ON THE KOYUKUK
On Myrtle Creek, six miles above its mouth, the Gordons selected
a cabin site, close against the shoulder of a mountain, where a
thicket of spruce promised some protection against winter gales.
And it was in the building of this cabin that they came first to
realize the real comradery, the _esprit de corps_ of the men of
the Koyukuk. For the two or three hundred white men who live upon
the Koyukuk and its tributaries, all but a half-dozen of whom are
grouped far within the Arctic Circle, more than six hundred miles
above the river’s confluence with the Yukon, and isolated as few
other camps in the North are isolated in the land of the strong cold
and the long dark, count themselves more a family than a community.
A man strikes it lucky, and the whole Koyukuk rejoices. Another
meets misfortune, disease or accident, and down he goes for medical
attention--Fairbanks--Vancouver--Seattle--and the Koyukuk pays the
bills. And in no other gold camp in the world is it the common practice
when a man “goes broke” for another more fortunate than he to invite
him to “take yer pan an’ go down on my claim an’ git out what you need.”
And so, in the building of the cabin. Hardly had Gordon felled the
first tree when he was suddenly confronted by a bearded giant whose
faded overalls were tucked into a pair of rubber boots: “Hello,
neighbor!” greeted the man, “Goin’ to locate? That’s good. I’m Pete
Enright, half a mile up the creek.”
“Gordon’s my name, Old Man Gordon, they call me down Dawson way. Yes,
guess I’ll try my luck here.”
“She’s spotted, Gordon, remember she’s spotted. Lots of gold if you
can only find it. Don’t git down-hearted. She’s here, but she lays in
pockets.”
Attracted by the sound of voices, Mrs. Gordon and Lou appeared from the
little tent pitched close beside the creek.
“Well, for gosh sakes!” cried Enright, staring in surprise at the two.
“Ladies! Real white ladies on Myrtle!”
“My wife an’ daughter,” introduced Gordon, “This is Pete Enright, our
neighbor just above.”
“You all’s _skookum_, all right. First ladies on Myrtle, almost the
first on the Koyukuk. No wonder you didn’t stick around Dawson. They
tell me the whole Yukon country is gummed up with shorthorns an’
_chechakos_, till a man ain’t got elbow room for to swing a pick. You
all’s moose chewers all right, an’ you jist nach’ly had to come where
the moose chewers is. Well, I got to go. So long, folks, see you agin.
Don’t cut ’em too long, Gordon. Little cabins is easier het than big
uns. She gits away down there when the strong cold’s on. Fifty below
is common, sixty ain’t nothin’ to brag about, an’ they claim she’s hit
way below seventy. My thermometer thicks up so’s she ain’t no good at
sixty-seven, an’ I know she gits colder, but I can’t measure it. The
cold’s all right when yer fixed fer it. But she’s God’s own country--no
shorthorns nor _chechakos_--plenty room to move around in. So long.”
The man disappeared as abruptly as he had appeared. The three Gordons
smiled. “Nice and hearty for a neighbor,” said Mrs. Gordon. “Down
below, the way it is now, if we’d have located within half a mile of
one of those _chechakos_, he’d have been growling about our crowding in
on him.”
“Different breed of pups up here,” replied her husband. “All malamutes
an’ huskies--no mongrels.” The women returned to their duties about the
tent, and Gordon resumed his chopping.
It was nearly noon the next day when eight men, headed by Pete Enright,
threaded their way through the spruce timber, and came to a halt before
Gordon. Each man carried an ax. “Hello, Gordon!” Enright greeted, and
turned to his followers. “Boys, this here’s Old Man Gordon, I was
tellin’ you about.” He proceeded to introduce each man by name, and
when he had finished, addressed them. “All right, boys, go to it!
“Wouldn’t make it no bigger’n ten by twelve, Gordon. Mine’s six by
eight--warm as hell, but no room. There’s only one of me, though.”
At Enright’s bidding, the men scattered about the timber and soon
Myrtle Creek rang to the song of axes.
“Where’d they all come from?” asked Gordon, as Enright sank his ax to
the helve into a standing tree.
“Come from? They’re all Myrtle Creekers. I mushed on down the creek
an’ gathered ’em up. The Slate Creek boys all be growling ’cause I
didn’t let them in on it, but, shucks, there’s enough of us here to
roll up the cabin, an’ chink it an’ throw up a dog shelter, an’ cut yer
winter’s wood in a couple days or so.”
“I’m sure obliged,” said Gordon, “I’ll slip over to the tent an’ tell
ma to cook up an extra batch of grub.”
“Not by a damn sight!” cried Enright. “We didn’t come up here to eat
off’n you all. We come to roll up a cabin. An’ we packed our own grub.”
