Chapter II: Part 2

But the dessert was the masterpiece of the meal. It was a good, hot, Canadian blueberry pie about as big round as the top of a piano-stool. It had a lid on it and the juice was bubbling out through the little slits. It certainly looked delicious and it tasted the same. It was cut into only four pieces. I maintain that no self-respecting pie should be cut into more than four pieces except perhaps in the case of a very large family. Grannie gave me one piece, McDougal one, and took one herself. That left one over and when I was through with my piece I was urged of course to have the other piece. What could I do? What would you have done in my place? Courtesy, inclination to oblige, and my palate all said take it. My waist-band said, "Have a care," but it was awfully good pie and I cleaned the plate!

Then McDougal lit his pipe. Grannie cleared up the table but left the dishwashing until after I had gone as she wanted to share the conversation. What a jolly three hours we had! Not a great deal there to make us happy, you would say; a lonely log-cabin in a far land and in the depth of an almost Arctic winter with no other human habitation within sight or sound. Yet we forgot the fierce cold that circled us, for the little place was comfortable, and better still our hearts were warm with love and friendship. McDougal was finely educated and had travelled, so the cabin was neither small nor lonely. Its walls expanded and took in many guests. A goodly throng was there for we wandered at will among a world of books and men. He loved a good, clean joke, and let me tell you when we got going the stories both grave and gay were worth your hearing.

Grannie was with us heart and soul in it all. Her face beamed with cheeriness and good will. Sometimes, however, a far-away look came into her brown eyes. I knew what it meant. She longed to get away from the North and back again to the sunshine of her Southern home. She was getting on in years and our extreme winters were very trying to her. Whenever she got half a chance she would tell us something about their home in California, the warm, bright summers, the lovely gardens she and her neighbours had, and the flowers growing in profusion, especially the roses charming the eye and filling the air with their perfume.

Dear wee Grannie, she never lived to go back. One winter the brutal cold gripped her and in spite of all we could do it took her life away. It was a sad day when we placed her body in the grave on that hillside. All the creek assembled to show their affection, and in deep sorrow. It was her last request that she should be buried there. She didn't want to be far from the man she loved even though it meant a lonely grave in a lonely land. The Klondike is for McDougal his homeland now. Fifteen years have passed since then and he still lives in that cabin on the mountain slope where the woman he loves best lies buried.

But there was no thought of sorrow that Christmas Day. Nowhere in the world was there a merrier party, and when it came time for me to go, (I had a wedding at Last Chance Roadhouse), it was with a feeling that the cabin had been a sanctuary of friendship, happiness and hospitality. When I went out into the darkness and the bitter cold I was hardly conscious of it for my heart was aglow. All through these years filled with many vivid experiences that day has kept its brightness. Nor will it ever fade away but seems to shine more clearly in the Halls of Memory as the years go by.

_IV._

_Some Klondike Weddings_

In the fall of 1916, a month or two across from Canada, I was posted for duty at Shorncliffe Military Hospital, Major C. Reason of London, Ont, commanding. I was billeted for a few weeks in a Sandgate private house where the landlady used to do a little cheap profiteering on our coal allowance. She gave me mostly cinders for my grate, mixed with a modicum of coal. The room was altogether too large for the fireplace, and anyway I was fresh from Canada and wasn't inured to the rigorous climate that prevails inside English homes in winter. I used to write my letters in bed. It was the only way I could keep warm in my room for any length of time.

Major Reason soon arranged a place for me in the Officers' quarters and there I was quite cosy and happy. The Medical Officers were congenial and made my initiation into Army life a pleasant experience. The style of men they were can be judged by the fact that by common consent we decided to read aloud a portion of some worth-while book four evenings a week in the Mess after dinner. We chose "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" by Holmes, and that winter we read it through and no one played truant. Is there another Officers' Mess that has that record?

The Officers were all strangers to me except Captain Ferris of Edmonton, President of the Mess. I knew him in my Toronto University days in the class of '98, as "Buster Ferris," when he was one of the scrimmage bunch on the Varsity Senior Rugby team. Those were the days of "Biddy" Barr, Counsell, Hobbs and McArthur on the football field, and Hamar Greenwood, MacKenzie King, Arthur Meighen, Tucker, Billie Martin, and Eddie Beattie in the Literary Society. In 1894 the students boycotted all lectures because of the Senate's action in regard to Tucker and Prof. Dale. We were all wild "Bolshies" for a few weeks and those I have mentioned were our leaders. I wonder if they still remember those revolutionary meetings in the Spadina Ave. hall!

The Nursing Staff under Miss Urquhart gave their services in a wholehearted spirit that was beyond praise. Indeed, throughout the whole hospital staff "one unceasing purpose ran" and that was to serve the patients in every possible way.

