In the Klondyke; including an account of a winter's journey to Dawson

Contents

I THE START FROM DYEA

Choosing Comrades— Jack Beltz and his Dogs— Fritz Gamble— From Sheep Camp to the Summit— Packing over the Chilkoot Pass— The Halt at Lake Linderman— A Night in a Sleeping Bag— Coasting down the Frozen Yukon— Half Way to Dawson . . Page i

II. ON THE TRAIL

II

Personalities — The Forbears of Jack and Fritz — Good Camp Manners — Dog Individuality — Dude — The Team of Huskies — Wayfarers at Five Fingers — Fort Selkirk and Pelly — The Thanksgiving Turkey that Did Not Get to Dawson — A Diet of Flapjacks — Suburbs of the Klondyke Capital — The Passing of the Trail.

AS we moved on slowly at dawn to make a few more miles before camping, we saw the penalty of this savage run, which human stubbornness had insisted upon making, in the blood left on the trail by the wounded feet of our dogs. Jack at once covered them with the moccasins which he had brought for the purpose. It was plain enough that the continuance of night marches was unfeasible if we desired our brave steeds to hold out as far as Dawson. While the sled slid easier at night, the excrescences of ice were as sharp as lances, and though the mushy trail of mid-day made the sled harder to pull, it was like a cushion for a wounded foot. We compromised upon a portion of both evils by determining to start at dawn and travel as fast and as long as we could, practically. This gave only seven or eight hours on the road as against the twelve or more that we had originally planned, and in order to make the most of them we made the sacrifice for the dogs' sake of drinking ice-water for our luncheon instead of taking the time to boil chocolate. Fritz preferring to handle the '* gee-pole," and I preferring to assist in keeping the equilibrium of the big sled by holding the handles at the rear, each settled down to this as his definite labor.

We now had more time for our camps ; more time for our pipes of relaxation as we sat on our beds around Jack's bonfires after the dogs were fed and dinner was eaten. On one of these nights we were talking of ambitions.

** As a boy, I wanted to drive a street-car," said Fritz. '' When I grew older they still called me Freddy, and I made pictures for a living. That is enough to ruin any man ; and, foreseeing this, I concluded that I'd live on flapjacks and go unwashed, and be called ' pardner,' or Pete, or Bill, or make baking-powder dough, or anything, till I found a good placer mine.

Then I'm going around the world, smoking the best brand of Turkish cigarettes, and looking at other people's pictures."

Jack had run away from home at the age of thirteen to the land of the Indians that had been revealed to him in a dime novel secreted in a haymow, and had earned his own living ever since. Meagre as was his early education, he had picked up a surprising amount of information from reading and from association. His eye was that of a scout ; his knowledge of birds and animals that of a naturalist ; his love of flowers that of a sentimentalist. He had varied his life as a cowboy by many other occupations. At one time he had been a private coachman in Omaha, just to see how it would seem.

" I was gettin' pretty sick of the job," he explained, "when the old lady I drove about leaned over to me one day, confidentially. 'I'm goin' to get you a fine livery to wear,' she said. Then I realized how low I had fallen, and that evening I was a free man again."

He was longer on the Government survey than in any other employment, rising until he filled a position of considerable responsibility. Possibly it was then that he learned the ethics of camp-life ; more likely they were innate. He adhered to his own soap, his own towel, and his own bedding, and was more observant of the small niceties of life than are most of the men who wear the high collars that he despised. In all of his seventeen years of wandering his greatest source of sorrow was that he had never made enough money, according to his ideas, to return home, though his pay had been as high as a hundred and fifty dollars a month. He must have a few thousands, and treat the little Pennsylvania village that was his birthplace to such extravagance as it had never seen before. If he made a '' stake " in the Klondyke, he had planned to drive right up to the old folks' door with his team of huskies and a little red cart, distributing candy to the children as the procession moved forward.

