MAN OF THE FAR NORTH
History, local in character, unrecorded for the most part, but epic in
virile intensity, makes with startling rapidity where men answer the
call of raw gold. And it is history, not delicately graven by master
hands of diplomacy; but rough hewn and slashed broad by self-centered
men who let the chips fall where they may. The past is forgotten. The
future is yet to come. But, there is gold in the gravel today! Raw
gold! Yellow gold! Coarse gold! And dust! With no thought of future men
will starve for it, will freeze for it, and for the chance to gouge
it from the earth will undergo all hardship and privation known and
unknown. With their eyes fixed on the golden sands of California, men
gave no heed to the rich and fertile loam lands of the middle west as
the wheels of their wagons rutted, and their feet trampled that golden
storehouse of the future. For there is gold in the gravel _today_!
The grazing lands of Australia, with their golden future in cattle and
sheep were worn bare by the trails of the stampeders. There is gold in
the gravel _today_!
And the forest lands and the tillable lands of Oregon, and Washington,
and British Columbia were passed with hardly a glance by the
nondescript army that surged Northward to answer the call of gold.
Timber and grain are of the future--but there is gold in the gravel
_today_!
And never did history make more rapidly than when that horde of
_chechakos_ swarmed over the Chilcoot and poured into the valley of
the Yukon. Good men, and bad men, poor men, and rich--clean-lived,
clean-muscled farmer boys aglow with the ruddy health of the outdoors,
rubbing elbows with the pasty-skinned degenerates of the city’s
slums--all dumped together into a land of ice, and of snow, and of
rugged mountains! Into a land that by no possibility of development
could be made to supply the one tenth part of their sustenance!
Rough hewn is the history of the Yukon. Its makers drowned in its
waters, froze on its hillsides, and starved on its creeks; or miserably
back-trailed to the place they came from! They paid with their lives
for their ignorance; or crept cravenly back in defeat. Those were the
incompetents. But, a few of the fit survived. Supermen, who lived on
and thrived where human life was the only cheap thing in the whole lean
land--beat the North, and gutted her creeks of their riches!
So history made fast on the Yukon. Camps sprang up in a day, flourished
for a month--and were forgotten. The hero of today supersedes the hero
of yesterday, and tomorrow will be unremembered. The heroes were the
men who found gold. Camps grew into towns, and towns into cities, and
banks superseded the safes of the saloon keepers and the traders as
repositories for the miner’s gold.
And so it was that eight years after Burr MacShane bid Camillo Bill
good bye and headed North in the darkness, his name had been long
forgotten, where once it had been the big name of all names. A dozen
or more of the old timers would occasionally shake their heads in
reminiscent regret that he had gone. Always they spoke of him in the
past tense--all but Camillo Bill, who regularly deposited large sums in
the bank to his credit. To the bank Burr MacShane was only a name--the
name of its heaviest depositor. In answer to inquiry Camillo Bill had
vouchsafed the information that Burr MacShane was his partner. That
he was on a prospecting expedition somewhere in the North. And, that
when he got ready he would return. And with the passing of the years
MacShane’s dust piled up its interest.
But, of all this, MacShane himself, knew nothing. Far to the northward,
in that land of winter darkness where the Colville River winds its
unmapped way to the frozen sea, Burr MacShane played a lone hand. There
was something on the Colville--something big. Somewhere upon its upper
reaches was a huge storehouse of gold--red gold. Gold that gripped
him as no other gold had ever gripped him. It was like no other gold
he had ever seen. Gold that stirred his imagination to its profoundest
depths--wonderful--mysterious--red!
Slowly and methodically he worked the bars of the lower river, panning
the precious red particles from the muck. It did not run rich, a
couple of dollars to the pan, hardly more. But what would it show deep
down? There was no timber. He could not burn in. The second winter he
laboriously hauled wood from the foothills of the Endicotts a hundred
and fifty miles, pulling the sled with his dogs! Six round trips
he made--and burned to bed rock in a week! So he worked up river,
southward. One by one he explored the tributaries. For four years he
worked--living like an Eskimo--delving like a gnome. Then he made a
hurried trip to Coldfoot for supplies, and for another four years he
buried himself in the North.
