Chapter XI: Gold, Gold, Nothing but Gold

The boys had made a much longer stay on the end of this last trip out than they had figured on, for now that they were in the heart of the real gold fields they were reluctant to go back until they had explored every part of it.

While gold dust and gold nuggets were to be found in every miner’s cabin in amounts ranging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still the boys were as poor as ever, for nowhere had they found the slightest signs of gold packed in moosehide sacks and corded up like stovewood.

They had gone through valleys, up and down streams, over tundras, into forests and across lakes and they had combed these districts pretty well, but the only visible effect of their efforts was the exeunt of their good grub and they were fast running short of their reserve rations for both themselves and their dogs.

Both Jack and Bill were growing discouraged but the difference between them was that while the latter never hesitated to voice his innermost thoughts, the former applied the brakes so that his never got to the surface of audible speech.

“This prospectin’ business is beginnin’ to clog on me phy-si-que,” announced Bill, as he was hitching up the dogs preparatory to starting back to their base.

“Suppose you’d been prospecting here for twenty odd years like old ‘_I Blazes_’ we met down at Juneau, or for fifteen, ten, or five years like hundreds of others up here,” plugged in Jack.

“That’s a hawse of an entirely different breed for they haven’t anything else to do, while I have me business, me mother and me goil to look after in little ole Noo York,” Bill replied, his eyes snapping with the pure joy of the thought.

New York! how good those two words sounded to Jack, for while Montclair, New Jersey, is where he lived, everybody north of New York as far as Albany, east as far as Coney Island, south as far as the Atlantic Ocean and west as far as Trenton always think of New York as his _home town_ when he gets a respectable distance away from it.

But to get back to Earth and Alaska. The dwindling condition of their food supplies led the boys to go into close caucus as the best means of supporting their party, so they decided to go back to their base at once and bring down a larger store of provisions.

This settled, they repacked their sleds and hitched up the dogs for the trip northward again. They started off with whips a-cracking, bells a-jingling and the dogs in the best of spirits even if their masters were not in such good humor.

“My only regret in leaving Alaska will be that we can’t take all of these huskies along with us. I’m going to take ’Frisco and maybe Skookum too,” said Jack.

“An’ I’m goin’ to take old Sate home,” said Bill, and when Sate heard this he gave two merry little howls for all the world as if he had understood and, on second thought, there’s no doubt but that he did.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could take back both dog teams an’ the sleds an’ drive them up Fifth Avenoo--wouldn’t it be great, Jack?”

His partner gave him the laugh.

“There you go dreaming that same stuff again. It would be a great show for the New Yorkers who don’t know how to travel except on trolleys, and trains and in motor cars and hearses. But by the time we get back it will be well along toward the middle of summer so I guess we’ll have to call that little day dream of yours off.”

“Can’t youse even let a fellow dream out loud onct in a while?” Bill inquired petulantly. “It don’t cost nothin’.”

“Go on and rave then, I don’t care,” said Jack.

“Well then, just imagine it was winter in Noo York an’ us a-drivin’ our dog teams up the Avenoo with moosehide sacks o’ gold piled on our sleds like cordwood.”

“Why, we wouldn’t get from Thirty-third Street to Forty-second before there’d be Wild West doings and a dozen gangs of gunmen, any one of which would be as bad or worse than Soapy Smith’s, would be holding us up and taking our sacks of gold away from us,” Jack told him.

“An’ what would the perlice be doin’ all this time?” asked Bill innocently.

“Oh, they’d be directing the traffic and showing the hold-up men which way to go to keep from being run over by the many motor cars,” Jack replied with all seriousness.

Bill blinked his eyes.

“An’ I suppose we’d be standin’ by with our hands in our pockets lookin’ on. Mush, you huskies, mush!” yelled Bill gruffly and with that the conversation lagged.

All that day they traveled leisurely along and when night came on they had only done some twenty miles. As usual the boys looked after the dogs’ feet and fed them a stinting portion of fish, when they at once dug into the snow with the openings on the south side. Jack and Bill had no intention of making a snow igloo for, like their dogs, they had grown fat upon the good things of the land and in consequence they were not as alert and spry as they had been.

