Chapter VII: In Winter Quarters

The barking and howling of the dogs woke the boys from a sound sleep. They quickly got out of their sleeping bags to see what it was all about and when they looked out of the tent they saw a pack of fourteen huskies with their mouths wide open and looking for all the world as though they were laughing, except when they were in the act of straining their vocal cords to make a noise.

If they could have talked the boys would have heard them say, “here, you sleepy fellows, get a move on yourselves, for we’ve got to do twenty miles to-day.” The handsome brutes were as playful and joyous as any of their tribe this side of the happy hunting grounds where all good canines go to when they die and where the “toil of the trace and trail” are not known.

On second thought, though, it may just be that they were not so particularly anxious to get into the harness again as it was that they had fond recollections of the dried fish they had eaten the night before, and that they were more than ready now for another helping of the same hyperbolical breakfast food.

While Jack fed them more generous portions of fish than they had ever known before, Bill proceeded to get their own breakfasts, of crisp bacon, real bread made by that heathen Chinese, Sing Nook, back there at Circle, and coffee with condensed milk and sugar in it. What more could they--could anyone--want? The boys couldn’t imagine.

Now as long as they had followed the river their course had been due east and they didn’t have to worry about going in the right direction but when they reached the end of it their course lay northeast, which is, naturally, forty-five degrees between the points of the compass known as _due north_ and _due east_. To follow this course they produced their compasses and while both Jack and Bill were perfectly familiar with the use of the instruments something seemed to be wrong with them, for instead of the needles pointing to the north as do all good compasses, they pointed almost due east, or to be exact they pointed to _east by north_, which is eleven and one-fourth degrees north of due east.

“It’s twelve o’clock by both your watch and mine and there’s the sun overhead on the meridian, so north must be up there and here’s these bloomin’ compasses a-pointin’ to the east,” complained Bill. “Here we are a thousand miles from nowhere and we don’t even know the blinkin’ north when we sees it.”

“Now don’t get excited, Bill, but let’s investigate this thing and reason out the whyness of the wherefore,” said Jack sanely, though he couldn’t understand it any more than did his “pard” Bill.

They were so close to the north-pole the needles vibrated with dynamic energy and yet they fixedly held their positions north by east.

“Maybe it’s the hardware in our outfit that’s affectin’ them, or the pemmican we had for lunch yesterday, or else the dogs have et a keg-o’-nails afore we left Circle,” suggested Bill, who had a better idea of funning than he had of science.

“There isn’t enough iron in our outfit to affect them as you can tell if you will walk around the sleds with your compass. It may be the pemmican, though, for I sort of feel as if there’s a loadstone in my stomach. Leaving all joking aside, Bill, there is something here--some phenomenon we don’t understand,” returned Jack, thinking as he had never thought before.

“It may just be,” he went on, “that there is a vein of iron ore running along in this direction which would of course account for the erratic behavior of the needles. If so we’ll soon get out of the range of its influence. What we’ll do is to call the point marked _east_ on our compass cards _north_ and then if we travel _north by east_ we’ll really be going in the right direction, see?” explained Jack.

“It’s as clear as mud,” responded Bill, “we’ll have a nice time correctin’ the errors of these compasses when they are ninety degrees outen the way. You can use your compass if you want to but I’m goin’ by the blinkin’ Sun and the bloomin’ North Star, I am.”

All that day as they were mushing on Jack kept tab on his compass and Bill kept his eye on the sun and while they both firmly believed they were headed right, the compass, by which the mariner pushes boldly forward, steering always as it directs, knowing it will not send him astray, had the boys worked up into something that very nearly approached a nervous state of mind.

All the time they were on the march that afternoon the going was very much heavier than it had been on the No Name River, for they had to break the trail as they went along. Jack kept wondering what had come over the compasses that so persistently made them point east instead of north.

When they had established camp that night they were still discussing the frivolous peculiarities of compasses which enabled them to point east when they were on top-o’-the-world with the same degree of freedom that they pointed north when they were used on the rim-o’-the-world.

The weather was crisp and cold and the air as thin and clear as crystal. Bill, who had lost faith in the instrument that is the symbol of unerring accuracy, stood forth in the night, looking more like some barbarian of the glacial age than a pampered boy of the gas-house district and viewed the twinkling lights in the bowl of the heavens. He called Jack and indicating the North Star with his finger said:

“Either that star is wrong and our compasses are right or the other way about, but ’tween you and me, Bud, I’ll bank on the North Star every time and _dish_ the compasses.”

“I know exactly where the trouble comes in, Bill; funny I couldn’t have thought of it before,” said Jack, brightening up as though his brain-cells had decohered. “The North Star and the compasses are both right. You know that the magnetic north pole and the true, or geographic, north pole are not in the same place.