During the long daylight of the short summers he explored the lower
river, pan-washing the bars. And in the perpetual darkness of the long
winters he would mush back to the foot hills and work the tributaries
where some scraggy spruce timber furnished the necessary wood.
And in the course of time he had learned a strange thing. The red gold
of the lower river was top gold--new gold. It had not been washing long
enough to have worked down even to the shallow bed rock. The gold of
the upper river and its tributaries was old gold, paler, and deeper
down.
Therefore, he reasoned that somewhere between the two places he would
one day find the source of the red gold. Some convulsion of nature--an
earthquake, the fall of a cutbank, or an overhung spur of a mountain,
had within a comparatively recent time, opened up this storehouse of
red gold and the waters of the river were washing it down with the
surface sand.
On the trail of red gold MacShane forgot civilization. What was it
he had told Camillo Bill--maybe a year from now I will be taking out
a thousand dollars to the pan? More than a year had passed--many
years. But the storehouse was there. What difference did it make? He
would find it--sometime. And so with the utmost patience he rode his
hunch--the hunch that had driven him into the North. Wandering Eskimos
knew him and brought his supplies from Shungnak on the Kobuk, two
hundred miles to the southward.
Early in March of his eighth year on the Colville, he located a spot on
a tributary that flowed in from the westward, where indications showed
that the course of the river had been changed by an enormous slide of
rock. Powder! Powder, he must have to blast his way into the towering
mass of stone. And, as he studied the mass, he knew that all the powder
in the camps of the Koyukuk, and the Kobuk would not even scratch the
mighty pile. Nome was his only hope--Nome, the city that had sprung
up near the mouth of the Salmon River; where years before, he himself,
had struck color in the beach sands, but decided it wasn’t pay. He had
heard of Nome at Coldfoot, and of the fabulous wealth that those same
beach sands were yielding--and he had grinned. For that was in the
past. But, on the Colville, there is gold in the gravel _today_!
“Guess I’ll just hit down there an’ have a look at this city that’s
got rich off what I couldn’t find,” he said to himself that night in
his igloo-like hut. “It’s a hunch. I feel it workin’. I’m right now
knockin’ at the door of a big strike. ‘Go to Nome,’ it says. That means
get powder an’ blow this hill to hell.” For a long time he sat and
stared at the red squares that glowed at the draft of his stove. “Maybe
it means that I’m just naturally plumb homesick to talk to someone.
It’s--why, hell! It’s four years since I’ve seen a white man, or spoke
a white man’s word to anyone but myself an’ the dogs. An’ I ain’t
seen a white woman in God knows when! I wonder if they’ve got regular
saloons, with mahogany bars, an’ foot-rails, an’ dance halls. I wonder
if they’ve got anyone there that can make the old piano talk like Horse
Face Joe could? There’s one way to find out for sure,” he grinned, and
put a huge batch of dog feed to cook.
Morning found him on the trail. Four days later he pulled into Shungnak
to find everyone in the isolated little mining camp talking dog race.
“Where is this race? An’ when is it comin’ off?” asked MacShane.
“Over to Nome. An’ she starts the thirteenth of April,” informed the
saloon keeper, “How you bettin’? Me--I’m bettin’ even money John
Johnson’s team wins agin the field. Or, I’m bettin’ two-to-one on him
to beat out any team you kin name.”
“How many teams are racin’?” asked MacShane, indifferently.
“I don’t know. Four or five--mebbe more. It don’t make no difference.
They can’t none of ’em beat Johnson’s wolves.”
“I’ll take a thousand that this Johnson’s team don’t win,” said
MacShane, tossing a sack onto the bar. “I don’t know anything about
Johnson or his team, either. But I’m headin’ for Nome, an’ I guess I’ll
just hang around and see the race. It’ll be more interestin’ if I’ve
got somethin’ up on it.”
“Take another thousan’ if you want it,” invited the saloon keeper.
“No, a thousand will be enough. How’s the trail down river?”
“You’ll have a trail. An outfit pulled through the other day from the
Koyukuk. Old Man Gordon an’ his gal. Purtiest gal I ever seen, too.
