Down the Yukon (8 page)

“Yes sir!” Donner shouted. “Ride 'em, eh, Sydney?”

“He's a lunatic,” I heard Jamie mutter.

The moose was fully aware of the man on his back, but there was nothing the animal could do about it. The whites of its eyes rolled back in fear and it shook its great antlers, but ineffectually.

It was then I saw Donner's right hand go to his hip, which was underwater. When his hand came back in view, it clutched a long-bladed sheath knife.

With his left hand Donner pulled himself onto the shoulders of the great beast, and with his right hand reaching around, he plunged the knife to the hilt in the moose's throat.

I gasped at the sight. The next I saw was a quick, fierce push with the knife hand.

The knife came out crimson. With an aborted groan and a wrenching wheeze, the moose was in the throes of death.

The river was turning red all around him as Donner swam for the canoe. “Lean the opposite way as I get in,” he commanded of Brackett. After dropping his knife inside, Donner climbed hand-over-hand into the canoe.

Jamie and I watched dumbfounded as Donner ordered Brackett to paddle back to the moose. Donner was making ready a length of rope, which he proceeded to tie to the base of the antlers.

By this time we'd drifted well downstream of them, a hundred yards or more. Jamie was keeping us pointed
upstream in order to see the conclusion of this strange stunt. We continued to drift, transfixed, as they paddled their prey to shore. “What kind of man is that, who would do such a thing for
sport?”
Jamie wondered aloud.

“Every time I see him, it gets worse.”

We watched as they beached their canoe. Evidently they meant to stop, no doubt to build a fire and roast steaks. By this time the two were barely in sight upriver. We were close to shore, rounding a slight bend, losing sight of them. Suddenly Burnt Paw, looking downriver, perked up his ears and gave a strangled sort of warning bark.

Jamie and I swiveled around to look downstream and caught the fright of our lives. Extending far from the shore, to which it clung by its roots, was a living tree, a tremendous spruce tree lying on its side, sawing up and down in the river.

“Sweeper!” Jamie cried, and began to spin the canoe fast as she could. I helped with wide, shallow strokes until we were faced downstream, and then we both paddled with all our might.

Could we get around that sweeper?

I didn't think so. The tree was coming on nightmarishly fast. We couldn't reach the shore and we couldn't get around the tree.

“Not going to make it!” Jamie cried.

In every nerve of my body I knew this might be our death. The current was too strong, there was too little time. The big spruce loomed so close its branches seemed to fill the sky. What a foolish way to die, I thought, and then I realized that the sweeper itself was our only chance. I yelled, “Jump onto it!”

“Hit it broadside!” I heard Jamie yell back, and I felt her swinging the canoe around. For a moment I thought she was doing exactly the wrong thing, but then I understood—she was giving us both the chance to leap out.

The moment came in a dreamlike blur. As the tree was bobbing upward I rose, leapt onto the trunk, and grabbed a branch. I saw that Jamie—thank God—had done the same, saw the canoe below us pinned against the sweeper and tipping on its side, saw Burnt Paw leap at the last moment onto the trunk between us.

His claws scratched for a hold and they caught, but it
was apparent he wasn't going to be able to withstand the rocking-horse motion for long. Working my way toward him, I snatched him up with my free hand. Jamie clung tight to a branch and reached into the surging white water for her paddle, which was riding up and down against the trunk of the tree. Mine was nowhere to be seen.

As the tree trunk was on an upswing, I noticed huge branches sticking straight down into the river. I shuddered to realize that one of us could have been pinned underwater, impossible to reach, against those branches.

The canoe, at times mostly underwater and at times mostly above, was on its side with its hull facing upstream in a froth of white water. It was pinned against the sweeper with a tremendous amount of force. Branches spoking underneath the canoe kept it from being swept under the tree. I wondered if there was any way to get at our gear or to free the canoe.

“The tree could turn loose of the bank!” Jamie shouted over her shoulder. She was already working her way along the trunk toward the shore. It was a gradual climb, but upright branches along the route provided secure holds to counter the up-and-down motion of the tree. I followed with Burnt Paw, hoping the sweeper's roots wouldn't lose their grip on the bank before we could get there.

Up ahead, Jamie was stopped. The last fifteen or twenty feet had no limbs at all and would have to be walked like an inclined tightrope. Fortunately the trunk was massive and the tightrope wide.

“It's barely rocking at this end,” Jamie reported.

