II. THE MEAT
Half the time the wind blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered against
it along the beach. In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were being
loaded with the precious outfits packed across Chilkoot. They were
clumsy, home-made boats, put together by men who were not
boat-builders, out of planks they had sawed by hand from green
spruce-trees. One boat, already loaded, was just starting, and Kit
paused to watch.
The wind, which was fair down the lake, here blew in squarely on the
beach, kicking up a nasty sea in the shallows. The men of the
departing boat waded in high rubber boots as they shoved it out
toward deeper water. Twice they did this. Clambering aboard and
failing to row clear, the boat was swept back and grounded. Kit
noticed that the spray on the sides of the boat quickly turned to
ice. The third attempt was a partial success. The last two men to
climb in were wet to their waists, but the boat was afloat. They
struggled awkwardly at the heavy oars, and slowly worked off shore.
Then they hoisted a sail made of blankets, had it carry away in a
gust, and were swept a third time back on the freezing beach.
Kit grinned to himself and went on. This was what he must expect to
encounter, for he, too, in his new role of gentleman's man, was to
start from the beach in a similar boat that very day.
Everywhere men were at work, and at work desperately, for the
closing down of winter was so imminent that it was a gamble whether
or not they would get across the great chain of lakes before the
freeze-up. Yet, when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs. Sprague and
Stine, he did not find them stirring.
By a fire, under the shelter of a tarpaulin, squatted a short, thick
man smoking a brown-paper cigarette.
"Hello," he said. "Are you Mister Sprague's new man?"
As Kit nodded, he thought he had noted a shade of emphasis on the
MISTER and the MAN, and he was sure of a hint of a twinkle in the
corner of the eye.
"Well, I'm Doc Stine's man," the other went on. "I'm five feet two
inches long, and my name's Shorty, Jack Short for short, and
sometimes known as Johnny-on-the-Spot."
Kit put out his hand and shook. "Were you raised on bear-meat?" he
queried.
"Sure," was the answer; "though my first feedin' was buffalo-milk as
near as I can remember. Sit down an' have some grub. The bosses
ain't turned out yet."
And despite the one breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and
ate a second breakfast thrice as hearty. The heavy, purging toil of
weeks had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf. He could
eat anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a
digestion. Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he
received surprising tips concerning their bosses and ominous
forecasts of the expedition. Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding
mining engineer and the son of a millionaire. Doctor Adolph Stine
was also the son of a wealthy father. And, through their fathers,
both had been backed by an investing syndicate in the Klondike
adventure.
"Oh, they're sure made of money," Shorty expounded. "When they hit
the beach at Dyea, freight was seventy cents, but no Indians. There
was a party from Eastern Oregon, real miners, that'd managed to get
a team of Indians together at seventy cents. Indians had the straps
on the outfit, three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague
and Stine. They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a
pound the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps.
Sprague and Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand,
and the Oregon bunch is still on the beach. They won't get through
till next year.
"Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to
sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's. What
did they do when they hit Linderman? The carpenters was just
putting in the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco
bunch for six hundred. Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even
thousand, and they jumped their contract. It's a good-lookin' boat,
but it's jiggered the other bunch. They've got their outfit right
here, but no boat. And they're stuck for next year.
"Have another cup of coffee, and take it from me that I wouldn't
travel with no such outfit if I didn't want to get to Klondike so
blamed bad. They ain't hearted right. They'd take the crape off
the door of a house in mourning if they needed it in their business.
Did you sign a contract?"
Kit shook his head.
"Then I'm sorry for you, pardner. They ain't no grub in the
country, and they'll drop you cold as soon as they hit Dawson. Men
are going to starve there this winter."
"They agreed--" Kit began.
"Verbal," Shorty snapped him short. "It's your say-so against
theirs, that's all. Well, anyway, what's your name, pardner?"
"Call me Smoke," said Kit.
"Well, Smoke, you'll have a run for your verbal contract just the
same. This is a plain sample of what to expect. They can sure shed
mazuma, but they can't work, or turn out of bed in the morning. We
should have been loaded and started an hour ago. It's you an' me
for the big work. Pretty soon you'll hear 'em shoutin' for their
coffee--in bed, mind you, and them grown men. What d'ye know about
boatin' on the water? I'm a cowman and a prospector, but I'm sure
tenderfooted on water, an' they don't know punkins. What d'ye
know?"
"Search me," Kit answered, snuggling in closer under the tarpaulin
as the snow whirled before a fiercer gust. "I haven't been on a
small boat since a boy. But I guess we can learn."