The hospital was finely located on a slope running down to the sea. It looked south over the Straits of Dover, where we saw the destroyers and transports crossing and recrossing continually, with usually a "Silver Queen" or two floating overhead on the watch, their sides glittering in the sunshine. On a clear day we could faintly discern the cliffs of France where great deeds were being done, and whither, some impatiently awaited day, it would be our good luck to go, if only the war lasted long enough!

I quickly learned my duties in the hospital and liked them. We had an Officers' hospital, also large surgical, venereal, and medical divisions, usually full. There was work for me in great plenty and variety. Apart from the regular parade services there were communion services and informal evening meetings at convenient times and places. Nearly every day I walked through all the wards and as it seemed opportune would sit down by a bedside to chat, write a letter, or get directions for my errands. How varied these requests were! One wants me to look after his mail which he thinks is being held up somewhere; some ask for a New Testament or a recent book; this one has a roll of films to be developed; another wants me to find if a certain battalion has arrived safely from Canada and where it is stationed for his brother is in it; another asks me to buy two Xmas cards, "real nice ones," one for his Mother and one for his "next-best-girl." This one wants a money-order cashed; a homesick fellow wonders if I could possibly get him one of his home-town papers; another gives me his watch to be mended, or would like some good stationery, or a fountain pen. In every case I promise to do everything I can and all that the law allows.

Then there are those, always some, who are passing through the Valley of the Shadow who want to hear again about Jesus and His Love and Power. Nothing else will do. Also there are men, not many, who are downhearted, sad, or bitter. You wonder indeed how certain of the poor fellows can smile at all. Ask them how they are and they would say through clenched teeth and pain-drawn lips, "All right." What plan did I follow in dealing with these numerous needs? I had no plan, except to place all my resources of body, mind and heart freely at their disposal. You would have done just the same, you couldn't help yourself. They repaid me a thousand-fold with welcomes and friendship, intimate confidences, and marvellous stories of their experiences.

Apropos of the variety of a chaplain's opportunities to serve, here's a story that was current around the wards. It was told to me as a good joke on the padre. A wounded Australian soldier had been taken to one of the big Imperial hospitals in the north. None of his own chaplains were near and so a fine old English padre took upon himself to visit him. For days the chaplain's best efforts to get on friendly footing failed. One evening, however, after a very satisfying dinner at the Mess the clergyman felt he would make a special try, and with his Bible in hand went into the ward and sat down by the bedside. "Now, my boy," he said, "I am going to read you a few verses of Scripture, and I hope they will impress you." The soldier shammed sleep and said nothing, seeming as unresponsive as ever. After a verse or two, however, he opened his eyes and sighed deeply. The chaplain stopped reading and looked at him in pleased surprise. He smiled and said, "Go on Sir, it is good." Thus encouraged he read on through the whole chapter, hearing many deep-drawn sighs of satisfaction from the bed. When he was finished the soldier assured him the reading had done him a world of good, it had been just what he needed to make things look brighter, and he asked the chaplain to draw his chair up as close as he could and do him the favor of reading it again. This was getting on with a vengeance, and the padre was highly pleased with himself. When he ended and was warmly thanked he was curious to know what there was in the chapter that had benefited the soldier, and so asked him. "Well Sir," said the Tommy, "You're a good sort, and I'll be honest with you. It wasn't what you read that did me good, but all the same you've made a hit with me. They've kept me on the 'water-wagon' ever since I came to this hospital, and, Sir, your breath has been just like a taste of heaven to me." Collapse of the padre!

My first attempt to tell Klondike stories in public overseas was in an entertainment given by the Sergeants' Mess at which I had been asked to be the speaker. That day I had married one of our convalescent patients named Pte. Trainer to a Devonshire girl. My thoughts were running in matrimonial channels and so I decided to narrate some incidents connected with two or three of my Klondike weddings.

* * * * *

Nearly sixty miles into the hills back of Dawson a new run of gold had been discovered on the Dominion Creek flats, a district that looked so unpromising to prospectors that it had been so far left untouched. Some claims had been staked on it but no prospecting done. Ole Tweet, a Norwegian, had taken over one of these claims as all he could get out of a bad debt. He sank a hole on his ground and found first-class pay. The inevitable stampede followed and soon cabins, windlasses, and dumps commenced to show in all directions. Tweet's cabin was the first to be built and so many stampeders had to be sheltered, that he turned temporarily from his mining, got out logs, and built a good roadhouse. It was a profitable business, for he ran a clean place where you could get plenty to eat and a comfortable bunk, and it became the popular resort of the miners. He hired a cook, an unmarried woman of middle-age, whom he had met in Dawson. She was a good woman in a country where women of the right kind were scarce, so she soon had many admirers. Of all the suitors for her hand there were two whom she favored, one a Scottish Canadian, whose first name was Archie, and the other Ole Tweet. As time went on she became worried because of her continued inability to decide which of these two men she would marry. Both were equally pleasing to her and they were both worthy fellows. She spoke to her heart and no clear answer came back. Yet she knew she could not rightly keep them in suspense any longer.