Paddle in hand, she negotiated the crossing. At the last she climbed to the bank across the largest of the roots. I held my breath and followed with the dog, and
then I collapsed in the grass beside Jamie. Burnt Paw was in a frenzy, dancing around us and licking our faces.

“I know, Burnt Paw,” Jamie told him, fighting tears. “We're very lucky to be alive.”

“You did well,” I said. “If you hadn't—”

“Jason,” she corrected me, “I'll never forgive myself. I can't believe I let this happen!”

“We both let it happen.”

“I was in the stern.”

“We're safe, that's all that counts.”

“It's not like I didn't know to be on guard for sweepers. I just couldn't keep my eyes off those two and the moose. It was all so strange. I just didn't think.”

“Think of it this way: All that I can tell we lost is your hat.”

Her hand went to her head. “I didn't even notice.”

“The canoe,” I said, struggling to my feet. “There's an awful lot of current holding it. Looks impossible to work it around the tip of the tree.”

She nodded her agreement.

“Maybe if it were empty—if we could pull everything out of it. It's a wonder it isn't broken.”

With a rueful laugh, Jamie said, “It's Canadian-made.”

“Look how well anchored the tree is. A lot more bank would have to wash away before it turns loose. We could go back and forth…unload the canoe one piece of gear at a time.”

“If we were extremely careful, maybe we could.”

“We could get back in the race.”

Jamie's face flashed red and tears welled. “We could have lost our lives! We still could, out there. Don't even think about the race!”

Abashed, I could see it. If we rushed, we were going
to get hurt or killed. “You're right,” I said, and I meant it. “We don't have to win the race, but we still want to go to Nome, don't we, and get there on our own?”

“That we do.” She was still angry with me.

“We'll be as cautious as can be. What if I'm tied to a short piece of rope? We can use the bow rope…short enough so I couldn't fall in. I could hand things to you, and you could work them to shore one piece at a time.”

Jamie brushed her tears away. “It might work.” A moment later, full of determination, she said, “Let's try it.”

With Burnt Paw barking from the shore, we went back out on the sweeper and began to pick our way through its branches toward the canoe.

Burnt Paw wasn't barking any longer. I turned around, half afraid he was following us. Indeed, he was practically at my heels. “Get back!” I yelled at him. “Don't you remember it's a bucking horse out there?”

The rocking motion was already such that he didn't need convincing. Burnt Paw ran back along the trunk to shore, then started barking up and down the bank.

“Now it almost looks like he wants to swim to us,” Jamie said.

“He's not that crazy,” I assured her.

A second later, on the downstream side of the sweeper, the mutt leapt into the river and swam twenty or more feet into the calm water down there before he turned around and paddled for shore.

“He's got something in his mouth,” Jamie reported.

“What in the world?”

Burnt Paw came onto shore and shook himself out, still hanging on to some crumpled black object.

“My hat!” Jamie exclaimed. “He's rescued my hat!”

Burnt Paw wagged that bent tail of his as we praised
him for being a hero. Making our way out to the canoe, we found it still unscathed. We'd lashed the oilskin tarp well enough that so far none of our gear had escaped. The shotgun was still held by the ropes—barely. With my free hand I reached down to untie the bow line that we were going to use for my safety rope. “This is all going to take a lot of doing,” I said, and as I spoke, my eyes caught a motion out across the river and slightly upstream—rowed boats, a dozen or more, pulling hard.

“What
race?” I said with a laugh.

In the hours to come, every single skiff and scow passed us by. Those who floated by close enough to see us mostly quit rowing, stopped and stared, then started rowing again as they passed us by. We understood. They were in a race with so many contestants it could be decided by seconds. Some, nevertheless, hollered out, “Are you okay?” or “Do you need help?” We hollered back, “Thank you! We're okay!” and watched them go by. In truth, more people on the sweeper would be dangerous.

At the very end of the parade came the green canoe. Strange, but I'd forgotten that Donner and Brackett even existed.

At first they just stared at us, assessing our situation. Then the boxer yelled, “Hey, Hawthorn, the river's half a mile wide! Crafty boating, mate, crafty boating!”

I felt like telling him and his bloodthirsty partner to consign themselves to eternal hellfire, but I held my tongue. So, I noticed, did Donner. Even from a distance of thirty yards I was chilled by his calculating stare.

In the twilight between eleven and one we were still working. The sun was rising as we pulled the canoe out of the water and onto the trunk of the tree. We tied on with our long rope, floated the canoe on the downstream
side of the tree, then bit by bit passed our end around the branches as we worked it to shore.

