Chapter VI: Smokey Joe’s Blue Bears

Johnny awoke with a start. What had wakened him? He could not say for sure. He had a feeling that it had been a human voice, perhaps a shout.

Propping himself up on one elbow he listened intently. There came no sound save the long-drawn distant howl of a wolf. “Must have dreamed it,” he murmured as he drew deep into the caribou-skin bed.

The night was cold, bitter cold. It was dark. Like chilled white diamonds, stars glistened in the sky. “What a change a few hours can make,” he thought. They were sleeping in the mysterious Bill’s shelter, he and Lawrence.

Why were they sleeping in this cheerless shelter? Warm beds awaited them at home. When one is young he does not need too good an answer for the thing he does. Both Johnny and Lawrence were born scouts. They loved the sharp tang of cold on their cheeks, followed by the quick glow of a campfire. The smell of wood-smoke, deer steak broiled over coals, dreamy hours just sitting before the fire, not talking, just thinking, all these were a joy to them. So they liked to get away for a night. Bill’s camp was a convenient place.

Johnny did not fall asleep at once, instead his mind was crowded with dreamy thoughts.

Perhaps Bill was a gold prospector. Perhaps he had discovered gold. Then when he returned to this camp, they might all go tramping away to find the spot and stake out claims.

“That would ruin the settlement,” he told himself. “People would desert their dreams of making homes for brighter, more illusive dreams of wealth. And yet—” What did he wish? He could not tell.

When they had retired for the night the moon had been shining, a bright fire gleamed before their shelter. Now all was gloomy and cold. Should he rekindle the fire? “No. Too chilly,” he shuddered. “Wait till morning.”

The days that had gone before had been uneventful ones. More and more he had come to realize that they must have a tractor. Long hours they had worked clearing timber. Brush was burned. But wood must be saved for fires, for buildings and fences. Every day saw larger piles of wood on the cleared land.

“With a tractor and a stout sled we’d have it hauled home in no time,” Lawrence had said to his father. “Without it—”

“Wait a little longer,” his father had counseled.

So they were waiting and tonight, sleeping in Bill’s shelter, they were still waiting.

So Johnny thought and dreamed until at last he fell asleep.

Perhaps he slept an hour, perhaps less or more. Then he awoke with a suddenness that set his senses reeling.

“Law-Lawrence!” he shouted in wild consternation. “The bear! The bear!”

Something solid and heavy as a bear had landed with all but crushing weight on his chest. It still rested there but did not move.

“That’s no bear,” said a gruff, good-natured voice. “That’s my pack. Sorry! Didn’t know you was here.”

“Lawrence!” Johnny exclaimed. “It’s Bill!”

“Not Bill neither,” the stranger disagreed. “They call me Smokey Joe.”

“Smokey Joe!” Johnny peered into the darkness, trying to get a look at the man’s face. “Smokey Joe. I’ve heard of you.”

And he surely had. Smokey was a well-known character in the valley. The old-timers told how he came and went. Always in search of gold, he would disappear for months.

“Then,” one of the motherly women added, “just when we think he’s gone for good, up he pops again. We feed him up and patch his clothes. Then, like some boy, he’s off again.

“But he’s no boy,” she added. “He came to Alaska in the gold rush of ’97.”

“Eighteen-ninety-seven!” Johnny had exclaimed. “More than forty years ago!”

“He never left,” the gray-haired lady had added. “He came from the Cumberland Mountains somewhere and he still speaks in their queer way.

“They say,” she added with a lowered voice, “that he struck it rich once, had nearly half a million dollars, and that he’s got some of it hid away in the hills somewhere. But, then,” she sighed, “you can’t believe anything you hear and only half you see in Alaska. Alaska is a place of wild dreams.”

Johnny was recalling all this as he made haste to split dry wood into fine pieces, whittle some shavings, then light a blaze in their out-of-doors fireplace.

“It’s about morning,” he said, at last looking into Smokey Joe’s seamed face. “Did you come far?”

“Been travelin’ mighty nigh all night,” the old man drawled. “Me and my hounds here.” He nodded at three powerful dogs, already curled up on the snow for a sleep. “Right smart cold up yonder. Hit’s a sight better here in the bottoms.”

“We’ll have coffee before you know it,” Johnny said cheerily. “Coffee and sour-dough flap-jacks.”

“Ah,” the old man sucked in his breath. “Sour dough flap-jacks. They shore do stick to yer ribs. Reckon Smokey Joe’s the flapjack eatinest feller you almost ever seed.”

Lawrence grinned. This old man spoke a strange language.

“A bear!” Smokey chuckled. “You all thought I were a bear! That’s right smart quare.”

“We almost caught a cub,” Johnny explained. “Caught him alive, I mean.”

“Almost.” Lawrence laughed. “But his mother objected.”

“Bears,” said the old man, blinking at the fire. “Back thar in them thar glaciers thar’s bears you might nigh wouldn’t believe the plain truth about.”

“Why?” Johnny sat up. “What’s strange about them?”

“Might nigh everythin’s quare, I reckon. Hm,” the old man sniffed the coffee, “smells powerful good.”

“It’ll be boiled in a minute or two,” said Johnny. “But tell me about those bears.”

“They’re blue, plumb blue, like a thin sky.” The old man struggled for words. “They’re right smart woolly like sheep, I reckon. But they ain’t sheep. God-a-mighty, narry a bit of it. One of them clawed my lead dog like tarnation. An’ they’re the fish-eatinest critters you most ever seed.”

“Polar bears?” Johnny suggested.

“Polar bears, big as good-sized hounds!” Smokey sniffed. “Who’s ever hearn tell of sech polar bears?”

Who indeed? Johnny was growing excited and confused. “Woolly, blue bears no bigger than dogs,” he was thinking. “What kind of bears could they be?”

In his confusion he upset the coffeepot and spilled half its contents. For all this, there was plenty left. Smokey Joe drank it piping hot, ate in a ravenous manner. Then, springing to his feet and calling to his dogs, declared he must get down to Palmer for a new pack of grub.

“He’s found a trace of color in some dashing stream that doesn’t freeze, not even in winter,” was Johnny’s conclusion. “He’s going to hotfoot it right back and get rich—maybe.”

“But, Johnny,” Lawrence was not smiling, “do you really suppose there are any such bears as he described?”

“Of course not,” was Johnny’s prompt reply.

“But, Johnny, if there were, if we caught one alive! No bigger than a dog. We could do it, Johnny. We could buy a tractor.”

“Forget it. It’s all a pipe dream, I tell you.”

But Lawrence did not forget Smokey Joe’s blue bears, nor, in the end, did Johnny.