Chapter III: On the Edge of Things

The _Princess Alice_ made a stop for a few hours at Juneau, a town standing on a promontory between Lynn Canal and the Taku River, and the boys, with many other passengers, disembarked to see what they could see. Here for the first time they felt they were getting pretty close to the field of their future activities for they were in Alaska, the land of the midnight sun and the aurora borealis, the moose and the caribou, the prehistoric glaciers and--hidden gold.

Across the water a great mill was in full blast and as they stood looking at it a big, grisly sort of a man, who appeared to be between fifty and sixty, and whose clothes showed that he was an old time prospector, moved over toward them. Evidently he had in mind the idea of holding some small conversation with them, for up on top of the world the inhabitants do not consider formal introductions as being at all necessary when they feel like talking to any one.

“Goin’ to buy it boys?” he asked, grinning good-naturedly to show that his intentions were of the best.

“Afore we do, we’d kinda like to know what it is, for we’d hate to buy a pig-in-a-poke,” replied Bill smiling just as cheerfully, only, as I have previously mentioned, whenever Bill smiled the scar across his cheek made him look as if he was getting ready to exterminate a greaser.

“Oh, I see, you youngsters are new up here--tourists maybe,” came from the big throated man.

“We’re new up here all right,” admitted Jack, “but we’re not up here to see the sights, or for our health either, but to do a bit of prospecting.”

“Shake pards,” and he held out a calloused hand, as big as a ham and as horny as a toad’s back, to each of them in turn. “I’m Hank Dease, but in these parts I’m known as Grizzly Hank. And who might you fellows be?”

“I’m Jack Heaton of New Jersey, and this is my side-kick, Bill Adams of New York City, New York County and New York State, and there with the goods as needed.”

“I blazes! I’m right glad to know you boys,” drawled Grizzly Hank, “for you look to me as if you’re made o’ the right kind o’ timber. Since you’re strangers here I’ll tell you about Juneau, which I allow is the finest city in the world.”

Now Juneau has a population of about two thousand people, so, naturally, Bill was going to jump right in and monopolize things by asking Grizzly Hank if he’d ever been in Noo York, but Jack gave him the high-sign not to break in and so for once his pal held his peace.

“I’ll tell you about the wonderful things we have here first and then if there’s any little thing you want to know about prospectin’ up here or in the Yukon Territory I’ll tell you as good as I know. I’ve been in this country for nigh onto thirty years and you see how well I’ve panned out, but you fellows may do better--a few do, but, I blazes, most of ’em don’t.”

Grizzly Hank had found a couple of good listeners and as he liked to talk he was making the most of them while they lasted.

“That’s the Treadwell mill you are lookin’ at over yonder on Douglas Island. It has an output of gold that runs upwards of eighty thousand dollars a month. The first gold ever found in Alaska was down at Sitka in 1873, but it was old Joe Juneau, a French-Canadian prospector, who showed that gold could be mined here in payin’ quantities.

“At that time another prospector named Treadwell who was in this district had loaned a little money on some claims over there and finally had to take them for the debt. Later on he bought French Pete’s claim which lay next to it for the magnificent sum of five hundred dollars; and these claims which he bought for a mere song are the great Treadwell mines of to-day. I blazes! There are some other mines in this district and since Treadwell took over the original claims the output of gold has been to the tune of a hundred million dollars and the end is nowhere yet in sight. I blazes!”

“Do you mean to say, Mister Dease, that gold is mined over there like coal?” asked Bill, thereby exposing his ignorance.

The grisly prospector looked amused but he recalled the time when his own ideas of mining gold had been just about as vague.

“You see, boys, gold is found in several ways up here. Sometimes it is ’bedded in quartz when the _ore_, as it is called, has to be mined and then crushed in a stamp mill to get the gold out; more often it is found as free gold, dust and grains and bits of pure gold mixed with the dirt when it must be _panned_, that is, put in a pan and the dirt washed away and then the gold, which is the heaviest, falls to the bottom of the pan, and again,” he lowered his voice to make what he was about to tell them more impressive, “nuggets of gold are picked up from bits the size of a pea to chunks as large as my fist! I blazes! It all depends on the locality.”

“These diggin’s here are quartz mines and the ore is of mighty low grade--only a couple of dollars in gold to the ton of quartz. To get this gold out the quartz, or ore, is crushed in a mill called a stamp, and the Treadwell has the largest number of stamps of any mill in the world--upwards of two thousand, I blazes!”