The dogs, which at first seemed to me to be only so many domesticated wolves of like dispositions, had now assumed strong individualities. Dude, the leader, was worthy of the name given to him, on account of his sleek coat of thick gray fur, by the frontiersman who had instilled into him the wisdom of the trail and soldierly spirit and obedience. He was the sergeant-major among Yukon dogs, far from being a pup in years and far from having lost his vigor. When called to harness in the morning he would stretch his body, arch his neck, throw his handsome tail over his back, deliver himself of a peculiar little wolfish whine, and trot straight to his place. Though your old sergeant-major may feel a little stiff when he gets out of bed, he isn't stiff when he has his tunic on, especially if there are any recruits about. From the moment that Jack called " Mush !" until he called '' Halt ! " Dude pulled steadily. All the others shirked at times and needed the crack of the whip to remind them of their duty, but the traces between Dude and the dog behind him were always taut. He had the natural dignity requisite to his position. The other dogs attempted no familiarities with him, such as eating out of his dish or trying to bowl him over in sport. After an unusually hard day's work, before lying down to rest, he would gambol a little with them as a relaxation from the steady strain in harness, but not in a manner of equality.

During their conversations while the master was stirring the porridge he asked the sergeant-major what he thought of the prospects of reaching Dawson before the ice went out of the river, Dude replied, on the authority of Jack's translation :

" Don't ask me ! I can make it all right. But we ain't certain of anything as long as we have those house-dogs on the hind sled."

Next to Dude was Fox, a nondescript, who remained in good flesh up to the last. He waddled and puffed in trying to keep up when Dude trotted. Fritz said that Fox reminded him of a fat school-girl, her cheeks daubed with molasses candy, and two braids down her back.

Behind Fox was Jack, a pup, a mischiefmaker, a rascal, and an actor. All husky dogs are thieves. Some will take a pot off a stove by its handle and hide it safely out of sight in the snow while they wait for its contents to cool to their taste. Jack promised to become the most accomplished of the clan. His wolf's nose always told him where our bacon was stored and his wolf's eyes told him when his opportunity had arrived. Once he had the meat out of his own basin of porridge eaten, he looked up to see which dog had any left and got it before the other dog realized what was up. He would scent an Indian camp even before Dude, sometimes at a distance of two miles. In the traces he forgot to pull while he looked at the ravens flying overhead or listened for noises in the forest. Then the whip descended upon him and he would seem verycrestfallen for a moment, only to be at his old tricks and to have his tail in the air in the next. The more he was punished for dereliction during the day, the greater was his affection for his master in camp. On the warmer nights when Jack slept outside of the hut for the sake of elbow room, he would put himself on guard at the head of the master's bed of boughs and allow no other dog except Dude to come near.

Dude was partial to him. He regarded Jack as a wayward but clever pup who was sowing his wild oats, and he knew, as an old sergeant-major, that this would make the best kind of a dog in the end. Often the master took hold of the ne'er-do-well's ears and shook him, saying :

" I guess I like you best, after all. Jack. That's the way of the world. You're a rascal, but you're clever."

Next in line was Tommy, Jack's brother. Jack enjoyed getting Tommy into scrapes and then leaving him to get out of them the best he could. Tommy was forever sneaking about the tent, and he was so impolitic in his choice of his moment of action that he was usually caught red-handed and cuffed. Though he never succeeded in stealing half as much as Jack, he came in for a great deal more enmity from Fritz than all the rest of the team. Jack used to approach Fritz gayly as Fritz sat with a leg on either side of our little stove, turn his coyote's head to one side, cock up his ears, and assure Fritz of his friendship for a good cook and his contempt for all such curs as Tommy. He might go and come many times in this way before Fritz's back was turned. When it was, however, he seized his spoil and trotted away in the businesslike manner of a dog who is doing an errand for his master. At a safe distance, he neatly dodged all missiles and smiled mockingly back at the cook. When Tommy was licked in the traces he howled for half an hour and his tail did not ascend for the remainder of the day. None of the other dogs would make friends with so sour a fellow. Perhaps he was only oversensitive and introspective, and I do him wrong. I fear, however, that he will be sent to the penitentiary at Forty Mile for a long term one of these days.

Shorty, the end dog (wheel horse) of the husky team, was born in Spitzbergen, where dogs are so white that when they are on a background of snow you know of their presence only by the black spots for their eyes and a bigger black spot for their noses. An equality in breadth and length gave Shorty his name. Like some fat old gentlemen whom we meet at the club, he was the more comical because he was unconsciously so. He didn't believe in being a martyr, and he always carried his head so that one of his eyes was on Jack. When the master was about to touch up Jack and Tommy, Shorty would begin suddenly to pull very hard. His legs were so short and his body was so chunky that if the team turned a sharp corner around a cake of ice he would often roll over like a ball of fur ; or, in trying to keep up he would slip and fall down a fissure, hanging suspended by his collar while he looked around at Jack, saying :

"Oh, I know I'm the snapper of the whip ! What next?"

