Chapter IV: When Bill and Black Pete Met

The boys wore sorely disappointed in Circle for while it had been, as they had heard, “the largest log house town in the world,” and as far as log houses go it was yet, for that matter, still that essential moving principle that makes up a town, namely the inhabitants, was lacking.

But times have changed since the early ’90’s and now all that remain of its population are a few men who look after the stores and a handful of prospectors, miners, hunters and trappers who come into town to buy their supplies, and these hearten it up a bit. As for the empty log houses they serve only as so many monuments to commemorate the time when the town was alive and full of action.

You ask why the town died out? I’ll tell you. Gold was discovered there in 1894 and for the next four years its growth was phenomenal--the wonder of all Alaska; but when the Klondike was opened up the inhabitants left everything behind them and made a mad rush for the new gold fields, and so at the present time there is little left to tell of the glory that was Circle’s.

The way Jack had figured it out coming up on the boat was that they would get their clothes, grub, sleds and dogs at Circle, which prospectors and others he had talked with said they could do, and then when they were all fixed and winter had set in they would push on over to the land of the Yeehats and there establish a base from which they could work.

This base of supplies was to be like the hub of a great wheel the circumference of which would include all of the territory to be prospected and their local expeditions would be like the spokes, that is they would strike out with their dog teams, traveling light, taking a new line of direction each trip they made. In this way they could, he said, make a thorough search for the hidden gold that those before them had struck so rich but which for divers reasons best known to those who had sought it had never been gotten out of the country.

His best thought, as he had previously explained in answer to an objection of Bill’s, was to make this search during the winter months instead of doing it in summer-time in virtue of the fact that they could then use dog sleds and this would enable them to cover the ground without working themselves to death and do it at a goodly clip besides.

Now, when Bill had set his eyes on the deserted City of Circle he instantly took a violent dislike to it. Having become fairly well posted on the geography of _Ilasker_, as he still persisted in calling it, he concocted the notion that what they should have done was to come up in the early spring and go on by boat to Fort Yukon, which is about eighty-five miles farther on down the river.

From there, he contended, they could have gotten a couple of canoes and paddled up the Porcupine and Big Black Rivers until they were close to where the International boundary line crosses the Arctic Circle. This done, (according to Jack’s own reasoning he said), they would be about as near the place where they wanted to make their winter quarters as they could get. But there was no getting away from it, they were now in Circle with winter fast coming on and it was too late to change the work sheet as previously laid out.

By the time this argument was over, the boys had reached the Grand Palace Hotel, an enormous log building of two stories of the regulation kind to be found in all frontier and mining towns.

Running nearly the length of one side of the hall as they entered it, was a bar with a hotel register on the end nearest the door. At the extreme farther end of the hall a platform had been built up about as high as a man’s head, while any number of small round tables covered with worn-out and faded green cloth were strewn about the room.

The owner of the Grand Palace in the days antedating the Klondike rush was Sam Hastings, or _Silent Sam_ as he was called, because he never spoke unless he was spoken to and his replies were always pithy and to the point. His face was smooth shaven; he wore a low crowned, narrow brimmed Stetson hat, a rolling collar with a flowing tie, silk shirt with diamond set gold buttons in the cuffs, a Prince Albert coat with a six gun conveniently within reach under it, doeskin[3] breeches and kid button shoes. Unlike Soapy Smith he was honest, as men of his type went in those days, but like Soapy he died with his button shoes on.

[3] _Doeskin_ is a kind of fine twilled cloth much used in those days for making breeches.

Now let this close-up of Silent Sam fade away and take a look at a snap-shot of Doc Marling, the present owner of the Grand Palace and you will observe a further change that time and circumstances have wrought in Circle.

Doc is a big-headed man and bearded like a couple of pards. He wears a woolen shirt, under which beats a fair to middling heart; his breeches are also woolen tied around his ankles and he has on a pair of deerskin moccasins.

He is no shooter--you could see that the moment you look at him--but it is history up yonder that he once choked a bear to death with his hands alone.

He was the only animated object in the great bare room when the boys walked in and they felt like a couple of mavericks that had been cut out from the herd. No more lonesome place had either of them ever been in this side of Nyack-on-the-Hudson.

But Doc Marling didn’t seem to feel that way, since after being there for twenty odd years perhaps he’d gotten used to it. He invited them to inscribe their names on the hotel register, after which he led the march down the hall--it seemed to the boys as if it was a block long--thence up the stair-way whose well-worn steps showed clearly that Circle had been very much alive in the days of her youth, and then to their room which was altogether too big.

“One thing sure, we’ll get in practice here for the long winter that is ahead of us,” reflected Jack philosophically.

