BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN
After the boys had taken the sacks of gold out of the pit they lowered
the rude box that held all that was mortal of Michael Carscadden into
it; stood with Eileen by the open grave with bowed heads and made their
silent prayers for him. Then Bill played _Nearer My God To Thee_ on his
mouth-organ and never before had he played the toy musical instrument so
sweetly and with such feeling.
This done the boys filled in the space around and above the box with
snow which they packed down tight; then they came to rigid attention,
gave the military salute and Bill sounded _taps_ on his mouth-organ when
the simple but sincere service was over. So ended the life of adventure
and romance of one of Alaska’s greatest hunters of moose and seekers of
gold--Michael Carscadden.
After the boys had put back the heavy hewn timbers, which formed the
floor, they fell to discussing the best way to get Eileen and the gold
over to their permanent camp, for it was about as hard a puzzle as
getting the fox, the geese and corn across the river.
There were three ways of doing it but as two of them necessitated
leaving Eileen alone at one or the other of the cabins they did not
think well of either of these and hence eliminated them. The matter
resolved itself down to the conclusion that the only feasible plan was
for them all to go together and take along the gold at the same time.
“You can hitch up my dogs, boys,” spoke up Eileen, “then you will have
seven dogs in each team and they can haul these heavy loads.”
“But your dogs are nothing but skin and bones, Eileen,” Jack explained
to her, “and I doubt very much if they will be able to drag themselves
back to our camp, let alone do any team-work.”
“Here we are millionaires in our own right an’ only half-a-pound of tea,
a dozen biscuits and two cans of pemmican left and our dogs a-starvin’
to death. I’ll give a hundred dollars for a beefsteak as big as my
hand,” said Bill, and he meant it, but there were no takers, for here in
the frozen wilderness gold had lost its purchasing power.
That night while Eileen slept, the boys loaded the heavy sacks on their
sleds and on one of them they made a comfortable bed for her of
bear-skins. Then Jack prepared a pot of tea, doled out a single biscuit
and a spoonful of pemmican for each hand and called Eileen to
“breakfast.” While she was getting ready for the long journey the boys
went out and whistled for the dogs but they were in no great hurry to
leave their warm holes.
Less than half a ration of fish apiece was their share but they are long
suffering beasts and actually seemed thankful for the little that they
got. As Bill was hitching up his team, Sate, his lead dog, caught his
eye and his master’s heart went out to him.
“Sate, you poor dum animule, you’ll get your fill o’ rations, I’m
thinkin’, when we hits our camp,” he told him as he gave him a couple of
love pats on the head.
“You’re all right, pard. You’re the goodest driver in all Alaska and I
know it isn’t your fault that we’re starved out,” Sate said
good-naturedly. At any rate he howled a couple of times cheerfully which
was his way of saying it in short-hand dog-language.
When Jack went into the cabin Eileen had taken her last leave of her
sleeping father whose burial place she might never see again.
“We’re all ready to go, Eileen,” he called cheerily.
“I am ready to go too, Jack,” she said simply; “there is nothing for me
to stay for now.”
Jack picked her up and carried her out to his sled where he put her in
her sleeping bag and tucked a lot of big fur robes around her.
It was an hour or more before the night would fade into day, yet so
bright gleamed the aurora borealis that it was easily light enough to
see to travel. Their whips cracked, the commands to _mush_ were given to
the teams, the bells jingled, but there was lacking the great vibrant
joy that comes of living in the open which usually marked their going.
The sleds were heavy with gold, but Eileen’s daddy had been left behind
and they were on the ragged edge of starvation.
Even when they reached the tundra the sleds did not pull easily for they
were overloaded and the dogs were weak from hunger so that instead of
enjoying themselves racing along in the traces, gold had made them
work-dogs with all that this hard term implies.
Nor were the boys more kind to them because of the gold and hardship
that had been thrust upon them. Rather they gave their orders in harsher
tones and plied their whips harder and more often. The dogs well knew
that there had been a great and sudden change in their lives and they
laid it all to the girl who rode, when, according to their canine way of
thinking, she by rights ought to and should have walked.
