feet for several minutes. “So, we’ll go out the side.” He grabbed one
corner of the robe and tugged it loose from where it was anchored under
the snow, while Sandy worked on the other corner. Then they pulled it
aside, exposing a smooth, glittering expanse of ice behind it.
Sandy tested it with his fist and whistled. “Like iron.”
There was a tremor in Jerry’s voice. “What goes on around here? Maybe I
wasn’t kidding last night when I called this thing a tomb.”
“Take it easy,” Sandy soothed. “It’s only snow.”
“Yeah, ice,” Jerry repeated. “You ever see them drive trucks across the
ice on frozen lakes? I’ve seen it in newsreels. That ice is pretty
rugged stuff.”
“You got a knife?” Sandy asked. “I left mine in the sled.”
“So did I. Say, let’s try to move the sled,” Jerry suggested.
They both shoved and pulled at the sled for a long time, but it seemed
welded to the spot. At last, Jerry sank down exhausted. “I don’t get it.
What happened?”
Sandy played the light over the walls of the lean-to. “I can guess.
Remember how cozy and warm it got in here last night? Between that stove
and the heat from our bodies, I bet the temperature in here was a good
fifty degrees higher than it was outside. The heat radiates through the
snow, causing it to melt partially. Then it freezes up. That’s how the
Eskimos harden the walls of their snow houses. They build big bonfires
in them.”
“Only they don’t forget to make doors in ’em,” Jerry said grimly.
“Another thousand years from now, I can see a couple of geologists like
your dad and the professor digging us out. Preserved in a block of ice
like that baby mammoth.”
“It’s no joking matter,” Sandy said. “We’ve got to think of a way to
break out of here. One thing, though: they’re bound to send out search
parties and sooner or later they’ll find the sled.”
“What makes you think so?” Jerry demanded. “The sled is probably covered
with snow by now and this must look like any other part of the
landscape. And you don’t think those dogs are going to hang around here
forever, do you? They’ve probably run off looking for food already.”
Sandy felt his heart begin to race madly. “I never thought of that,” he
admitted. “Well, it’s up to us then. What have we got that we can use as
a chipping tool?”
“Only thing I can think of that’s metal is the Coleman stove.”
“That’s no good. No sharp edges.”
They were silent for a moment, then Sandy snapped his fingers. “I’ve got
it! The gun!” He took the bulky .45 out of his pocket and held it up in
the light. “We’ll blast our way out.”
Jerry looked worried. “You know what they say about shooting fish in a
rain barrel? Well, if one of those slugs ever ricochets inside here,
we’ll be dead fish.”
“It’s our only chance,” Sandy said. He loaded the gun, cocked the hammer
and nudged off the safety with his thumb. Holding the gun at arm’s
length away from him, he pointed the muzzle at the end where the
entrance had been. “Better make sure your hood is pulled tight over your
ears,” he advised Jerry.
“I’m all set. Let ’er go.”
Sandy shut his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger. The
explosion reverberated like a bomb in the small lean-to. Sandy felt the
shock wave slam into his face, and the recoil almost tore the gun out of
his hand. He sat there stunned for a while.
Jerry’s voice screaming in his ear brought him out of it. “Sandy, it
worked!”
He opened his eyes to the most wonderful sight he had ever seen. A beam
of sunlight was pouring through an opening in the ice wall. The potent,
snub-nosed .45 slug had blasted a hole almost four inches in diameter.
In the light of the flashlight, he also observed that the ice around the
hole was shattered and veined from the shock wave.
Dropping the gun back into his pocket, Sandy got on his knees and began
to work on the opening with his hands. Snow and ice crumbled easily, and
before long he had enlarged the hole so that he was able to squirm
through. Jerry was right behind him. Painfully, they stood up.
“Oh,” Jerry groaned. “I feel like a dog on its hind legs.” Looking up at
the clear blue sky, he threw kisses into the air with both hands. “Mr.
Sun, I never figured we’d ever see you again.”
It was a perfect, cloudless day without even a breeze. Looking around
him, Sandy realized that the high winds of the night before had
exaggerated the intensity of the blizzard. Except where it had drifted
around the sled and lean-to, no more than twelve inches of new snow had
fallen. He discovered, too, that they had been traveling along the ridge
of a low hill and had stopped on the most exposed spot in all the
surrounding terrain. On either side, the ground sloped away gently into
protected valleys thick with fir trees.
After spending hours shut up in the gloom of the lean-to, the boys found
the sunlight on the snow blinding. They dug their smoked glasses out of
their packs and put them on. The dogs crowded around them, yelping and
wagging their tails.