They’ve got a string of dogs they think kin run, an’ they’re goin’ to
enter ’em in the Sweepstakes.” The man laughed harshly, “They ain’t got
no more show than a rabbit, runnin’ agin them Nome race dogs.”
“Gordon? Old Man Gordon, you say?”
“Yes. Know him?”
“Knew a man named Old Man Gordon once down to Dawson--before the big
stampede. Maybe it’s the same one.”
“Might be, at that,” agreed the saloon keeper. “But that gal of his’n!
You’d ort to see her. Didn’t know they grow’d peaches on the Koyukuk.
Baudette, here, he’s French, an’ nach’ly runs to wimmin more’n what us
others does--she makes such a hit with him that he offered to bet her
dogs would win. I give him odds of ten-to-one agin ’em. They can’t win.”
“Got any more dust at ten-to-one that says they can’t win?” asked
MacShane.
“Why, do you know them dogs?” queried the man suspiciously.
MacShane laughed: “Never saw ’em or heard of ’em,” he replied. “It’s
just a hunch--an’ when I get a hunch, I ride it. Ten-to-one’s a good
bet if I lose.”
“How much do you want of it?”
“Oh, couple hundred.”
“All right, you’re on fer two hundred. If them Koyukuk dogs wins, you
stop in on your way back an’ collect three thousan’.”
“I’ll stop,” grinned MacShane, and headed his dogs down river.
At Candle he bought an entire new outfit of clothing, and after a
night’s rest, pulled for Nome. On the crest of Death Valley Hill he
met the girl. MacShane had never, in any sense of the word, been a
lady’s man. The dance hall girls, with their association of liquor
and music amused him for an evening, and were promptly forgotten. Of
other women he knew nothing whatever. With MacShane the trail was the
thing--the trail, and what lay just beyond. He had been in the van of
a dozen stampedes. He had owned scores of good claims. But always the
onrush of the stampeders had driven him on. He had plenty of gold--how
much he had no idea. Much of it he had taken from the gravel with his
own hands, and much of it was the proceeds of the sale of claims. He
did not care for gold, only for the finding of gold. He loved the
game, and he played it--not for the gold, but for the game. It was
this spirit that had held him for eight years far in the North beyond
the haunts of men. To find the source of the strange red gold became
his fetish. The red gold appealed to him as no other gold had ever
appealed. And its quest kept him sane and keen, though living apart
from his kind through the long drear nights of eight Arctic winters,
and the unceasing daylight of eight short summers.
And now, at last, he stood upon the threshold of his golden storehouse!
During all the hours of the snow-trail he had pictured to himself what
he would find when he had blasted his way into that mountain of fallen
rock. A pocket? A crumbling lode? He would soon know. Trailing down
the Kobuk, from Shungnak he had been almost sorry he had decided to
stay at Nome for the dog race. Oh, well, what did it matter. A week, a
month, a year? A couple of weeks in the big camp would do him good. And
then he would hit the trail, and when he again struck a camp a stampede
would follow his back trail--a stampede for red gold! Then--he would
move on. Would harness his dogs and hit the long trail. Where? What did
it matter, just so he got away from the crowd? There were other strikes
to come. Dawson had not been the last strike, nor the Koyukuk. And the
Colville would not be the last strike. There always would be another
strike, and he, Burr MacShane would head some other stampede, on some
other far-off river. And again his name would be a by-word throughout
all the North.
He smiled whimsically: “They’ve all forgot me by this time. I’ve
be’n too long gone. There won’t anyone know me in Nome. There wasn’t
any Nome when I come through this part of the country. It’s--let’s
see--it’s twenty years ago. Twenty years--an’ in a little over a year
I’ll be forty! Old Man MacShane, they’ll be callin’ me, then. Yup, Old
Man MacShane!” and he laughed.
When the girl disappeared on the trail to Candle MacShane mushed on.
For an hour he mushed steadily, and with a start of surprise, he
realized that during that hour he had been thinking entirely of the
girl he had met on the trail. He remembered that Christmas in Dawson,
when he had lifted her onto the piano. He remembered that he had
picked out the prettiest doll on the Christmas tree, and given it to
her. “Funny I never noticed her, then,” he mused. “Must be because
she’s grow’d up. But, eyes like that--I sure ought to have noticed.