A corner of the tarpaulin tore loose, and Shorty received a jet of
driven snow down the back of his neck.
"Oh, we can learn all right," he muttered wrathfully. "Sure we can.
A child can learn. But it's dollars to doughnuts we don't even get
started to-day."
It was eight o'clock when the call for coffee came from the tent,
and nearly nine before the two employers emerged.
"Hello," said Sprague, a rosy-cheeked, well-fed young man of
twenty-five. "Time we made a start, Shorty. You and--" Here he
glanced interrogatively at Kit. "I didn't quite catch your name last
evening."
"Smoke."
"Well, Shorty, you and Mr. Smoke had better begin loading the boat."
"Plain Smoke--cut out the Mister," Kit suggested.
Sprague nodded curtly and strolled away among the tents, to be
followed by Doctor Stine, a slender, pallid young man.
Shorty looked significantly at his companion. "Over a ton and a half
of outfit, and they won't lend a hand. You'll see."
"I guess it's because we're paid to do the work," Kit answered
cheerfully, "and we might as well buck in."
To move three thousand pounds on the shoulders a hundred yards was
no slight task, and to do it in half a gale, slushing through the
snow in heavy rubber boots, was exhausting. In addition, there was
the taking down of the tent and the packing of small camp equipage.
Then came the loading. As the boat settled, it had to be shoved
farther and farther out, increasing the distance they had to wade.
By two o'clock it had all been accomplished, and Kit, despite his
two breakfasts, was weak with the faintness of hunger. His knees
were shaking under him. Shorty, in similar predicament, foraged
through the pots and pans, and drew forth a big pot of cold boiled
beans in which were imbedded large chunks of bacon. There was only
one spoon, a long-handled one, and they dipped, turn and turn about,
into the pot. Kit was filled with an immense certitude that in all
his life he had never tasted anything so good.
"Lord, man," he mumbled between chews, "I never knew what appetite
was till I hit the trail."
Sprague and Stine arrived in the midst of this pleasant occupation.
"What's the delay?" Sprague complained. "Aren't we ever going to get
started?"
Shorty dipped in turn, and passed the spoon to Kit. Nor did either
speak till the pot was empty and the bottom scraped.
"Of course we ain't been doin' nothing," Shorty said, wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand. "We ain't been doin' nothing at
all. And of course you ain't had nothing to eat. It was sure
careless of me."
"Yes, yes," Stine said quickly. "We ate at one of the tents--
friends of ours."
"Thought so," Shorty grunted.
"But now that you're finished, let us get started," Sprague urged.
"There's the boat," said Shorty. "She's sure loaded. Now, just how
might you be goin' about to get started?"
"By climbing aboard and shoving off. Come on."
They waded out, and the employers got on board, while Kit and Shorty
shoved clear. When the waves lapped the tops of their boots they
clambered in. The other two men were not prepared with the oars,
and the boat swept back and grounded. Half a dozen times, with a
great expenditure of energy, this was repeated.
Shorty sat down disconsolately on the gunwale, took a chew of
tobacco, and questioned the universe, while Kit baled the boat and
the other two exchanged unkind remarks.
"If you'll take my orders, I'll get her off," Sprague finally said.
The attempt was well intended, but before he could clamber on board
he was wet to the waist.
"We've got to camp and build a fire," he said, as the boat grounded
again. "I'm freezing."
"Don't be afraid of a wetting," Stine sneered. "Other men have gone
off to-day wetter than you. Now I'm going to take her out."
This time it was he who got the wetting and who announced with
chattering teeth the need of a fire.
"A little splash like that!" Sprague chattered spitefully. "We'll
go on."
"Shorty, dig out my clothes-bag and make a fire," the other
commanded.
"You'll do nothing of the sort," Sprague cried.
Shorty looked from one to the other, expectorated, but did not move.
"He's working for me, and I guess he obeys my orders," Stine
retorted. "Shorty, take that bag ashore."
Shorty obeyed, and Sprague shivered in the boat. Kit, having
received no orders, remained inactive, glad of the rest.
"A boat divided against itself won't float," he soliloquized.
"What's that?" Sprague snarled at him.
"Talking to myself--habit of mine," he answered.
His employer favoured him with a hard look, and sulked several
minutes longer. Then he surrendered.
"Get out my bag, Smoke," he ordered, "and lend a hand with that
fire. We won't get off till morning now."