And Eileen thought so too and she often asked the boys to let her walk
with them that the loads might be made the lighter but they would not
hear of it. Her little added weight made no difference, according to
Jack, and besides, alleged Bill, the dogs could stand it for once, for
never had huskies been taken care of better, done so little real work,
or had suffered less from hunger.
It took them two days and the best part of another one before they
reached their camp and it was lucky for them that the time was not
prolonged for that noon they had drunk their last drop of tea, eaten the
last crumb of biscuit and particle of pemmican, and given their dogs the
last bite of fish. So hungry had Bill become that he had marked out the
dog he was going to kill to provide provender for them all, but fate was
kind to the dog, and to Bill, for he was not called on to do this act of
sabotage.
When they at last got to their camp Bill was as good as his word and fed
the dogs a dozen rations of fish and moosemeat and having downed this in
as many gulps they began to show signs of life and decency again. Jack
threw together a real meal, the first that Eileen had eaten in weeks,
nay months, and oh, how good those Alaska strawberries tasted! They were
indeed a delicious fruit.
After the boys had gorged themselves they counted up their sacks of gold
to make sure that none had escaped either by way of the door or up the
chimney, and in their youthful ardor they were on the very verge of
giving vent to their repressed feelings in true western style, and whoop
things up. But somehow they simply couldn’t do it with that frail, slip
of a girl, weakened by months of misery and starvation, and all of her
own people gone out of her life forever, lying there on the bunk
following their every movement. Once she smiled, ever so faintly, and
the light of a new life was in her eyes and the peace of contentment was
on her face.
After policing up the cooking utensils and setting things to rights a
bit they turned the cabin over to Eileen and built a snow igloo of
goodly size just outside the door, for their own quarters. Now that the
precious metal they had sought for so long and hard was theirs they were
keen to start back to the haunts of men, but Eileen did not grow strong
as rapidly as they had hoped for and there was naught else for them to
do but stay.
Then the question came up as to the safest way to get their winnings
from their cabin in the Alaskan wilds back to the Atlantic seaboard and
into the _Empire Safe Deposit Company’s_ vault. Convoying a cargo of
gold nuggets, to say nothing of chaperoning a little Irish-Indian maid,
from the almost unknown heart of this great sub-Arctic country, over
rivers, sea and land and into the most thickly inhabited part of the
world was, they realized, no small undertaking.
“There are two trails we can take to get to Seattle,” began Jack.
“One is the way we came up,” interrupted Bill, “and the other--”
“Is for us to sled down the Big Black and Porcupine Rivers to Fort
Yukon, then take a Yukon River steamer to St. Michaels, over on Norton
Sound, and from that place sail on a regular steamer that goes direct to
Seattle.”
“But that way is longer by a thousand miles,” protested Bill.
“I know it is but if we go to Circle City and then up the Yukon River to
White Horse we’ll have to cross over into Yukon Territory and the
chances are we’ll have to hand over a ten per cent tax on our
hard-earned winnings to the Canadian Government; besides they’ll be
liable to make us do a lot of explaining as to where we got it from, and
I hold it’s nobody’s business. Get me?”
Bill batted his eyes.
“Afore I’d pay a nickel tax on our dust I’d drive over to the North Pole
and go around by the way of Greenland,” was his emphatic rejoinder.
Now there are a lot of terse phrases such as “nothing succeeds like
success,” “a fool and his money are soon parted,” _et cetera_, and
another might be to say that nothing makes most fellows so stingy as
coming into possession of a fortune, for it was evident that these
usually over-generous boys had “tightened up” since this golden manna
had risen from the pit where it was _cached_ in such a strange manner.
They were, as Bill expressed it, “fools for luck.”
Eileen was not progressing as fast as they thought she would though she
improved slowly and surely. Good food, the best care, cheerful
companionship and strong arms to look after her every want had made a
wondrous change in this frail little girl who had dropped to the floor
from exhaustion only a fortnight before. One thing was sure, however
miserly the boys had grown in their minds, they took a tremendous
interest in this silent half-breed child whose father had been the means
of making them as rich as the richest caliph and that, you will allow,
is pretty rich.
Eileen in turn recognized in them messengers sent by the Great Spirit
who had saved her life, and as she watched them go about their work,
heard them talk of their plans, and what they would do with and for her
when they got home, she knew they were, like the nuggets in the sacks,
twenty-four carats fine.
