Chapter X: On the Trail of Gold

“Well, how is old Potlatch this nice, bright, beautiful morning,” Jack jocularly inquired of his partner after they had started and their grouches had somewhat subsided.

“No more o’ them things for me,” replied Bill almost amiably. “We’ve wasted a whole day and we haven’t even got a blanket between us to show for it. What I was thinkin’ about, though, was the sacks Bull Moose Joe has made pertainin’ to an’ anticipatin’ the findin’ of the gold. My one best bet is that we gets the gold first off and the sacks arterward.”

“Now you’re talking sense, Bill. It just goes to show how all-fired over confident a fellow can be. Confidence is a good thing but some people have so much of it they fool themselves. Of course I’ll admit that it would take a long time to kill enough moose to make twenty or thirty sacks but a few months more or less wouldn’t make much difference after we’ve got the metal. Of course if we accidentally stumbled onto a moose-yard that would be different.”

The boys had hunted the caribou for their fresh meat supplies, in fact caribou were so plentiful in some districts of the country through which they passed they seldom had to use their stock provisions, such as bacon and Alaska strawberries, and as for the dogs, they waxed fat on the excess of meat they were given and grew sluggish. There was no need for them to die to get to the happy hunting grounds--they had attained all that their canine souls could wish for under these youngsters of great hearts and high courage who were their masters.

It is no trick at all to shoot a caribou and it is no sport either for if it is wounded it will not put up a fight. Sport in hunting big game comes in only when the hunter is exposed to danger and takes a chance of fighting for his life along with the beast he is trying to kill. And Bill was right when he said that any man who calls himself a sportsman and goes after caribou for the mere sake of killing them ought to be given a spanking and sent back home to his mother.

While Jack was something of a naturalist and knew all about caribou and their habits Bill was the expert when it came to dressing them. Bill shot the first caribou and when he brought it into camp he examined it closely for it was the first one he had ever seen at close range.

“It looks like a reindeer to me, pard,” he said after eyeing it closely.

“It is a reindeer, for caribou and reindeer are one and the same animal; the only difference is that reindeer are domesticated and caribou are wild. Then again there are two kinds of caribou; the one you’ve brought in is the kind that lives north of sixty-four and this is called _barren ground_ caribou, while the kind that lives farther south is called _woodland_ caribou.

“You see the winter coat of this caribou is thick and almost white, but in summer it takes on a reddish-brown color except underneath and that stays white. As summer comes on the caribou goes north and in winter he comes down here to the woodlands. While he is quite shy yet his curiosity is so great it often gets the best of him and he will stand and give a fellow the once over until it is sometimes too late for him to retreat.

“As to speed, why he can beat a dog or a horse all hollow and so when he is running nothing but a target shot will bring him down.”

“We must get some moose afore we start back for little ole Noo York. I want to take back the head and antlers of a big un to me goil, see,” reflected Bill, who was evidently beginning to think of home.

Jack allowed that it might not be a bad scheme to bring down a moose or two, not merely for trophies of their prowess as big game hunters, but for the purpose of using their flesh for food, as well as their hides, in the possible event of their having need for them. Now, know you, that while in summer the moose usually travels alone, in winter a number of them will band together and trample down the snow in a space with their hoofs, and this is called a _moose-yard_.

Finally, one day, the boys came across tracks leading to a moose-yard, then quickly made a temporary camp, and struck out to stalk it. They came upon it just as the moose, of which there were about a dozen, had reached a small lake. In the yard were two old bull moose, half-a-dozen cows and the rest calves. The boys crept up on them until they were within bullet range. The bull moose were magnificent specimens of wild animal life and must have weighed more than a thousand pounds apiece.

The boys chose their quarry and then two bullets speeded forth though the cracks of their Winchesters sounded like a single shot. They ran toward the moose but the bullets which had crashed into their great bodies did not kill them or even drop them to the ground. Instead, the wounded beasts bellowed with rage and as the boys came up they charged them with mighty fury, their great antlers cutting the air like so many sabers.