Next day the gale still blew. Lake Linderman was no more than a
narrow mountain gorge filled with water. Sweeping down from the
mountains through this funnel, the wind was irregular, blowing great
guns at times and at other times dwindling to a strong breeze.
"If you give me a shot at it, I think I can get her off," Kit said,
when all was ready for the start.
"What do you know about it?" Stine snapped at him.
"Search me," Kit answered, and subsided.
It was the first time he had worked for wages in his life, but he
was learning the discipline of it fast. Obediently and cheerfully
he joined in various vain efforts to get clear of the beach.
"How would you go about it?" Sprague finally half panted, half whined
at him.
"Sit down and get a good rest till a lull comes in the wind, and
then buck in for all we're worth."
Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the
first time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to
the mast and sped down the lake. Stine and Sprague immediately
became cheerful. Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always
cheerful, and Kit was too interested to be otherwise. Sprague
struggled with the steering-sweep for a quarter of an hour, and then
looked appealingly at Kit, who relieved him.
"My arms are fairly broken with the strain of it," Sprague muttered
apologetically.
"You never ate bear-meat, did you?" Kit asked sympathetically.
"What the devil do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing; I was just wondering."
But behind his employer's back Kit caught the approving grin of
Shorty, who had already caught the whim of his metaphor.
Kit steered the length of Linderman, displaying an aptitude that
caused both young men of money and disinclination for work to name
him boat-steerer. Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to
continue cooking and leave the boat work to the other.
Between Linderman and Lake Bennett was a portage. The boat, lightly
loaded, was lined down the small but violent connecting stream, and
here Kit learned a vast deal more about boats and water. But when
it came to packing the outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and
their men spent two days of back-breaking toil in getting the outfit
across. And this was the history of many miserable days of the
trip--Kit and Shorty working to exhaustion, while their masters
toiled not and demanded to be waited upon.
But the iron-bound arctic winter continued to close down, and they
were held back by numerous and unavoidable delays. At Windy Arm,
Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within
the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were
lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as
they came down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was
charcoaled "The Chechako."
Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine. "I can sure read and
spell, an' I know that chechako means tenderfoot, but my education
never went high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like
that."
Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the insult rankled; nor
did he mention that the night before, Shorty had besought him for
the spelling of that particular word.
"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
later.
Kit chuckled. Along with the continuous discovery of his own powers
had come an ever-increasing disapproval of the two masters. It was
not so much irritation, which was always present, as disgust. He
had got his taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching
him how not to eat it. Privily, he thanked God that he was not made
as they. He came to dislike them to a degree that bordered on
hatred. Their malingering bothered him less than their helpless
inefficiency. Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest
of the hardy Bellews were making good.
"Shorty," he said one day, in the usual delay of getting started, "I
could almost fetch them a rap over the head with an oar and bury
them in the river."
"Same here," Shorty agreed. "They're not meat-eaters. They're
fish-eaters, and they sure stink."
They came to the rapids; first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles
below, the White Horse. The Box Canyon was adequately named. It
was a box, a trap. Once in it, the only way out was through. On
either side arose perpendicular walls of rock. The river narrowed
to a fraction of its width and roared through this gloomy passage
in a madness of motion that heaped the water in the center into a
ridge fully eight feet higher than at the rocky sides. This ridge,
in turn, was crested with stiff, upstanding waves that curled over
yet remained each in its unvarying place. The Canyon was well
feared, for it had collected its toll of dead from the passing
goldrushers.
Tying to the bank above, where lay a score of other anxious boats,
Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate. They
crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of water. Sprague
drew back, shuddering.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "A swimmer hasn't a chance in that."
Shorty touched Kit significantly with his elbow and said in an
undertone:
"Cold feet. Dollars to doughnuts they don't go through."
Kit scarcely heard. From the beginning of the boat trip he had been
learning the stubbornness and inconceivable viciousness of the
elements, and this glimpse of what was below him acted as a challenge.
"We've got to ride that ridge," he said. "If we get off it we'll hit
the walls."
"And never know what hit us," was Shorty's verdict. "Can you swim,
Smoke?"
"I'd wish I couldn't if anything went wrong in there."
"That's what I say," a stranger, standing alongside and peering down
into the Canyon, said mournfully. "And I wish I were through it."
"I wouldn't sell my chance to go through," Kit answered.
He spoke honestly, but it was with the idea of heartening the man.
He turned to go back to the boat.
"Are you going to tackle it?" the man asked.
Kit nodded.