“See them huskies Jack? See the way they’ve crawled in on the south side? That means a high wind from the north to-night and I prognosticates a blizzard comin’. I hates to think o’ it but I guess we’d better build a igloo,” was Bill’s advice.

“Not so bad when you can use a dog for a barometer, what say Bill?” remarked his partner.

“Sure, they’re great animules all right. You can use ’em for Christmas presents, a pair o’ suspenders or eat ’em, accordin’ to your needs,” added Bill to his partner’s eulogy on the wide range of usefulness of the husky as an all round convenience.

Now the dogs of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions are the greatest weather forecasters in the world for when they want to go to sleep they dig a hole out of the snow so that the opening will be to the leeside, that is, to the side opposite that which the wind strikes when it blows up in the night.

The dogs forecasted the direction the wind would blow that night with their usual accuracy and Bill’s acumen of mind in foreseeing the necessity of an igloo was justified, for a blizzard hurled itself down on them from the north, the thermometer dropped to seventy below, the wind raged and tore around like mad, while the sleet beat down upon and around them with mighty fury for four whole days and nights without a let-up.

In the meantime the boys stood it, or rather laid down to it, uncomfortably in their igloo, for it was altogether too small for such a prolonged stay. At that they would have gotten along all right but for their short rations, which, if the blizzard had kept up much longer, would have starved them to death. During all this time the dogs had stayed in their holes without so much as a bite of fish to eat.

When on the morning of the fifth day the boys pulled away the block of snow that closed the opening to their igloo they found they were snowed under, and after a couple of hours of hard work they succeeded in digging their way out through ten feet of snow. Then they called their dogs who were likewise sewed up in the blanket of snow. One by one they dug their way out but they were so hungry they were in a mean humor.

Since they had not had anything to eat for so long a time the boys generously gave them half of their fish rations for the time they were entombed, when they became something like their old selves again. It didn’t take the boys long to hitch up and get started but the going was painfully slow and tedious, though they hoped for better sledding when they struck the tundra that lay beyond.

“All I’m asking is that we run into an Indian village, for as our grub-boxes now stand, we’ll soon be without anything to eat,” said Jack half to himself, as they moved along.

“Funny as how this blizzard couldn’t have held off for a couple of days and given us a chanst to get back to our base,” groused Bill just as though the weather cared anything for them; “but what’s that I spies down yonder in the valley.”

The boys stopped their teams so that they could see to better advantage and took a look at the object in the distance.

“Looks like the top of some miner’s cabin,” was Jack’s opinion. “As it is about noon let’s go over, invite ourselves in, eat and be miserable.”

“Mush!” they bawled out and made for the cabin which was nearly a mile away.

As they came up to it the only sign of life they saw was a couple of gaunt huskies that looked more like starved timber wolves than animals of the domesticated canine breed. They snarled and snapped at the boys, which ill manners made the team dogs furiously mad and had they not been in the traces they would have made short work of them. Bill threw each of the starved dogs a piece of fish and in the hopes of getting more they curbed their tempers a bit. In the meantime Jack hallooed time and again outside the door but there was no response from the cabin.

“Whoever lives here can’t be very far away or his dogs wouldn’t stick around,” said Jack. Then he pounded vigorously on the door and hallooed again.

He was about to give it up for a bad job when the door opened a little, but instead of a miner to greet him he was astonished almost out of his wits when he saw before him the frail, wasted form of a young half-breed girl. Then Bill stepped up and he got the shock of his life too.

The girl, who was not more than fifteen years old, said never a word but stared appealingly at them with her big, dark hollow eyes, and then fell suddenly to the floor. The boys were inside the cabin in an instant and it was easy to guess that hers was a case of pure and simple starvation. Bill picked her up as though she were a baby and he was going to lay her on a bunk near by when he saw a white man stretched out motionless on it. Hastily laying the girl on another bunk he went to the man, listened to his heart and found that he was still alive.

