better time in all my life."
That night was the regular weekly meeting of the Club. I made my
report, which was quite long, and mentioned many distressing cases,
showing an alarming increase of the typhoid. Then I asked for a rotary
relief committee of three to be chosen at every other meeting, and a
permanent relief committee of two.
"I've found the biggest-hearted man in all Alaska," I said. "His
business and mine are not quite the same. In fact I have been all
my life fighting saloons and saloon-keepers, and I expect to keep
on fighting them until I die. But this man's heart of love for his
fellow-men fights his business harder than I can."
Then I related some of the things Billy had done during the past week,
and ended my speech by asking that he be put on the permanent relief
committee with me. "We two will find the sick and cut out the work for
the rest of you," I promised.
The Club applauded, much to the confusion of Bill, who tried his best
to shrink out of sight. One of the boys reported next morning.
"Say, Doctor," he began, "you sure scared Bunch-grass Bill near to
death last night. Tickled, too. He asked us all to come in and have one
on him. He doesn't know anything else to do when he feels good. 'That's
a new one on me,' he said. 'I never had anything to do with a preacher
in my life. Didn't like 'em. Kept shy of 'em. But if Father Young sees
fit to come into my saloon--and he's in it every day--I'll go with him
wherever he wants me to go--even if it's to his church.'"
That touched me, for I could sense something of the sacrifice
it would involve. It would be far easier for Bill to start on a
three-thousand-mile winter mush on snow-shoes, over unbroken trails,
than to step inside of a Protestant meeting-house.
From that time on, Bill was my right hand. As the number of typhoid
victims increased, he made his saloon an intelligence office, finding
and reporting to me all new cases. The example of the Odd Fellows
stimulated the various social orders represented in the camp--the
Masons, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Eagles, and others--to a like
humane work; and Bill looked up their sick members and reported to
their committees. He saw that all the sick had medical attention, and
guaranteed the payment of scores of doctor's bills. Each steamboat
that left Nome for the "outside" carried a number of convalescents and
broken-down and moneyless men, and funds had to be raised for their
passage. Bill headed nearly all of these subscription lists, as well as
those for fitting up the four temporary hospitals we opened and filled
with sick men.
Being for over six weeks the only clergyman in that whole region, I
conducted all the funerals. One week I had eleven--all typhoid cases.
Bill attended them all, looking after the digging of the graves and
making coffins, and often acting as undertaker.
Now, I am not setting up my saloon friend as a saint. Quite the
contrary. I suppose he had been guilty of every crime mentioned in the
Decalogue. He had never known any home life, but had knocked about from
camp to camp of the western frontiers ever since boyhood. His ideas of
morality, therefore, were very vague. He was said to have been "run
out" of several towns in Montana and Idaho. He had a violent temper
and, as the phrase went, was "quick on the trigger." Rumor said that
he had the blood of more than one man on his hands; although it was
claimed, in every case, that he had not sought the quarrel. He sold
whiskey and drank it, gambled and swore habitually without a thought of
any of these things being wrong. He was simply an uncultured, ignorant,
rough-and-ready, Irish-American backwoodsman.
But to those of us in the raw camp of Nome who witnessed Bill's
untiring kindness and self-sacrifice during those weeks of distress,
his faults faded into the background behind the light of his many good
deeds. St. Peter says, "Charity covers a multitude of sins," and surely
Bill's charity "abounded" overwhelmingly, putting out of sight much of
the evil in his life.
As for me, I shall always think of him as one of the most loyal,
devoted friends I ever had, and the saver of my life. For after seven
weeks of most strenuous and wearing work, I was suddenly stricken
down with the typhoid myself. The blow came when I was fairly drowned
in the multitude of my duties. I was raising the money to send out
on the steamboat four or five men who must leave the country or
die--poor fellows whose vitality was so low that they could not combat
the cold and storms of a Nome winter. I was also preparing another
warehouse-hospital. So great was the demand for space for the care of
the sick that I had felt compelled to take into my own ten-by-twelve
tent three men sick with the disease. So crowded was the tent that I
had to sleep under the bed of one of them. Billy Murtagh and others of
the Odd Fellows' Club warned me against thus exposing myself to the
infection, but there seemed to be no other way. Billy brought me all
his remaining Apollinaris water that I might not have to drink the
impure seepage of the tundra. Some of the brothers carried me pails of
water from the one well which had been recently put down.