As fast as they were able to get out of the way of one of the bulls, the other was upon them and they were kept busy dodging, side-stepping and in devious other ways eluding them. In the skirmish between the boys and the bulls, the cows and the calves stood off at some little distance looking on but without the slightest show of any intention of joining in, for their belief in the power of the bulls to look after themselves was absolute.

Just as the larger of the bulls was making a final desperate charge on Jack, he pulled the trigger of his rifle three times with lightning-like rapidity; the monster moose came to a dead-stop and toppled over, when a fourth bullet ended him and Jack had his first and only moose to his credit.

In the meantime Bill was having a hard time of it, for the other bull pressed him so close he not only could not use his gun but he had to drop it to save himself. Bill had seen bullfights in Mexico, but a toreador dodging a bull of the bovine species was as mere child’s play, he opined, as he afterward said in telling me about it, when compared with getting away from this mighty animal of the genus _Cervus_.

He had also seen, yes, had even performed, that seemingly superhuman feat known in the cattle country as _bulldogging_ a steer, which means that a cowboy throws a steer to the ground by grasping its horns and twisting its neck until the animal falls, but he knew that this trick would not succeed with the monster he was now pitted against.

The struggle was going on away from where it started as far as powder will send a bullet and the moment Jack had killed his moose he ran to help his partner. Before he got within firing range he saw a sight that he would not be likely to forget, no, not if he lived to the century mark. The bull moose had made a terrific lunge at Bill but instead of pinning him on his horns, or catching and tossing him a dozen yards or so as is the way of these enraged beasts, the New York boy had grasped his antlers as he lowered his head and with the agility of an acrobat, plus the desire to aid and abet the first law of nature, when the bull’s head went up Bill went with it with his feet straight up in the air.

In another instant he turned completely over and landed on the moose’s neck and there he gripped the coarse thatch of hair and held on with a tenacity of purpose that all of the bull’s cavorting around could not shake off. Then it was that Bill drew his six-gun and emptied the contents of it into the head of the great beast, while a bullet from Jack’s rifle brought him down. Finding their leaders were no more, the cows and calves turned and fled.

The next thing on the list was to skin the moose, and this was a very arduous job. Both of the boys, but especially Bill, could almost out-Indian an Indian when it came to skinning a caribou but out here where the icy wind was cutting across the lake it was a very disagreeable task. Before they were through with the work the day had slipped into night and they had to make their temporary camp their quarters. After a supper of moose-cutlet they felt much “sorensified” as Bill expressed it, and he was not so badly off but that he could play a few _chunes_, as he called them, on his mouth organ. They piled the hides, both of which were as large as the largest buffalo hides, on their sleds, together with as much of the meat of the carcass of one of the moose as they could carry; this they took back with them to their permanent camp, and it solved the meat problem for a very considerable time to come.

While Jack could clean the skins quite as well as his partner, still the job didn’t agree with his finer sensibilities and he balked on doing it in true Indian style. Bill was not so particular and he would squat squaw-like on the floor, lay the skin on his lap, hair-side down, grip the edge of it with his teeth, and with his left hand under it he easily and quickly cut and scraped away all the flesh and fat from it with his knife in the right and never once make a miscue and cut the skin.

Not satisfied with their experience as big game hunters in bringing down the moose, the boys pined for a bear. Now while bears are quite plentiful in many parts of Alaska they seemed to be mighty scarce in the Yeehat district, though every once in a while the boys would see the tracks of one. And so it was that Jack and Bill left their work of seeking gold ever and anon and sought to track, instead, the bear to his lair.

But their hunt for a bear was very like their hunt for gold in that they hunted both with vim and determination but neither the bear nor the gold was anywhere to be found. Yet the boys knew that both were there if they could only catchee ’em, as Sing Nook would say. When they came upon the fresh tracks of a bear, as they did once in a while in crossing lakes or going through the woods, they forewent their main quest in the hopes of getting a shot at Bruin, but instead they never even got a look at one.

But bear was not on their minds all of the time. They had been busy around their permanent camp for several days getting the moosehides into shape and bear was as remote from their minds as the prehistoric dinosaur.