"I wish I could get the courage to," the other confessed. "I've
been here for hours. The longer I look, the more afraid I am. I am
not a boatman, and I have with me only my nephew, who is a young
boy, and my wife. If you get through safely, will you run my boat
through?"
Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.
"He's got his wife with him," Kit suggested. Nor had he mistaken
his man.
"Sure," Shorty affirmed. "It was just what I was stopping to think
about. I knew there was some reason I ought to do it."
Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.
"Good luck, Smoke," Sprague called to him. "I'll--er--" He
hesitated. "I'll just stay here and watch you."
"We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the
steering-sweep," Kit said quietly.
Sprague looked at Stine.
"I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman. "If you're not afraid to
stand here and look on, I'm not."
"Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly.
Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of
a squabble.
"We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty. "You take the bow
with a paddle, and I'll handle the steering-sweep. All you'll have
to do is just to help keep her straight. Once we're started, you
won't
be able to hear me, so just keep on keeping her straight."
They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening
current. From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar. The river
sucked in to the entrance with the smoothness of molten glass, and
here, as the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of
tobacco and dipped his paddle. The boat leaped on the first crests
of the ridge, and they were deafened by the uproar of wild water
that reverberated from the narrow walls and multiplied itself. They
were half-smothered with flying spray. At times Kit could not see
his comrade at the bow. It was only a matter of two minutes, in
which time they rode the ridge three-quarters of a mile and emerged
in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.
Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice--he had forgotten to
spit--and spoke.
"That was bear-meat," he exulted, "the real bear-meat. Say, we want
a few, didn't we? Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that
before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of
the Rocky Mountains. Now I'm a bear-eater. Come on an' we'll run
that other boat through."
Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had
watched the passage from above.
"There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty. "Keep to win'ward."
After running the stranger's boat through, whose name proved to be
Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose
blue eyes were moist with gratitude. Breck himself tried to hand
Kit fifty dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.
"Stranger," was the latter's rejection, "I come into this country to
make money outa the ground an' not outa my fellow critters."
Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey.
Shorty's hand half went out to it and stopped abruptly. He shook
his head.
"There's that blamed White Horse right below, an' they say it's
worse than the Box. I reckon I don't dast tackle any lightning."
Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked
down to look at the bad water. The river, which was a succession of
rapids, was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef.
The whole body of water, rushing crookedly into the narrow passage,
accelerated its speed frightfully and was up-flung into huge waves,
white and wrathful. This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and
here an even heavier toll of dead had been exacted. On one side of
the Mane was a corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the
opposite side was the big whirlpool. To go through, the Mane itself
must be ridden.
"This plum rips the strings outa the Box," Shorty concluded.
As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above. It was a
large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of
outfit, and handled by six men. Before it reached the Mane it was
plunging and leaping, at times almost hidden by the foam and spray.
Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit and said: "She's fair
smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst. They've hauled the oars in.
There she takes it now. God! She's gone! No; there she is!"
Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying
smother between crests. The next moment, in the thick of the Mane,
the boat leaped up a crest and into view. To Kit's amazement he saw
the whole long bottom clearly outlined. The boat, for the fraction of
an instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places, all
save one in the stern, who stood at the steering-sweep. Then came the
downward plunge into the trough and a second disappearance. Three
times the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the bank saw
its nose take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane. The
steersman, vainly opposing with his full weight on the steering-gear,
surrendered to the whirlpool and helped the boat to take the circle.
Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which
Kit and Shorty stood that either could have leaped on board. The
steersman, a man with a reddish beard of recent growth, waved his hand
to them. The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane, and on
the third round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper end.
Possibly out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the steersman did
not attempt to straighten out quickly enough. When he did, it was too
late. Alternately in the air and buried, the boat angled the Mane and
was sucked into and down through the stiff wall of the corkscrew on
the opposite side of the river. A hundred feet below, boxes and bales
began to float up. Then appeared the bottom of the boat and the
scattered heads of six men. Two managed to make the bank in the eddy
below. The others were drawn under, and the general flotsam was lost
to view, borne on by the swift current around the bend.
There was a long minute of silence. Shorty was the first to speak.
"Come on," he said. "We might as well tackle it. My feet'll get
cold if I stay here any longer."
"We'll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
"And you'll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder. Shorty turned
to their employers. "Comin'?" he queried.
Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from hearing the
invitation.
Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of
the rapids and cast off the boat. Kit was divided between two
impressions: one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a
spur to him; the other, likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old
Isaac Bellew, and all the other Bellews, had done things like this
in their westward march of empire. What they had done, he could do.