Grizzly Hank paused for a moment to get a fresh start.

“Go on Mister Hank, we’re listenin’ with both ears,” urged Bill.

“As you were saying--” Jack paced him.

“As I was about to say,” continued the prospector, who was every whit as appreciative of his audience as it was of him, “when Treadwell began to take out gold, old timers all along the coast clear down as far as ’Frisco heard of it, came up and pushed further north believing that they would find other lodes of gold bearing ore and they believed right, I blazes!

“That other mine over there on Douglas Island that you see to the right is the Mexican Mine but it’s small fry as against the Treadwell for it only has a hundred and twenty stamps working.”

“We’re not pertiklarly keen on Mexican mines, oil wells or anything else that goes by the name of _Mex_--we had all the Mexican stuff we wanted when we was down there six months ago,” broke in Bill to whom the word brought no very pleasant recollections.

“To this side of the Mexican mine,” went on the prospector, “is the _Ready Bullion_ mine and it has a two hundred stamp mill.”

“_Ready Bullion_ listens good to me,” admitted Jack, once more breaking into his discourse.

“Shortly after the Treadwell mine began to show itself a bonanza, a story went the rounds that it was an accidental lode, or a _blowout_ as we call it; that is, it was a lode of gold deposited there by some gigantic upheaval of the earth when Alaska was in the makin’ and that it was the only place north of fifty-six where gold could be mined at a profit.

“I always believed that yarn was set agoin’ to keep other prospectors out of the country; but when it kept on producin’, men with picks and shovels came here just the same, and what happened was that other deposits were found and these are the mines that are bein’ worked now in southern Alaska.

“Still other prospectors pushed on further north with their packs on their backs, on sleds which they pulled themselves or which were hauled by dog teams, on horses and mules, and they toiled up the _Trail of Heartache_, as the nearly straight-up _White Pass_ trail was called in those days. I blazes, _and_, I was one of ’em.

“Once on the other side of yonder range we prospected for gold bearin’ quartz, and panned the river beds until we reached the Klondike River. There is where Carmack, with two Indian pards, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, had already staked rich claims. One day Carmack went down to the stream to wash a piece of moose he had killed and it was then that he saw gold in the water and when he panned it he got more nuggets than his eyes could believe. News of gold travels faster than greased lightnin’ and it was not long before the biggest gold stampede was on that ever took place in the golden history of gold! I blazes!

“Over night the Klondike became famous and wherever human bein’s lived that spoke a language it was a word that they knew and it meant but one thing to them--and that was gold. And, I blazes, the world knew that gold was bein’ panned out in the Klondike by hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars and the world went crazy over it.

“When I got there one mornin’ I was dead-broke but by night I was a rich man. It was nothin’ to wash a hundred, five hundred, I blazes, a thousand dollars from a few pans of gravel. And still further north, somewhere along the Porcupine River, Thornton and a couple of his pards discovered a blow-out where nuggets of gold were so thick they could pick ’em up like stones; they packed them in moosehide sacks and corded them up like stovewood until they had all the gold they thought they could carry out of the country.”

Grizzly Hank had the boys going for fair. They stood as though they were magnetized to the spot. Both were itching for more detailed information but neither spoke his mind for they had agreed before they left New York that while they would have to admit they were prospectors bent on finding gold, like countless thousands before them, they would give no hint, under any circumstance, of their real mission to any one.

“Go on--” said Bill impatiently.

“Yes, pards,” he went on, his sharp, deep-set eyes brightening which showed that however it was he had failed to keep the elusive metal he had found, his long quest left no cause for regret; “yes pards, the gold belt runs from the Gulf of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean, and the further north you go the more gold you’ll find and--the harder it will be to get it _down under_.[2] I’m goin’ to the Porcupine River district as soon as I can get some one to grub-stake me----”

[2] In Alaska and the far north the United States is called _down under_.

A mighty bellowing blast came from the triple throated whistle of the steamer at the dock and drowned out the alluring voice of the prospector pioneer. Then the warning sound subsided for a moment.

“There’s your boat a-whistlin’ an’ if you’re goin’ on her you’d better scoot. I blazes! Good-by and good luck.”

They started for the boat on the run but their minds were in a semi-torpid condition, for the old miner had surely enough set them by the ears. When they were again on the deck of the _Princess Alice_ and had somewhat recovered from the magic of his words they fell to discussing gold, Grizzly Hank and a few other consequential things.

