Jason's Gold (8 page)

King stood with his front feet on the little shelf under the bow, looking north and sniffing the wind.

“I'm counting on you, partner,” Jason told him.

The wind was out of the north, blowing against them. How was he going to get past the Yellow Legs?

This was crazy, he realized, but he'd come too far not to try it.

Everyone this far north was more than half-crazy, including him.

For three days Jason battled blustery Lake Bennett, a glacial spear aimed at the North Star. When it seemed he'd never have its rough and icy water behind him, the turquoise lake left its mountain corridor with a sudden bend to the east. Jason found himself in a narrows, with the wind for once at his back. He paddled hard to take advantage.

Ahead, rifle shots. Around a bend, the channel was choked with caribou, many hundreds of them, swimming across the neck of water that connected Bennett to the next lake, Tagish. Small explosions of smoke and the flash of paddles along the waterline drew his attention to the source of the shots: Indian birch-bark canoes in motion alongside the mass of surging heads and the forest of antlers.

Jason paddled closer and watched as a man tied a rope around the antlers of a dead caribou. The Indian motioned quickly toward Jason's rifle atop his outfit, then nodded toward the herd as if to say, Help yourself.

At the thought of fresh meat for himself and the husky, Jason readied the rifle. Point-blank, he aimed at a fine-looking caribou as the animal rolled its eyes fearfully toward him.

Jason wasn't ready for the overwhelming blast in his ears or the recoil against his shoulder. At least he hadn't wounded the animal; it had died instantly. He tied the free end of the canoe's stern line to the antlers and paddled for the north shore, where caribou by the dozens were being dressed out on the beach.

A white man with broad yellow suspenders who was watching the spectacle stepped forward to help him beach his canoe and haul the caribou onto land. His name was Higgins, and he was from the trading post at Caribou Crossing, a village close by. “Anyone behind you?” Higgins wondered.

“I saw half a dozen sails yesterday and two this morning.”

“Some will move forward as they finish their boats, I'm thinking, and make their winter camps along the shores of Tagish and Marsh Lakes. I expect you're still going to try to beat the ice to Dawson City?”

Jason nodded. “And I don't know the first thing about how to deal with this carcass. Could you lend me a hand?”

Drawing a sheath knife, Higgins made quick work of freeing the hindquarters. “I suggest you take just these—you don't appear to have room for more meat and won't have time to dry it anyway.”

Jason brought his map of the Yukon's upper reaches from his back pocket and asked, “When do you figure I'll reach customs?”

“Depends on the wind. Fort Sifton's right there along the Tagish River, which is the few miles of current between Tagish Lake and Marsh Lake.”

“Which side is the fort on?”

“Your left—the west. Worried about the Mounties' seven-hundred-pound grub requirement, eh?”

“I am. I might have only five hundred.”

“Through August they were lax. They'd huff and puff, but they let men through with next to nothing. One fellow had a flute and a knapsack. Now they're talking about raising the minimum to a thousand pounds.”

Jason paddled on. It was strange, after having been trapped for so long among the hordes of stampeders, to suddenly whisk past them and find himself alone in this vast country. His brothers seemed so far away, yet he knew he was at last closing the gap.

With the wind at his back, Jason sped into and along the windy west arm of Tagish Lake. He squinted into the distance to see if he might sight a canoe paddling his way.

What if it was a Mountie? What would he do?

He didn't know. Would they really turn him back over a few hundred pounds?

Jason camped where this west arm of the lake was joined by a much longer one running up from the south. He feasted along with the husky on skillet-fried caribou steaks and bannock sprinkled with cranberries. In the morning, caribou steaks and bannock again, then a day's paddle north against the wind to the foot of Tagish Lake by dusk.

He was within a few miles of Fort Sifton.

They might very well turn him back, especially because he was young and traveling alone.

He couldn't take the chance.

Bundled against the cold, Jason started paddling several hours after the sun had set. The hours of daylight had already shrunk dramatically. The whole of the sky was ablaze with stars, and their reflection off the water provided sufficient light. He'd never seen so many stars in his life. The climate was much drier here on the Canadian side. It wasn't raining all the time; the trees weren't massive; the air was clear as crystal.

Jason paddled in the frosty stillness down the slow-moving Tagish River, hugging the east bank. When he spied the dim outlines of the flagpole and the log cabins on the opposite shore, he let the canoe drift.

King knew they were being stealthy and remained frozen at the bow, studying the buildings intently. The cabins were slipping by; Jason was holding his breath. There was no motion there and no sound anywhere but the ghostly hooting of an owl in the distance.

With the fort behind them, a ghostly dancing curtain of yellows and greens appeared from horizon to horizon, shimmering and changing shape from moment to moment. Jason had heard about the aurora but never seen it. The husky was watching it too, and the hair stood up along King's spine.