He blinked so oddly, there was such an expression of disgust in the very way in which he lolled his tongue out, that you laughed at him as you would at the old gentleman who finds another club member in his favorite chair and reading his favorite paper.

Tim, the larger of the two St. Bernards, was a sober, phlegmatic dog of noble mien, who was funny only when he ate so much porridge after a hard day's work that he groaned with pain.

** You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Tim," Jack would say, '' I know I'm to blame. But I'd feel just as mean if I didn't feed you all you wanted."

The St. Bernard is too high-spirited for the work of a draught animal. At first Patsy seemed the better dog of the two. But Patsy wore himself out by fidgeting, and then it was his turn to soldier while Tim did his work. Toward the last they were in such bad shape that we dared to put only fifty pounds on their sled.

In the neighborhood of Five Fingers we met a dozen stranded pilgrims whose desperate efforts to reach Dawson in the previous autumn had been put to naught by the summary approach of the arctic winter when they were within a few days of their destination. They had built cabins on the banks of the river, wherever their boats had been inextricably caught in a jam of ice, and settled down to the prospect of playing checkers and fighting off scurvy for eight months, until summer came. Of those who were unsuccessful in the battle, the most afflicted was an old forty-niner who accepted with better grace than any of the others a diet of spruce tea and rice, which he hoped would undo the work of too much bacon. A few prospect holes had been sunk without any reward except '' colors," because, as they explained, they were, in keeping with their general ill luck, just outside of the gold belt. For selfish as well as sentimental reasons we were glad that these unfortunate fellows were not more numerous. We had always to tell them some of the news, and then to leave their hospitality rather offended despite our explanations that we could not afford to tarry with them for a day's rest when the trail was good.

At one of the cabins a boy of seventeen years hobbled out to the bank to greet us. He and his uncle had left Dawson for the coast in December, drawing their own sleds. Hardship had so affected his uncle's mind, as the story was told to me, that to escape from the country had become a brutal and selfish mania with him. He forced his nephew, even at the point of the revolver, it was said, to do all the work of making and breaking camp. The boy was so tired one night that he crawled under his blankets without changing his moccasins, which had become wet by the slush snow about the fire. He awoke in the morning with his feet frozen. When they were overtaken on the trail by a man with a dog team, the next afternoon, the boy, goaded on by his uncle, was plodding along on legs which were frozen stiff up to his knees, experiencing, he said, much inconvenience but no pain. The fellow-traveller gave him a ride behind the dogs to the nearest cabin, where, later, a doctor on his way to the coast found amputation necessary to save the boy's life. As for the uncle, he delayed only a few hours, and hastened on his journey more energetically than ever.

A little hunting had been done by the stranded pilgrims, but with no success. We had hoped to obtain some venison from the Indians, but though we passed many of their deserted camps between the Hootalinqua and the Pelly, we came to only one that was occupied. Here two families were sitting around a small fire with their backs protected on all sides from the wind by a wall of brush about waist high. We secured a few pounds of extremely tough steak in exchange for some cornmeal. A small boy who looked quite like a young Jap knew a few English words and had the gift of making comprehensible gestures. He explained that he had heard his father's gun go " boom ! " far off on the mountain-side, a few hours before. No chaffing could shake his confidence in his father, whose name was Chook, as a great hunter. One boom, he told us by signs, and the moose or caribou always tumbled over into the snow. The temptation to wait and see if Chook would return with fresh moose or caribou meat was great, but we resisted it. When, however, we were at the other end of the semicircle formed by the curve of the river beyond the camp, a cry from the bank showed us Chook, who had hastened through the woods by a trail known to himself, bearing a fine caribou steak and a piece of liver. With him, besides the little boy we had seen, was an elder brother who had been out to learn the way in which Daddy crept up quietly until he was within a few steps of his prey. Chook wanted sugar in exchange, but we had none to spare. Finally his obduracy was overcome and he accepted corn-meal. Long after we had passed on, he stood watching us, and presumably he was grinning over his bargain. We enjoyed part of the steak; Jack, the pup, stole the rest with such finesse that we forgave him.

When we had passed one point which we recognized as a name on the map, we looked forward from day to day, as we lessened the distance, until we should arrive at another. In camp we compared our opinions of how many miles we had made that day, and soon our estimates became surprisingly accurate. After leaving Five Fingers, all our thoughts were bent on reaching Fort Selkirk, where the Pelly, a great river of itself, joins the Yukon. The trail for this distance was better than for the fifty miles that had preceded it and the colder weather made sledging better. Moreover, our new plan of shorter hours and harder work was succeeding admirably.

