Chapter II: Ho! for the Gold Country!

“Now that I’ve declared myself in on this game I wants to know something about how it is supposed to be played,” said Bill, who, having once thrown his pet scheme overboard went into the new one heart and soul. “How big a country is this here Ilasker and to what part do we hike?”

Now Bill was like lots of other born and bred “Noo” Yorkers in that wherever there was an _a_ the end of a word he invariably substituted _er_ for it. As Bill’s mother had excused herself and made her exit, Jack took it upon himself to set his pal to rights.

“Not _Ile-ask’-her_, Bill, but _A-las’-ka_; get that? A-las’-ka!”

“All right, _A-las’-ker_ then; have it any way,” groused Bill who, though he always wanted to know the right of every thing and had insisted time and time again that Jack correct him whenever he said or did anything that was not “accordin’ to Hoyle,” as he put it, still he was a little peeved when his pal did so, and in this respect he was not unlike the common run of folks whether of low or high degree.

“It’s a larger country than you’d think. Here are two maps of her that I’ve brought along,” said Jack as he produced, unfolded and spread the large sheets on the floor. This done, both he and Bill dropped to the correct prone position for shooting--that is lying flat on their stomachs with their faces downward--a position of great value in skirmishes on the border, but one seldom needed in civilized New York, unless it be to size up a map to the best advantage.

“This smaller one will give you an idea of how big she really is,” continued Jack; “it shows Alaska laid on top of the United States, that is compared with her. You see the main part of her is nearly square and she is hemmed in by the Pacific and Arctic Oceans all round except on her eastern boundary which is the Yukon Territory of Canada.

“If you lay the square part of Alaska over the middle part of the United States as this map shows, it will cover about all of Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma; then that handle of coast land, which is less than a hundred miles wide and some five hundred miles long, extends southeast along the western edge of Canada and this strip would reach clear across Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean, while pushing out to the southwest is the Alaska Peninsula and beyond it the Aleutian Islands.

“The peninsula is nearly five hundred miles long and the islands are strung out for another five hundred miles or more, so that the tail end of them would touch the Pacific Ocean in California. You see for size, Texas, which we think is a pretty big state, isn’t in it with Alaska.”

“It’s almost big enough to get lost in,” reflected Bill dryly.

“Now this large one is a government map of Alaska and I’ll show you exactly where we are headed for. See that red cross I’ve marked there just below the Arctic Circle on the Big Black River? Well, that’s our destination and when we reach it we’ll be in the land of the Yeehats. At any rate that is where they once lived, for from what I have gathered they were wiped out of existence some years ago. Once we get into their country it’s up to us to find out where _the gold is cached_.”[1]

[1] Pronounced _cashed_, and means hidden purposely.

“But suppose the Yeehats, or some other tribe of Indians, are still there and that they’ve got the gold corralled, what then?” Bill wanted to know.

“Oh well, we’ll have to treat with them according to the exigencies of the case. The first thing we must do though is to get there, the next is to locate the gold and when this preliminary but important work is done I think we can safely say that it is ours.”

“Ours not because we found it first but because we found it last,” Bill added to clinch the ownership.

“Exactly, or words to that effect.”

“Must be awful cold up there,” suggested Bill as his eyes wandered around the sub-Arctic region on the map.

“In summer it’s a mighty pleasant place but in winter it does get a little chilly, for sometimes the bottom nearly drops out of the thermometer and the quicksilver falls to fifty, sixty and even seventy degrees below zero; but you don’t mind a little thing like cold weather do you?”

“No,” replied Bill thoughtfully, “but I kicked all last winter to the superintendent of this here apartment buildin’ because the heat was only sixty-eight degrees while I likes it about seventy-two degrees. If I’d a-known we was goin’ on this here trip to the frigid zone I’d a-told him to bank the fires, or let ’em go out entirely, so I’d get used to it. Lettin’ that be as it may, what kind of an outfit do we want and do we get it here or when we gets up into that blarsted country?”

“We’ll take our rifles and I suppose we ought to have a shot-gun for small game, and while, as I have said before, the inhabitants, whatever may be their color or country, are all peace abiding folks still we ought to take our six-guns along so that we can protect our gold when we get back to civilized lands again.”

“An’ we’d better take our thermos bottles, solid alcohol cookin’ outfit, flash lamps, compasses and a pair of pliers with us, not forgettin’ me mouth-organ,” put in Bill.

“By all means,” allowed Jack; “as for the rest of it we can find out exactly what we need in the way of rations and equipment when we reach Dawson or Circle City. We don’t want to overload ourselves but there must be a-plenty of the necessaries, for, the way I figure it, we’ll probably have to stay the best part of a year in those parts.”