“In fact the magnetic pole is way south of the true pole--let me see, if I remember rightly it is pretty close to the meridian which is one hundred degrees west of Greenwich and on the sixty-eighth parallel, and is, consequently, nearly twenty degrees south of the geographic pole. This is the reason, then, our compasses point to the east instead of to the north; the only thing we don’t want to forget to do is to allow for this difference.”

“Right you are, Jack,” Bill made answer, for of all times that his admiration for his partner welled in his breast it was when the latter explained what he called “this high-brow stuff.” “Say if I had a brain like yourn I wouldn’t be up here seekin’ moosehide sacks o’ gold, I’d be back there in little ole Noo York on Wall Street shovelin’ it into vaults; that’s what I’d be doin’.”

Having disposed of the vexatious problem of the North Pole Bill again took an interest in his compass and began figuring out how many points this way or that way they would have to go to get so many points the other side of somewhere else. Bill didn’t know it but up there in the cold, cold North he was developing his gray matter, for he was _thinking_ and this is the only process by which it can be done.

And so for the next three days they kept steadily onward over tundras, on streams, through wooded lands, up hills and down dales and always north by east. Nor did the boys feel a bit lonesome here in these vast stretches of the sub-Arctic ice and snow and the great, grim solitude of nature but this may be accounted for in virtue of there being hardly ever a minute but that they were kept on the jump doing something for either themselves or the dogs.

Neither were they without companions for the dogs were the most wonderful company ever. They showed the most amazing intelligence, particularly ’Frisco and Sate, and Bill was not far from the truth when he said “they’re human and that’s all there is to it.” And in very truth so it seemed, for whatever they wanted to do or say, they knew precisely how to go about it, or to make themselves understood.

“We still have another day’s journey before us,” Jack announced as they made their last temporary camp, and they were, indeed, getting pretty close to the end of the rainbow, for they were even then in the land of the Yeehats, which was the land of their golden hopes.

But to Bill, instead of there being more gold the farther north they went, the snowscape grew more desolate and forbidding, for he was better acquainted with a semi-torrid climate than he was with a wholly frigid one, and to him the outlook was far from alluring. Jack who had spent nine months in the Arctic didn’t mind it a little bit. He had the makings in him of a polar explorer.

Harking back to that July morning when Jack had unfolded the fascinating story of gold in moosehide sacks to him in his apartment, and now looking out upon the snow-veiled land as far as his eye could reach Bill again began to wonder if, after all, it wasn’t a fairy tale told by a writer of fiction, or, more likely, a hoax perpetrated by the early miners on the tenderfeet who pestered them with questions.

“What I’d like to know is if this metal is really up here,” he finally said to Jack, “why haven’t men like Jack McQuesten, Doc Marling, Sam Stoneback and all the other old timers who have lived in Ilasker ever since gold was discovered, searched for and found this treasure.”

Jack smiled cynically--that is, as cynically as a boy can smile.

“You might just as reasonably ask me why the head door-keeper of the Stock Exchange has not made a fortune on the floor--he’s on the _ground_ too you know. Or why is it a boot-black sometimes becomes a millionaire, or a girl from Tin Can Alley rises out of the depths and is crowned a queen?” Jack argued.

“Or Bill Adams, of Claremont Avenoo, seekin’ the yellow metal in the shadow o’ the North Pole,” Bill commented and then he added, “I’m gettin’ to be some poet like Mr. Service, what say, Jack?”

“Yes, this beautiful Northland will make a poet of anybody. But were the bootblack and the alley wench destined to do and become what they did do and did become?” Jack went on.

“Is it because they _thought_ their way up, or is the element of chance responsible for it all? Perhaps it is like pemmican, due to a little of everything mixed together. These are things for you to think about, Bill.”

Bill _was_ thinking but he couldn’t think fast enough to keep up with Jack’s line of talk, though he had the satisfaction of knowing what his partner was driving at and this was more than he was sometimes able to do.

“It sounds to me, Jack,” he finally said, “but I’m hopin’ as how you’re right. I wouldn’t take any stock in it comin’ from any one else ’ceptin’ yourself. Your hunches from the time I first knowed you has got the weegie board locked in a vault. An’ consekently I’m sayin’ as how I take it your hunch inkubator is in just as good workin’ order and reliable here in Ilasker, as it was down in Mexico.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” said Jack, throwing out his chest, only it couldn’t be noticed from the exterior because his caribou coat was so big it covered up his abnormal expansion. “And see here, Bill, you want to _cut out_ this ‘it sounds to me’ stuff. I’m not exactly what you call a Christian Scientist but we’ll never find the pot of gold if you’re going to keep doubting it all the time.”

This little talk gave Bill some food for thought too, and he resolved that let come what may he would never show any signs of its “sounding to him” again.