One evening Jack was getting supper and Bill had gone over to the wood-pile, which was a stone’s throw from the cabin, for some firewood. After he had been gone for a quarter of an hour, or so, Jack began to wonder what had become of him, inasmuch as he was waiting for the wood to broil a moose-steak. Another five minutes elapsed and Jack, who had become impatient, went to the door to hurry Bill up.

“Going to stay at that wood-pile all day,” he yelled very loud and not very gently.

No answer from Bill, so Jack went over to see if anything could have happened. When he got close to the wood-pile he heard groans and when he came upon his partner he found enough had happened, and to spare. There was Bill keeled over in the snow covered with frozen blood while lying up as close to him as two mortal enemies could get was a big brown bear breathing his last.

Jack lifted his partner to his shoulder and carried him to the cabin where he gave him first aid and washed him up. Bill was clawed, chewed, torn and bruised from head to foot and back again. Only for his fur clothing he must certainly have been killed.

After Jack had attended his partner and made him as comfortable as possible he went out to the wood-pile and took a look at the bear. Mr. Bruin had been slashed up quite a bit himself for Jack counted fifty-six knife wounds in his head and body. He was assuredly a whopper for he must have weighed in the neighborhood of six hundred pounds.

Bill lay in his bunk for two days and nights and when he got up he was still feeling pretty groggy. The first thing he did was to ask for his “lookin’ glass,” which was a bit of burnished steel of the kind used by dough-boys in the army. Bill screwed up his face and Jack thought he was going to cry.

“’Tain’t no use, pard,” he moaned looking at himself.

“No use of what, Bill,” Jack asked sympathetically.

“No use in havin’ a goil. Look at me map now and tells me, as man to man, could any goil love a guy what’s got one like it. I says no.”

“A fellow’s face hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s the kind of a fellow he is down deep in his heart, and the stuff he’s made of, that counts, not only with his girl, but with the world at large,” urged Jack.

“But look at it. Nobody but a mother could love a face like that,” proclaimed Bill, and Jack came very near thinking his partner had spoken rightly.

“Now tell me how it all happened.”

“Well,” began Bill, putting his hand to his forehead, “I remember I went to the wood-pile and as I was pickin’ up an armful o’ wood I heard something back of me go _woof! woof!_ I said ’_woof, woof_ yourself’ and lookin’ ’round I saw this here ornery bear standin’ back o’ me with his dooks up and ready for a fight. I drops the wood and lets out an orful holler for you to bring a gun but you musta gone to sleep on the stove for you didn’t show up.

“Then this here ornery bear makes a reach for me jaw and me and him had a sprintin’ match ’round the wood-pile. Finally he catches up with me and lands a gentle little tap on me jaw with his tremendous right hand and it sent me sprawling. Afore I could get up he was on top o’ me and I thought I was goin’ to be like the hero o’ that rime for little kids which runs:

‘Algy met a bear;
The bear was bulgy
And the bulge was Algy.’

“I had left me six-gun here in the cabin and I had just sense enough left to grabs me huntin’ knife when I stabbed him every chanst I got.

“We rolls over and over until after a while he and me couldn’t roll over any more and then you comes.”

“Yes, you drove that knife into him fifty-six times by actual count,” said Jack admiringly.

“One more stab and there’d have been enough for an advertisement for a pickle factory,” replied Bill.

“You certainly did put him out of commission all right. It must have been a great fight. I tell you I’d like to have seen it,” allowed Jack with enthusiasm.

Bill looked up and blinked his eyes at his partner.

“Yes, it was a great fight all right. I’m sorry you missed it and I wish you could have seen it from the place I did. I allus did prefer broilin’ moose-steaks as against killin’ a b’ar, and hereafter youse gets the wood. See?”

So ended their hunt for big game.

* * * * *

Now if you will look at a map of Alaska you will see that the Porcupine River is like the letter U laid over on its side; that is to say, its head waters are in Alaska and the stream then flows east over the International boundary into the Yukon Territory, thence north by northeast across the Arctic Circle and when it reaches latitude 137 degrees and longitude about 67-1/2 degrees, it makes a sharp bend and flows back west by southwest for a couple of hundred miles, when it empties into the Yukon River, between the towns of Beaver and Fort Yukon.