At first she couldn’t quite make Bill out, especially when he smiled,
for the very emotion that nature intended a smile to represent, that
terrible scar across his cheek gave the opposite appearance. Sometimes
Eileen would look at him so curiously that Jack thought perhaps, she
might be a little afraid of him, so one day while Bill was out getting
some wood Jack told her how he came by that scar and the kind of a
fellow he was as a friend and a fighter.
Came that day when all agreed that Eileen could safely make the sled
trip down to Fort Yukon and, indeed, it was high time, for spring was
fast coming on and this meant that the snow would melt, the ice grow
thin and rotten and the bottom drop out of the trail at any moment.
So again the gold and the girl were loaded on the sleds and the long
awaited start back home was made--a journey of some six thousand miles.
Many things can happen in making a trip of even less length, aye, and
_did_ happen as you shall presently see.
It was not often that the dogs got into any very serious fights but
there had been bad blood between Eileen’s Indian dogs and Jack’s and
Bill’s dogs from the time they first met and they would have discarded
the Indian dogs long before but as each team was short a dog and the two
_scrubs_, as Bill called them, could haul their full share, they kept
them.
At the first camp they made, going down the Big Black River, Link, one
of the Indian dogs and Dave, of Jack’s team, got into a fight over so
small a thing as a piece of fish that neither of them had, and before
the boys could separate them Link lay very close to the edge of the
world next to come. It was a calamity that this fight should have
happened a day after instead of a week before they started for it proved
to be the most costly dog-fight that was ever pulled off anywhere, bar
none.
Bill was for leaving the dog and going on but Jack said it was best to
stay in camp for a few days and let Link’s wound’s heal, for they had
great need of him as both sleds were loaded to the guards and it was all
that a full team of seven dogs each could haul. Then again Jack had
conscientious scruples against shooting the dog or turning him loose in
the wilds. (Perhaps because Link belonged to Eileen). But before Link
was whole again another seven days had slipped by and spring was
pressing winter hard for first place.
The days were getting longer and so warm that their thick fur clothing
was quite uncomfortable and they must needs change into their mackinaws.
The melting snow and running water everywhere made sledding overland out
of the question but the trail was still holding on the river though here
and there holes appeared and cracks separated the more solid stretches
of ice. Time was up and they must push on.
Jack took the lead as he had Eileen on his sled and Bill’s outfit came
on a little ways behind. Another day’s march and they came to some
rapids where the air holes were larger and the ice bent under the weight
of their treasure. Jack was ahead of his team picking the way across the
treacherous trail when all of a sudden Bill let out a blood-curdling
yell of the Apache variety, and on looking back he and Eileen saw that
he and his sled and Jinx, the wheel dog had gone through the ice while
Sate and the rest of the team were straining every muscle to the
breaking limit to keep from being dragged down into the icy waters
behind them. The pole that Bill had taken the precaution to carry saved
him from going under but try as he would he could not get out.
Running back at top speed Jack had the situation sized up long before he
reached the scene of disaster. When he was within a dozen feet of the
team he made a mighty slide, as a man sliding for home with three on
bases, and drawing his hunting knife from its sheath at the same time,
the instant he came alongside the last dog he cut the traces. Relieved
of the mighty weight so suddenly the team fell headlong forward and
sprawled about on the ice; at the same moment the sled, with over half
of the moosehide sacks of gold on it, and Jinx, the wheel dog, dropped
to the bottom of the river. Jack then helped Bill out and on getting
back to the former’s team they made an air line for the shore.
It would add nothing to the gayety of the world to relate what Jack said
to Bill and Bill said to Jack and what both of them said about the loss
of their vast fortune so soon after they had found it. Eileen was the
peace maker and she told them they still had enough gold to keep them
forever and ever (she had never lived in New York) and that the loss of
the gold mattered not a whit as long as Bill had been saved. And both of
the boys came to think that she had the right view of it at that.
The result of the dreadful mishap was a pow-wow in which it was resolved
first, that they couldn’t afford to take any further chances on the
_last ice_ with either Eileen or the remainder of their treasure,
second, that spring was altogether too far advanced to make any further
attempt to get to Fort Yukon with their remaining sled, and third, that
they must mark the spot where the gold went down so that they could
recover it when conditions were more favorable.