“It wouldn’t be half-bad if we had a ’phone connection with the _American Consolidated Oil Company_ back in Noo York, but where are we? Five thousand miles away and not even a wireless station nearer than Eagle. ‘I blazes!’ as Grizzly Hank down at Juneau says,” groused Bill. His indisposition was curious in that no matter how strenuous the tide of battle might be he had never a word to say, but inaction always behaved as an irritant to his nervous system.

Came soon the loud jangling of a bell and they knew it for a call to supper. They followed where it led and sat down to their first meal in Circle, and it was good. There were ten or a dozen men at the table with them and up here at the very outpost of civilization, where men are what they are, they all fell into loud and easy conversation.

“We’re in the hands of white men, as I said we’d be, back there in New York,” Jack told his partner when they were again in their room.

Just as they were about to turn in they thought they heard a phonograph going, and as “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” they went down into the big hall to be soothed.

While in pre-Klondike days it was of nightly occurrence to find four or five hundred people gathered in the hall, there were now congregated perhaps some twenty-five or thirty men, and these were made up of Americans, French-Canadians, Indians, half-breeds, and a Chinaman or two, to say nothing of the bear.

A few of those who composed this agglomeration of humanity, were the scum of the earth but most of them were men of strong character and sterling worth. Considering that they were on the very edge of things they were bound to be a rough and ready lot but taken all in all they were well behaved and peaceably inclined--all except one and he was Black Pete.

While the crowd by no means filled the void of the big hall, still it breathed enough of life into the stagnated atmosphere to take off the sharp edges of their lonesomeness.

Now instead of a phonograph they discovered that the source of the music originated in a tall, rangy miner with a big bushy mustache, who was sitting on the platform and sawing away on a fiddle as if his whole soul was in it. Near the platform some kind of a disturbance was going on around which the onlookers had formed themselves into a ring. Whatever it was they were greatly interested and from the roars of laughter they were evidently enjoying it hugely.

Jack and Bill elbowed their way deep enough into the ring to see what the frolic was and what they saw they concluded was about as good as an act in a side-show. In a word it was a team of dancers executing with great precision and solemnity the “bear-trot”, or “bear-hug”, or “bear-something-or-other”, for a young French-Canadian and a big brown bear, who stood erect on his hind legs, when he was as tall as his keeper, were executing a most ludicrous, albeit, a lumbering sort of dance.

After a spell Rip Stoneback, the fiddler, ceased scraping the catgut strings with his horse-hair bow and the trainer and his bear wound up their exhibition with a wrestling bout that tickled the everlasting daylights out of these simple northmen, from which it could be fairly deduced that, after all, they were really only boys “growed” up.

The boys mingled freely with the knots of men taking in what they had to say about everything in general and little things in particular, for it was all brand-new and novel to them. Jack struck up a conversation with a young fellow named Jim Wendle from ’Frisco who had staked a claim over on Preacher Creek.

“The boys here are all right,” he was saying to Jack, “there’s only one fellow who is really hard boiled and that’s Black Pete over there. He’s laid out every man he’s ever tackled, either with his fists, or his knife and I’ve heard that he shot a man once. He’s meaner than all get out when he’s had a few drinks so don’t get into any argument with him. Agree to anything he says if he talks to you.”

Black Pete did not look the part of a “bad man” though his face was hard and his complexion was swarthy. He was not very tall, had tremendous shoulders and having lived in the open Northland all his life he knew the run of men who gathered here. He was thoroughly disliked in Circle because of this disposition on his part to always want to pick a fight and there were men thereabouts who were actually afraid of him.

At about the same time that Jack was getting his information concerning Black Pete another prospector was tipping off his history to Bill and it was lucky for both of the boys that they were “let in” on his past performances when they were.

Black Pete and a boon companion were leaning against the bar when the latter made some passing remark about that young stripling and his partner who had just landed in Circle.

“Sleem keed heem all right,” returned Pete, “but I no got use for heem pardner--zat fellow weez da cut cross hees cheek. I give heem beeg leeking sometime. Maybe theese night. Watch a meenute. I have som’ fun with sleem keed.” Black Pete called to Jack and motioned him to come over, but as the latter had not been introduced he paid no attention and this aroused Black Pete’s ire. Then he and his companion started over toward Jack and Jim Wendle.

“Be careful now,” his friend cautioned him.

Black Pete laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder in a perfectly friendly like manner and said:

“You and Jeem com’ heeva dreenk weeth me?”

At that Jack got up from the table and looked Black Pete square in the eye.

“I don’t drink,” he said shortly.

Black Pete was mad clear through, that much was plain.

Bill who had been taking a hand in a world-old game called _poker_, happened to see Jack and Black Pete facing each other and he divined trouble. He laid down his cards and went over where his pardner and the bad un were, to _listen in_ on the conversation.

“Heeve a seegar, then,” the Canuk insisted catching hold of Jack’s arm and pulling him toward the bar.

Taking a firm hold on Black Pete’s wrist Jack removed his hand from his arm and said, without the slightest inflexion in his voice, “I don’t smoke.”

