stefansson-wrangel-09-32-067v

336 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

the Wrangel Island expedition Ada talked with me freely
and openly whenever we were alone. She did so at times
also with the parents of Lorne Knight when she was
visiting them at McMinnville, Oregon; but they say that
occasionally she would suddenly stop talking and remain
silent for considerable periods. I imagine this may have
been when they asked her definite questions. Her stopping
when questions were asked seemed suspicious to some
people, as if she were trying to hide something. How-
ever, if they had only waited a while and let her talk
uninterruptedly they would have found her answering
of her own accord the very things they had asked. She
did not mind revealing the facts; it was only that she had
promised not to answer questions.

Of all the people Ada Blackjack met in the United
States she probably talked most freely to Mrs. Inglis
Fletcher. That may have been partly because they were
naturally sympathetic, but I think it was largely because
Ada’s son Bennett and Mrs. Fletcher’s boy were not very
different in age and had both been seriously ill. Ada’s
one concern in life is Bennett, and Mrs. Fletcher’s sym-
pathetic interest in the boy won her completely.

When I saw them in Seattle, Bennett had been in the
hospital but was not entirely cured. There were tuber-
cular lesions on his neck and chest. The approved treat-
ment for superficial tuberculosis nowadays is to go prac-
tically naked in the open air, but that cannot well be done
in cities. Being just a boy, Bennett naturally liked to
play in the open, and being an Alaska boy, his greatest
interest was in dogs. It happened that Mrs. Fletcher was
about to leave Spokane, Washington, by way of Seattle
to visit in Hollywood, California, some friends of hers
and mine in whom Bennett was more interested than in
any other people in the world, for they are the owners of
the “wonder dogs” Strongheart and Julie and of a multi-
tude of other dogs and tame wolves that Bennett had
seen in the movies. The dogs were on a farm outside
Hollywood. It was just the place of Bennett’s dreams and
also ideal from the point of view of his physician, for