Alaska (80 page)

An Eskimo with seven good dogs could harness them in either of two ways: some excellent drivers liked to have three pairs, each pair yoked side-by-side, with a lead dog in front, his chain locked into the chain which ran down the center and attached to the sled. If a man had seven or nine superbly trained dogs long accustomed to this hitch, that was the way to do it, but there was an element of show in such a harnessing.

Tough-minded men who liked to move a maximum weight of cargo hitched their seven dogs in tandem, one directly behind the other, with each dog's harness tying directly into that of his follower. Such a hitch had the advantage of allowing the three key dogsled, swing, wheel to perform at maximum and to utilize whatever skills they had mastered. Sarqaq, who had done much hauling in the areas bordering 485

on the Yukon Flats, preferred the tandem hitch and used it to perfection.

Regardless of which harnessing the driver adopted, his dogs pulled the same kind of sled. If the trip was for show, or for the conveying of young women or a well-to-do couple, the sled looked like an ordinary sleigh familiar in either Russia or the United States: a commodious and well-upholstered place for two persons to sit, a handrail for the driver in the rear to use when he caught a ride, and long after runners for him to stand on when doing so. But when, as in Sarqaq's missions, the sled had to carry the maximum freight, it was a low sturdy vehicle with no frills, wide, heavy runners and no sides, the freight being kept in place by numerous rawhide thongs.

Either of these marvelous machines for they constituted two of the world's most effective users of energy required special conditions: in most snow where a trail had not already been established, the man in charge of the sled had to go in front, on snowshoes, to break a path; the dogs by themselves could not do this, for they would waste their energy fighting snow which might be so deep that it covered their nostrils. When a man drove a dogsled he worked.

Of course, if a driver was lucky enough to be traveling along a river whose ice had been frozen to a glassy smoothness, which happened occasionally even on the Yukon, he might ride for several hours, because the dogs loved such a .gallop when only slight friction retarded their sled. But generally, in a typical day's travel of twenty-five miles, the man would run at least twenty, gliding over the snow on his big webbed shoes.

Since each dog weighed about sixty pounds of concentrated muscle and could haul about one hundred pounds over terrain that was not excessively rough, Sarqaq's seven dogs ought to haul a total weight of seven hundred pounds, but since the sled itself, severely trimmed, weighed ninety pounds, the effective weight of foodstuffs for starving Dawson could be a little over six hundred pounds, less the weight of dog and human food carried.

During the first hour out of Fort Yukon, Sarqaq established the patterns to be observed: 'Always that way,' indicating southeast. 'Start before daylight, stop after light goes,' or twelve hours at least a day. 'Try for twenty-five miles a day, with stops, rest,' this indicated by fingers and gestures. 'Five days, stop one day, dogs sleep,'

because no dog could work as hard as a man nor as long. 'You, me walk. Maybe good time, ride,' but mostly they would do what Klope had called as a boy the dogtrot.

'Eat? You, me that,' and Sarqaq indica-486

ted the dried food on the sled, including pemmican made of caribou, moose and bear.

'Dog eat?' And there came the major problem.

Sarqaq's dogs worked extremely hard and were constantly hungry, but tradition said that they must be fed only at night. It seemed to Klope that a quarter of the sled's load was dog-salmon dried the previous summer; a pound and a half of this nutritious food heavy in oil would keep a big dog alive and able to work and, when mixed with just a little dried oats or meal, the salmon gave the dogs more energy than they required.

In the cold, salmon did not turn rancid and dogs never tired of it, gulping down great chunks even though it contained sharp tiny bones which might have killed less sturdy breeds. To carry so much cargo merely to feed the dogs was in one sense extravagant but in another not, for without dogs, there could be no safe human traffic over the vast expanse of the arctic.

To supplement the dried salmon, on which the dogs would be quite content to feed permanently, Sarqaq was always on the alert for animal tracks, because if he could kill a caribou or a moose, or perhaps a bear wandering from its hibernation, the dogs could be fed for two or three days with a healthy change of diet and no depletion of the dried salmon. In fact, Klope deduced after several days of travel that since Sarqaq had brought along insufficient salmon for the proposed eighteen days, he was gambling on supplementing the fish with a caribou now and then. Accordingly, each of the men kept an eye cocked for signs of game, and Sarqaq was quite willing to halt progress for an entire day while he tracked some animal, for he knew that whenever he caught one, he improved the chances for bringing this long and daring venture to a successful conclusion.