It was the meat, the strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that
it required strong men to eat such meat.
"You've sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at him,
the plug of tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in the
quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the
steering-gear, and headed the boat for the plunge.
Several minutes later, half-swamped and lying against the bank in
the eddy below the White Horse, Shorty spat out a mouthful of
tobacco juice and shook Kit's hand.
"Meat! Meat!" Shorty chanted. "We eat it raw! We eat it alive!"
At the top of the bank they met Breck. His wife stood at a little
distance. Kit shook his hand.
"I'm afraid your boat can't make it," he said. "It is smaller than
ours and a bit cranky."
The man pulled out a row of bills.
"I'll give you each a hundred if you run it through."
Kit looked out and up the tossing Mane of the White Horse. A long,
gray twilight was falling, it was turning colder, and the landscape
seemed taking on a savage bleakness.
"It ain't that," Shorty was saying. "We don't want your money.
Wouldn't touch it nohow. But my pardner is the real meat with
boats, and when he says yourn ain't safe I reckon he knows what he's
talkin' about."
Kit nodded affirmation, and chanced to glance at Mrs Breck. Her
eyes were fixed upon him, and he knew that if ever he had seen
prayer in a woman's eyes he was seeing it then. Shorty followed his
gaze and saw what he saw. They looked at each other in confusion
and did not speak. Moved by the common impulse, they nodded to each
other and turned to the trail that led to the head of the rapids.
They had not gone a hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague
coming down.
"Where are you going?" the latter demanded.
"To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered.
"No, you're not. It's getting dark. You two are going to pitch
camp."
So huge was Kit's disgust that he forebore to speak.
"He's got his wife with him," Shorty said.
"That's his lookout," Stine contributed.
"And Smoke's and mine," was Shorty's retort.
"I forbid you," Sprague said harshly. "Smoke, if you go another
step I'll discharge you."
"And you, too, Shorty," Stine added.
"And a hell of a pickle you'll be in with us fired," Shorty replied.
"How'll you get your blamed boat to Dawson? Who'll serve you coffee
in your blankets and manicure your finger-nails? Come on, Smoke.
They don't dast fire us. Besides, we've got agreements. If they
fire us they've got to divvy up grub to last us through the winter."
Barely had they shoved Breck's boat out from the bank and caught the
first rough water, when the waves began to lap aboard. They were
small waves, but it was an earnest of what was to come. Shorty cast
back a quizzical glance as he gnawed at his inevitable plug, and Kit
felt a strange rush of warmth at his heart for this man who couldn't
swim and who couldn't back out.
The rapids grew stiffer, and the spray began to fly. In the gathering
darkness, Kit glimpsed the Mane and the crooked fling of the current
into it. He worked into this crooked current, and felt a glow of
satisfaction as the boat hit the head of the Mane squarely in the
middle. After that, in the smother, leaping and burying and swamping,
he had no clear impression of anything save that he swung his weight
on the steering-oar and wished his uncle were there to see. They
emerged, breathless, wet through, the boat filled with water almost to
the gunwale. Lighter pieces of baggage and outfit were floating
inside the boat. A few careful strokes on Shorty's part worked the
boat into the draw of the eddy, and the eddy did the rest till the
boat softly touched the bank. Looking down from above was Mrs. Breck.
Her prayer had been answered, and the tears were streaming down her
cheeks.
"You boys have simply got to take the money," Breck called down to
them.
Shorty stood up, slipped, and sat down in the water, while the boat
dipped one gunwale under and righted again.
"Damn the money," said Shorty. "Fetch out that whiskey. Now that
it's over I'm getting cold feet, an' I'm sure likely to have a
chill."
In the morning, as usual, they were among the last of the boats to
start. Breck, despite his boating inefficiency, and with only his
wife and nephew for crew, had broken camp, loaded his boat, and
pulled out at the first streak of day. But there was no hurrying
Stine and Sprague, who seemed incapable of realizing that the
freeze-up might come at any time. They malingered, got in the way,
delayed, and doubled the work of Kit and Shorty.
"I'm sure losing my respect for God, seein' as he must 'a' made them
two mistakes in human form," was the latter's blasphemous way of
expressing his disgust.
"Well, you're the real goods, at any rate," Kit grinned back at him.
"It makes me respect God the more just to look at you."
"He was sure goin' some, eh?" was Shorty's fashion of overcoming the
embarrassment of the compliment.