“I guess they’re hungry,” Sandy said. “Is there any meat left?”
“A little,” Jerry said. He went to get the can of food from the front of
the sled. As he threw the last chunks of raw horse meat to the huskies,
he eyed it forlornly. “I’m so hungry I could eat it myself.”
Sandy grinned. “Even some of that _muk-tuk_ would look good to me now.”
“Are the sandwiches all gone?”
“We finished them last night.”
They had just finished feeding the dogs when a faint “Ha-lo-oo-oo...”
floated through the still air. On a distant ridge the figure of a man
and a dog were silhouetted against the sky.
“It’s Charley and Titan!” the boys yelled in unison. They began to leap
up and down, waving their arms and screaming, “Charley! Over here!”
Less than a quarter of an hour later, the Indian came plowing up the
hill with Black Titan floundering behind him. They hugged him joyfully
and pounded his back, and even Charley was grinning from ear to ear. He
listened solemnly while they related their harrowing experiences with
the wolves and how they had been trapped in the lean-to.
Charley had had a pretty bad time of it himself. He admitted that, for
the first time in his life, he had lost his way when he went back to
look for the boys, and had somehow mistaken east for west. Confused and
blinded by the shifting gale winds and whipping snow, he had wandered
off to an adjacent ridge. After walking around for hours, he had become
exhausted—he had been tired out by running twenty-five miles behind the
sled to start with—and erected a lean-to in a clump of thick pine trees
in the sheltered valley. He had built a big fire and had fallen asleep
beside it almost immediately. The next thing he knew, Black Titan was
licking his face and the first streaks of dawn were filtering through
the pine branches overhead. He had been searching for the boys when he
heard the gunshot.
Using the snowshoes as shovels, the three of them dug the sled out of
the snow bank. The intense heat of the sun softened the hard upper crust
and melted the ice that had formed around the runners. Then Charley
hitched up the dogs and headed for the nearest check point, which was
only a few miles away.
Their arrival created quite a bit of excitement. “Only one other sled
has come through here,” a worried official told them. “The Mounties have
planes and search parties out looking for the others.”
“We saw one of the planes,” Sandy said. “He dipped his wings and we
waved to him. So he knew we were all right.”
“Actually, though,” the official went on, “the storm looked worse last
night than it was. Those winds were gale force. I don’t imagine anyone
was really in serious trouble. They’re all experienced woodsmen,
accustomed to roughing it on the trail.”
Jerry hooked his thumbs inside his belt and puffed out his chest. “Sure,
it was a breeze.”
Tagish Charley was more interested in the sled that had passed through
the check point that morning. The official said the other driver had
about one hour’s start on them.
“We catch ’im,” Charley said. “Let’s go.”
“Hey!” Jerry complained. “What about breakfast? I’m so ravenous, I’m
liable to take a bite out of one of the dogs.”
“No time to eat,” the Indian said. “We have to win race.”
“We’ll give you some sandwiches and hot coffee to take along,” the
official promised. “You can eat on the run.”
Jerry stared wistfully at the platters of flapjacks, juicy Canadian
bacon and hot biscuits on the stove. “If we come out of this alive, I’ll
never look at a cold sandwich again,” he vowed.
A short time later, they were racing down the trail. It was a good day,
and by nightfall they had covered another forty-five miles and overtaken
the sled ahead of them. Its driver turned out to be a young uranium
prospector. For five years he and his brother had been competing in the
big race. Two years before, they had come in first and they were hoping
to repeat this year. They were pleasant young men and spent the night
with Charley and the boys at the last check point on the route.
That night, after a hearty supper, they sat around the fire talking to
Sandy and Jerry. Tagish Charley went to bed as soon as he had the team
fed and settled in the barn. About nine o’clock, another sled arrived at
the check point, and the driver reported that still another team was
camped at the side of the trail about an hour’s ride away.
“This is really going to be a photo finish,” one of the brothers said.
He got to his feet and knocked the ash out of his pipe into the
fireplace. “We better sack in, men. There’s going to be a mad scramble
to get away first in the morning.”
Sandy and Jerry followed them to the big dormitory bedroom, where a
dozen army cots were set up around a potbellied stove that glowed a dull
cherry-red in the darkness. Charley was already snoring loudly as they
slipped into their bedrolls.
“Now how are we supposed to get to sleep with that big lug sawing wood?”
Jerry grumbled. “We may as well sit and ... and ... talk ... around ...
the ... fire....” His voice trailed off into a pretty good imitation of
a buzz saw of its own.