When either he or Klope departed on such a hunting excursion, two rules were in effect: the hunter would take with him the extra dogs to help drag home the kill, and after the man had been absent for three hours, the other man would light a smudge fire to indicate where the sled was waiting, for otherwise the hunter might have no clue as to where either he or the sled was.

It was strange, almost to the point of being unbelievable, but in this windless, almost treeless north, a fire giving off smoke would send a signal high into the air, almost half a mile straight up, with never a waver in the column. The smoke just hung there motionless until it gradually dispersed. A traveler could often tell where people were living, beyond the rise of a hill, by the column of steam which hung sus—

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pended over their outdoor privy; such a signal could be seen for miles.

It was during a foray for meat that Klope made the hesitant suggestion which modified this trip, for as he was about to set off in search of a moose whose tracks were visible along the river, he asked if this time he could take as his drag-dog not the extra animals, but Breed, who lay in harness like the six other members of the team.

'Maybe good,' the Eskimo said, and Klope went off with only Breed, leaving the extras behind.

It was a day Klope would never forget, gray-blue sky, hazy sun low on the horizon, snow bright but not enough to cause snow blindness, a probability of snaring a moose, and the joy of the dog at heel. Breed loved the chase, but he was well enough trained to respond when Klope gave even the softest signal. Breed was in the hunt, too, and he wanted to bring down the moose upon which he and the team could feed. It became a rare partnership, even on that first day, and toward dusk, which came at an appallingly early hour, they approached their moose. Now Breed remained at Klope's side as they both edged into position, and when the gun fired, he leaped like the discharge of a cannon to trap the moose by a leg lest it stagger on merely wounded.

Now the problem became how to drag this heavy carcass back to the sled, and where was the sled? Scouting the horizon before total darkness fell, Klope located the pillar of smoke, hitched Breed to the one-dog harness, and looped the free end about the moose's neck. It was problematic whether the dog could pull so heavy a loadsome four hundred pounds but with help from an initial push by Klope, the fallen animal began to edge forward, and through special effort which Breed knew was required, the dead animal began to slide across the snow.

Klope, watching in admiration, muttered to himself: 'He knows he's bringing home something important,' and that did seem to be the case, for the dog stepped high, ears alert, dark eyes peering from side to side, harness taut, handsome silver-brown body straining forward. It was such a triumphant return that as darkness fell, with Klope spotting the sled, he fired into the night an exultant shot which reverberated in the frozen air.

Soon there came sounds of excitement in the camp, the barking of other dogs, the welcoming cry of Sarqaq; then the butchering of the meat, the tossing of offal to the hungry dogs and the warm good of coming home at end of day. But in the morning there came the ugly moment when Klope saw that 488

Sarqaq had harnessed his team without including Breed, who was thus demoted to serving merely as a spare.

Shoving the dog forward, Klope said: 'Here's Breed,' but Sarqaq growled: 'No damn good,' and Breed was dropped from the team.

Klope, realizing that he knew little about operating a dog team, said nothing, but he was sorely disappointed, and so, apparently, was Breed, who showed his displeasure at not being harnessed with his six mates. And since the spares were kept together in a small harness of their own to prevent straying, Breed could not even walk with Klope, and it would have been difficult to decide which was the more disappointed.

DURING THE FIRST LEG OUT OF FORT YUKON, SARQAQ kept to the river, picking his way across the rumpled ice, and one cloudless afternoon he came upon a long stretch of glaze ice as smooth as a mirror, and since this was the first time that Klope had experienced such ice, the Eskimo encouraged the white man to ride on the rear runners, and for about an hour, with Sarqaq lagging far behind, Klope and the seven huskies skimmed over the ice through the windless beauty of an arctic day. It was a thrill Klope could never have imagined, this timeless, placeless, noiseless movement through a world of white. When the ride ended, with the dogs showing no tiredness but lying happily on the ice, Klope wanted for one brief moment to shout, but shouting was not his style. 'Good dogs,' he said, rummaging in the cargo for bits of salmon to throw them.