“When do we leave for this promised land o’ gold and sixty degrees below zero?” inquired impatient red-headed Bill.

“It’s about the right time of the year for us to be pilgriming now,” returned his partner; “that’s why I’m here.”

“How long will it take us to get up there?”

“Oh, about three weeks or so if we make connections and don’t lose too much time on the way.”

“Then I takes it the weather’ll still be warm when we arrives. We’ll get a canoe, or maybe a couple o’ them, and paddle up this Big Black River until we comes to the land of the Yeehats,” suggested Bill.

“No, that’s not my idea of it at all. You see, Bill, so much of the country where we are going is low that it is more or less wet all the time and it would make traveling overland in summer with our outfit a hard game. The way I’ve figured it out is that we ought to start from Circle City when winter sets in and travel by dogsled; then we can go up or down rivers, over them, cut cross country, yes, to the North Pole if we want to, and without any hard work on our part.

“Winter sets in early up there and by the time we reach Circle, get our outfit, learn the lay of the land, hear what all the old timers have to say and the first snow begins to fly, we’ll be just about ready to strike out.”

Bill shoved his hands in his pockets, went to the window and focused his eyes on a great warship that lay at anchor in the Hudson. He was wondering, not about the craft for he knew all about her and every other kind afloat; he likewise knew about some of those craft that navigated the land as for instance _hawses_, but this traveling in winter in search of gold with dog-sleds was a deep mystery to him.

“In winter the gold’ll be snowed under and we’d never find it I’m a-thinkin’,” he said thoughtfully.

“Take it from me, Bill, wherever the gold has been _cached_ there will be signs that will point out the place as plain as the nose on your face. All we’ve got to do is to find the signs--uncovering the gold will be easy,” argued Jack.

“It sounds to me, Buddy, but if we’re goin’, the sooner the quicker says I.”

“The _Twentieth Century Limited_ leaves the Grand Central Station at 2:45 in the afternoon and pulls into the LaSalle Street Station at Chicago the next morning in time so that we can make connection with the _North Coast Limited_ of the _Burlington Route_ which carries a _Northern Pacific_ sleeper through to Seattle. How about leaving to-morrow afternoon?”

“All to the good; that’ll give me time to see me goil and tell her I’m goin’ to Ilasker,” for Bill, be it known had become very much smitten with Vera Clair, the little blond telephone girl down in the office of the _American Consolidated Oil Company_. And Vera, who could roll the number _three_ under, over, through and above her tongue with the best of operators, and who also lived in Harlem, thought quite well of Bill, too.

“If you say that,” warned Jack, “Miss Clair will think you are going to ask her a very important question and you might find yourself in a somewhat embarrassing position.”

“What d’you mean ‘’barrassin’ position,’” questioned Bill sharply, blinking the while at Jack.

“Why she might think you meant you were going to pop the question----”

“Put the pedal on that soft stuff right where you are, or I’ll make youse put up your dooks, see, Buddy.”

“Then say _A-las-ka_, as I told you before, and you’ll be on the safe side,” again explained Jack.

“All right, _A-las-ker_ then,” Bill attempted once more and Jack gave up trying to teach him how to pronounce it as a bad job.

* * * * *

The next afternoon the boys met at the Grand Central Station with their big suit cases and each carried in his money-belt two hundred dollars in cash and a draft on the National Bank at Skagway for a thousand dollars. It was not long before they were on board the _Twentieth Century Limited_ and were being whirled through the tunnel under New York and up to Mott Haven; there the powerful electric locomotive gave way to a gigantic steam locomotive and they were soon running along the edge of the historic Hudson River headed toward the field of their new endeavors.

At the sight of the Palisades Bill could no longer restrain his aesthetic feelings--oh yes, Bill had them too, and he knew the beautiful when he saw it.

“I tell youse the Hudson has got them all _faded_, Jack. I’ve seen ’em all includin’ the Schuylkill at Philadelphia and they might as well get offen the map.”

“There are three rivers you haven’t seen yet, Bill, and these are the Mississippi, the Yukon and the Amazon. When you have seen these great streams you’ll be in a better position to judge the merits of the Hudson.”

“This position right here in seat 2, car 30 is good enough for me to size up the Hudson. Just as Noo York is the onliest town in the world so the Hudson is the onliest river on the map. Somebody oughter give Mr. H. Hudson a medal for havin’ discovered it; an’ when we come back, richer’n Rockerfeller, I’ll donate one to him that is twenty-four carats fine.”

Jack had the porter fix a table between the seats and laid out his time-tables of the three railroads that were to carry them across the continent. Then for Bill’s enlightenment and his own pleasure he traced the route they were to make to Seattle and thence on up to Circle City, Alaska.