CHAPTER TEN
Down the Chilkoot Chute to Victory
It seemed to Sandy that he had just closed his eyes when he felt rough
hands on his shoulders, shaking him. “Time to go,” Charley’s voice
whispered.
“What time is it?” he mumbled, raising himself on his elbows.
“Four o’clock,” Charley said. “Other fellers hitching up already.”
Sandy struggled out of his sleeping bag and sat on the edge of the cot,
stretching. It was still dark, but when Charley opened the stove door to
throw on another log, he could see that the cots that the two brothers
had slept on were empty. Yawning, he raised his left foot and kicked the
cot where Jerry was still sleeping soundly.
“Rise and shine!” he called to his friend.
They ate a hurried breakfast of hot cereal and scalding coffee, and by
four-thirty they were on the trail again. The cold wind in their faces
and the stinging spray kicked up by the dogs’ feet brought them fully
awake before they had gone far.
When it began to get light, the boys got out of the sled and trotted
along with Charley. They kept it up for a mile or so before Jerry
developed a bad case of rubber legs and went down on his knees.
“I feel like a dope,” he said, as Sandy helped him back into the sled.
“Here we are, a couple of kids, puffing like steam engines, and an old
guy like Charley isn’t breathing any harder than if he had run up a
flight of stairs.”
“And we’re in pretty good condition from being in school athletics. Can
you imagine how some of the other guys in school would make out?” Sandy
asked. “The guys who hop in the family car to go down to the corner
newsstand and sneak smokes between every class?”
“Yeah,” Jerry agreed ruefully. “The kids in the States are getting soft,
there’s no doubt about it.”
“My Uncle Russ always says you should take at least as much pride in
your body as you do in your home. Most people wouldn’t live in sloppy,
rundown houses, but a lot of them don’t care if they spend their lives
in sloppy, rundown bodies.”
Jerry slapped his middle irritably. “Let me tell you, I’m going to work
on this flab when I get home. Old Charley here has taught me a lesson.
You miss a lot of the fun of life if you’re out of shape.”
Sandy kept up with Charley for another mile, then he got back into the
sled. He noticed that the Indian held to a pattern: he would run along
for a half hour or so and then hitch a ride on the sled for ten minutes.
It seemed as if he could go on like that endlessly and tirelessly.
They stopped at mid-morning to give the dogs a rest and brew some strong
Indian tea. Charley wouldn’t drink the coffee in the thermos. “Coffee no
good. You ever see huskies drink coffee?” The boys had to admit that
they never had. “Indian tea like medicine. Make you strong and healthy.
Dogs know.” To demonstrate, he poured a little into a tin plate for
Titan, and the big lead dog lapped it up promptly.
“It sure doesn’t look as if we’re ever going to catch those guys ahead
of us, Charley,” Sandy commented, dropping a handful of snow into his
cup to cool it.
Charley looked down the trail behind them. “They behind us now. Last
hill we pass, we go around the long way, maybe mile longer. They go
through valley.”
Jerry blinked. “If we came the long way, how come we’re ahead of them?”
The Indian shrugged. “That valley like pocket after big snow. Drifts
three, four feet deep. They have plenty trouble getting through.”
Sandy grinned. “What a sly old fox you are, Charley.”
They were traveling high in the coastal mountains of British Columbia
now, moving through the Chilkoot Pass. Just before noon, they arrived at
a customs check point.
“You’re the first team through,” the mounted policeman who waved them
past shouted.
Abruptly, the trail appeared to end at the edge of a cliff. Charley
reined the team in and motioned for the boys to step to the rim of the
drop-off. Here they saw that, in reality, the trail continued on down a
steep incline that resembled the big drop on a roller coaster. For
almost 1,200 feet it fell away at a 45-degree angle into the coastal
valley below. It was a magnificent spectacle.
Jerry gulped hard. “We’re not going down _that_ in a sled, are we?”
Tagish Charley nodded curtly. “Chilkoot Chute. We take dogs off first.
They follow us down.” He walked back and began to remove Black Titan’s
harness.
Sandy grinned at Jerry. “You ever been on a bobsled?” Jerry shook his
head mutely. “Well, after this it’ll be a cinch.”
When the dogs were unhitched, the boys climbed aboard the sled, and
Charley pushed it to the edge of the chute. It teetered briefly, then
nosed down the incline.
“Alaska next stop!” Sandy yelled as they picked up speed. A rush of air
choked the words off in his mouth, and his stomach rose up in his rib
cage with a sickening sensation that was ten times worse than he had
ever experienced in an elevator.