We wrung every drop of water we could from our sodden clothes and bedrolls, then spread them out to the sun on racks we improvised from driftwood. Inventorying our foodstuffs, we separated what could be salvaged from what was ruined. We set our dried fruits, jerked meats, and bacon out to dry and counted our flour, baking powder, biscuits, and dried vegetables a complete loss. There would be a trading post at the Alaska gold camp of Eagle City, just across the border, where we could at least buy bannock makings—flour and baking powder—with our last five dollars.

Fortunately we had a quantity of tinned foods, mostly salmon. We had our knives, the saw and the ax, our tarp and our tent. The match safe had kept our matches dry. All we'd lost to the river had been my canoe paddle, and thanks to Jamie's foresight, we had the spare.

We counted ourselves extremely lucky.

Lucky and exhausted. We spread out the oilskin tarp, threw ourselves down on it, and slept, no matter that the sun was bright and the new day already warming at three in the morning.

 

Approaching wakefulness, I heard bacon hissing on a stove. Abe is already cooking breakfast, I thought, and I'm not even up. I'll be late for the mill.

The next thing I heard was the chuffing of a steam engine. The engine at the mill, I figured. Someone else has stoked the furnace, and I was supposed to have done it.

My eyes opened to a vast expanse of water and bluffs in the distance. Amid my confusion, the foreground
exploded with motion. A flock of red-breasted ducks rose from the water and ran skittering along the surface, their black-and-white wings beating a frenzy until they rose, all at once, into the air.

As I blinked away the onslaught of the light I realized I was on the Yukon River with Jamie. I rolled over—there she was, sound asleep. I heard the swooshing sound of the sweeper sawing up and down in the river and remembered what had happened.

I got up and stretched, looking out across the river and upstream.

What I saw dumbfounded me. In the middle of the vast Yukon River, in broad daylight, floated a two-story building.

I dropped to my knees and shook Jamie by the shoulder. Her eyes popped open as if she were in mortal peril. “Whaa—” she started to say.

“Sorry to wake you, but there's something out on the river that you have to see.”

She got to her knees, blinking away the light, and shaded her eyes. “What in the world?”

The building was close enough now that I could make out the lettering between the first and second stories:
MOONLIGHT HOTEL.

“The Moonlight, from Dawson!” Jamie exclaimed.

The next moment the letters began to turn away from us. The chuffing of a steam engine carried across the water—the same sound I thought I'd dreamed. Suddenly we could see that the hotel was on a small barge being pushed by a tiny sternwheeler.

Jamie rubbed her eyes. “But what's it doing here?”

“Moving to St. Michael?” I guessed. “Nome?”

With a yawn, Jamie lay down on her back and fetched her watch out of her trouser pocket. She yawned again and opened it up. “Ten before eight. We've lost…almost fifteen hours.”

“But we're no longer in a hurry,” I reminded her.

She sat upright, suddenly alert and conspiratorial. “There's a long way to go. A lot could happen. Who says we can't still win?”

Here came Burnt Paw between us with a flurry of kisses that sent Jamie bounding to her feet like a colt off to the races. “Jason, our bedrolls are dry! Let's roll them up and put them away! Hurry!”

We waved to the two men at the rail of the little sternwheeler, the
New Racket.
A third waved from the wheelhouse.

On a whim, Jamie flew to picking wildflowers from the profusion around us—blue lupine, goldenrod, and pink shooting stars. In the next instant she was running in a circle around the tarp and tossing the colors into the air. Burnt Paw was beside himself chasing after her, barking, leaping to catch the flowers.

“I'm so happy to be alive!” she cried.

Jamie's dark hair had fallen out of its braid, and now it danced, fetching and disheveled, on her shoulders. “Father and I stayed in the Moonlight Hotel when we first arrived in Dawson! Jason, it's a good luck sign, don't you think?”

“I do, I do,” I said, feeling merry as she.

“Let me tell you a joke,” Jamie said breathlessly, coming to a sudden stop. She seemed to have forgotten we were in a hurry, but then, so had I.

“You ever hear about the two prospectors who were walking along the railroad track when they spied a
human arm lying off to the side?”

I shook my head.

“‘That looks like Pete's arm,' said the first prospector. ‘It is Pete's arm,' said the second.”

I couldn't help but chuckle. This was already funny.

“They walked on a little ways and then they saw a human leg beside the rails. ‘That looks like Pete's leg,' observed the first prospector. ‘It
is
Pete's leg,' said the second. After a short while they saw a head lying beside the track. ‘That looks like Pete's head,' said the first prospector. ‘It
is
Pete's head,' replied the second prospector, who stooped and picked it up. He held it by the ears, gave it a shake, and cried, ‘Pete, are you hurt?'”