“I’ll not permit it!” cried Gordon. “Ye’ll eat my grub, or ye’ll not
work on my cabin! Who d’ye think I am to----”
Enright laid a huge hand on Gordon’s shoulder, “Hold on, Gordon,” he
said, “You listen to me. You ain’t on the Yukon, now--you’re on the
Koyukuk. Our ways is a little different here, than some other places.
But there’s reasons for it. Take this grub business. It’s a hell of a
job to pack grub up from Coldfoot. You’ve figgered yer grub to run
you till a certain time--everyone does. Of course if it was only one
man, fer a few meals it wouldn’t cut no figger. But there’s eight of us
fer may be three or four days, an’ we ain’t what you might say light
eaters. Anyhow we’d make a hell of a hole in any man’s grub pile. Now,
we’d all be eatin’ our own grub anyhow so it’ll last as long as it was
figgered to last. Hell, man! You might better roll up yer own cabin
than be et out of grub. On the Koyukuk we like to do one another a good
turn. An’ when we do we don’t want no half ways about it, neither. All
we got up here is each other.”
Four days later the eight men returned to their claims, leaving the
Gordons in possession of the largest and most completely equipped
cabin on Myrtle. Ten by twelve, it stood at a sharp bend of the
creek surrounded by the thicket of spruce, all chinked, banked, and
furnished, even to a rocking chair which one of the men had devised
for the comfort of Mrs. Gordon. Nor did the cabin alone bespeak the
handiwork of the miners, for conveniently grouped about it were an
ample dog shelter, a pole meat cache, and a huge pile of dry wood, all
chopped and ready for the stove, a reserve supply against the coming of
the strong cold.
During the fall Gordon prospected the bars up and down the creek,
staking several likely locations and panning, before the freeze-up,
considerably better than wages.
When snow fell two men on Slate Creek “went pardners,” and having no
use for two dog outfits, Gordon bought a team of six good dogs and a
sled. Then he and Lou took the outfit and struck into the hills for
caribou, returning a few days later with six fine carcases which were
hoisted onto the meat cache.
The days rapidly shortened, and with the long nights came the cold.
Gordon was burning in, now, on a bar close to the cabin. Each day at
noon the sun hung lower and lower in the heavens, his rays weakened,
and the shadows lengthened upon the snow. At last came the day
when sunset followed sunrise with no interval of time between, and
thereafter for many long days the only sunlight to be seen was the
noontime gilding of distant mountain peaks. Daylight came to mean dim
twilight, and a great deal of Gordon’s work was done by the light of
the moon and stars.
But he worked with a will, for his frequent test pans showed that he
had struck pay. Lou helped, even with the cutting and carrying of
cordwood to keep up the fire that thawed the gravel, and when she was
not at her father’s side she was off in the hills with the dogs and
her little twenty-two rifle with which she added no small contribution
to the family larder in the way of rabbits and ptarmigan. As Gordon
chopped his wood, and laboriously man-hauled it on a rude travois to
his workings, as he tended his fire, and as he shoveled out his layer
of thawed gravel, his thoughts were always upon the time when he could
afford a “b’iler” to loosen his gravel with steam. The boiler got to
be an obsession. He talked boiler for hours on end to his wife and
daughter, and he talked it to the men of Myrtle and Slate Creeks when
chance threw them together. In vain the men argued that the cost of
bringing a boiler into the Myrtle Creek country would be prohibitive,
and that even if one were brought the spotted nature of the workings
would necessitate its frequent removal to new locations. But Gordon
remained obdurate. And amused, the men went their ways and among
themselves dubbed him B’iler Gordon.
At Christmas time the Gordons made the trip to Coldfoot, as did most
of the inhabitants of the creeks, for the midwinter trading. Beside
the white people there was a goodly sprinkling of Indians and Kobuk
Eskimos whose chief aim in life seemed to be to squat upon the floor of
the trading room and listen with unconcealed delight to the scratchy
music that wheezed from the horn of a cheap phonograph. The fact that
they understood no word of the ragtime songs and talking records seemed
to detract in no slightest particular from their delight, as over and
over again the dozen or more badly worn records were proudly fed into
the machine by one of their number who had been instructed in its
manipulation.
Being the only white women with the exception of the dancing girls,
Mrs. Gordon and Lou were the invited guests of the trader’s wife. The
men foregathered in the saloon which, with its dance hall, divided
honors equally as to popular diversion, with the evening meeting
conducted in the trading room by an itinerant missionary.