“The only thing for us to do now,” declared Jack, “is to camp right here
until the _first water_ and then build a boat or a raft and float on
down to Fort Yukon, which is some seventy miles from here. In the
meantime we’ll build up a cairn of rocks on each side of the river and
in a line with the sunken yellow stuff so that when we do come back
we’ll know right where it is.”
“An’ one good thing no one else ’ull ever guess out where it is,”
philosophized Bill.
The boys made a fairly comfortable camp and set about building a raft of
spruce logs which they lashed together with rawhide thongs. When this
was done and they could get across the river they built up a great pile
of rocks on either side of it but well back from the shore. Before
another moon rolled round they were ready to make a fresh start down the
river.
“What about these huskies here,” asked Bill, who always kept his
weather-eye open for the welfare of their dogs even though they didn’t
have any more use for them.
“We’ll turn them loose and they’ll follow us along the shore all right,”
replied Jack, and so that little matter was settled.
They loaded the remaining sacks of gold, their outfit and provisions, of
which precious little was left, onto the raft. In the middle they had
built up a platform of saplings for Eileen to sit on to the thoughtful
end that when the raft struck the rapids and took a notion to dive, like
a submarine, the water would not wash over and wet her.
Then Eileen took her seat on the platform, Jack stood on the front end
and Bill on the diagonal corner of the rear end and with their long
poles they pushed their treasure float off shore. As Jack had said, the
huskies followed them and they kept as close to the edge of the river as
they could, barking and howling furiously as they ran along.
It took very little effort on the part of the boys to steer the raft and
none at all to keep it moving as the current was augmented all along by
rivulets and streams from the melting snows. Where the river was wide
and the water shallow the raft sailed gently along but where the channel
was narrow the boys had to do some tall maneuvering to keep it from
getting swamped.
The rapids, of which there were many, were their despair. When the
ungainly craft struck these eddying currents it pitched and rolled about
like a piece of cork and the little crew had to hang on to it for dear
life. In this exciting fashion they covered the rest of the distance
down the Big Black River. Just before they came to the mouth where it
empties into the Porcupine River the bed made a sharp descent and the
water rushed down it in a mighty torrent.
There was a bend in the river ahead of them and this too they
successfully navigated, but a rock, that projected out of the water, and
which was directly in their course, proved their undoing. Jack managed
to get his pole on it and brought all of his strength to bear to keep
the raft clear of it, but the weight and the momentum were too great and
a corner struck it with such force that Eileen and the boys were thrown
bodily into the water.
It was well for them that they were good swimmers and after a struggle
with the swift current all of them landed on the shore like bags of wet
rags. Then the huskies covered with mud and rending the air with their
vocal organs swarmed round them.
Never in all his life had Jack felt more like crying. He could stand any
kind of bodily pain but with all of their gold gone he suffered
exquisite mental torture. Many a prospector in the early days had killed
himself for less bad luck. Bill seemed to be not all there for he acted
queerly and talked about the little “boidies” that were singing in the
trees, the “bloomin’” flowers that bloomed in the spring, and other like
idiotic fancies that hadn’t anything to do with the case, tra, la.
[Illustration: “THE UNGAINLY CRAFT PITCHED AND ROLLED ABOUT LIKE A PIECE
OF CORK.”]
Eileen was the only one who had kept her wits about her. She reasoned
with the boys, or at least she tried to; she told them how very, very,
lucky they were in that for the second time none of them were drowned,
and as for the gold it was a blessed good thing it was all gone, she
said, for it only brought bad luck.
Bill looked at her as she spoke these consoling words in a funny kind of
way, as though he’d just got out of a merry-go-round and didn’t quite
know where he was.
“Eileen,” he managed to say, blinking at her; “I wouldn’t even let a
perliceman talk that way to me. If you was me pard, Jack here, I’d make
you put up your dooks, see.”
Eileen laughed as if either he, or what he had said, was a great joke,
and what’s more, she laughed out loud--the first time since they had
known her. Then Jack laughed, and Bill, not to be left out in the cold,
joined them with his hearty guffaw. And there the three of them sat on a
fallen tree, water soaked, bedraggled, dead broke and as miserable as
possible, laughing fit to kill.