Long before placer mining was thought of in Alaska or in the British Northwest Territory, representatives of the fur companies were stationed at Fort Selkirk. The present post is across the river from the upper ramparts of the Yukon's bank, whose towering walls of rock resemble the walls of old-time forts, even to the embrasures. In a break in the ramparts is the mouth of the Pelly, which is to the Yukon what the Missouri is to the Mississippi.

Mr. Pettit, the trader at Selkirk, had only Indians for companions. The aspect of this little man's loneliness was heightened by his slight form and his pallor, so out of place in a country where bare existence is supposed to demand so much vigor. In summer he busied himself with a little garden, which was an absorbing occupation because upon its success there possibly depended immunity from the dreaded scurvy. In winter he sat by his stove smoking when he was not sleeping. Watching the Indians go through the ritual of the Russian Church in their original manner, or dance around a dying fellow to keep off the evil spirit of death, were diversions which must by this time have lost their novelty for him. He had had nothing to sell for more than a year. This was a great disappointment to his customers who were short of those great requirements of aboriginal happiness, tobacco, sugar, and gaycolored clothes.

While we were at Pelly, the Indians became excited over the arrival of news that one of the tribe, Ulick, had shot ten caribou and two moose, '' one sleep " — or more than a day's travel — down the river. We made careful calculations as to how much tobacco we could spare, and kept a sharp lookout for Ulick, whom we met with his family dragging some of the moose back to camp. For forty-five cents' worth of tobacco we secured thirty pounds of steak for ourselves and the dogs. To offers of as high as a dollar a pound for more, he merely made the reply :

'' Got heap money ! Want ' baccy ! '"

Your husky dog is no vegetarian. Once we realized how much additional pulling-power our team could get out of a little fresh meat we denied ourselves for them.

The height and the character of the mountains towering over our heads told us that we were coming into the region of the Rockies. Every turn of the river brought into view a panorama of low wooded islands made in later times by a change of current ; of islands that were Cyclopean masses thrown up by chaos, and the nesting-places of eagles ; of mountains on either shore, whose strata seemed to have been kneaded and stirred when soft as douo^h, and afterward, upon solidifying, to have been rent by convulsions of the earth's crust.

But one was too busy with the handles of 51 the sled fully to enjoy scenery. You only knew that the vista seemed to be frowning upon the impudence of you and your sled and dogs breaking in upon great solitudes. Thankfully, the weather was more in our favor and the trail was harder, as it had been between the Big Salmon and Pelly, and not so sliding. At times it was as smooth as a skating-rink for a few hundred yards where it was protected from the sun by the shadow of the mountains and the forests ; again, there was glare ice, where we might ride for a little distance, jesting merrily about private equipages and driving-parks ; and, again, we drove flocks of wild ducks away from open places, making us regret that we had only revolvers with us. Far over our heads against the background of the blue sky we saw great flocks of wild swans and wild geese moving northward in stately procession, reminding us that summer was near at hand. At 2 a.m. the thermometer was at from 10 to 20 degrees below zero; at noon, 80 degrees above, and the crust of dawn had become like porridge. I had one ear blistered by the frost and the other by the sun in the same day. But we little minded these extremes ; for the trail continued to be good, until one morning we arrived at the cluster of cabins called Stewart City, at the mouth of the Stewart River, where we rested for a day. Of the inmates of the cabins we bought enough rice to piece out the rations of our dogs.

A mile out of Stewart we met Anders, of Bay City, Michigan, who was drawing his own sled as he swung along in great strides in the company of an elderly man who had one dog. An idea for making a fortune had occurred to him and to carry it out he had started for Dyea at once, regardless of the season of the year. He was *' going outside " to bring in the stock for a poultry farm which he proposed to establish on an island near Dawson.

'* Fresh eggs will bring ten dollars a dozen any time," he said, *' and a spring chicken as much. I ain't going to let anybody get ahead of me, you bet. I've got a side of bacon and a sack of flour. I'll sleep by day and go without a blanket. I'll make it to Five Fingers with my sled and then I'll take what's left of my grub on my back and skin along the shore till I get to the lakes, where I can get some more grub off the boats that are coming in, snake a canoe somewhere, and paddle up to Linderman."