Sitting one summer day by her open window, wishing for something to help her to come to a final decision, it chanced a little bird alighted on the sill, looked up at her and said, "tweet, tweet!" The bird's chirp settled it. Her difficulty was solved and she accepted Ole Tweet. That was his real name, not "fixed" for the story. I married them in that same roadhouse on Dominion.

It is said, but I cannot vouch for the truth of this, that Archie was missing for a day or two after the engagement was announced, until someone found him in his cabin with a number of little birds he had caught and caged, trying to teach them to say, "Airchie, Airchie." But it was too late!

One of my friends, (call him Jones if you like), a miner on Hunker Creek, had been having such heavy clean-ups one Spring that he determined to write to his sweetheart in Tacoma announcing his intention of coming out before the freeze-up that fall to marry her. Sensible woman that she was, she wrote back to tell him not to come. She would come North instead, he could meet her in Dawson and so save the expense of his trip out and back. She had her way, and I was asked to tie the knot at the Third Avenue Hotel in Dawson. I shall not attempt details of the affair, only to say that I never came so nearly disgracing myself at any sacred ceremony as on this occasion. The little room was crowded with guests, standing around the walls, sitting on chairs, on one another's knees and on the floor, closing in around the little six-foot space in the centre reserved for the wedding party. The room grew very warm and close. I knew Jones was nervous for he had privately and very earnestly pleaded with me to "make it short." He and his best man had been standing in front of me for full ten minutes expecting the bride and her attendant momentarily. Ten minutes is a long time for a man to wait in such circumstances and we were all on pins and needles. By the time the door opened to admit the bride the atmosphere had become electrical, and when in entering, her dress caught in the doorway and something ripped, there were little outbursts of choked-back laughter, and I could see poor Jones fidgetting more than ever. I hardly dared look at his anxious face for it took me all my time to keep my voice at a proper reverential pitch. As I went on I heard, whenever I paused, a low, persistent, irritating noise that seemed in the room and yet was hard to place. I thought it must be either the humming of the wind through a window crack, or the distant buzz of a gasoline-saw making fuel for Dawson's homes. I located it at last. It was the subdued chattering of the bridegroom's teeth, as if he had a severe chill! It is an absolute fact. It almost floored me for a moment and I thought I could not go on. I paused to regain my composure. The silence made the noise more distinct and explosive gurgles of laughter here and there told me that others had noticed it. The perspiration ran down my face in streams. There was nothing for it but to struggle on, and in an abnormally sad voice I continued without pause, until I came to the question asked of the groom, where I had to stop for his reply. If Jones had stammered his answer I could not have held in any longer, but would have burst into nervous laughter. I am thankful to say he said "I will" with never a tremor, and I was able to finish without disgracing "the cloth."

My last story is of a Creek wedding held in Last Chance Roadhouse on Hunker. It was Christmas Day. I had just come down the mountain trail from McDougal's where I had my Christmas Dinner. The wedding party was waiting for me when I arrived. The roadhouse was a low, log building about fifty feet long and twenty wide. There were no partitions. The bar was at one end, the kitchen at the other, and the part in between was a sort of "Anyman's Land." It was dining-room, parlor, and gambling room in one. The bunkhouse was separate. Things were "humming" from kitchen to bar, for remember it was Christmas at a roadhouse on a main creek trail in the Klondike in early days.

Not the most suitable place in the world for a wedding. For all that, it went through in fine style. We stood up beside the table and the place grew quiet. A blanket was hung up by the roadhouse man in front of the bar--done because of his innate sense of the fitness of things. There was no bothersome noise, except the opening and closing of the doors as people came in and went out, and the stage-whispering of a few men in the bar who had got too far along with their celebrations for their fellows to control them completely. The names of the bride and groom, their true names, were, Jensine Kolken and John Peczu Kazinsky. She was a Norwegian Lutheran, he a Hungarian Roman Catholic, married by a Canadian Presbyterian minister in a Klondike roadhouse. Rather an unusual combination but it turned out splendidly. They loved one another sincerely and all these years have lived happily. They are prosperous and have several children.

After the wedding many toasts were drunk. I drank mine in soda-water. Before the toasts Mrs. Kazinsky had gone to the kitchen and was there busy about supper. She was the roadhouse cook and had a lot of work to do preparing and serving meals to the holiday crowd. I said good-bye, put on parka and mitts, and set out on my seven mile tramp to Gold Bottom, where we had arranged a Camp Christmas Tree Entertainment for that night.