While I was in the midst of the canvass for funds, and in the bustle of
preparation for the departure of the last steamboats, I had a terrific
headache for several days. I was besieged day and night by friends of
sick men for places to put the stricken ones where they could be cared
for. The life of a number of these men seemed to depend on my keeping
on my feet. I had no _time_ to be sick. I kept away from Billy and my
other friends, for fear they might forcibly interfere.
But one of the Odd Fellows saw me as I was coming out of a store with a
subscription paper in my hand. He looked at me for a moment and hurried
to the "Beach Saloon."
"Bill," he shouted, "get a doctor, quick, and go to the parson. I saw
him just now staggering along with his face as red as fire and his hand
to his head. He's got the fever, sure."
Billy came running down the beach with Dr. Davy at his heels and caught
me as I was entering my tent. Without ceremony they picked up the sick
man who was in my cot and carried him to another tent near by. Then, in
spite of my protests, they undressed me and laid me in my blankets. I
was half delirious and stubborn. I fought them.
"This is all nonsense, Doctor," I protested. "I have only a headache.
There is no time to fool away. These men must go out on this steamboat,
and the money is not raised. Let me alone."
Dr. Davy finished his examination and turned to Bunch-grass Bill. "He
has a bad case of typhoid," was his verdict, "and ought to have been in
bed three or four days ago. Find a house to put him in and a woman to
nurse him."
Bill had one of the softest and sweetest voices I ever heard. He came
to me and laid his cool hand on my forehead. "Don't you worry about
those men, Father," he said gently. "I'll attend to that. Now who do
you want to nurse you?"
"Mrs. Perrigo," I replied. "She has just built a new cabin. I helped
her with it. Her husband is recovering from the fever."
Soon the good woman was in my tent, eager to serve. I was carried
through a driving snow-storm to her cabin. It was a rude affair built
of rough boards set upright and battened with narrow, half-inch strips.
A single thickness of building-paper poorly supplemented the inch
boards. But cold and uncomfortable as it was, it was the only available
shelter. I had them bring my tent and make a storm-shed of it in front
of the door. There, for more than two months, I was to lie helpless.
My friends told me afterwards of the consternation that my illness
caused. I was chairman of all the general relief committees--those
of the town council, the citizens, the mission, the Odd Fellows. That
the leader should thus be laid aside seemed a greater calamity than
was actually the case. For Mr. Wirt of the Congregational Church
arrived with lumber to erect a hospital, and Raymond Robins, a young
man of great earnestness and talent, who has since arisen to national
prominence, came with him to help in Christian work.
The night after I was taken to the Perrigo cabin, there was a meeting
of the Odd Fellows' Club. Billy Murtagh was present and made his first
public speech. As my illness and the general situation was discussed
he rose to his feet, the tears streaming down his face. He seemed
unconscious of them--or, at least, unashamed.
"Fellers," he faltered, "I'm hard hit. This gets me where I live. Now
I'll tell you this: you fellers can look after the other sick folks,
and call on me when you need any money. But I want you to leave Father
Young to me. I've adopted him. He's my father. All I've got is his. If
there's anything in this camp he needs, he's goin' to have it."
Ah, that long, desperate fight for life! The stunning pain in my head,
the high fever, the delirium, the nervous terror, the deadly weakness,
the emaciation, the chills and nausea! I was badly handicapped in my
fight. The two months of wearing work and strain which preceded my
illness had exhausted me, body and mind--there was no vital reserve to
draw upon.
I was in a little, cold shanty, twelve feet square, crowded and
unhealthy. Two people besides myself must live in that tiny room--sleep
there, cook there. The savage arctic winter raged against us, howling
his vengeance upon our impudence in thus braving him, unprepared.
He made every nail-head inside the house a knob of frost. When my
blankets, damp with the steam of cooking, touched the wall, he clamped
them so tight one must tear the fabric in pulling it free. He made my
clothing, stowed under the cot, a solid lump of ice. He asphyxiated us
with foul gases when the door was closed, and filled the room instantly
with fine snow from the condensation of the moisture when it was
opened. He charged constantly upon the thin shell of the house with his
high October and November winds, shaking it wildly and threatening
to bowl it over. He drove, in horizontal sheets, the fine, flour-like
snow, shooting it through batten-crevice, door-crack and keyhole; and,
finding myriad small apertures in the shake roof, sifted it down upon
my face. He piled it in fantastic whirls around the house, selecting
the side on which our one small window was, to bank it highest, so that
he might shut out our light. He sent the red spirit in the thermometer
tube down, down, down--ten below zero, twenty, thirty when it stormed,
and forty, fifty, sixty below when it was still, and the black
death-mist brooded over the icy wastes and men breathed ice-splinters
instead of air.