But when the Yukon took a slight curve to the southwest, forming in effect a detour from straight-line passage, Sarqaq left the river and kept to the east. This deviation was practical only because the dreaded Yukon Flats tapered out at this point, providing the dogs with relatively flat land; it was made imperative because Circle and its hungry men lay in wait just ahead, and if Sarqaq and Klope tried to rush their cargo of food through that snare, they were going to lose everything. So well back from the river they ran, not pausing to hunt for game and missing one day of rest they should have allowed the dogs.

When they returned to the Yukon south of Circle, the temperature began to drop so precipitously that Sarqaq feared they might not be able to move ahead, and he began to look about for accumulations of snow in which the dogs could burrow if the cold became unbearable.

It did. It went down to thirty-below, where Sarqaq's ther-489

mometer ceased to register, then down to forty-two, then to forty-seven. Had a heavy wind also been raging, men and dogs would probably have frozen. As it was, the cold was almost clement; if you stayed out in it with face exposed, you ran the risk of losing a nose or an ear, but if you protected yourself and your dogs, survival was surprisingly easy. As Klope moved through the extreme cold he kept hugging his left elbow close to his side, for this enabled him to feel the jar of sourdough against his skin, and he developed the conceit that he was like one of the gods he had read about in fifth grade, the custodian of a sacred fire, and the idea gave him pleasure: The leaven may not be any good when we get it there, but it won't be frozen.

Survival for the dogs consisted of burying themselves like rabbits in the snow till only their black noses were visible; you could find them by watching for their frozen breath hanging in the silent, motionless air. For men it was much the same; at fifty-one-below they used their sled as a wall, piled snow about them as an added windbreak, and found as much comfort as they could.

As they lay immobilized, Sarqaq chastised himself for having been so stupid as to come back onto the river: 'Colder here,' and with his mittened hands he made the sign of wind blowing, but as Klope pointed out: 'No wind. None at all,' and the Eskimo agreed: 'No wind, but cold follows river,' and he showed with his mittens how the bitter cold moved up and down the Yukon as if propelled by some strong wind.

'How could that be?' Klope asked, and the Eskimo replied, in effect: 'You tell me.

But it is colder, isn't it?' And it was.

When daylight came on the eighth day of their trip, Klope noticed that Sarqaq had his mittens off and was carving some small object. 'What are you doing?' he asked, and the Eskimo said: 'For you.' It was a pair of sun goggles to prevent snow blindness, for if a white man with his lack of pigmentation, but any man really, remained surrounded by snow when the sun shone, his eyes would fight against the glare so strenuously that he would go temporarily blind, or, if the cold was sufficiently intense, permanently so. To prevent this, the Eskimos had long ago learned to wear protectors carved from ivory, bone or wood, or even cut from caribou hide if nothing better was available; the guard covered the eye completely but provided a very narrow slit, less than a quarter of an inch vertically and not more than an inch horizontally, through which the traveler could see where he was going. Often the goggle was painted black to reduce glare to a minimum, and as Sarqaq delivered this valuable survival tool to his companion he warned: 'Sun strong, no more hunt,' for even with such 490

a shade, continued exposure to the arctic sun as it beat against snow could be perilous.

When the intense cold relaxed, one of the worst Sarqaq had known, the men resumed their southern push, and the Eskimo received a lesson which startled him. That he had a high regard for Klope had been proved by his willingness to share this trip with him, but this did not prevent his holding all white men in gentle deprecation.

'They can't work the way we do,' he told his Eskimo and Athapascan fellow drivers.

'They can't move over the tundra like us. And they cry at cold weather.' Since all native people accepted such evaluations as an act of faith, the sled-drivers nodded.

But now, in the later stages of the run when the white man should have been exhausted, Klope was showing surprising strength, and during one day's run of twenty-seven miles he led most of the way, spent no time riding, and at the end of day was in much stronger condition than Sarqaq. The Eskimo, noticing this, supposed that it was because of something he, Sarqaq, had eaten, but since the two men had shared the same rough food, this theory didn't make much sense. And when on the third successive day Klope ran and worked somewhat better than the Eskimo, the latter said admiringly: 'You white man work good.' It was high praise.