It was cold, bitter cold, the roadhouse thermometer said 50 below zero, and yet it was a grand night. We had seen no sun night or day for weeks, but for all that it was clear as day with a light more beautiful than that of the sun. The whole broad, snow-white gulch around me was flooded with light. I looked up to the sky and there my eyes beheld a wondrous sight, magnificent beyond imagining. The dome of heaven, from east to west and from north to south, was filled with an iridescent misty glory, glowing with strange light in which gleamed lovely, delicate shades of green and gold. You could see this luminous mist and yet see through it as if it weren't there at all. It was almost uncanny, like seeing the invisible. In the midst of it floated the moon at the full, ablaze with abundant light, spilling it down in wasteful abundance mixed with the Aurora, coming to the silent earth to change it to a glistening, white fairy-land of unrivalled beauty. Far, far beyond in the clear depths of the cloudless sky a thousand, thousand stars sparkled intensely like well-set jewels. As I gazed the misty glory disappeared as if by magic and in its place I saw great arrows of witching light shooting in masses back and forth through the air.

I stood, as many times I did those winter nights, spellbound and reverent in the presence of God's handiwork. Fancy took wing. Perchance this fair light was from the shining pinions of angels as they flew hither and thither on heavenly errands. Perchance it was the gleaming from a myriad spears, as the armies of the Lord of Hosts marched and countermarched in some Grand Parade. Or were these the wild, elemental forces of nature playing at games that the Creator had taught them and that they had played from all eternity?

Apart from these dreamings, I know I shall never see anything, with my mortal eyes at least, so startlingly and mystically beautiful as these canvasses which God hangs out night after night in the far North for all to see who will but lift up their eyes to the heavens.

My talk was ended. Captain Ferris, my old friend, was in the chair and after the usual courtesies he brought us down to "terra firma" with a joke on the padre. "Now, Captain Pringle," he said, "those were wonderful sights you saw after you left the wedding in that roadhouse where you took only soda-water in the toasts. We know you so well that you didn't need to tell us what you took. We know you are a teetotaller. But, padre, for the sake of the strangers here, and in view of the amazing things you saw after leaving the roadhouse, say again to the crowd distinctly, that it was "only soda-water." I "said it again," we all had a good laugh, and dispersed.

_V._

_Wolf Dogs_

I had been with the 43rd about two months and during that time we had been out in "rest" twice, once at Villers-au-bois and once at Camblin l'Abbe. They were very interesting French towns, especially to one who had always lived in western Canada, and although they had been pretty badly knocked about by shelling they were havens of refuge, rest, and comfort to us after the trenches. But my man Macpherson wouldn't grow enthusiastic with me over these two places. "Wait till you see Auchel, sir, that's the place for us. Why it's the French 'home' of the 43rd. That's a real town and fine people, and they think there's no other battalion quite as good as ours." I heard the town often spoken about in the same way by others and was delighted when I learned one day that we were to move back to Auchel. I wasn't disappointed in my expectations. The place had been a prosperous farming village until the discovery of coal nearby had developed it into a fine little town. It had retained much of its former quaintness, and the mines had brought it in contact with newer ideas by which it had benefited, and the town was vastly cleaner, better lighted, had better stores, and was generally more up-to-date than the old village had been.

As in all the many thousand French towns and villages, the Roman Catholic church edifice was by far the largest building. At Auchel it was located in the Market Square without any enclosing fence, and on the weekly market-day when the Square was crowded with stalls many of them would be placed against the buttresses of the church.

Auchel was unique among the towns we knew in France in having a neat little Protestant Church as well, called "L'Église Evangelique." It was a plain building seating perhaps 150 people and built after the style of our own small country churches. On the wall at the right of the platform was the verse in French, "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God," and on the other side, "He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities." High on the wall behind the pulpit was inscribed the verse, "Dieu est Amour," and just behind the speaker were the words, "God bless our Sunday School." Their pastor gladly gave us the use of the church. We held our Communion Service in it on Sunday and turned it into a reading-room during the week.

It was in this Protestant church at our own sacrament service that Capt. Jack Verner was baptised and took his first communion. He is buried overseas.

It was in Auchel, when our battalion had been warned to be ready to move at an hour's notice, that the padre gathered a dozen Camerons who were not on duty, got a lorry and driver, and went off with his men to a town twenty-five miles away to get a supply of books, magazines, writing-paper and benches for his reading-room. I needed the men to load and unload the equipment. We were away all afternoon. When we came back, the adjutant, a conscientious Scot, gave me what, from a military point of view I richly deserved, a right good scolding. No orders to move had come, but if they had, there would have been a serious reprimand coming to somebody. "All's well that ends well." We didn't move for a full ten days and in the meantime the men had their reading-room. Our parade services were held in the ramshackle building which had been a cinema before the war. The most inspiring part of our worship was the singing. There was a piano to give us the right pitch and tempo, the congregation did the rest. It would have thrilled you to stand on the platform and hear those eight hundred men singing the grand old songs of Zion. It was glorious. I was "lifted," and when the time came for the sermon I couldn't help preaching with heart as well as voice. It gave me an idea of the great loss we may sustain in over-modernizing our church services. The congregation often doesn't sing, or sings feebly. Its voice of praise is frequently drowned out by the pipe-organ or choir. We obtrude these latter so much upon the eyes and ears of the people that we seem almost to merit the observation of a critical Roman Catholic, that he would rather bow before an altar and a crucifix in church, than before a showy, loud-voiced pipe-organ and choir, performing in front of an audience which apparently took little part in the service except to listen.