“Moosehide sacks of gold corded up like stovewood!” repeated Bill blinking his blue eyes.

“The farther north you go the more gold you’ll find!” reiterated Jack, for the words sounded like ready money to him.

“Shake, old pard, we’re on the right trail,” and the boys struck hands with a vengeance. “I was thinkin’ as how we orter have taken Grizzly Hank along with us,” commented Bill; “he knows all the ropes and he’d a-come in mighty handy.”

“I thought of that too when he was talking to us but then we’d have to split up our winnings into thirds which would mean that we’d simply short-change ourselves out of a couple of million dollars or so. Then again his ideas and ours would probably be entirely different for he’s a prospector of the old school while we are discoverers of the new school. Finally, ‘two’s company and three’s none’ is just as true, I imagine, of the trail as it is of a parlor date.”

“Agreed to on all points,” said Bill, “but when we comes back let’s grub-stake him to the limit so that he can eke out a million or so on his own account afore he kicks-in.”

Skagway was the jumping off place as far as the _Princess Alice_ was concerned and the boys were right glad of it for they were anxious more than ever to get into the heart of things. The town is on the Chilkat Inlet at the head of Lynn Canal and, like many others along the coast, it has a mountain for a background.

They stopped over night at Mrs. Pullen’s hotel, which is also a wonderful Alaskan museum, and as they were looking about they came across a rack of the inevitable picture post cards. Bill said he was of a mind to send one down under to a certain little telephone countess, (whom he could see in his mind’s eye masticating the indestructible listerated nuggets and hear her say in the deep recesses of his auditory organ “who do you want to talk to?” with the “smile that wins.”)

On one of the post cards was a picture of a very pleasant, mild mannered looking gentleman whose kindly eyes and benevolent mouth bore out Jack’s statement that all men north of fifty-six are _white_ at heart. Under the picture on the card of the somewhat incongruous caption of _Soapy Smith_.

“I suppose he’s the Sunday School Superintendent, owner of the First National Bank and mayor of this burg,” Bill remarked to his partner.

A prosperous looking individual standing near-by overheard Bill’s facetious comment, smiled sadly and said:

“I take it you boys haven’t heard the story of Soapy Smith and so I’ll enlighten you as to the manner of man he was. Soapy came by his saponified cognomen honestly for he began his career as a full member of the fraternity of gentle grafters. Soapy’s line was to wrap up a ten dollar bill with a small bar of soap and sell it from the tail end of a wagon for the small sum of one dollar.

“Then the lamb would take his purchase around in the back alley where no one could see him, and open it up and then he would find that he was out just ninety-nine cents, for while he had the soap the slippery ten-spot still remained as a part of Soapy’s financial reserve fund.

“But this graft was too legitimate for Soapy for he had to give a bar of soap worth at least a cent to each and every purchaser. Having accumulated a little coin he drifted in here with the stampeders in ’98 and opened up a saloon, dance-hall and gambling house. As if this game was too honest he organized a gang of outlaws and they robbed men and killed them too, right and left.

“Law abiding citizens got tired of these hold-ups, for the prospectors and miners began to go through Dyea and use the Chilcoot Pass rather than take a chance of meeting Soapy and his gang in Skagway or on the White Pass trail. So a _Vigilance Committee_ was organized and at one of their meetings one night they put Frank Reed at the gate to keep Soapy and the members of his gang out.

“As soon as Soapy heard of the meeting he took his shootin’ irons and went over to it where Reed promptly refused to admit him. Came two simultaneous pistol shots; Soapy fell dead and Reed lived for a couple of weeks and then he cashed in. If you go up to the canyon you’ll see the graves of both these men in the cemetery there. So you see you can’t most always tell by lookin’ at a man what is under his vest.”

The next morning the boys took the train for White Horse, about a hundred and ten miles due north at which point they would make connections with a boat on the Yukon River. While the stampeders had toiled up the icy trail of White Pass, their backs breaking under their packs and their hearts breaking under the torture of it all, the boys were now making the trip in a comfortable train of the White Pass and Yukon Railway, the first in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

“Isn’t just exactly like ridin’ on the _Twentieth Century_, is it Jack?” observed Bill as the train crept at a snail’s pace up to the summit.

Just then the train rounded a curve blasted out of solid rock and they looked straight down a thousand feet into a canyon.

“More like a trip on the _Elevated_,” suggested Jack.