The boys had followed Jack’s scheme of going out in every direction like spokes from the hub of a wheel, in which case, as has been previously explained, the hub was the base of their supplies on the Big Black River. And it will also be seen by a reference to the map that this river is a tributary of the Porcupine River and empties into it near Fort Yukon. In fact, Alaska is a country of rivers and nearly all of them, except those along the coast, are feeders for the Yukon River.

By the middle of March the boys had completed about half of the spokes of the wheel and on this particular trip they had found greater evidences of gold in larger quantities than on any one they had previously made. It was their sixth trip, which took them due south of their base, and at the end of it they came to the head waters of the Porcupine River. Then they traveled down it, or perhaps it would be better to say up it, for in its inception it flows northwest. They met more miners on, and in the vicinity of, the Porcupine River than in all of the rest of their trips put together.

Every little way they would come across a handful of miners who were engaged in the irksome but albeit pleasant task of picking out the pay-streak in a mine, hauling it to the surface and piling it up on the dump. At these camps the boys always lost a lot of time for they would have to stop and give, or get, the latest news from down under which in most instances was from three to five months old. All of the men they met were in the most cheerful and sanguine frame of mind, which of itself was enough to show that the claims they had staked out were rich in the yellow metal.

At every camp the boys received a most hearty welcome from these rough and hardy men who were wresting treasure from old Mother Earth here in the high, high North. Often they felt that they must push on but they simply could not withstand the temptation of accepting an invite to stay for dinner, supper or breakfast, or as long as they had a mind to, for the men were making their _piles_ and under such auspicious circumstances they craved the company of their fellow kind.

Thus it was that when the boys went into the rough log cabins, which were often no better and sometimes a great deal worse than their own, they saw glittering things lying around loose the like of which their cabin could not boast, and these were nuggets of gold in abundance. In one cabin they saw an old molasses can with the cover melted off and it was filled to overflowing with nuggets; in another cabin there was a bucket heaped high with nuggets, while in still another, nuggets were piled up in the corner like coal.

And this treasure was only a small part, an incidental part, of the winnings of these men, for the nuggets were picked up from the pay-streak as it was picked out and shoveled into the buckets, while the gold dust which had a far greater worth was still out in the dumps waiting to be washed in the final clean-up which would take place in the spring.

Bill allowed that the men in Alaska must all be white except for that rotter, Black Pete, for no one watched the gold to keep it from being stolen, nor would there be any need to watch it until they started back on their long journey toward civilization. The boys were at last on the trail of gold!

“Here in this district is gold a-plenty, Jack, if we want to do like the rest of ’em and work for it,” said Bill as a feeler, for he had begun to think that, after all, it might be a better paying deal to do a little digging on their own account and get a few thousand out of a place where they knew it was, than to keep on looking for millions laced up in moosehide sacks, when they hadn’t the faintest notion of where it was hidden. In other words it was the outcropping of the old cabbage--adage I mean--which says that a canary in the cage is worth a couple of them flying around the room with the windows open.

But Jack vetoed the idea, for since they were on the richest claims that had yet been staked by mortal, it stood to reason that right in this district must be the great store of gold they were after. Again, and by the same token, when various miners offered them ten, fifteen, yes, even as high as twenty-five dollars a day to work for them, these generous wages made not the slightest appeal to the boys. If they had to work to get the gold out of the earth, the boys allowed it would be better to do a little prospecting the coming summer, stake out their claims and then go to it the next winter.

“It’s the same old game I’m tellin’ you, pards,” said one of the miners to his companions as the boys drove away after he had made them a particularly alluring offer to go to work. “These young scalawags are after them moosehide sacks o’ gold as sure as I’m born, and twenty dog-teams couldn’t pull them away from the crazy idee.”

Then the three men laughed a long, loud, and hearty laugh which showed what they thought of the scheme.