It was in Auchel, too, that our battalion received its great gift from the Women's Canadian Club of Seattle, Washington. On May 16th, 1918 the consignment reached us. It was, as far as I know, the biggest present in kind that was ever given a Canadian battalion in France. How such bulky stuff got through at all and in such prime condition is a miracle that someone else will have to explain. But there it was. Six big wooden boxes each half as large as a piano-box and packed full. There were many kinds of things and practically enough of every kind to give everybody in the battalion a good share of it all. I had to have a parade (voluntary), and Macpherson and I handed out the stuff, which we had unpacked and arranged, to the men as they lined up. There were great quantities of fine candies in bulk and in many small fancy boxes, lots of chewing-gum and tobacco, hundreds of cigars and thousands of cigarettes. There were a score of immense homemade fruit cakes. Then there was a generous abundance of dates, raisins, figs, writing-paper, pipes, pencils, fountain-pens, safety razors, snuff, vaseline, soap, tooth-brushes, wash-rags, socks, sapadilla, handkerchiefs, tooth-paste, shaving-soap, medicines, joke-books and many odds and ends in smaller quantities. Most of the smaller parcels were tied up in pretty ribbon and white tissue-paper with Christmas cards in them and ornamented with Christmas labels, for the boxes had been due three months before.

It was in Auchel that I talked to my men about northern dogs. One evening we gathered in L'Église Evangelique and I told them some stories about wolf-dogs I had known or handled.

* * * * *

One winter I heard that a group of men were prospecting on Duncan Creek about two hundred miles farther out than my location at Gold Bottom. I decided to take a month or two away from my regular circuit on the creeks around me and pay a visit to these new diggings, take along some reading matter, tell them the news, have some services, and bring back their mail.

I needed a dog-team for the trip. My own dogs were not then old enough for a long journey nor were they properly broken, and so I picked up an odd dog here and there on the creek until I had a string of six. They were of mixed sorts but all had been broken to the sleigh, and their owners, who had no work for them, were glad to have the dogs taken off their hands, fed and cared for.

I'm not going to speak of them all but only of three that had more distinctive characters than the others.

When we travel with dogs in the North they are hitched up tandem (usually) to a sleigh about two feet wide, a foot from the ground, and eight or nine feet long, and are guided by voice and gestures only. There are no reins. Of course you carry a black-snake whip to urge the lazy ones on. This whip is about ten feet long with a heavy loaded butt needed for protection if a refractory husky should turn on you. The leader is the all-important dog. The others have only to keep their traces taut and follow on, but the leader has to use his head with all his wolf and dog senses and instincts. He must find and keep on top of the old trail if there is one buried under the drifts, know whether new ice is safe enough or not, and avoid the serious peril of water under the snow, for at very low temperature, with creek channels frozen solid, water is squeezed out and runs under the snow. It of course freezes very quickly, but if you and your dogs get into it, while still liquid in extreme cold weather, it means an immediate camping to save your feet and those of your dogs, and dry wood may not be near just then. This may well mean death, for death soon comes to the crippled man or dog away from help in the sub-arctic winter if he cannot build a fire. Your leader too, must respond to all the few words of command. These are "Mush!", a corruption, through the old French-Canadian Coureurs-du-bois of "Marchez!"; "Whoa!", the whole team knows that welcome word; "Gee!" to turn to the right, and "Haw!" to swing to the left.

Now this pick-up dog-team of mine was strange to me and I to them, so the introduction was a fight or two until they knew I was boss. Then I had to "learn" my dogs and place them in the string so that they could work properly, and also see that they all did work until they became a real team where each dog was doing his share.

I first picked on a big grey-muzzled malemute named Steal as a likely fellow to lead. Dogs' names there don't usually indicate their character, but his did. All malemutes are born thieves, some men think. I don't agree, but in this case I had a thief by nature, education, and name. He would break into your "cache" if it could be done and steal what he fancied. His owner claimed he could read labels on canned goods, for he would carry away bully-beef tins but not canned-fruit. It was his keen nose, not his eyes of course, that told him the difference. Once you knew of this failing it could be easily guarded against on the trail. It would have been of little moment if Steal had done his duty as leader. He knew all the tricks of the trail and would have made a fine leader if he had tried to do his bit. But I hadn't gone far before I realized that he wouldn't work away from the whip. Running behind the eight-foot sleigh I had it and the five dogs between me and Steal. His traces were always trailing. He would rarely quicken his pace no matter how fiercely I shouted "Mush on, you malemute!", nor for the crack of the whip. I had to run along beside the team on the narrow trail, throwing them partly off, before I could reach him with the whip. Then he would dig in for a few hundred yards but soon commenced to slow down, continually looking back to see if I were coming at him again. This performance was demoralizing to team and driver, so some change had to be made. I put a smaller dog named Mike in the lead and hitched Steal up next the sleigh as my "wheel-dog." He worked there. He knew perfectly that his game was up and put his shoulder against the collar from that on. He was that sort of dog that works well under the lash, although as a fact I never had to strike him now. I simply cracked the whip above him if he showed signs of shirking and he would get right in and pull, at the same time emitting a series of howls that could not have been more woeful if he were being killed. Anyway, I could see that the dogs in front took it as a warning of the punishment awaiting the laggard and would pull so hard I would sometimes have to slow them down.