Jack had not been idle in the meantime but had made some tea and prepared some bouillon and these he gave to both the girl and the man. The tea acted as a stimulant, the bouillon as a food and together they had an almost immediate effect on the girl, for now she opened her wan, lusterless eyes and looked at her benefactors. Then she feebly smiled her appreciation of the kindness of these two strange white boys whom she felt had been sent in this hour of her extreme need by the Great Spirit.

Having got the girl well on the mend, both Jack and Bill gave their undivided attention to the man; but he did not recover so rapidly for with him starvation was an after effect, the primary cause having its origin in a cancer of the stomach which was of several years’ standing. But with all of Jack’s medical lore and Bill’s skill in making new men out of broken down ones; in spite of the strengthening food and careful nursing, Michael Carscadden, better known as Moosehide Mike, steadily grow worse; for he was sorely in need of an operation.

In the early morning hours he always seemed to be better and on the fifth day after the boys reached the cabin they believed he had a fighting chance; it was on this basis that they held out the hope of his recovery to the girl Eileen. But Michael knew his condition better than did the boys and that same evening, just as the red Arctic sun was slipping down behind the White Mountains, this mighty hunter of moose and of gold knew that he was slipping with it to his last rest. Death had staked out its claim on him. Knowing that the end was not far off he took Eileen in his arms and called the boys to his bedside.

“This little girl is my daughter. Her mother was a full-blooded _Athapascan_ and as good a woman as the great God ever put a heart in. A year ago she died and I did not have the strength to get back to civilization with my sacks of gold and as I would not leave without them Eileen and I have lived here alone these last twelve months. My wife was a direct descendant of Yakintat, a Yeehat chief.

“The Yeehats once lived in this district and they had in their possession a great store of gold which they had taken from three white men, of whom a prospector named John Thornton was the leader. In the fight which followed Thornton and his companions were killed. The Chief of the Yeehats _cached_ the gold which Thornton and his men had packed in moosehide sacks and its hiding place remained a secret with the tribe.

“A few years after, a plague broke out among the Yeehats and when that ended there was only a handful of them left and these joined other and less fierce tribes. When I reached Alaska I heard, like yourselves and all the others who came here, the story of this great treasure of gold and, like yourselves and many others, I set my heart on finding it.

“I lived with different Indian tribes and, finally, when I was pretty nearly killed by a moose a young Indian woman nursed me back to life and then I married her. She told me many legends and folk-lore tales about the Indians and one of these had to do with a mighty store of gold, the location of which had been handed down to her. She thought of it as nothing more than a mere story but I took it seriously and me and my Marie set out to find it and find it we did.”

The dying gold seeker raised himself on his arm a little and clutched at the collar of his shirt. His eyes brightened with a kind of preternatural light as he continued:

“Yes, there we found it in a cave deep in the side of a hill, bright and yellow nuggets ranging in size from bits as large as a pea to chunks as large as my fist. The moosehide sacks that held it had long since rotted away and the metal had burst through them and lay in heaps on the ground.

“Then it was I became a hunter of moose, not for the love of hunting, not for the meat to eat, but for their hides to make new sacks of. And I killed more moose than any other man hereabouts, unless it be Bull-Moose Joe who lives over there around Mount Burgess in the Yukon. The difference ’twixt him and me is that he hunted the moose a-fore he found the gold whilst I found the gold and then hunted the moose. My Marie and little Eileen and me made new sacks of the hides, packed them full of gold, brought them and here they be.”

The boys looked at each other knowingly and shook their heads. They understood perfectly, or thought they did.

“He’s got a high fever and is as delirious as they make them,” said Jack.

“Bats in his belfry for fair,” added Bill.

“No, good friends. My poor daddy is not out of his head. Every word he says is truly so,” Eileen told them.

The dying man smiled feebly.

“When I am gone I want you two boys to take my little Eileen with you down under and see that she is brought up like a white lady and given everything that gold can buy. And I want you to watch over and protect her as if she was your own sister. Promise me you will do all this and I will give to each of you one-third of all my gold and Eileen is to have the other third. She will tell you where it is when I am gone and there I want you to bury me.”

He stretched out his hands unsteadily toward the boys and they grasped them warmly.