Faster and faster the sled shot down the slope, swaying from side to
side, as Charley, riding the tail, shifted his weight skillfully to
steer it. Behind it the dogs skidded and scrambled down the chute,
barking and yelping excitedly. The sled reached the bottom and glided
down the trail almost half a mile before it came to a halt.
“What a ride!” Jerry exclaimed.
“We must have skidded halfway to Skagway,” Sandy said. He got out of the
sled and looked back at the Chilkoot Chute. “Gee, it doesn’t look so bad
from here, but when you’re on it, you’d swear it was a perpendicular
wall.”
The dogs finally caught up and Charley hitched them to the sled again.
“We win now easy,” he said matter-of-factly.
As they approached Skagway, they passed cabins, farms and other signs of
civilization. A group of children playing in one yard gave them a lusty
cheer and chased after the sled. Farther along, other children tagged on
to the caravan along with three dogs.
Then, up ahead on the outskirts of the city, they saw a big crowd of
people. “Finish line,” Charley informed them.
When the sled came into view, a tremendous roar went up and continued
unabated as they shot past a man waving a flag. The next thing Sandy
knew, they were engulfed by a sea of well-wishers, and men were pounding
him on the back so enthusiastically that it took his breath away. At
last he spied his father and Professor Crowell fighting their way
through the throng.
“Dad!” he called out happily. “We made it.”
Dr. Steele reached the boys and threw an arm around each of them.
“Congratulations! This was quite a race, I hear.”
“Charley is the guy who rates the congratulations,” Sandy answered.
Professor Crowell pounded Tagish Charley on the back ecstatically. “I’m
the proudest and happiest man in the world. I haven’t felt like this
since my twin girls were born. Thank you, Charley.”
Charley knelt down and put his arms around Black Titan, who was
accepting praise and pats from all quarters with the dignified reserve
of a true champion. “Dogs win the race. Charley just come along for
ride.”
Later, back at the hotel, after a warm bath and a good supper, the boys
recounted the adventures they had had during the race.
“Bless my soul,” Professor Crowell said to Jerry, “now you really have
an idea of the rigorous life that the sourdoughs led. Does it still
sound appealing to you?”
Jerry forked the last piece of homemade apple pie from his plate. “I’ve
come to the conclusion that I’m just a city boy at heart, sir,” he
declared emphatically.
“How was your visit to Fairbanks?” Sandy asked his father.
“We had a fine time,” Dr. Steele said. “I gathered some priceless
material for the pamphlet I’m preparing on the Pleistocene Era.” He
smiled. “But promise you won’t tell Quiz Taylor, Sandy.”
Sandy laughed. “I know what you mean, Dad. My solemn word, I won’t
mention it.”
“What’s on the agenda now, Dr. Steele?” Jerry inquired. “Are we going
home?”
“Not for another few days, Jerry,” Dr. Steele said. “The professor and I
want to fly up to Valdez and look over some old mining sites.”
“Where’s Valdez?” Jerry asked.
“The most northerly ice-free port in Alaska. It used to be the shipping
point for copper ore until the Kennecott mines closed down in 1938. We
had planned an exciting outing for you fellows—” he hesitated and looked
wryly at Jerry—“but inasmuch as Jerry says he’s a city boy at heart,
well, maybe we’d better forget it.”
“What kind of an outing, Dad?” Sandy asked.
Dr. Steele lit his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “We
won’t be using the plane for several days, and we thought you might like
to visit Kodiak Island. One of the instructors from the university will
be spending a week there, hunting bear, and he said you boys would be
welcome to join him.” He winked at Sandy. “But I’m not sure your city
friend here would be up to it.”
“That’s all right,” Sandy said. “Jerry can stay here at the hotel until
we come back.”
“Not on your life!” Jerry snorted. “I want to take one of those
bearskins back to my mom.”
Tagish Charley looked up from his plate solemnly. “Kodiak bear plenty
bad killer. Maybe he take your skin back to his mamma.”
Everyone except Charley laughed.
The next morning they boarded the big Norseman plane and headed
northwest up the coast for Valdez. As they flew over the glacier-ribbed
mountains, the boys were awed by the wild beauty of the country beneath
them.
“It’s so primitive,” Sandy remarked. “I don’t think man will ever tame
it.”
“Yes, he will,” Dr. Steele said. “As surely as he tamed the American
West. We just didn’t pay much attention to it until after World War
Two.”