The trail by water crossed Lake Labarge. Here was no fast current,
but a tideless stretch of forty miles which must be rowed unless a
fair wind blew. But the time for fair wind was past, and an icy
gale blew in their teeth out of the north. This made a rough sea,
against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat. Added to
their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on
their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a
hatchet. Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and
Stine patently loafed. Kit had learned how to throw his weight on
an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing
their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle.
At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they
would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter. Stine
seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost. A second
day, and a third, the same fruitless attempt was made. In the river
mouth, the continually arriving boats from White Horse made a
flotilla of over two hundred. Each day forty or fifty arrived, and
only two or three won to the northwest shore of the lake and did
not come back. Ice was now forming in the eddies, and connecting
from eddy to eddy in thin lines around the points. The freeze-up
was very imminent.
"We could make it if they had the souls of clams," Kit told Shorty,
as they dried their moccasins by the fire on the evening of the
third day. "We could have made it to-day if they hadn't turned
back. Another hour's work would have fetched that west shore.
They're--they're babes in the woods."
"Sure," Shorty agreed. He turned his moccasin to the flame and
debated a moment. "Look here, Smoke. It's hundreds of miles to
Dawson. If we don't want to freeze in here, we've got to do
something. What d'ye say?"
Kit looked at him, and waited.
"We've got the immortal cinch on them two babes," Shorty expounded.
"They can give orders an' shed mazuma, but as you say, they're plum
babes. If we're goin' to Dawson, we got to take charge of this here
outfit."
They looked at each other.
"It's a go," said Kit, as his hand went out in ratification.
In the morning, long before daylight, Shorty issued his call. "Come
on!" he roared. "Tumble out, you sleepers! Here's your coffee! Kick
into it! We're goin' to make a start!"
Grumbling and complaining, Stine and Sprague were forced to get
under way two hours earlier than ever before. If anything, the gale
was stiffer, and in a short time every man's face was iced up, while
the oars were heavy with ice. Three hours they struggled, and four,
one man steering, one chopping ice, two toiling at the oars, and
each taking his various turns. The northwest shore loomed nearer
and nearer. The gale blew ever harder, and at last Sprague pulled
in his oar in token of surrender. Shorty sprang to it, though his
relief had only begun.
"Chop ice," he said, handing Sprague the hatchet.
"But what's the use?" the other whined. "We can't make it. We're
going to turn back."
"We're going on," said Shorty. "Chop ice. An' when you feel better
you can spell me."
It was heart-breaking toil, but they gained the shore, only to find
it composed of surge-beaten rocks and cliffs, with no place to land.
"I told you so," Sprague whimpered.
"You never peeped," Shorty answered.
"We're going back."
Nobody spoke, and Kit held the boat into the seas as they skirted
the forbidding shore. Sometimes they gained no more than a foot to
the stroke, and there were times when two or three strokes no more
than enabled them to hold their own. He did his best to hearten the
two weaklings. He pointed out that the boats which had won to this
shore had never come back. Perforce, he argued, they had found a
shelter somewhere ahead. Another hour they labored, and a second.
"If you fellows'd put into your oars some of that coffee you swig in
your blankets, we'd make it," was Shorty's encouragement. "You're
just goin' through the motions an' not pullin' a pound."
A few minutes later, Sprague drew in his oar.
"I'm finished," he said, and there were tears in his voice.
"So are the rest of us," Kit answered, himself ready to cry or to
commit murder, so great was his exhaustion. "But we're going on
just the same."
"We're going back. Turn the boat around."
"Shorty, if he won't pull, take that oar yourself," Kit commanded.
"Sure," was the answer. "He can chop ice."
But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing,
and the boat was drifting backward.
"Turn around, Smoke," Sprague ordered.
And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished
himself.
"I'll see you in hell, first," he replied. "Take hold of that oar
and pull."
It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of
civilization, and such a moment had come. Each man had reached the
breaking-point. Sprague jerked off a mitten, drew his revolver, and
turned it on his steersman. This was a new experience to Kit. He
had never had a gun presented at him in his life. And now, to his
surprise, it seemed to mean nothing at all. It was the most natural
thing in the world.
"If you don't put that gun up," he said, "I'll take it away and rap
you over the knuckles with it."
"If you don't turn the boat around, I'll shoot you," Sprague
threatened.
Then Shorty took a hand. He ceased chopping ice and stood up behind
Sprague.
"Go on an' shoot," said Shorty, wiggling the hatchet. "I'm just
aching for a chance to brain you. Go on an' start the festivities."