“The northern lights, King.”

Jason's breath in the cold made an eerie vapor that sank toward the surface of the river and trailed away.

He'd been in unusual spots tramping across the country, but nothing like this. Nothing like paddling alone into the far interior of the North.

It must be at least midnight. He could still see, so why stop?

Once onto Marsh Lake, he made out three different camps of Klondikers by their white canvas tents. In the silence he floated past them.

He was no longer the caboose on the last train trying to reach Dawson.

For hours, the aurora provided even more light, and it mesmerized him with a fierce joy that redoubled his determination.

At a spur of land jutting into the lake, he made camp finally, and slept. With the first light King was stirring. Jason roused himself from his blankets. The tarp was frozen stiff, and frost coated the blueberry bushes.

That day Jason passed four more parties on Marsh Lake. His canoe was much faster than the skiffs, unless they had a following wind and were able to improvise a sail, but it was almost all headwinds now.

Paddling to his utmost, he put Marsh Lake behind him in a day and camped where a river poured out of the lake. Checking his map, he verified that the pale green river that began on this spot was none other than the mighty Yukon.

It was the twenty-third of September as he started north on the great river. The sky above was filled with vees of noisy geese and swans and cranes fleeing the country where he was headed. The aspens and birches on the hillsides were at their peak of yellow and red, while the brush on the top glowed a deep crimson purple. Along the river itself, the dense cottonwoods and willows flamed bright gold.

The middle of the day was so warm he had to peel off his wool shirt and paddle in his flannel undershirt. He
grinned, remembering Jack in his red underwear climbing the Chilkoot.

Two, three weeks at most, he'd rendezvous with his brothers in the Golden City, then stake his claim. Within a month, he'd be shoveling gold.

The next morning, Indian summer was only a memory. A gale from the north had blown all night and sent the golds and reds to the ground. Entire stands of aspen and birch stood gray against an ashen sky.

As Jason paddled on, he listened carefully for the sound of fast water.
DANGEROUS RAPIDS
, the map said. The last thing he wanted to do was paddle into the white water of Miles Canyon by accident.

As he rounded a high prominent bluff, he spied a piece of red calico tied on a willow along the bank. A warning?

Yes. The box canyon loomed downriver, its dark walls of basalt a hundred feet high. The narrowed river as it passed inside looked barely wider than fifty. Dozens of boats were tied to the shore in an eddy that pooled above the entrance to the canyon. Klondikers were
portaging their outfits on their backs along a trail that led above the cliffs. Here began the most difficult five miles of the Yukon, the part Jamie Dunavant had said a beginner couldn't manage in a canoe. Had Jamie and her father dared to run it?

With great difficulty, the Klondikers were skidding their heavy skiffs along the portage trail over logs placed across the path. “Let's go take a look,” Jason suggested to the husky. “Find out what we're in for.”

They walked along the very edge of the cliffs, looking down into the violent chute of foaming waves. After a quarter of a mile the gorge ended, but almost immediately a second one began. In between, as the river rushed out of the first gorge, it was consumed by surging boils and a monstrous whirlpool on a scale that reminded him of the boat-eating Charybdis of mythology.

On both sides of the whirlpool, eddies raced violently upstream against the cliffs. He could understand why everyone was portaging.

The second box canyon was a near duplicate of the first, only narrower. Together they totaled a mile. At the end of the mile, Jason could see boats down below putting back onto the river at the head of Squaw Rapids. He listened to the talk on the bluffs as Klondikers nervously discussed the water downstream. After Squaw Rapids, he learned, came even bigger waves in the White Horse Rapids, said to resemble a parade of white horses standing on their hind legs.

It was the narrow canyons that were the chief hazard—having your boat bashed against the walls, or spilling in the whirlpool in between the two canyons. Squaw and White Horse Rapids could be run, they said.

Not by canoe, Jason thought. Not by me.

Jason knew he'd have to portage the canyons, but if he took the time to portage Squaw and White Horse Rapids as well, he'd lose his race with winter for certain.

Jason's eyes were drawn back to the head of Squaw Rapids. He saw his answer. Several parties, unwilling to risk running the white water, were roping their boats down the edge of the rapids from the shore. That's what he would do, walk the canoe down on a short leash. But first he had to portage around the canyons.

Returning to his canoe at the head of Miles Canyon, Jason faced a thorny problem. There were a hundred men on this trail, yet he couldn't beg for help. Every one of them was in a desperate race against the ice. How was he to portage his canoe single-handed?

King was anxious to start down the trail. Would he pull? The madman on the Dead Horse Trail had said he wouldn't.

But if King would…

Jason brought out the husky's harness. King leaped in the air at the sight of it, nosed it, leaped again.

Won't pull, eh?