Once over the Pass the engineer opened the throttle a little and the train picked up in speed. Then by way of varying the kaleidoscopic changes of scenery the train shot into a tunnel and out of it onto a tremendously high bridge that spans the Skagway River which flows tumultuously over the rocky bottom on its way to the gulf.

A few miles beyond they crossed an old wagon road which was being built to connect White Horse with White Pass but the railroad was completed first and took its place. A dozen miles or so farther on they saw some log cabins which the conductor of the train pointed out as having been the center of White Pass City, one of the tented towns that had sprung up during the mad rush to the Klondike, and when it subsided the town vanished.

Then came into view Glacier Gorge and high above it the train sped along its very edge, then wound up a long grade, when spread before them were the Sawtooth Mountains and Dead Horse Gulch.

“Sounds like the name of a dime novel I onct read,” reflected Bill.

“Why Dead Horse Gulch?” Jack asked the conductor.

“Because when the rush was on in ’98 thousands of the pioneers brought their horses with them and so many of them died down there from starvation and overwork that their bodies choked up the gulch.

“See that sheet of water yonder?” he continued, “that’s the beginning of Lake Bennet and there the hustling, bustling, town of Bennet once was. As soon as the gold crowd from Skagway reached this lake they gave up the trail and threw together rafts and craft of every description. They piled their outfits on or in them and then floated down the Yukon River to the Klondike, unless they were drowned first, as many were. You’ll be glad to know, boys, the train hesitates twenty minutes at Bennet for victuals,” and the boys thought it was high time that it did so.

When this important function was over and they were again on the train it ran along the edge of the lake until the lower end of it was reached where the friendly _con_ called “Carcross! Carcross!”

“This town,” he told them, “is built on a place where the Indians used to watch for the caribou to cross and this is the cause why of its name.”

After a short ride their rail trip--the last they would have for many, many moons--came to an end at White Horse, on the Thirty Mile River. They considered they were playing in great good luck, for the steamboats leave only twice a week for Dawson and one was scheduled to sail that night.

This gave the boys plenty of time to look around White Horse but they saw with eyes dimly for their vision was as blurred by their quest for gold as ever were those who had rushed madly through there in the days of ’98.

Bill opined that he “liked White Horse fine as it has two boats a week we can get away on.” As a matter of fact it is a lively town for the steamboats take on their supplies here for their down river trips.

The boys walked over to the White Horse Rapids, as the Indians called it after a Finnlander because of his light hair and whom they thought was as strong as a horse, after he had lost his life in its swirling waters. And hundreds of other lives and dozens of outfits were lost in the wild scramble of the early prospectors to get to the gold fields.

But neither Jack nor Bill gave more than a passing thought to these foolhardy and adventurous souls who had risked and lost all in their futile attempts to get to the Klondike; much less did they think of those who had made the golden goal and won out in the finality of their efforts, for the boys’ own scheme consumed every moment of their time, and all of their energies were directed upon the consummation of it since they were gold seekers just as truly as were any of those who had gone before.

The steamboat _Selkirk_, which was to carry the boys from White Horse to Circle City, was of the old time kind that was used on the Mississippi and other rivers half a century ago; that is, it was of the wood-burning, stern paddle-wheel type.

As they stood out on deck the next morning Jack tried to lose sight of the big issue for the moment and he imagined himself to be the first explorer who had traced the Yukon River in this region. If he had not had gold on the brain it would have been an easy thing to do for here were the same virgin meadows, primeval forests and silent fastnesses just as they were when the Russians laid claim to Alaska. And the gold, he reasoned, that was here then is, for the greater part, here now.

Not once since they had left Seattle had Bill compared anything with his Noo York, at least not out loud, but when they were passing through the headwaters of the Yukon he said as though he was talking to himself, “It hasn’t got anything on the _Spuyten Duyvil_,” which, let me elucidate, is a tidal channel that connects the Harlem River with the Hudson River and so forms the northern boundary of Manhattan Island on which New York City proper is built. But in the eight hundred and sixty odd mile trip down the Yukon to Circle City Bill had ample opportunity to amend his snap comparison and even then he was fifteen hundred miles from its many channeled delta where it flows into the Bering Sea.

“Doesn’t look much like the naked north or frozen regions that the folks back home think it is,” remarked Bill, as they passed a _tundra_ (pronounced toon´-dra) which was thick with grass and shrubs and sprinkled with various plants in flower.

“I’ll say it doesn’t,” replied Jack, “but wait, we haven’t run into winter weather yet.”