Do not think I was cruel, or drove the dogs at their top speed always. In the north there is more real kindness and expert care used by dog-mushers in handling their wolf-dogs than in the way pet-dogs and house-dogs are treated in our cities. A dog doesn't appreciate having its nose kissed by human lips, and it is gross unkindness to let unthinking impulse lead you to over-feed them, or give them wrong food and make them sick and weak. It is cruel to keep your dog chained up for days at a time alone in your back-yard, varied only by taking him out for a walk usually on a leash. Our trail-dogs are almost always healthy, hungry, and happy. Each day they have, what every dog really needs and loves above all else, a long run in the wilds with other dogs, satisfying the old, inborn, "pack" instinct. They are carefully fed, not much in the morning, perhaps a chunk each of dried salmon and the same at noon. A good feed at dawn or during the day would mean a sick or "heavy" dog along the trail. But at night the first meal prepared is for the dogs, a good, big, hot feed of boiled rice, cornmeal, or oatmeal, with a liberal allowance of fat bacon cut up and mixed in and perhaps a couple of dog-biscuits each to crunch for dessert. Every toe of every dog was examined daily and any sign of sensitiveness would mean a salve, or, if expedient, a soft moccasin small enough to fit the foot and protect it from the trail. The dogs were felt carefully all over to see if they were sore anywhere. Too much depended on his dogs on the trail for a man to be careless, or harsh, or ignorant, in their handling.

Mike was a dandy little dog and served me well the whole journey through. He wasn't as knowing on the trail as Steal and got us into a tumble that might have had troublesome results. Travelling along a ledge running about fifteen feet above the bottom of the gulch, he took the team too near the edge and got on the "comb" of snow which broke off with him and he dragged the whole team, sleigh, and driver over the brink, to roll in a confused heap to the bottom. It took me an hour, when daylight was precious, to get straightened out and going again, but otherwise we were none the worse.

I found that Mike had one other fault. It took me two or three days to notice it. He had the knack of keeping his traces straight but not tight. He rarely pulled more than enough just to keep them from sagging. No matter how hard the going Mike was only a "leader." He never got down and pulled. I hesitate to criticize him, for at least he did do his work as leader when without him I'd have been in a fix. He did his own part, carried his own harness, and willingly. That's a great, good quality, in dog or man. Often, though, I wished he would forget being a leader, drop his dignity, and just be an ordinary work-dog, especially in deep snow climbing a steep bank when the other dogs and the driver were pulling and shoving with all our strength to make the grade.

At Duncan I found a hearty welcome and spent ten days visiting around the cabins. Before I started back an old-timer named Brodeur came into camp limping behind his dogs. His axe had glanced while felling a tree and gashed his foot. First-aid was given, but it was evident that he should be taken to Dawson where he could get expert surgical treatment. We arranged that he should come back with me. Before we left he sold his dogs and sleigh for thirty-five ounces of gold, about five hundred dollars. The dog he wouldn't sell was his leader, named Shep, the best sleigh-dog I have ever seen in the north. Brodeur refused to sell him for any money, not, however, because of the dog's usefulness, that would have had a market value, but for what you would call sentimental reasons. To put it simply, they loved each other.

Of course there was only one place in the team for this king among dogs and Mike now came second in the string. What a grand dog Shep was! I can't tell you half his fine qualities. I don't know what noble dog breed was mixed with the wolf in him, but he was master of the team, in harness and out of it, from the start, and they seemed to sense it and not resent it. The first night Steal tried to dispute it by leaving his own pile of hot rice to snap some from the far-side of Shep's. Before you could think Steal was down half-buried in the snow yelling in his accustomed way, while Shep nipped a few little slits in his ears. It wasn't a fight. It was corrective punishment properly administered, in the same spirit in which you spank your little boy. A dog can travel quite as well with a few healthy cuts in his ears as without. Was it Shep's way of boxing his ears? Shep was no bully, but he wouldn't allow any fights among the dogs. He had, too, the rare art of "jollying" the team along the trail. This was seen when the going had been hard all day and the dogs were growing weary. Then he would talk to them as he travelled in his whining, malemute way, and it would seem to brighten them up. Perhaps he told them funny dog stories, or pictured the joys of a good supper when they got to dry timber and camped. Whatever your explanation, Shep was the cause, and the effect was seen in a brisk and willing lot of dogs going strong at the close of the day. Always he pulled his best. Whenever it was heavy sledding he would get right down dog-fashion, with his belly close to the trail, tongue hanging out, and do all he knew to keep things moving; heart, lungs, muscles, toe-nails and teeth were all enlisted in his effort to serve the man he loved who was riding under the robe in the sleigh behind. How did he use his teeth? This way--Climbing up a bank through the brush, making around an overflow on the creek, we were nearly being stalled; Shep, not content with his usual efforts, had managed to grip with his teeth a stout branch that stretched conveniently near, and was using teeth and neck-muscles to add to his pulling power! Do you wonder that Brodeur loved the dog? Shep never knew the feel of the whip in punishment. At night when the team was unharnessed his first move was to the sleigh where he shoved his muzzle into the old man's hand and looked into his face asking him, I suppose, if everything was going well.

