip
which men’s hands gave him. He had not heard
voices like theirs down in the States, with a gladness
in them that was almost excitement. Small boys
ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled
swiftly that Alan Holt had come back from the States.
Before the day was over, it was on its way to Shelton
and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such
was the beginning of his home-coming. But ahead
of the news of his arrival Alan walked up Front Street,
stopped at Bahlke’s restaurant for a cup of
coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen’s
offices in the Tin Bank Building.
For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen
had arrived a few days before, and his brothers were
“in” from the big ranges over on the Choris
Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised
to be a tremendously successful summer. The Lomen
herds would exceed forty thousand head, when the final
figures were in. A hundred other herds were prospering,
and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a
million reindeer were on the hoof in Alaska, and the
breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when compared
with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five
thousand! In another twenty years there would
be ten million.