Having had experience in losing things, including a few mere sacks of
gold and a lot of provisions when his sled went down, Bill had insisted
before they embarked on their raft that they should each carry a day’s
rations strapped to their backs. Building a big fire they dried their
clothes and had their drop of tea and bit of pemmican and after that
they felt much better, and quit laughing.
The huskies fared very much _a la_ Mother Hubbard’s dog, which is to say
that the cupboard was bare and so the poor brutes had none, no, not even
a piece of fish to eat.
“Well, one good thing,” said Bill, whose pemmican had revived him again,
“we won’t have to mark this blarsted spot where the last bit of our gold
was dumped for I’d know that rock if I saw it a thousand miles off Fire
Island.”
Jack and Eileen took a good look at the projecting finger which wouldn’t
get out of the way of their raft, and they agreed with Bill that it was
a monument of misfortune which having once been run into could never be
forgotten.
As they were only twenty some odd miles from Fort Yukon these youngsters
started out to walk there, or “hoof it” as Bill so inelegantly expressed
it. They had not gone more than a couple of miles when they came
upon--no, it couldn’t be, and yet there it was--their raft beached on
the shore and on it there still remained three of the moosehide sacks of
gold.
As Jack had often told Bill conditions are largely a matter of mind and
truly it seemed so. For see you now, when they first stumbled on the pit
of gold in Carscadden’s cabin they were not nearly as elated as one
would have thought they’d be. Then when they lost the sled load of gold,
though they were still millionaires, they were as sore at heart and mad
at each other as they could be. When they lost all of their treasure and
were dead-broke they laughed, and now having recovered three sacks of it
they simply went wild with joy. Can you beat it?
It was a remarkable trio of youngsters that landed from their raft at
Fort Yukon on that never-to-be-forgotten day in July. At any rate so
said the inhabitants of that burg. Hoboes couldn’t have looked more
disreputable. And the huskies were all there too, mean, lean and dog
dirty.
The crowd at the landing that gathered round this motley little group
scarce knew what to make of it, they felt so sorry for these woe-be-gone
“kids.” But when they saw Bill take two moosehide sacks filled with
something that was tremendously heavy under his arms and Jack take
another and third one on his shoulder, the half-breed girl trudging
along between them and their teams of huskies sticking as close to them
as they could get without being stepped on, their mute sorrow changed to
open expressions of surprise. Here was something to talk about to the
end of time.
“Moosehide sacks filled with gold! by jimminy!” blurted out an old
timer.
“An’ them kids found it where we couldn’t,” exclaimed another bitterly.
And so on, and so on.
They went over to the Crystal Hotel and while Bill stood guard over what
was left of their treasure, Jack took Eileen across the street to the
_New York Emporium_ and there they outfitted themselves and Bill for the
trip down to St. Michaels. When they next appeared in public there had
been a great transformation for Eileen was a brand new girl and Jack and
Bill were almost themselves again.
Eileen, as pretty as ever an Irish lass and an Indian maid blended into
one could be, had her hair done up, wore a blue traveling dress, a
sailor hat and, cross my criss cross, she had on stockings and shoes,
which latter, let it be whispered, she would willingly have traded for a
pair of old moccasins.
The boys were clean, well groomed and had their hair cut. They wore real
store clothes--all wool suits that looked as if the price tag on them
had been marked up to $7.65 from $5.67. When they walked their shoes
squeaked at every step like a duck having its neck wrung. They were
rich, genial and willing to talk on any subject they didn’t know
anything about, but of the moosehide sacks filled with gold, they said
never a word.
Yet, with all their good humor the boys were ready to pull the triggers
of their six-guns on the bat of an eyelid should any one get the idea in
his head that he was going to relieve them of their treasure. And they
guarded Eileen with the same jealous care.
A week’s run on the steamboat down the Yukon landed them at St. Michael,
and once there they shipped their sacks of gold by express through to
New York City when a part of their great responsibility was lifted from
their minds. In a month’s time Jack and Bill were back where they had
started from, while Eileen was being petted and pampered by the swelldom
of Montclair.
THE END