Jason attached the harness, then fifteen feet of rope running back from it to the canoe. With King out in front pulling, and him horsing the canoe as needs be over the skids…

It was worth a try.

Jason placed some logs across the path, pulled the canoe into position on top of them, found a few more logs to place across the trail ahead.

The Klondikers skidding the skiff ahead of them paused to study the arrangement, all grins.

“Pull, King!” Jason called.

In reply, the big husky simply wagged his tail.

The Klondikers laughed and went back to work.

Jason went to the husky, talked to him, took his harness in hand above his shoulder blades, and pulled. “Pull,” Jason repeated. The canoe rolled forward a few inches. He repeated the demonstration again and again, then walked up the trail twenty feet ahead, turned around, and chanted, “Pull, King! Pull! Pull for me!”

And King pulled. Tentatively at first, but with encouragement, more and more, until the husky was pulling with all his might. Jason raced back to the rear of the canoe, picked up a log, and shuttled it to the front. “Pull!” Jason yelled, yanking with all his strength on the gunwales.

With the two of them working, the canoe moved along the trail much faster than he'd guessed it would. They were having an easier time of it, in fact, than the Klondikers in front of them, who were floundering with their big skiff.

At the break between canyons, Jason rested opposite the whirlpool. At the sound of men running on the trail behind him, he turned around and spied none other than Jack London pounding down the trail with the wiry Merritt Sloper close behind.

“Jason Hawthorn!” London cried. “You,
ahead
of me? What in the world? How did you manage it? And here I'd been picturing you stuck back at Lindeman. Now, here's a dog team worthy of legend, a one-dog team—the mighty King!”

Jason pulled the canoe out of the trail, and they swapped stories. Jack's party had been one of those he'd passed along Marsh Lake in the night.

London and Sloper studied the whirlpool, then trotted down the path to take a look at the second gorge. Jason and King had gone back to work and had advanced the canoe by fits and starts halfway along the
trail above the second canyon when London and Sloper returned panting up the trail. They were joined by Thompson, Goodman, and Tarwater from upriver.

“Want to portage the canyon, Jack?” called orange-whiskered Fred Thompson. “Like everyone else?”

“Nothing doing, says my vote,” Jack replied. “I've seen nothing we can't manage.”

“Sure it can be done, eh, captain?” asked Big Jim Goodman.

London's eyes were blazing. “Two minutes saves us two days, maybe three.”

“It might make the difference where we winter,” put in Sloper.

The grizzled Tarwater had the last word. When Jack asked his opinion, he replied, “Been ponderin' so hard I ain't had time to think. But I'm game for the ride if you're the one drivin'.”

They took their vote: unanimous in favor of the two-minute route. They were going to run Miles Canyon.

As his party started up the trail, Jack lingered for a moment. “Jason, it seems like we're always saying hello or good-bye.”

“I'll see you in the Golden City; I'm sure of it.”

“You've heard about Lake Laberge up ahead? The Yukon pools up there, for some inconvenient reason—the lake is thirty miles long, and they say it can ice over the last week in September.”

“Any day now.”

“Exactly. Don't lose any strokes with that paddle of yours until you get past Laberge. I'm counting on you to come up big.”

“I will. Good luck to you in the canyon!”

“Got to keep those
Seven Seas
dry!”

With a wave, Jack took off running.

Jason had to see this. He positioned himself at the point of maximum drama: on the cliff toward the end of the first gorge, where he had an unobstructed view of the white water in the canyon and the whirlpool below.

The word had gone up and down the portage trail that a party was going to try the canyon. Everyone along the trail pressed to the edge of the cliff to see what would happen.

A shout came down from above: “They're on their way!”

Here came the
Yukon Belle
down the chute between the dark, narrow walls. Wiry Merritt Sloper, at the bow, was digging with a paddle. Fred Thompson and Jim Goodman sat side by side, each working an oar, while Jack stood at the stern, steering with the huge sweep. As the skiff raced through a succession of waves, Sloper's paddle often grabbed nothing but air as the bow was pitched high again and again. At a command from London, the two amidships suddenly pulled in their oars, and just in time—the skiff went flying downstream at breakneck speed, at one point no more than six feet from the wall.

When a sudden wave swept the big skiff sideways, London leaned on the sweep oar with all his might and pointed the bow downstream just in time to meet a huge curling wave that would surely have tipped them over. Sloper's paddle snapped in two under the force.

Once through that last wave of the first canyon, the
Yukon Belle
was shot headlong into the whirlpool. Once again, London braced the entire skiff against the violent water with his sweep and called for oars. Thompson and Goodman, facing the stern, had little idea where they were going, but the strength of their oars pulled the boat
out of the whirlpool and headlong into the second canyon.

Cheers echoed all along the tops of the cliffs. “That man reads the water like a book,” someone shouted.

Jack London had come up big.