I'd been trying not to bust out laughing, and now I could. Ethan-like, I slapped myself on my thigh so hard it hurt. Burnt Paw was so excited he was springing up eye level with me again and again as if he had steel coils in his little feet.

“Yep, Jamie,” I said, “that's sure-enough funny. Got any more?”

“Maybe so,” she said, suddenly serious. Her eyes were surveying the disorder all around us. “But we have to get packed!”

“Just one more?”

“Later, on the river…if you're good, both of you.”

 

We were back on the river little more than an hour when we saw the sign at the border:
ENTERING ALASKA.
Before long we passed under the Indian village of Eagle, a jumble of cabins atop a cutbank on our left. Dressed-out salmon from pink to the color of cured tobacco decorated drying racks all along the bluff. Close to river level, sled dogs appeared out of holes they'd dug in the banks to keep cool. Each was chained to a stake. As we floated
by, some barked and some howled like wolves until we were far down the river.

Twenty minutes later we made our stop at the tiny mining town of Eagle City, fast as we could, for flour and baking powder. The gold camp was up on a high bluff above a spectacular horseshoe bend in the river; we took a second leaving the trading post to admire the view. The
Hannah,
one of the Alaska Commercial Company's new steamboats, was just arriving from downriver.

We raced down the hill. The
Hannah'
s passengers spilling onto the dock were on their way to Dawson, but they were all buzzing about the Great Race, which must have been a colorful sight for them indeed. We took no time to ask who was in the lead but put back on the river as fast as we could.

Below Eagle City we entered a deep twisting canyon with sheer bluffs on the curves. We passed the mouths of four rivers entering from the north—the Seventymile, the Tatunduk, the Nation, and the Kandik. At last I reminded Jamie that I'd been very, very good, and she said, “I thought you'd never mention it. You keep paddling. Did you hear about the two prospectors who went duck hunting? The first one shot, and when a duck fell out of the sky he said how terrible he felt about it being dead. The second prospector said, ‘Don't feel so bad—the fall would've killed him anyway.'”

I kept paddling, but I sure had a good laugh.

From behind me came her animated voice. “What about the prospector bride who cried her eyes out when her husband went out with all the other prospectors to shoot craps? She didn't know how to cook them.”

I gave the Yukon a slap with my paddle, which set off Burnt Paw barking.

“Did you hear about the prospectors building a
house? One of them went to the boss and asked if they should build it from the bottom up or the top down. The boss yelled at him, ‘Start from the bottom and build up, you numbskull!' The prospector turned to his partners and said, ‘Rip 'er down, boys! Gotta start over!'”

I turned around and said, “I just hope you have more, or I'll throw myself in the river.”

She shrugged. “I don't, so go ahead.”

“On second thought, I won't. Where did you get them?”

“I heard them in another form last winter. I turned them into prospector jokes and worked them into a play I wrote.”

“You've written a
play?
You don't mean it.”

Neither of us was paddling now. “I wrote it on my voyage north to pass the time. I finished it as we were pulling into St. Michael, and did some polishing on the journey up the river. I gave it to Arizona Charlie before we left. Maybe he's read it by now. I wrote it with his Palace Grand in mind.”

“What's the play about?”

“It's about Dawson City—it's a satire on the rise of the kings of the Klondike. Guess who I patterned it on? It's entitled
The Adventures of Big Olaf McDoughnut.”

“Big Alex McDonald!”

“None other. I'm guessing that Dawson City audiences will love a Klondike story. As for Big Alex, I met him last year—he won't mind fun being poked his way. In fact, he might die laughing; he's known for being generous.”

“I can swear to that. Do you remember my companion of last summer, Charlie Maguire? We wintered at Five Fingers together, canoed into Dawson together?”

“I remember Charlie. He'd lost one leg at the knee.”

“That's him. Charlie wanted to get home to Chicago, and we were saving up money for the transportation. Big Alex found out and invited him to stuff his pockets from a bowl full of nuggets.”

“I didn't know that! That will be perfect for the story, and I can picture just the spot for it. I'll write a part for Charlie into the play…. The scene with the bowl of nuggets will come near the end. There's a certain spot that's been nagging at me that needs a lift.”

“You're a writer, Jamie. A writer!”

“Just a cobbler of words…I'm my father's daughter.”

“Will Arizona Charlie pay you for your play, if he likes it, which I know he will?”