I saw him in Dawson two weeks after the pilgrims* flotilla began to arrive. The ice in the river had broken before he reached Five Fingers. He had climbed over mountains and beaten his way through underbrush until he sprained his ankle. Then he crawled to a ledge of rock overlooking the stream and waited until a pilgrim in a passing boat saw the red bandanna which he waved as a signal of distress.

''And I guess Dawson won't have turkey for Thanksgiving this year," he added. '* You remember the old feller that was with me ? We got separated. He couldn't keep up with my gait. Well, our boat passed his dog running up and down the shore howling, but we couldn't find a sign of him. I guess he was drowned."

It took us six days to make the remaining seventy-five miles to Dawson, though now our outfit, including bedding and kit-bags, did not weigh more than two hundred pounds. The weather at night had suddenly moderated, as if the arctic winter, after a spasmodic resistance, had given way entirely to the tropical summer. Henceforth, it was needless to put up our tent, and we slept and cooked entirely

I in the open, drying our wet footwear by the heat of the sun in the late afternoon.

Starting at 2 a.m. with the first h'ght, we plodded straight ahead through the snow up to our knees, until the dogs gave out. We followed the trail where we could ; followed it until it led us to the flowing river, and then we made a detour around the open place. The snow-shoes which we had brought thus far without having once put them on, now became invaluable in making a path by slow and arduous tramping, as monotonous as the beating of time, but a little more tiring, I assure you. Without the relief of the color of the dogs or of the man in front of you upon which to rest your eyes, little red spots would dance in the glare on the snow even through heavy green glasses. Often the rest of the party had to wait while Jack, who never tired, went on ahead to see if, in case v/e should go around this or that island, we should be obliged to retrace our steps. Again, in little side channels where the water was deep only in a freshet, we hitched all the dogs to one sled at a time and they dragged it over the sandy bottom and up on the other side, where we were likely to strike out on an old Indian trail bare of snow, and to have to lift the sleds from side to side to avoid saplings.

It was our boast that only once had we unpacked the sleds except to make camp. This was at Five Fingers, where we had to carry our baggage piece by piece up an ascent of forty feet. Even there we had sent the dogs up with the small sled on bare ground. But now we could lift the sleds and contents ; or if the bank or ledge of rocks which we wished to gain was very precipitate, we could slide them up on skids. Dude, the old leader, would crawl up by himself without a whine, like a true soldier. Jack threw the other huskies up bodily, and the clumsy St. Bernards were pushed and pulled and coaxed up.

Just when we had to undergo the greatest physical labor, and the greatest strain from climate, our food-supply, so astonishing had been our appetites, had dwindled to flour and bad bacon, and we had remaining only a pipe of tobacco apiece, which was religiously saved for our last camp. We missed most keenly our chocolate, of which we had eaten half a pound apiece a day. With a slab of it for luncheon, and only two flapjacks and a slice of bacon, we were not hungry again for five or six hours. Consume all the flapjacks and bacon that we could without suffering from that excess of quantity which is the foe of exercise, in three or four hours our stomachs would be calling for more.

On the afternoon of the fourth day out from Stewart, when the dogs pulled up after one of the rushes they were never too tired to make on scenting a camp, we looked up to see some figures standing on a pile of logs which they were cutting for a raft of timber for a Dawson saw-mill.

" How are ye ? " they called. ** Goin' to town?"

We had reached the suburbs !

** Well," replied Jack, ** we've been thinkin' some of it. How far is it ? "

'*'Bout twenty miles. But you won't make it. The ice is likely to go out any minute."

On the day following we passed still another camp of rafters, who said that the river was open in front of Dawson. They advised us to make camp and accompany them when navition opened.

** We'll be old inhabitants by that time," said Jack.

Every creek flowing into the river was a torrent, eating up the ice and flooding its surface. We could see that the river was rising, which was a sure sign that its days were few. However, we were confident of reaching our destination on the morrow, though we had to desert our sleds, put some flapjacks and slices of hacon in our pockets, and climb over the mountain which hid " town " from view.

Our last camp was on a wooded island where some prospector had built a brushhouse. Jack's bonfire, especially large in honor of the occasion, extended to this house, and we thought it rather good fun that we had to save our bedding from the flames. But our jubilation was not unmixed with sadness. We should not make another journey together, and we had been good comrades, always venting our anger, when it insisted upon expression, upon our sleds, and never blaming one another.