The fuel supply for the Nome camp was very poor and scanty. Men were
digging old, sodden logs of driftwood out of the snow, and hauling this
sorry fire-wood twenty miles by hand. Coal was scarce and sold by the
ton for $150.00, or by the bucket for ten cents a pound.
Having had experience with typhoid epidemics and other sicknesses in
the Klondike Stampede, I had laid in a good supply of nice foods for
the sick, such as malted milk, the best brands of condensed milk,
tapioca, farina, and other delicacies; but all of these had been given
away before my own illness, and there was a scarcity of such articles
in the stores.
But my friends, women and men,--indeed, everybody in the camp seemed
interested in me and anxious to do something for me--arose to meet all
these emergencies and "ministered to mine infirmities." The Odd Fellows
supplemented the efforts of the convalescent, but still shaky Perrigo,
and cut the wind-packed snow into bricks and built it around the house,
until it looked like a veritable Eskimo igloo. It was much warmer after
this was done.
The doctors at Nome all prescribed a diet of milk and whiskey for their
fever patients. Upon the news of my illness circulating in the camp a
dozen bottles of different brands were at once sent to me. Billy came,
examined, smelled at, and tasted these liquors, with the air of an
expert. Then he bundled all the bottles into a gunny sack and carried
them away, saying, "He's not going to have any of this dope. I've got
some of the pure stuff, made in Ireland." And he brought me an ample
supply for all my needs, and a gallon of pure alcohol for sponge-baths.
The Odd Fellows organized wood-cutting "bees" for my benefit, and
daily carried water from the well for Mrs. Perrigo's use. The women
collected food and milk from their own stores and those of others, and
brought them to me. The fellowship of the wilderness, the finest in the
world, had its full exercise for my benefit there at Nome. I doubt if
there was a person in all that great camp who would not have given me
cheerfully his last can of milk.
As the fever progressed and my condition grew more serious, the daily
visitors were restricted to two--Mrs. Strong and Bunch-grass Bill. The
lady looked after matters of business, my letters, and information
about other sick people. Billy, with his soft, low voice and gentle
manner, hovered over me, sitting for hours at my bedside, lifting me
in his two big hands with infinite care and deftness. Never did son
care for father with more tender solicitude and fuller devotion than
did this Irish Catholic saloon-keeper, this "bad man" of the western
frontier, for me--a Protestant preacher.
There were many malamute dogs at Nome, great, beautiful, wolf-like
beasts, and the "malamute chorus" was much in evidence in the late
hours of the night. One, in particular, which was tied up not far from
Perrigo's cabin, tuned up regularly every morning at three o'clock
with his high-pitched tremolo, waking every dog within a mile, until
all were howling, and keeping it up till daylight. There was no sleep
possible for me while this concert was in progress, and I used to lie
awake for hours, waiting fearfully for the leader to begin, and to
cower in my robes with nervous chills coursing down my spine at every
renewal of the long-drawn cadence, "Oo-o-o-o-o, oo-o-o-o-o, ow, ow, ow,
ow."
My fever would always rise with the commencement of this discordant
chorus and increase as long as it continued, and the doctor on his
morning visit would find me exhausted and trembling. The words of
Clarence would chase each other through my brain:
"With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise
I trembling wak'd, and, for a season after
Could not believe but what I was in hell."
Mrs. Perrigo told Billy of the nuisance. He stayed up that night until
the leading canine musician shrieked his solo to the moon. He followed
up the sound until he found the dog, roused the grumbling owner, paid
the high price asked for the animal, led him down the beach half a
mile, and shot him.
An errand of an opposite character also fell to Billy's lot. The
barracks which housed a squadron of United States soldiers was less
than a block from the cabin in which I lay. Every night at eleven
o'clock a bugle of remarkable sweetness and expression would blow
"Taps." I would listen for the soothing melody, and when it would sound
I would turn over in my robe and obey its command, "Go-o-o to sle-e-ep."