“Five hundred dollars for a year's permission, and fifty dollars for every performance.”

“Imagine!”

“We shook on it.”

After a break on shore to ease our aching backs and eat a quick meal, we turned to hard paddling and putting on some miles. Hour after hour went by without us catching sight of a single race boat. We passed a few Indian fish camps.

At sunset, around eleven, we went to shore to stretch our legs and eat a bite or two. When we set off again, I was in the stern. Jamie stretched out on the gear in front of me. With one hand under her head and the other curled around Burnt Paw, she said softly, “Our canoe sings like an arrow.” A minute later she was sound asleep.

Paddling at the stern with Jamie asleep so peacefully in front of me, the dog curled against her shoulder, the broad, empty sweep of the Yukon ahead, I was filled with the greatest contentment I had ever known.

“Being with you again suits me,” I remembered her
saying. “All of this is what suits me.”

Being with Jamie, seeing all this grand country for the first time—I couldn't have asked for more, unless it was to get back in the race. All night I kept paddling hard.

It must have been around six in the morning, with Jamie recently roused and paddling again, that we caught sight of the Moonlight Hotel and the
New Racket,
the pint-sized relic of a sternwheeler that was pushing it. We soon realized that the pair was moored at the landing of the most famous town in the interior of Alaska, Circle City.

Circle City's surroundings offered little to please the eye. The mountains had fallen behind, and the river sprawled more than a mile wide here, dirty and yellow and resembling a broad lake.

We needed a stretch and a few minutes off the river. Upstream of the boat dock, we tied up to a leaning black spruce and climbed the low bluff for a look at the celebrated gold camp turned ghost town.

The names of dozens of saloons and dance halls had faded on their disintegrating facades. Some couldn't be read. The sod roofs of a few of the log cabins had fallen in; doors were mostly boarded up on cabins and commercial buildings alike. Two saloons, the Midnight Sun and the Last Chance, had new paint, and so did Mae's Roadhouse across the street.

Only three years before, Circle had been a thriving town of more than a thousand, but that was before the big strike on the Klondike that gave rise to Dawson. The most famous thing about Circle City these days was its mistaken moniker. When they named the town they thought it was on the Arctic Circle, but it turned out that the sun refused to cooperate at midsummer and stay
above the horizon around the clock. It set briefly, even on June 21. To see the sun above the horizon at midnight, to actually reach the Arctic Circle, you had to float fifty miles farther north.

As we walked along the bank, the mosquitoes found us. This far downriver it was always just a matter of time once we were on land—seconds, usually. Fortunately, the devils weren't very numerous or bloodthirsty at the moment. We were able to walk along the riverbank for a closer look at the crumbling town and the floating hotel from Dawson that had stopped for a visit.

A husky from a team tied outside one of the cabins started to bark at Burnt Paw, but when the others didn't join in, it quit.

“Looks like no one's around the dock,” Jamie said. “The crew from the
New Racket
must have laid over here for the night. I sure would like to peek inside the Moonlight. We'll be quick.”

We walked up the gangplank to the
New Racket
and along its rails. The crew wasn't around. “Sleeping in the hotel or up at the roadhouse,” Jamie guessed. “I'm curious to see if the Moonlight ever got fixed up.”

“I don't think I've ever been in it.”

“The walls were mostly wallpaper over canvas—the hotel was one of the first in Dawson and was patched together with whatever was around. If somebody was snoring upstairs and two rooms down the hall, it sounded like the trumpet of doom!”

From the bow of the little sternwheeler we stepped onto the barge that floated the hotel. The front door had been removed. We walked into the lobby.

A mural over the registration desk caught my eye. It was entitled “Moonlight on the Yukon.” It was a winter scene with the light of the full moon glinting off
snow-covered mountains and the frozen river. My eye was drawn to a speck of a lonely cabin in the corner of the painting with golden lamplight showing through frosted windows. A delicate plume of smoke wafted from the chimney. A closer look revealed snowshoe tracks leading to the front door. Everything about the scene had me awash in memories. It was as if I'd made those tracks myself, returning to the cabin after an unsuccessful moose hunt downriver. Charlie and I were inside that cabin slowly starving on half rations.

From the corner of my eye I saw Burnt Paw perk up his ears. Jamie scooped him up with one arm, caught my eye, and nodded toward the hallway.

Burnt Paw's eyes also swiveled toward the hallway. I heard two voices, one with an English accent. No, Australian. Was it Brackett?

Yes, and the other was Donner.