We reached Dawson in good form and soon had Brodeur comfortably located in the "Good Samaritan" hospital. Shep made his bed, the first night, in the snow a few yards from the door, but he discovered which window was Brodeur's, and he camped under it against the logs of the hospital until his master was well. The foot mended rapidly and soon the old trapper and his noble dog were back in the hills again.

_VI._

_Lost on the Divide_

In March and April, 1918, the Canadians were lying along the low ground beyond Vimy Ridge, facing the Germans who held the Lens-Mericourt-Arleux front. The 43rd was entrenched about a mile forward from the base of the Ridge. We had taken over from the "Yorks and Lane's" who had done a lot of excellent engineering in the sector they had been holding. The trenches had been deepened and well drained. The dug-outs were numerous, large, and mostly safe. The months of their tenure had been quiet, and everything was in good repair. No Man's Land was wide, a quarter mile in places, smooth, covered with grass, and inhabited by colonies of larks. Apparently no raiding had been done, for that always brings some artillery retaliation showing in parapets and barbed wire knocked about, and ground torn by explosives.

When the Canadians commenced raiding, the Hun still held himself well in check, in spite of the loss of a few men killed or taken prisoner every night or two. He had a tremendous surprise developing for our Fifth Army away to our right flank, and he didn't care to "start anything" with us that might disarrange his plans. Not that we were left severely alone, for it was on this same comparatively quiet front, on Wednesday afternoon, April 3rd, that I saw more enemy shells drop on one particular spot in a limited time than I ever saw happen in any other sector.

Our Regimental Aid Post was a spacious comfortable place underground off "Vancouver Road," and there some 3rd Field Ambulance "bearers" had taken up their quarters along with our medical section. The dug-out had only the one defect of not being any too deep for safety. Well, it so happened that something had aroused the enemy's suspicions about our Post. Maybe the fresh earth thrown out from a little trench-improvement work near us had attracted the notice of the German air-men. Whatever the cause they evidently had come to the decision that it would be wise to "shoot us up," which they did with a vengeance. Captain Mackenzie and I were coming down the sunken road when the fusilade opened. At first we thought it was the usual stray shell or two, but for three hours we couldn't get within fifty yards of the place. The Hun gunners lobbed them over unceasingly. The dust of an explosion was still in the air when you could hear the hum of another shell coming. We were held up and just had to wait for the "strafe" to cease, anxiously wondering if the roof was holding and our men were safe.

It stopped at last and we ran down the road. One of the entrances was smashed in but the other still held up. We went downstairs to find our men crowded into one small portion of the Post that remained intact. All around was evidence of their miraculous escape. I shuddered to think what would have been, had a shell penetrated the roof there and burst among them.

McClymont told me that their lights were blown out seventy-two times by the concussion of shells exploding near the entrances, and that when they went out about the twenty-fifth time Macpherson started them singing some music-hall choruses to relieve the strain. About the fiftieth time, by mutual unspoken consent, they changed to hymns! I'd have changed long before that; indeed I doubt if I could have found voice steady enough for song!

The foregoing facts I glean from an old notebook in which at the time I further jotted down that "the Hun threw 235 "5.9" shells on and around our R.A.P. in less than three hours. One entrance was crumpled in and dirt and bricks heaped on our beds. Twenty men there but no one hurt. The shelling represents a waste of twenty-five thousand dollars, and our cosy home gone."

That night we moved across the road to a deeper dug-out, one that had been built by the Germans, located by Sergt. Sims. Talking in the evening after supper about the day's event, our conversation naturally went afield to other adventures, and I was led to speak of a narrow escape from death I had in very different circumstances in a distant land.

* * * * *

In nearly eleven years of the Yukon trails, living on the creeks among the mountains in early Klondike days, I could not fail to have my share of memorable experiences, some of them with more than a spice of hazard. I lived just the regular life of a "musher"--a man on the trail--and while that mode of life assuredly held nothing of monotony, yet I grew so accustomed to it that it all seemed part of the usual, familiar course of things.