“Let’s see, we reach Chicago to-morrow morning and change cars there. Then we’re in for a long ride, for it will take us about three days and nights to make the trip. We’ll get into Seattle next Saturday morning some time. Our boat leaves Seattle the following Monday morning and this will give us all the time we want to see Seattle.”

“Now look up this boat trip from Seattle to Skagway,” said Bill.

“We take the _S.S. Princess Alice_ and sail up through Puget Sound until we reach the northern end of Vancouver Island, when we come to the open sea; then we run through Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Province of Columbia, when we pass through Dixon Entrance into Clarence Strait and are in Alaskan waters. Farther on when we get to Juneau we’ll begin to see something that looks like real scenery for that’s the beginning of the great glaciers.”

“I’m not so keen on seein’ scenery as I am on seein’ gold,” vouchsafed Bill, whose resultant financial success in the Mexican expedition seemed to have completely turned his young head from contentment and the love of adventure into discontent and a violent itching for riches.

“You’ll see both a-plenty before we’re through with it, take it from me.”

“What’s all them pink spots on the map, islands?” inquired Bill scanning them closely.

“Yes, and the blue part outside is the Pacific Ocean while that on the inside represents various inlets, straits, sounds, canals, etc. So you see we take what is called the _inside route_ and it will be as smooth sailing as if we were going to Albany on the day boat.”

“An’ what happens when we land at Skagway?”

“There we change to the railroad, which has been built in recent years over the White Pass across the Coast Range, and we are then in the Yukon Territory which, as I told you and your mother, is a part of Canada. The railroad ends at White Horse, a town about a hundred miles farther north. We’ll still have about seven hundred miles to travel before we get to Circle City, but we do this leg by a steamer on the Yukon River, and from there to the land of the Yeehats on the Big Black River we’ll have to cover with dog-sleds,” concluded Jack.

Their journey across the continent was about as exciting as a trip from Manhattan Street to Bowling Green on the Subway. While the boys were very much awake when in their waking state, when it came to sleeping they could beat the seven sleepers by a stretch, and as for appetites--well, they just naturally had an exaggerated idea of what their stomachs were for--and ate like young pug-uglies. In truth they were on the job every time the dining car waiter announced the last call for breakfast and the first call for lunch and dinner.

As they were nearing Savanna up in the northwest corner of Illinois, Jack told his pal that they would soon strike the Mississippi River and that from there on to St. Paul the railroad parallels the ‘father of waters.’

“The Mississippi is a thousand five hundred miles long, has its head waters at Lake Itaska in Northern Minnesota and empties into the Gulf of Mexico about a hundred miles south of New Orleans,” explained Jack. “You will see from this, Bill, that there are other rivers in our United States besides the noble Hudson.”

Presently the train ran right along side of the great river. Bill took one look at the installment of scenery which lay spread out before them as flat as a board and then he burst out into a long and loud cackle, making, according to Jack’s way of thinking, a holy show of them both.

“Why the big noise?” questioned Jack in a sour voice, for he was exasperated beyond all measure at this unseemly conduct of his pal.

“It’s enough to make a bucking broncho laugh. The Mississippi eh? and you’d put it in the same class with the Hudson? Why it’s nothin’ but a stream o’ mud,” Bill made answer.

“You must remember that we’re a thousand miles from its delta,” expostulated Jack.

“That’s nothin’; the Hudson’s so wide at Noo York the politicians can’t get enough money together at one time to build a bridge acrost it, see Buddy?”

And let it be said in Bill’s behalf that that part of the Mississippi which is visible to the eye where the Burlington railway parallels it does make a mighty poor showing.

The boys were conspicuous for their silence all the rest of the way to St. Paul for Bill had made up his mind that he wouldn’t let even his pal run down his Hudson River, and Jack had taken a mental vow that, pal or no pal, he would never again point out any wonder, ancient or modern, whether produced by nature or fashioned by the hand of man again to Bill, because the latter always pooh-poohed everything unless it was in or intimately associated with the city of Bagdad-on-the-Hudson.

As the train was nearing Livingstone, Montana, late in the afternoon of the following day the boys had entirely forgotten that the muddy waters of the Mississippi had been the innocent cause of making them a little sore at each other and all was to the merry with them again.

Livingstone is the junction where the change is made for Gardiner, the “gateway of the Yellowstone,” and everybody in the car was talking about the hot-springs, the geysers, the ‘Devil’s Paint Pot,’ ‘Hell’s Half-Acre’ and other wonders to be seen there. Moreover quite a number of passengers were tourists who had made this long western trip for the express purpose of seeing the Park.

“We should by all means have seen the Park since we are so near it. It was a great mistake of mine to have bought our tickets through to Seattle without a stop-over here,” said Jack who was genuinely regretful that he had not thought of it at the time, but it was too late now.

