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.
[Illustration: In Camp--The Dogs’ Porridge.]
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 mischief-maker, 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 very crestfallen 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 corn-meal. 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
gay-colored 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 dough, and afterward, upon solidifying, to have
been rent by convulsions of the earth’s crust.
But one was too busy with the handles of 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 in the open,
drying our wet footwear by the heat of the sun in the late afternoon.
[Illustration: The First Boats.]
Starting at 2 A.M. with the first light, 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 we 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 navigation 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 bacon 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
brush-house. 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.
Our hair and beards were long and unkempt; our trousers were the color
of mahogany; but we felt strong enough to go up the side of a mountain
on the run, and we had been so near to nature that we could truly claim
her for next-door neighbor.
In the future, the numerous police stations built in the summer (1898)
will furnish food for travellers and their dogs. Already, therefore,
our journey in the manner that we made it is a thing of the past, and,
accordingly, one feels as he looks back on it a little of the pride of
the pioneer.
“We can sleep as long as we want, to-morrow,” said Fritz, pulling his
robe over him, “and we won’t care whether it is going to freeze at
night or not.”
“And we won’t have wet feet,” Jack added. “I guess it’s been twenty
days since they wasn’t sopping ’fore we’d been out two hours, and that
slush does feel rather clammy when the sun’s blisterin’ overhead.”
Ten miles in ten hours was the record of our last day’s travel, over
the worst trail we had encountered. At dusk we rounded an island, and
to our right, on a small flat across the river (which here had been
opened by the current of the Klondyke), we saw the cluster of cabins
which was the pilgrim’s Mecca. There was glare ice, however, above the
Klondyke across to the little suburb of Dawson, Klondyke City. For the
first time in many days we rode on our sleds, finishing our journey in
triumph.
“Don’t you know that it’s too late to travel on the river?” asked the
foremost man of the little crowd that came out to meet us.
“Yes,” replied Jack, “and we’ve just made up our minds to quit.”
Four days later, as if it had broken away all along the shores at
the same moment, the ice moved on toward the sea like a great white
procession, halted now and then by a jam, but not for long.
“It’s a pleasure to see that trail go by,” was Jack’s comment, as he
watched it from our cabin-door. “I only wish I might pay it back in its
own kind by tripping it up a few times.”
III
DAWSON
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DAWSON--CORNERING THE TINNED FOOD
MARKET--CHEECHAWKOS AND OLD-TIMERS IN THE EARLY DAYS.