Kind of soft, an’ dark, like you could look way down into ’em--an’ all
the time you know she’s lookin’ into your own--sort of sizin’ you up.
If a man had anything on his mind that he had to hide, he couldn’t
look into those eyes.... Wonder how much powder it’s goin’ to take to
move enough of that rock to find out what’s under it.... Swung out
behind those dogs like a man ... I’ll bet she can trail all day....
Ton of powder ought to do.... She broke ’em herself, an’ she’s set
on drivin’ that race.... I can start in on the lower end an’ work up
through.... God! where’d she be if a blizzard hit, an’ she got caught
here without shelter?... Main trouble’s goin’ to be handlin’ the damn
rock after it’s blow’d out.... Old Man Gordon won’t know me.... I
wore a beard those days.... Anyhow, I ain’t goin’ to be bothered with
water, I’ll work into it before the thaw ... I won’t let on who I
am.... Wonder what he thought when he found his dust salted back in
the shaft? Wonder if he told _her_? Hell--I hope not! Won’t make any
difference, though, if they don’t know me.” And so it went, the man
struggling to concentrate upon his red gold, and the girl obtruding
his thoughts--muddling his problem. Half-angrily, he decided to banish
thought of both the girl and the red gold from his mind. And so he
continued his journey to Nome, thinking continuously of the girl with
the soft dark eyes.
MacShane drove a fast trail and arrived in Nome early in the evening
of the second day after his meeting with Lou Gordon. He had heard that
Nome was a big camp, and a live one. But he was totally unprepared to
find a modern, electrically lighted city on the bleak coast of Norton
Sound. “Camp--hell!” he exclaimed, as he passed along the brilliantly
illuminated street, “She’s a town! I sure passed up a big thing when
I quit this country an’ headed for the Yukon. But, I was only a kid,
then.”
Putting up his dogs, he strolled about the streets for a while, the
displays in the shop windows holding his attention. Men passed him
on the sidewalks, singly and in groups, and men accompanied by women
muffled to the ears in rich furs. But they paid him no heed. Now and
then he saw a man clad in parka and moccasins but for the most part
they were dressed as they would have dressed in Seattle or Vancouver.
“Dude camp,” muttered MacShane, and for the first time in his life he
knew that he was lonely. He grinned at the realization of it. He--Burr
MacShane, who had mushed more lone trails than any man in the North,
was lonely in the biggest camp in the North. One hour of Nome had
accomplished what eight long years in the Arctic solitudes had failed
to accomplish--it had made him long for his kind.
A door opened, and from a glittering palace of fun two men stepped, and
passed on down the street. Attracted by the sound of music, MacShane
entered the place and found himself in a spacious room the floor
of which was dotted with small tables at which men and women were
seated, eating and drinking. Upon a raised platform at the rear an
orchestra was rendering music. To the right, a long bar ran the full
length of the room. Men stood at this bar, each with his foot resting
upon a polished brass rail, and poured their liquor from cut glass
decanters that glittered in the blaze of light. Here was something he
understood. While not in any sense a drinking man, MacShane’s visits to
civilization had always been celebrated with more or less whiskey. He
enjoyed the exhilaration of it. It was part of the game.
“All this camp needs is wakin’ up,” he decided, and crossing to the
bar, smote it loudly with his fist. “Surge up, you trail-hounds an’
have a drink!” he roared, in a voice that carried to the far corners of
the room. But, there was no crowding to the bar. The orchestra played
on, and the men and women at the tables stared. One or two snickered.
The men at the bar turned on him in frank astonishment. Some of these
also laughed. The linen-clad bartender opposite him stared at the gold
sack that lay upon the bar before MacShane, and from the rear a man,
also linen-clad, hurried toward him.
“Cut that out!” he ordered, curtly.
MacShane was bewildered. He felt as though he had been plunged suddenly
into cold water. “What do you mean?” he managed to ask.
“I mean you lay off the rough stuff, or out you go--see? We don’t stand
for that, here!”