Along in the late afternoon of the next day they came to a river and Jack proclaimed that they had at last reached the end of their long trip.

“This is the Big Black River all right and if I haven’t missed my guess we are about ten miles below the Arctic Circle and fifteen or twenty miles west of the International boundary line. Put her there, old pard, we’re in the land of the Yeehats at last!”

“With nary a Yeehat in sight,” said Bill as they grasped hands, “but I’m goin’ to keep my rifle handy if it’s all the same to you.”

Then came the work of building their winter quarters which was to be a log cabin of one room about twelve feet wide and fourteen feet long. There were plenty of trees about, the chief kind being Alaska spruce, and owing to its abundance in the more northern parts of Alaska it is used for work of every description, such as cabins, mining timber, firewood, sleds, etc.

The first thing to be done was to fell the trees and they began by sawing them down with their crosscut saw. Bill said he would rather chop them down and that he could do it easier and quicker than both of them could do it together with the saw. While this work was in progress the dogs grew restless on account of their inactivity and enlivened things up every now and then with a fight; then Jack would go among them, like Daniel in the lion’s den, and use the butt-end of his whip handle on them until they broke apart.

“I’ll give you _muts_ something to do that will take the fight out of you,” he told them, and he did, for as Bill felled each tree his _pardner_, as he had now begun to call him, lashed a rope round an end and hitching the dogs to it put them to doing work the like of which none of them had ever done before.

And pull? Why, boy, they pulled so hard that their muscles looked as if they would break through their hides. After he had broken out a log and was ready to start Jack would give his long whip a tremendous crack and yell _mush!_ when every dog did his duty and they liked it too.

It was a never ending source of wonder to the boys that these animals liked to work. And yet under the influence of kind treatment they were very affectionate, especially the malamutes, though none of them showed it in a way at all like dogs that live in the lap of luxury. Neither would it do to pet one of them to the exclusion of the others else there would be a terrific fight going on in an instant for they were fearfully jealous, and would not tolerate the slightest show of partiality.

“I’ve got one o’ them high-brow ideas, Jack; I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ as I’ve watched these huskies, and after what you told me about the way the dogs acted on the front over there in France, I’ve conclooded they’ve got human brains just the same as you and me. They could talk if they wants to but they just pretend they can’t so they won’t have to argy with a feller. They’re just like them furriners in Noo York, they can _savvy_ anything they wanter and anything they don’t wanter _savvy_--why they don’t.”

“Then you believe in _reincarnation_,” said Jack.

“Reindarnation!” was Bill’s near echo. “I might believe in it if I knew what it is, but not knowin’ I cannot say.”

Then Jack explained how some folks, including about four hundred million in India, believed that the souls of animals, when they died, passed on into the bodies of people. This was all easy enough for Jack to tell about but when Bill wanted to know what Jack meant by _soul_ his partner had no small time telling him about it in a way that he could understand.

“It sounds reasonable,” declared Bill, “and I would believe in this reindarnation thing only these dogs are so much decenter than most people.”

And so they worked and talked and talked and worked and another month slipped by before they got their log cabin done. The way Bill could swing an ax made Jack envious and while building the cabin was the hardest of hard work, both of these youngsters got a lot of pleasure seeing it go up log by log. And when it was all done they were as proud of it as any millionaire who ever built a mansion on Fifth Avenue.

And furniture! They made mission furniture, table, chairs and all the accessories of home, the like of which no missionary in the heart of lightest Africa ever set eyes upon. And comfortable! With a rousing fire, ham and Alaska strawberries, coffee and biscuits that Jack made so well (I didn’t say so light) they were as comfortable as a husky after a double ration of dried fish, fast asleep under the snow.

“I’m thinkin’ we’ve got to get out and kill some fresh meat,” suggested Bill after a meal in which the spirit of Sing Nook was present, _i.e._, when the strawberries came on as usual.

“I thought you declared that Alaska strawberries were every whit as good as the spaghetti we used to get at _The Black Cat_ back in New York, when we thought we were a couple of highflyers,” Jack laughed.

“Oh, for a dish of spaghetti,” sighed Bill, and then he came back with this statement: “Ilasker strawberries are all right but after you’ve et them for thirty or forty meals you get a lee-tle tired of them and pine for a young oyster, in a bowl of cracker soup, or a couple of fried eggs--one fried on one side and one on the other--or even a steak from a hoof of a panhandle longhorn.”

“I move that to-morrow we begin ‘prospecting’,” Jack said, paying no attention to Bill’s likes and dislikes. “We’ve been away now for over three months and all we’ve got to show for it is an outlay of more than a thousand dollars, these two mighty good dog teams, our cabin and the fun we’re having.”

“Then let’s go to it,” Bill said.

“We’ll strike out across the river and go due north; then every trip we make we’ll veer round five points until we’ve boxed the compass.”