As the boat plied its way softly and swiftly down the Yukon they saw occasional Indian villages, the men taking life easy, the children playing and the squaws busy drying the golden salmon on poles set in the sun. Then to the great delight of both boys they saw a caribou swim out from the shore intending, probably, to cross to the other side, but frightened by the modernity of the throbbing, smoking monster he swam back faster than he came, and on gaining the shore he disappeared from view.

Another time Bill went over to Jack, who was talking with some passengers, and saluting as to an officer he said, “I have to report, sir, a bear on the starboard bow.” And sure enough there stood a huge bear high on the ledge of a rock and so motionless was he that he seemed carved out of the rock itself; but inwardly he was fully alive to this mechanical invasion of his eminent domain.

Never was a river trip of such wild beauty, so full of interest and yet such soothing quiet as this one the boys were now making and it would have proved doubly delightful if they had been pleasure seekers instead of gold seekers. The only breaks in the continuity of the run were made when the boat nosed its way along a bank and, finding an anchorage, she _wooded up_, that is she took on wood to be burned under her boilers.

Now the river widened and the boat ran into the more placid waters of Lake LeBarge which Jack pointed out to Bill as having been the scene of action in _The Cremation of Sam McGee_, a poem by Robert Service. On reaching the lower end of the lake the boat shot down the Thirty Mile River where the swift current winds forth and back like a tangled rope and it takes a pilot who knows his trade to hold her to the channel.

But the most exciting piece of navigation is at Five Finger Rapids, for here the river narrows down into a neck and almost closing the latter are five ugly finger-like rocks projecting above the surface with the water swirling swiftly round them in mighty eddies. It looked to Jack and Bill as if there was not enough room for the boat to pass between any two of them but this didn’t seem to worry the pilot any who held her nose hard toward the middle finger.

The boys thought that he must be tired of life. But hold there matey, just as they had timed her to strike the rock he bore down hard on his wheel to port and the boat missed the rock by the skin of its teeth, Their hearts dropped back from their throats to their thoraxes again and they believed they still stood a fair chance of finding the gold they were after.

And now comes Dawson into view--Dawson in the heart of the Klondike--the Dawson of tradition, adventure, romance and--of gold! This is the identical town where that great army of pioneer gold seekers, who braved the rigors of the winters, the dangers of the rapids, the stresses of starvation and the robbers of Soapy Smith’s gang, found themselves if they were unfortunate enough to be so fortunate.

As the steamboat ties up here for half a day to load and unload its cargo the boys went on a hike over to an Indian village called _Moosehide_, a little way down the trail from Dawson. On returning to town they got the _borry_, as Bill called it, of a couple of horses and rode out eight or ten miles where some great dredges were at work bringing up the sand and gravel from the streams and hydraulicking equipments were washing the gold out of it.

“This kind of mining,” Jack said to his partner, “is simply panning out gold on a big scale by machinery, and gold fields that are not rich enough to be worked profitably by a prospector will yield gold on a paying basis where hydraulicking can be taken advantage of.”

“It’s too slow a game for me,” was Bill’s idea of the scheme, “I wants to pick it up in chunks.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Jack made answer.

They left Dawson that evening and the next morning still found them in the Yukon Territory, but shortly after breakfast the boat crossed the International boundary line and they were on good old U. S. soil again. The boat soon made a landing at Eagle City where Fort Egbert is located and the first thing Jack spied was a big wireless station which he knew belonged to the U. S. Army.

From Eagle to Circle City, or just _Circle_ as it is called for short, is a sail of a hundred and ninety miles. Both Jack and Bill were dead tired of traveling and they hailed Circle as heartily as they would have hailed their own home town. But they didn’t know what they were hailing. The only outstanding fact with them was that they had _arrived_, or at any rate they had gone as far as trains and boats could carry them toward the goal of their desires. The bridge was swung ashore and they got off without delay. The whistle blew a couple of sonorous blasts, and the boat backed off and went on her way down stream.

In the days of the gold rush Circle had been the great outfitting town in these parts. It was built up entirely of log cabins and it had more log cabins than any town had ever gathered together before or since. Why Circle City? Whence the name? Because when the town was started it was believed to be located right on the Arctic Circle but later it was learned that it was a good eighty miles below the Circle.

As the boys stepped ashore they were greeted by a few white men, some Indians and the ear-splitting howls of the huskies.

“I tell you Bill, we’re on the very edge of things.”

“You said a mouthful, pard,” was that worthy’s sober reply.