“Do you promise?” he asked almost inaudibly.

“We most solemnly do,” answered the boys deep from their hearts.

“Then I shall die in peace.”

Her father took Eileen’s thin, pale hand in his and kissed it.

“Good-by, little daughter. I hear your mother calling and I must go. I thought that I would live to take you down under but it is not to be. Instead your mother and me will meet you in the sweet bye and bye. And may the great, good God above us bless you.”

Her hand fell out of his and she threw her arms around his neck.

“Good-by, dear, dear Daddy; good-by,” she sobbed, and then fell prostrate across the inert body of her father from which his spirit had just taken flight.

Jack lifted her gently back to her own bunk, while Bill drew a blanket over the dead man’s face and turned away with something mighty like tears in his blue eyes.

That night was the most solemn and heart-rending one any of these young folks had ever experienced, for to the young, death is ever gloomy. The boys built a good fire, lit half-a-dozen candles and did all they could to soften the weight of the blow which had fallen on Eileen, but their efforts were in vain.

To add to the melancholy of the occasion the dogs, instead of crawling into their holes after they had eaten their half-rations of fish, sat in a semi-circle outside of the cabin door and in the ghostly light of the streaming aurora borealis, with their noses pointed skyward, they spent the greater part of the night howling mournfully a last requiem for the departed soul.

The next morning the boys set to work to fashion a casket to hold the remains of Michael Carscadden, and it took them the best part of three days to finish it. Then they put his body in his sleeping bag and laid it in the rough hewn box.

Eileen was so weak and dazed she seemed hardly to realize what it was all about. As she lay on her bunk she only stared with wide-open, pathetic eyes at these last sad arrangements. It was merciful that she did not understand to the full.

The boys gave her all the food they could scrape together and did without themselves for they had to get her strong enough to travel. Starvation was close on their heels. Bill’s solution for the shortage of food was that they kill one of the sled-dogs but Jack would not listen to such a thing.

“I’m no cannibal Bill, and I’d as leave eat my grandmother as I would one of our dogs,” was the way he disposed of this brash idea of his partner.

Jack figured that they could last just three days longer and by the end of that time they would have to be back at their base of supplies, or they would never get there.

“We must leave your father now, Eileen, and will you tell us where it is he wished to sleep his last sleep?” Jack was finally forced to ask her.

He had waited as long as he could for he greatly feared that in her weakened condition she might not survive this last sad ordeal. But in Eileen’s veins flowed the blood of Irish stoics and Indian chiefs and she accepted the inevitable with great courage and fortitude.

“Under the floor,” she replied as bravely as she could.

“He chose well,” Bill whispered, “for here the wolves can’t get him.”

“The cabin will be the tomb of a true Alaskan gold seeker here in the heart of the wild northland,” said Jack reverently.

The boys commenced to tear up the heavy timbers that formed the floor of the cabin and when they had a couple of them up what they saw underneath almost caused their senses to leave them, for there in a big pit lay _sack upon sack made of moosehide piled up like cordwood_!

Bill lowered himself into the pit and lifted out the sacks to Jack who piled them up against the wall. The rawhide thongs had come loose from some of them and the shining yellow metal poured out in a golden stream about the floor.

When hardships and starvation overtook the boys they knew them for stern realities but having stumbled upon the great store of gold in this wholly unexpected manner and under such surprising conditions they didn’t know whether it was truly so or merely a wild and woolly dream. They really didn’t. To them it was all too wonderful for any human explanation.

While they were hard at work getting up the sacks, the gold seeker who slept on yonder bunk and the half-breed girl who lay weak and helpless on the other bunk were well nigh forgotten for they were the masters of gold that made them as rich as the ancient Crœsus or the modern Rockefeller.

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“Gold! gold!! Nothing but gold!!! I tell you Bill,” ejaculated Jack in the wild frenzy of the gold seeker who has made his strike.

“Yes, old pard, and we’ve got it in our clutches where it won’t get away,” returned Bill, just as excitedly. “Jack I’ve got to take my hat offen to you for bein’ the only, original man with the hunch that always makes good.”