Lieutenant Craig, the commander of the post, ordered the discontinuance
of "Taps," thinking it would disturb me and the other sick people. That
night I waited, as usual, for the "good-night" bugle, and when it did
not sound I grew anxious and distraught. I thought my watch was wrong
or the bugler must be sick. I grew excited, restless and feverish,
and passed a sleepless night, missing my accustomed lullaby. We told
Billy; he went to see the Lieutenant, and the next night the lovely,
soothing phrase sounded forth on the still night air, and I slept.
TAPS.
[Music]
Another cause of nervousness and anxiety arose, requiring the efforts
of both Mrs. Strong and Billy Murtagh to solve the difficulty. I was
paying my nurse, Mrs. Perrigo, five dollars a day, which was almost all
she and her husband had to live on. They had been eating for a year and
a half a food outfit designed for only a single season, and there was
but little of it left. Mr. Perrigo, who was a Yankee tintype-picture
peddler and knew no other trade, had tried his best to be a gold-miner;
but, in common with the rest of the forlorn "Kobuckers," had made
nothing at all. His wife, who had been a bookkeeper in Boston,
valiantly took up the trades of waitress, washerwoman and cook in the
Arctic wilderness, but there was but little money in that disappointed
crowd. Almost immediately after landing on the "golden sands" of Nome
in August Mr. Perrigo was stricken with the fever. With the fearful
prices that prevailed, my five dollars a day was little enough to feed
them and meet the monthly payments on their house.
I had accumulated $125.00--mostly wedding fees--when I was taken sick.
It melted away like a spoonful of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. Every
Monday I must have thirty-five dollars for my faithful nurse. I placed
in Mrs. Strong's hands for sale my Parker shotgun, my typewriter, my
gold-scales, my extra overcoat, all gifts from friends. She got good
prices for them, and for the few articles I could spare from my food
supply--but still the phantom weekly payment menaced me. When I closed
my eyes the figures--$35.00--big and lurid--stared at me, and in my
delirious dreams became red goblins, mocking me.
A splendid woman, member of the church which assumed my salary, had
given me two beautiful wolf robes. I was lying in the heavier one. I
delivered the other to Mrs. Strong. "Sell it for me," I requested. "You
ought to get fifty or sixty dollars for it."
A week passed--then another. Mrs. Strong reported she "was holding the
robe for a higher price." The crisis I had dreaded had arrived. My
money was gone. I had none to meet next Monday's payment.
"Sell the robe for what it will bring," I directed Mrs. Strong. "I must
have the money."
"I'll sell it on Saturday," she promised.
Monday morning Mrs. Strong marched in with a large canvas money-bag in
her hand. With Mrs. Perrigo's assistance she counted out the money,
which was mostly in silver coins. Then she wrote in large figures,
"$158.50," and pinned the paper on the wall by my head.
"Where on earth did you get that money?" I cried.
"Why, for the robe, of course."
"You never got all that for it."
"Yes, I did," she affirmed.
Then the truth dawned upon me. "Mrs. Strong!" I exclaimed, "you raffled
the robe!"
"Yes," she laughed. "What are you going to do about it?"
Then she explained. Finding it impossible to get a fair price for the
fur blanket she and Bunch-grass Bill had laid their heads together.
They knew that I would not consent to a raffle, so they kept the
matter quiet. Bill displayed the robe in front of his saloon. Shares
were offered at fifty cents each. My lady friends of the mission sold
tickets. Bill bought fifty and others of my friends did almost as well.
Their purpose if they won the robe was to give it back to me.
What could I do? To rebuke their kindly deception would be ungracious
indeed. With brimming eyes I thanked my friends, and Mrs. Perrigo got
her money.
But the greatest of Bunch-grass Bill's many acts of kindness towards
me remains to be told. As Dr. Davy had said from the first, mine was
"a bad case." I had seven and a half weeks of high fever before it
broke, whereas the usual limit of fever was three weeks. I reached the
extreme of emaciation and weakness. I could hardly lift my hand. When
they bundled me in a blanket like a baby and hung me on the hook of a
big steelyard I weighed sixty pounds! I was long in the Valley of the
Shadow of Death and reached its utmost boundary, until the very waters
of the dark river lapped my feet.