After the summer, beautiful but brief, there came the eight months of grim, relentless winter. Then we had to face the long darkness and the deadly cold; to travel vast, white valleys filled with an almost terrifying silence broken only by the ugly howling of the wolves; to battle through deep and drifting snow along miles of lonely summits, with blizzards blinding and bewildering. But against each problem or task that Nature set us we matched, with zest, our wits and skill. There was the joy of conflict in it. Experience made us self-reliant and we learned to love the life, so free and clean, so full of stirring incident and victorious combat with the elements. Only now am I commencing to get the true perspective of those Yukon days, and by comparison with the soft conventional life of these later years, recognizing how unique and interesting they were.

There comes to my mind a very unpleasant time I had one winter night, when I lost my way, broke my word, and spoiled a happy gathering. If it were a sermon, my text would be, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

The Christmas festivities in the Yukon long ago usually continued for about a month. The weather was so frosty that work on the windlass was both disagreeable and risky, so it became customary for the mid-winter weeks to be occupied in visiting or entertaining neighbours and friends. Small "parties" were held in a sort of rotation at the larger cabins up and down the valleys. Everybody was merrymaking. Hospitality knew no artificial bonds, for in those golden days, there was neither prince nor peasant, rich nor poor. Don't think from this that we had no right social standards. I know that much of the fiction about the North is built on the theory that the men in the Klondike diggings practically adopted the moral code of the brothel. That assumption may make a novel "spicy" and increase its sale, but nevertheless it is quite untrue. We, of the creeks, had worthy moral standards, simple but definite, and rigidly enforced. Our social grading, however, was not based on the length and value of a man's "poke," nor on his grandfather's record. If he lived an honest, decent life among us, he was barred from nothing.

In addition to the many smaller affairs, each gulch, where there were miners, would have one big evening for all, church or roadhouse being requisitioned for the occasion. These were called Christmas Tree Entertainments, or simply "Trees" for short. It was one of my duties to name the members of committees to have charge of all arrangements, and I was also expected to be chairman at all the "Trees." To meet this last requirement each creek had to choose a different date so that I could make the rounds.

In the winter of 1905 we had carried through our entertainments at Last Chance, Gold Bottom, and Gold Run. Sulphur Creek was the last, and they had been working to make it the best of all. It was to be held on Dec. 28th. One of the Sulphur men, Robertson, had come over to Gold Bottom to "size up" the programme there and report to his committee. He told me that Sulphur's Tree would easily eclipse the others, and that I must on no account miss it. "You can depend on me, Robertson," I said, "and I'll see whether you Sulphurites can make good your boast. I'll have to 'mush' across from Gold Run that afternoon, but I won't disappoint you."

At noon Dec. 28th a very happy party of six old "tillicums" were gathered in Jordan's cabin on Gold Run. His partner Jim Prophet was there, Coldrick the Londoner, Macgregor the Australian, Bousfield and myself. Prophet had been lucky enough to get a moose that had strayed into the valley within rifle-shot and it lay partly cut up on some poles by the "cache." So he had invited his friends in to help eat some of the choicest parts, moose-steak in ordinary being, of course, too common for a special feast. I shall forbear entering into details of that meal, but our meat-dish was young moose-heart stuffed, roasted, with fresh Klondike river grayling as an entree. Grayling are caught in the fall when slush ice is running in the river. They are sluggishly heading for deep water. You fish for them with rod and line baiting with raw meat. When you pull one out he freezes stiff almost before you can get him off the hook. You catch what you need, take them home, and stack them up like firewood in the cache where they will remain frozen. There you have your winter's supply of absolutely fresh fish.

We were sitting at the table when there came a knock on the door, and in response to Jordan's hearty "Come in," it was opened and the form of our good friend Corp. Haddock, of the North West Mounted Police, emerged through the mist. He sat down a minute or two but wouldn't stay. He was calling at all the cabins giving orders that no one was to attempt to leave the valley until the weather moderated. The barracks thermometer registered 65° below zero, and a dense fog had formed. Under these conditions it was perilous to attempt any journey away from human habitations. No one spoke of my intended trip, (although I found out later that Haddock knew my plans), until he had gone, when Coldrick said, "That puts the finish on your mush to Sulphur, Pringle." "No," I replied, "I gave my word I'd be there and they will be looking for me. I have crossed that divide fifty times. I know every flake of snow on it. Unless the corporal catches me and puts me in the 'cage,' I'll be chairman at the Sulphur Church this evening."

This sounds boastful and foolhardy, but as a fact it was neither. I realized perfectly what I was facing, and knew that, barring accidents, I could keep my promise. I had fifteen miles in all to go, and only one mile of it difficult travelling through deep snow on the low summit, and for that I had my snowshoes. True, it was extremely cold, but I was suitably clothed and knew how to take care of myself, surely, after six years constantly on the trail.