Two or three days would ordinarily have sufficed for the midwinter
trading and its attendant social activities, but upon Christmas day
the strong cold fastened upon the Koyukuk. The thermometer, which up
to that time had hung between forty below, and ten above zero, on
Christmas day dropped suddenly to sixty below. On the day following it
was still sixty, and thereafter for ten days the warmest record was
fifty-four below.
The men of the creeks waited for a let-up. There is a saying in the
North that trailing at fifty below is all right as long as it’s all
right. Which means that if everything goes smoothly and without
accident, no particular harm will result. But who can confidently
expect to trail without accident? At fifty below the one absolute
essential to life is constant motion. No clothing, however warm, that
a man can possibly pile onto himself and pretend to leave any freedom
of movement for walking, will protect him from the grip of the frost
unless he keep moving. Any circumstance that necessitates a halt
without shelter spells disaster. A broken dog harness, a damaged sled,
or worst of all, encountering water on the ice, means a halt, and as
nothing can be accomplished with the hand encased in heavy mittens,
it also means baring the fingers to remedy the evil, and baring the
fingers at fifty below for more than a minute or two at a time means
that the fingers will freeze to the bone.
Water on the ice at fifty below? More chance of it than at any warmer
temperature, for at fifty the creeks freeze solid to the bottom in the
shallows, and the water thus dammed beneath the ice bursts through and
comes rushing down in a torrent on top of the ice, but under the snow,
so that before he knows it the unwary trail musher may find himself
ankle deep in water, which at fifty below spells death unless he can
immediately reach shelter and a fire. Nor can the danger be averted
by forsaking the creeks, for in the land of the strong cold the level
surface of the rivers and the creeks are the only practicable highways.
And these things the men of the Koyukuk knew, and knowing them, waited
for the let-up.
And as they waited the talk was of gold. Old Man Gordon discoursed at
length upon the possibilities of a “b’iler.” Someone spread the report
of rich strikes further up the Koyukuk on Nolan Creek, and on Wiseman.
Many signified their intention of hitting out for the new district in
the spring. But Gordon was not one of these. He swore he would stay
where he was, and would bring in a “b’iler” and show them all that the
real bonanza of the Koyukuk was Myrtle. A stand in which he was upheld
by Crim, the trader, and some few of the miners.
The morning of the fourth of January, with the thermometer at 30
below, saw a general exodus from Coldfoot. And as the sourdoughs mushed
back to their claims, the Gordon sled was weighted with more than
its freighting of grub, for when Lou had casually mentioned within
hearing of some of the men in the trading store that she had read every
scrap of paper in the cabin, there had been a general ferreting among
the cabins of Coldfoot with the result that fifty pounds or more of
well-thumbed books, and magazines were added to Gordon’s load.
The coming of spring brought confirmation of the rumor of a strike on
Nolan Creek. Coldfoot stampeded. The miners, all but a straggling few,
hit the trail for the new diggings. The saloon followed the miners and
the trading post followed the saloon. Coldfoot was dead. And Nolan
became the metropolis of the Koyukuk.
Among the few who remained were the Gordons. Disregarding the advice
of friends, the stubborn Scot stayed on Myrtle, insisting that when he
should bring his “b’iler” in and begin thawing the gravel with steam,
they would all stampede back to Coldfoot.
When he had finished sluicing his dump he weighed up dust enough to pay
Crim, outfit himself for another year, and put aside a considerable sum
toward the purchase and transportation of his beloved “b’iler.”
Late in the fall Mrs. Gordon succumbed to an acute attack of
appendicitis, and was buried by the grief-stricken husband and
daughter upon a wooded knoll just behind the cabin. After the death
of his wife, Gordon drew more and more within himself, and more and
more he became obsessed with his one idea--his “b’iler.” And so for
three years he washed the bars in summer, and burned into the gravel in
winter, the while his “b’iler” fund grew slowly.
In the meantime, quite without the old man’s notice, Lou had developed
from awkward girlhood into full rounded womanhood. And a very beautiful
woman she was, the soft curves of her figure giving no hint of the
splendid muscles that rippled and played beneath the velvet softness of
her skin--muscles that rendered her absolutely tireless on the trail,
and allowed her to swing an ax like a man. Perfect health steeled her
nerves to an almost uncanny accuracy with the rifle. She did all the
hunting, now, and no ptarmigan was brought into the Gordon cabin that
had not been shot clean through the head with the twenty-two, or was
any caribou hoisted to the meat cache that had not been instantly
killed by a well-placed shot from the thirty-forty.
Left to her own resources, the girl divided the time not occupied with
her simple household duties between hunting, and reading, and the
breeding of dogs.
In the magazines which she devoured from cover to cover, she had
occasionally run across an article upon the selective breeding of
animals. One such article dealt with race horses, another with dairy
cattle, and the information contained therein she eagerly digested, and
proceeded to apply to the breeding of dogs.