Then the unexpected happened--that which had not happened in Circle in perhaps a dozen or twenty years before.

“You don’t eh?” growled Black Pete, infuriated at Jack’s cold refusal to join him in either one or the other, “then deem you, heeve a bullet!”

At the same time he whipped out his six-shooter and pulled the trigger, but his marksmanship was bad, for Bill had caught him by his throat from the side and pulled his body over so that the bullet crashed through the roof, instead of boring a hole through Jack’s body.

Expecting that the remaining chambers would be emptied in the struggle which took place between Bill and Black Pete the crowd dropped to the floor, jumped behind the bar, crawled under tables--all except René and he kept his trained bear between himself and the business end of the gun the bad man of Circle and the Harlem boy were struggling for.

These latter two were well matched though there was no doubt but that Black Pete who was the larger was also the stronger, but sheer brute strength could not gain the mastery where the tricks of the wrestler’s art are brought to bear and Bill had a little the best of it.

As the crowd rightly guessed when the first shot was fired, Black Pete did pull the trigger every chance he got until all of his cartridges were shot off but each time the bullet that was intended for Bill went wild and neither he nor the others were scratched. One bullet, though, shivered the big plate glass mirror over the bar into a thousand pieces and Doc Marling, the proprietor, knew that he was having bad luck just then to the jig-time of three hundred dollars, even if it didn’t keep on for the next seven years.

All the time the struggle was under way Jack stood by as though he was watching a friendly bout in Prof. William Adam’s Academy on Manhattan Street in the good old days. More than one of the onlookers wondered why he didn’t crack a bottle on Black Pete’s head and so help out his partner, but this was not the way the boys did team work. In a set-to of any kind whether it was with bare knuckles, with knives or with pistols neither one would take a hand in the affair the other was engaged in unless, as Jack had once explained to me, it was “absolutely imperative.”

And this status of the fray was far from having come to pass, at least that was the way Jack sized it up. The crowd must have kept count of the shots fired for when the last one took place they quickly picked themselves up from the floor, or crawled out from their safety-first hiding places, and gathered around Bill and Black Pete who were still at it.

Whether it was due to the final breaking down of his courage, failing strength, too much hootch or the superior tactics of the trained athlete, was not apparent, but slowly Bill overpowered his opponent, threw him over his shoulder, when he struck the floor on his back, and pinned him down so that he could not move. After all had seen that Black Pete was helpless Bill let him up.

There was wild cheering for the victor and some one brought Bill a big glass of forty-rod.

“You have well earned it boy and you need it,” he said as he offered the glass to him.

“I never drink,” said Bill and it was given instead to Black Pete to revive him again.

When the latter had regained his feet, and recovered from the shock a little, he offered no explanation for his defeat, but in his deep humiliation he moved over toward the door to make as dignified an exit as he could in the quickest possible time.

“Hey, where are youse goin’,” Bill called out after him. “Come back here and sit down at this table and let’s be friends, for I never holds a grudge after I have downed me man. Sit down here, I wants to tell youse something.”

Black Pete reluctantly did as Bill requested and the crowd surged round them to hear what it was this boy from down under had to say to him.

“I takes it you’re a bit loaded with licker to-night and perhaps I had the ’vantage of youse for I never lets any of that hootch stuff interfere with me _phys-e-que_, see? Now you think you’re some scrapper don’t you? Well maybe you are, and I’ll give you a fair chanst. Tomorrer youse keep away from the bug-juice, see? and come ’round in de evenin’ and I’ll spar’ a few rounds with youse--tree rounds ull be about enough--just a friendly bout for the sport it will give these gents here. Marquis Queensbury rules or sluggers rules, I don’t care which. Youse can go now,” and Black Pete promptly sneaked off wishing that an earthquake would open a gulch through Circle and swallow up him, Bill, Jack and everybody else, but it didn’t.

All the next day Black Pete wondered how he could get out of the ‘friendly bout’ that Bill was so willing to _pull off_ for the mere fun of the thing. He didn’t know what the Marquis of Queensbury rules were but he finally came to the conclusion that he was a better man than his opponent and that the only way he could retrieve his standing in Circle was to give the _Keed_ the beating of his life.

Curiously enough he did ‘cut out the booze’ just as though he had paid Bill for the advice and then he proceeded to get into his best fighting trim.

“I knock heem face een eef I ever heet heem,” he said talking to himself, and then to prove to his own satisfaction that he could do it he made four well defined dents in the pine board wall with a smashing blow of his fist.

“An’ you said these folks up here was all of the peace-lovin’ garden variety, and never use a gun,” Bill said soberly when they were in their room after the fracas.

“I thought they were,” replied Jack.

“You _thought_ they were?” and Bill looked at him as though he had caught him breaking the n^th commandment. “Well don’t youse think again, Buddy, or youse might hurt yourself, see?”