“A land of untold riches,” Lou Mayer mused. “Gold, copper, silver, coal,
lead, tin, mercury, platinum—Lord knows what else.” He looked over
meaningfully at Dr. Steele.
“Things are certainly moving fast,” Dr. Steele went on, a little too
quickly, Sandy thought. “Oh, yes, Son, in another fifty years Alaska
will be as civilized as California.”
“But not nearly so warm,” Lou Mayer added.
Professor Crowell smiled. “I don’t know, I like our northern winters.
They make for greater intimacy among families and friends. When the
temperature is fifty below zero and the snow is piled up to your window
sills, there is literally no place like home. You discover that being
together in front of a warm fireplace can be just as enjoyable as
running off to the theater, bridge clubs, night clubs, bowling alleys
and all your so-called civilized diversions. The trouble with so many
young people these days is that they try too hard to have fun.”
Jerry scratched his head thoughtfully. “Professor, you know, you’re
right. I can’t think of any time in my life when I’ve had more fun than
I did the Christmas Eve we spent at that little weather station.”
Dr. Steele took out a small wallet calendar and consulted it. “Which
reminds me that tonight is New Year’s Eve.”
“Isn’t it funny how you keep forgetting about the holidays up here?”
Sandy said. “I guess they see the old year out pretty quietly. Not like
the States.”
Professor Crowell’s eyes twinkled through his glasses. “Don’t bet on it,
son. Some of the New Year’s parties I’ve been to in the North make your
Stateside celebrations seem like pink teas. In the old days, I remember
some shindigs that went on continuously from Christmas right through New
Year’s.” He smiled nostalgically. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of
them were still going on.”
“But we’ll be spending our New Year’s on Kodiak,” Jerry reminded them.
“I was looking at it on the map. It’s just a dinky little island.”
“Not so dinky,” Dr. Steele said. “It’s about a hundred miles long, you
know. And I think you’ll find that its citizens have just as much
holiday spirit as the people in the States.”
“Do many people live on Kodiak?” Sandy asked.
“It’s not too heavily populated,” Dr. Steele admitted. “Once it was the
center of the Alaskan fur trade. The Russians settled in the town of
Kodiak in 1784, and it wasn’t until much later that they moved their
headquarters to the mainland.
“Nowadays it’s hard to make a living on Kodiak. I think the only major
occupation is salmon fishing. There’s rich farming land at the south end
of the island, but the natives have always had difficulty raising sheep
and cattle. Too many hungry bears around.”
Jerry squinted down the barrel of an imaginary rifle. “Well, there’ll be
a few less after we get there, eh, Sandy boy?”
Tagish Charley, who had been staring moodily out of the window, turned
his quizzical black eyes on Jerry. “You shoot big as you talk,
everything be fine.”
“I think you better go along and take care of these fellows, Charley,”
the professor suggested.
“That would be great,” Sandy said. “How about it?”
Charley appeared to consider the proposition for a moment, then looked
gravely at Sandy from beneath his black eyebrows. “Charley like to go to
Kodiak. But better not. I stay and look out for professor.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Off to Hunt Kodiak Bears
At quarter after twelve the Norseman put down on the outskirts of
Cordova, and the three geologists disembarked along with Tagish Charley.
“You’ll be in Kodiak before dark,” Dr. Steele told the boys before he
left them. “The pilot will radio ahead so Professor Stern can be on hand
to meet you when you land. Be sure and bring us back a bearskin.”
“We will,” Sandy promised. “And we’ll see you back here on the third of
January.”
“Goodbye, Doctor,” Jerry said. “And Happy New Year.”
“Thank you, Jerry, and the same to you.” Dr. Steele winked. “Don’t eat
too much _muk-tuk_.”
As soon as the plane was refueled, they took off again. When Jerry began
to nod drowsily, Sandy went up front and sat down in the copilot’s seat.
Russell Parker, the pilot, was a chunky, gray-haired man in his late
forties, a veteran of the World War II Air Corps. “I was stationed in
the Aleutians for four years,” he told Sandy. “The place sort of grew on
me. There was this girl in Anchorage, too. Well, as soon as the war was
over we were married, and I decided to settle here permanently. I had no
family ties back in the States, so the transition was easy.” He smiled.
“You might say I found a home here.”
“And you’ve been a bush pilot ever since?” Sandy said. “Boy, that must
be an exciting life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it exciting exactly. A little romantic
maybe—everything about _Alashka_ is romantic.”
“_Alashka?_” Sandy looked puzzled. “I notice you always say it that
way.”
“It’s an ancient Aleutian term. Means the ‘big land.’”