Gordon took scant interest in her “putterin’ wi’ the dogs” and gladly
turned over their entire management to her, allowing her to keep the
profits of the venture for her own. By the end of the third year these
profits had mounted to a tidy sum, notwithstanding the fact that she
used of it largely in the purchase of books and magazines whenever and
wherever she found opportunity, and also in the purchase of materials
for the underclothing which she fashioned by her own handiwork into
garments that copied those in the fashion plates of the magazines to
the utmost nicety. Her outer garments, of fur in the winter and squaw
cloth in summer, were the strictly utilitarian garments of the land of
the strong cold.
Quick to realize their superiority, the girl concentrated on the two
native breeds of dogs, the malamutes and the huskies. And the pride
of her stud was a great upstanding brute of a dog called Skookum,
whose mother a pure strain husky, she had mated with an old, but
magnificently muscled husky she had bought cheap in Nolan, because
his temper had soured with age until his owner feared to handle him.
Later she shot him when in a fume of wolfish ferocity he ran amuck
and killed two of his own pups. Upon Skookum, the sole survivor of
the litter, the girl lavished a world of affection, and a wealth of
patient training. For, from the first she had seen in the tawny, amber
eyed puppy the making of a great dog, inheriting as he had the superb
physical build of his father, and it is true, his father’s wolfish
temper, but blended with it the staunch loyalty and sagacity of his
mother who was a famous trail dog on the Koyukuk.
The fame of Lou Gordon as a breeder of dogs had traveled the length
of the river. She drove a ten dog team now, five malamutes and five
huskies, and each dog in the team had been carefully selected from
the pick of her kennels. Of this team Skookum was the leader, and
few indeed were the trail tricks his mistress had not taught him.
On the narrow trails of the Koyukuk the tandem rig was used almost
exclusively, and following the leader came the other four huskies, and
behind them the five malamutes. Thus, the longer geared huskies broke
trail for the shorter legged malamutes which in turn compensated by
bearing the brunt of the pull. As, among all her dogs, Skookum was
the girl’s favorite, so was he her constant companion, he alone being
allowed to run at large.
Although not an inherent fighter like the malamute, the husky breed
develops now and then a wonderful fighter. Skookum was such a dog,
his longer legs and heavier body giving him a decided advantage over
any malamute, and added to this physical advantage was the sagacious
cunning of his generalship. Before he was two years old he had fought
his way to the leadership of the team, displacing old Kamik, a crafty
and incorrigible fighter, and an equally incorrigible thief.
Lou Gordon knew dogs. She had picked Skookum for a leader from tiniest
puppyhood, and to that end she bent all her energy upon his training.
She talked to him as she would have talked to a human companion,
and it was her fancy that he understood every word she spoke. While
in no sense a demonstrative dog, Skookum had nothing of the supreme
indifference of the malamute. His smouldering yellow eyes followed
her every movement, and by little signs and quirks of expression, he
gave evidence of understanding. A raised eyebrow, a single wag of the
tail, a pricking of the mobile ears, and on rare occasions, a lick of
the long red tongue upon her face or hand, told the girl as plainly as
words what was passing in the great brute’s mind.
There was nothing of the brutal in Lou Gordon’s training of her dogs.
When occasion demanded she used the whip, and used it unsparingly, but
always in the correction of an acquired fault, that if persisted in
would detract from the value of the dog, or of the team as a unit. She
never punished a dog for fighting, nor did she ever punish a hungry dog
for stealing. Many hungry dogs came her way--dogs that she was able to
buy cheap because through abuse and inadequate feeding they had become
of little value to their owners. These dogs she took home, and by
judicious handling and feeding developed them into able-bodied trail
dogs that commanded top prices.
The care and management of from fifteen to thirty dogs was no small
task. She owned and operated with the help of an Indian boy her own
fish nets, and dried her own fish. She hunted caribou, and tried out
her own tallow. For she early learned that on the trail her dogs could
not be kept in condition on a straight fish or meat diet. She bought
corn meal and rice by the hundred-weight, and when working, her dogs
always got one feed a day of cooked ration, boiled rice or cornmeal,
mixed with tallow.
The result was that her own team was by all odds the best team on the
Koyukuk, and the dogs she offered for sale on her semi-annual trip to
Nolan and Wiseman, were eagerly snapped up at top prices.
And so it was, at the approach of Christmas, on the fourth year of
their residence on the Koyukuk, father and daughter were living alone
on Myrtle, for the last of the others had long since gravitated to the
new camps, the old man burning, digging, and dreaming of his “b’iler,”
and the girl busy with her dogs and her books.