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.

But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome.
After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best
men fighting for Alaska's salvation at Washington, word was traveling
from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to
range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of
miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten dollars
a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty dollars;
cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters
of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and
in the turmoil Ala