Before MacShane could reply, a large man detached himself from a group
at the bar and stepped to his side. The man’s eyes were twinkling, and
his lips smiled. The linen-clad one accorded him deference. MacShane
noted that the steel-grey eyes of the big man hardened momentarily as
he addressed the other.
“You go back, Strake, before you start something. Leave him to me.”
“Certainly, Mr. Smith. It’s all right, Mr. Smith,” the man rubbed his
palms together, and slipped away.
“Let’s liquor,” invited the man, “Here, shove this in your pocket.”
He lifted MacShane’s sack from the bar, upon which the bartender had
already placed decanter and glasses. Still in bewilderment, MacShane
poured his drink, and the big man followed.
“Trouble is with us--not you, sourdough,” he smiled. “We think we ain’t
a camp any more--we’re a city. We’re dudes! There ain’t a man in the
house that could make twenty-five miles on the trail to save his life.
We’re civilized plumb helpless. An’ it wasn’t so long ago that I struck
this camp with a pair of greasy overalls an’ a ragged parka, an’ drunk
whiskey out of a tin can. An’ Strake run the lowest lived dump in the
camp. But times have changed. There’s more raw gold here than anywhere
else in the world--yet Strake ain’t even got a pair of scales. We don’t
pan-wash an’ hand-sluice any more--an’ we pay our bills with checks.”
The man paused and uplifted his glass. “Well, here’s how.” MacShane
drank and returned the empty glass to the bar: “I see,” he said,
slowly. “An’ I’m sure obliged to you for tellin’ me. I’d buy a drink,
but I ain’t got a check.”
The big man laughed. “Down the street,” he said, “and around the
first corner to your right, you’ll see a sign that says MALAMUTE
SALOON. _Saloon_--not café. If I was you, I’d kind of loaf down there.
It’s--our kind of a dump. The boys will be glad to see you. An’ there’s
scales sittin’ on the bar.”
“Thanks,” said MacShane, “I’ll go there. So long.” As he passed close
beside a table on his way to the door, he heard a man whisper to his
companion, “That’s H. P. Smith. He’s cleaned up ten million, dredging.”
In the Malamute Saloon, MacShane ordered a round of drinks, but he did
it unostentatiously, half-expecting another rebuff. But the men in
moccasins and woolens crowded the bar and drank his health heartily,
and he was immediately swamped with invitations to drink with them. One
more drink he took, and retiring to a table toward the rear, ordered
supper. All about him, as he ate he could hear men discussing the great
dog race. Argument waxed hot. Bets were made, and the stakes put with
the proprietor. Life here was as it should be. Nome hadn’t all turned
dude.
But despite the familiar surroundings, MacShane realized that there
was something lacking. The three drinks should have produced a mild
exhilaration. A pleasant glow in his belly, and a faster coursing of
the blood through his veins. At this very moment he should be feeling
in a mood for comprehensive goodfellowship. He, too, should be placing
his bets on the dog race. But, the liquor was taking an opposite
effect. He felt depressed. His thought kept recurring to the girl on
the trail. Why should he keep thinking of her? She was nothing to
him. But, those eyes--those dark eyes that seemed to look deep into a
man’s very soul. Suppose something should go wrong out there? It is a
bleak country, the wind-swept trail to Candle. Why hadn’t he waited
on the trail. A waiter dumped an array of thick dishes before him,
and mechanically, MacShane ate. “She’ll be here tomorrow night,” he
muttered, “If nothin’ happens.” For a long time after the finish of
his meal he sat and watched the men at the bar, and at the card tables
that lined one side of the room. Slow anger rose within him. Anger at
the girl with the haunting eyes. Here was he, Burr MacShane, for the
first time in years in a live camp, his pockets bulging with dust, good
liquor for the ordering, dance halls, every ingredient of a good time,
and yet, here he sat lugubriously watching others disport themselves,
as he longed to be disporting himself. Yet the sport had lost its
appeal. He could not understand it, and unconsciously his mind took an
introspective turn. What did he want to do? There was no answer. Try
as he would he could arouse no spark of enthusiasm for anything. He
thought of the mass of loose rock at the end of his long trail. But,
even the red gold had lost its appeal. In disgust, he rose from the
table, paid for his meal, and walking straight to his hotel, went to
bed.