"This is mutiny," Stine broke in. "You were engaged to obey
orders."
Shorty turned on him. "Oh, you'll get yours as soon as I finish with
your pardner, you little hog-wallopin' snooper, you."
"Sprague," Kit said, "I'll give you just thirty seconds to put away
that gun and get that oar out."
Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver
away, and bent his back to the work.
For two hours more, inch by inch, they fought their way along the
edge of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake.
And then, when on the verge of himself turning back, they came
abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a
land-locked enclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the
surface. It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days.
They landed on a shelving beach, and the two employers lay in
collapse in the boat, while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a
fire, and started the cooking.
"What's a hog-walloping snooper, Shorty?" Kit asked.
"Blamed if I know," was the answer; "but he's one just the same."
The gale, which had been dying quickly, ceased at nightfall, and it
came on clear and cold. A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and
forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of
ice. At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in
their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back
from a look at the boat.
"It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced. "There's a skin of ice
over the whole pond already."
"What are you going to do?"
"There's only one thing. The lake of course freezes first. The rapid
current of the river may keep it open for days. This time to-morrow
any boat caught in Lake Labarge remains there until next year."
"You mean we got to get out to-night? Now?"
Kit nodded.
"Tumble out, you sleepers!" was Shorty's answer, couched in a roar,
as he began casting off the guy-ropes of the tent.
The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and
the pain of rousing from the sleep of exhaustion.
"What time is it?" Stine asked.
"Half-past eight."
"It's dark yet," was the objection.
Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag.
"It's not morning," he said. "It's evening. Come on. The lake's
freezin'. We got to get acrost."
Stine sat up, his face bitter and wrathful. "Let it freeze. We're
not going to stir."
"All right," said Shorty. "We're goin' on with the boat."
"You were engaged--"
"To take your outfit to Dawson," Shorty caught him up. "Well, we're
takin' it, ain't we?" He punctuated his query by bringing half the
tent down on top of them.
They broke their way through the thin ice in the little harbor, and
came out on the lake, where the water, heavy and glassy, froze on
their oars with every stroke. The water soon became like mush,
clogging the stroke of the oars and freezing in the air even as it
dripped. Later the surface began to form a skin, and the boat
proceeded slower and slower.
Often afterwards, when Kit tried to remember that night and failed
to bring up aught but nightmare recollections, he wondered what must
have been the sufferings of Stine and Sprague. His one impression
of himself was that he struggled through biting frost and
intolerable exertion for a thousand years, more or less.
Morning found them stationary. Stine complained of frosted fingers,
and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose
told him that he, too, had been touched. With each accretion of
daylight they could see farther, and as far as they could see was icy
surface. The water of the lake was gone. A hundred yards away was
the shore of the north end. Shorty insisted that it was the opening
of the river and that he could see water. He and Kit alone were
able to work, and with their oars they broke the ice and forced the
boat along. And at the last gasp of their strength they made the
suck of the rapid river. One look back showed them several boats
which had fought through the night and were hopelessly frozen in;
then they whirled around a bend in a current running six miles an
hour.
Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the
shore-ice extended farther out. When they made camp at nightfall,
they chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat and
carried the camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore. In the morning,
they chopped the boat out through the new ice and caught the
current. Shorty set up the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over
this Stine and Sprague hung through the long, drifting hours. They
had surrendered, no longer gave orders, and their one desire was to
gain Dawson. Shorty, pessimistic, indefatigable, and joyous, at
frequent intervals roared out the three lines of the first four-line
stanza of a song he had forgotten. The colder it got the oftener he
sang:
"Like Argus of the ancient times,
We leave this Modern Greece;
Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece."
As they passed the mouths of the Hootalinqua and the Big and Little
Salmon, they found these streams throwing mush-ice into the main
Yukon. This gathered about the boat and attached itself, and at
night they found themselves compelled to chop the boat out of the
current. In the morning they chopped the boat back into the
current.
The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White
River and the Stewart. At daylight they found the Yukon, half a
mile wide, running white from ice-rimmed bank to ice-rimmed bank.
Shorty cursed the universe with less geniality than usual, and
looked at Kit.
"We'll be the last boat this year to make Dawson," Kit said.
"But they ain't no water, Smoke."
"Then we'll ride the ice down. Come on."