“Never youse mind,” bolstered up Bill cheerily, “we’ll stop off when we comes back and we’ll have all the time we needs and plenty o’ coin to do it on.”

“That _listens_ all right too but I have observed it is very seldom indeed that a fellow ever returns over the same trail that he sets out on, and that the time to see a thing is when he passes by the first time. Well, we’ll get the gold we’re after and then I’m going to make a tour of the world strictly for pleasure.”

“I’m with youse Jack,” responded Bill heartily.

Jack made no reply for he could see himself carrying Bill along as a piece of excess baggage and having him size up everything they saw using _his_ Noo York, as he calls it, as a yard-stick to measure it by. Bill was all right for a trip of any kind where a sure-shot and brute-force were needed but on a pleasure trip around the world--well, he preferred to go it alone.

Came the time when the shine porter indicated his desire to brush off the boys and they knew that they were getting close to the end of the first leg of their journey--Seattle. They were right glad to get off the train, though withal they had had a pleasant journey and had met a number of interesting people. Among them was a Mr. Rayleigh who was accompanied by his very charming daughter Miss Vivian.

Jack had told the Rayleighs a little of his varied experiences in the World War, of his expedition to the Arctics, of his more recent journey to Mexico (giving Bill all the credit of their adventures there) and of their proposed trip to Alaska to find gold. The net result of it all was that the chance acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship before they left the train at Seattle and his new found friends gave Jack a very cordial invitation to visit them in Chicago when he returned from his quest in the Northland, but they left poor Bill out in the cold.

Jack didn’t blame Mr. Rayleigh much for he didn’t know Bill’s heart and he judged him by exterior appearances only. Poor Bill! the only way he could ever get a look-in anywhere was when some one saw him in action, and if Mr. Rayleigh could have seen him swatting German U-boats, or on the ’dobe in that fight with Lopez’s gang he would have welcomed him with open arms.

As it was, Jack accepted the invitation so cordially given, with avidity, for he liked Miss Vivian--she was so different from those New York girls (but hush! it would never do to voice this thought in Bill’s hearing or there would be a pitched battle on the spot) and she seemed to him more like a beautiful dream picture than a real being who lived in a world of three dimensions.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “I’ve simply got to get that gold now, there’s no two ways about it.”

* * * * *

Seattle, so named after old Chief Seattle, an Indian who was friendly to the whites, is built on a site where a handful of Indians once had their village, but it was an important place even then in virtue of its being a convenient point where every once in a while thousands of Indians would meet and hold their pow-wows.

It was settled by the pale faces about seventy years ago and when the gold stampede for the Klondike was on, it was the great center for outfitting the prospectors. Later on Skagway became the chief outfitting station but as the latter town is in Alaska a duty must also be paid by those who cross over the boundary line into the Yukon Territory since it is a part of Canada. To get around this the boys concluded that they would wait until they got to Circle City and outfit up there if this was possible.

Jack was rather surprised to find that Seattle was a fine, up-to-date city in every sense of the word but of course Bill couldn’t see it that way at all, so listen to him yawp:

“Youse could sot the whole blinkin’ town down on the East Side of Noo York and then where’d it be? Youse couldn’t find it, see!”

By the following Monday the boys had seen everything that Seattle and the surrounding country had to offer but the only things that interested Bill were the Siwash Indians and Mount Ranier.

“I suppose you’ll say that the New Yorkers are dirtier than these Siwashes and that Mount Ranier can’t hold a candle to the Palisades,” Jack bantered him.

“Somebody must have taken the _wash_ out of them Siwashes from the way they smell, and as for Mount Ranier, I’ll say it’s a real mountain. Let’s climb it, what say, Jack?”

“After we get the gold,” was his pal’s comeback.

* * * * *

The five days that followed on the _S. S. Princess Alice_ were long, bright, glorious, tiresome ones and the boys would have enjoyed every minute of the time if that disconcerting, maddening, magic word _gold_ had not kept burning in their brains. They saw yellow and the nearer they came to that wonderful land in the far north, which the discoveries of gold had made as famous as diamonds have made the Kimberly mines or watered stock has made Wall Street, their very beings seemed to be transmuted into the precious metal.

Hence, neither the great Coast Range Mountains nor the wonderful glaciers appealed overmuch to these youngsters who had set their hearts on getting gold out of the Yukon-Arctic district just as firmly as had ever the most seasoned prospector.

But Juneau did make an impression on Bill for he heard tales of gold up there the like of which he had never heard before. Only once did he think to belittle the town by making odious comparisons of it with his “Noo York” but with Jack’s help he smothered the attempt for he was in the gold country now and was carried away by that malignant disease known as the _gold fever_.