"Well, Bill," said Dr. Davy with a sigh, as he was returning one
morning from his call upon me, and stopped, as was his custom, to
report to the "Beach Saloon," "I'm afraid it's about over. I don't
think Dr. Young can last much longer. He can retain nothing on his
stomach. We've tried all the brands of condensed milk in the camp to
no avail. Everything comes up the instant it is swallowed. There are
many internal complications, and he may go off any hour in one of those
deathly convulsive chills."
"Big Wilbur," who reported the scene to me afterwards, said that Bill's
face "went white as chalk, and then flushed red as fire." He jumped at
the doctor as though he were going to assault him.
"By God," he cried, "he's not goin' to die. We'll not let him, Doc. See
here: When I had the fever at Dawson, what saved me was cow's milk.
Now, there's a cow here. You come with me, and we'll go see her."
"That cow," explained Wilbur, "was a wonderful animal. Her owner sold
twenty gallons of milk a day from her, and she didn't look as if she
gave one. Bill knew the owner was doping the milk with condensed milk
and corn-starch and water and other stuff. So he strapped on his two
big guns. He's great for bluff, is Bill. Doc. and I went along to see
the fun. We found the owner in the stable 'tending to his cow. Bill
didn't beat around the bush any.
"'You look here' he said. 'Your cow's givin' too darned much milk. Now
this man I want it for is my father, an' he's got enough microbes in
him already. Doc. here, analyzed your milk; didn't you, Doc?' (Doc.
Davy was game, and nodded.) 'He says you put tundra water and all
kinds of dope in it. I'm goin' to keep tab on you, an' if you dope
my milk--well, you know _me_! It don't make no difference what you
charge--a dollar a bottle or five dollars a bottle--my father's got to
have pure milk. Understand?'"
For three months Billy went to the stable every day and superintended
the milking. At a cost to him, sometimes, of three dollars for a pint
bottle, and never less than a dollar a bottle, the "bad man" brought
me every day, with his own hands, a bottle of fresh milk. When Bill
and the doctor came in with that first bottle Mrs. Perrigo carefully
raised my head and gave me a brimming glass of the rich milk. I drank
it all and dropped off to sleep. I needed no more whiskey. The turning
point of my illness was that glass of cow's milk. Bill's big bluff
saved my life!
To show the rough, yet fine sentiment of the man, let me tell one last
word about the lone cow. She went dry before spring, and, as the camp
was crazy for fresh meat, the owner butchered her. One of the Odd
Fellows told me. Said he, "Bill just went wild when he heard of it, and
we had all we could do to keep him from going gunning for the man who
killed the cow that saved your life. Why, that man would lay down his
life for you, and laugh while he was doin' it."
I would I could tell of Bunch-grass Bill's conversion and entire
reformation, but this is a true story, and I never heard that he ever
got so far as that. This much, however, I am proud to tell. One day in
the spring of 1900, when the army of gold-seekers was beginning to land
on the "Golden Beach," I was standing with Bill near his saloon. On a
sudden impulse I spoke to him.
"Billy," I said, "I love you, but I don't like your business. It's a
bad business. See what it has done to lots of good fellows around here.
You are too big for that game. I wish you'd drop it and do something
that's clean--that doesn't hurt anybody."
Bill made no reply, and I supposed my words had been fruitless. But in
a few weeks one of my friends informed me that Bill had sold out and
had gone to gold-mining.
"That's good!" I exclaimed. "Did he give any reason?"
"Yes," the man replied, "Bill said you told him to."
When I was returning to Alaska in 1901, I bought a nice buffalo
smoking-set at the Pan-American Exposition and took it to Alaska for
Bunch-grass Bill. I did not see him, as he was mining at a distance,
but I heard of his pride and pleasure as he displayed the gift and
talked affectionately of "Father Young." He left Alaska that summer,
and I have heard vaguely of his presence in the Nevada gold-fields.
But wherever he is, I pray that God may bless and save the Irish
saloon-keeper, who loved me and saved my life.
IV
MY DOGS
Mushing with dogs in Alaska is the worst and the best mode of traveling
in all the world--the most joyful and the most exasperating--according
to the angle from which you look at it.
Once I was preaching a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments to the
miners at Council, a town on Seward Peninsula eighty-five miles east of
Nome. I had come to the Third Commandment; and I bore down pretty hard
upon the useless and foolish habit of profane swearing.