Futilely protesting, Sprague and Stine were bundled on board. For
half an hour, with axes, Kit and Shorty struggled to cut a way into
the swift but solid stream. When they did succeed in clearing the
shore-ice, the floating ice forced the boat along the edge for a
hundred yards, tearing away half of one gunwale and making a partial
wreck of it. Then, at the lower end of the bend, they caught the
current that flung off-shore. They proceeded to work farther toward
the middle. The stream was no longer composed of mush-ice but of hard
cakes. In between the cakes only was mush-ice, that froze solidly as
they looked at it. Shoving with the oars against the cakes, sometimes
climbing out on the cakes in order to force the boat along, after an
hour they gained the middle. Five minutes after they ceased their
exertions, the boat was frozen in. The whole river was coagulating as
it ran. Cake froze to cake, until at last the boat was the center of
a cake seventy-five feet in diameter. Sometimes they floated
sideways, sometimes stern-first, while gravity tore asunder the
forming fetters in the moving mass, only to be manacled by
faster-forming ones. While the hours passed, Shorty stoked the stove,
cooked meals, and chanted his war-song.
Night came, and after many efforts, they gave up the attempt to
force the boat to shore, and through the darkness they swept
helplessly onward.
"What if we pass Dawson?" Shorty queried.
"We'll walk back," Kit answered, "if we're not crushed in a jam."
The sky was clear, and in the light of the cold, leaping stars they
caught occasional glimpses of the loom of mountains on either hand.
At eleven o'clock, from below, came a dull, grinding roar. Their
speed began to diminish, and cakes of ice to up-end and crash and
smash about them. The river was jamming. One cake, forced upward,
slid across their cake and carried one side of the boat away. It
did not sink, for its own cake still upbore it, but in a whirl they
saw dark water show for an instant within a foot of them. Then all
movement ceased. At the end of half an hour the whole river picked
itself up and began to move. This continued for an hour, when again
it was brought to rest by a jam. Once again it started, running
swiftly and savagely, with a great grinding. Then they saw lights
ashore, and, when abreast, gravity and the Yukon surrendered, and
the river ceased for six months.
On the shore at Dawson, curious ones, gathered to watch the river
freeze, heard from out of the darkness the war-song of Shorty:
"Like Argus of the ancient times,
We leave this Modern Greece;
Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece."
For three days Kit and Shorty labored, carrying the ton and a half
of outfit from the middle of the river to the log-cabin Stine and
Sprague had bought on the hill overlooking Dawson. This work
finished, in the warm cabin, as twilight was falling, Sprague
motioned Kit to him. Outside the thermometer registered sixty-five
below zero.
"Your full month isn't up, Smoke," Sprague said. "But here it is in
full. I wish you luck."
"How about the agreement?" Kit asked. "You know there's a famine
here. A man can't get work in the mines even, unless he has his own
grub. You agreed--"
"I know of no agreement," Sprague interrupted. "Do you, Stine? We
engaged you by the month. There's your pay. Will you sign the
receipt?"
Kit's hands clenched, and for the moment he saw red. Both men
shrank away from him. He had never struck a man in anger in his
life, and he felt so certain of his ability to thrash Sprague that
he could not bring himself to do it.
Shorty saw his trouble and interposed.
"Look here, Smoke, I ain't travelin' no more with a ornery outfit
like this. Right here's where I sure jump it. You an' me stick
together. Savvy? Now, you take your blankets an' hike down to the
Elkhorn. Wait for me. I'll settle up, collect what's comin', an'
give them what's comin'. I ain't no good on the water, but my
feet's on terry-fermy now an' I'm sure goin' to make smoke."
. . . . .
Half an hour afterwards Shorty appeared at the Elkhorn. From his
bleeding knuckles and the skin off one cheek, it was evident that he
had given Stine and Sprague what was coming.
"You ought to see that cabin," he chuckled, as they stood at the bar.
"Rough-house ain't no name for it. Dollars to doughnuts nary one of
'em shows up on the street for a week. An' now it's all figgered out
for you an' me. Grub's a dollar an' a half a pound. They ain't no
work for wages without you have your own grub. Moose-meat's sellin'
for two dollars a pound an' they ain't none. We got enough money for
a month's grub an' ammunition, an' we hike up the Klondike to the back
country. If they ain't no moose, we go an' live with the Indians.
But if we ain't got five thousand pounds of meat six weeks from now,
I'll--I'll sure go back an' apologize to our bosses. Is it a go?"
Kit's hand went out, and they shook. Then he faltered. "I don't know
anything about hunting," he said.
Shorty lifted his glass.
"But you're a sure meat-eater, an' I'll learn you."
