A. Frederick Collins

“ Eileen was so weak and dazed she seemed hardly to realize what it was all about. As she lay on her bunk she only stared with wide-open, pathetic eyes at these last sad arrangements. It was merciful that she did not understand to the full.
The boys gave her all the food they could scrape together and did without themselves for they had to get her strong enough to travel. Starvation was close on their heels. Bill’s solution for the shortage of food was that they kill one of the sled-dogs but Jack would not listen to such a thing. ”

“ From the Pacific Ocean on up to the Arctic Ocean there’s gold. In every stream and river, as well as the land between them, this precious metal is found in either particles or in nuggets. Take the Klondike! it’s not much larger than the Rat River here and yet so much gold was found there its name became known all over the world. Every river in Alaska and the Yukon, I suppose, is just as rich but you don’t hear much about them because the Klondike was the first and so outshone all the rest. We’ll get ours yet, don’t worry,” said Jack hopefully. ”

“ Look at me map now and tells me, as man to man, could any goil love a guy what’s got one like it. I says no.”
“A fellow’s face hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s the kind of a fellow he is down deep in his heart, and the stuff he’s made of, that counts, not only with his girl, but with the world at large,” urged Jack.
“But look at it. Nobody but a mother could love a face like that,” proclaimed Bill, and Jack came very near thinking his partner had spoken rightly. ”

“ But the men knew and the dogs know what to do.
There was a crack of a whip that sounded like a pistol shot, with a yell of “mush, you huskies,” and Bill’s team was at it and away. Another crack of a whip and another “mush on” from Jack, when his team followed a close second in the wake of the other. It was great sport for the old timers watching the breaking in of the new teams and their new drivers. For the boys it was real hard work and they felt as though they were sweating blood in their efforts to keep the dogs under control. ”

“ The boys had hunted the caribou for their fresh meat supplies, in fact caribou were so plentiful in some districts of the country through which they passed they seldom had to use their stock provisions, such as bacon and Alaska strawberries, and as for the dogs, they waxed fat on the excess of meat they were given and grew sluggish. There was no need for them to die to get to the happy hunting grounds—they had attained all that their canine souls could wish for under these youngsters of great hearts and high courage who were their masters. ”

“ Jack allowed that it might not be a bad scheme to bring down a moose or two, not merely for trophies of their prowess as big game hunters, but for the purpose of using their flesh for food, as well as their hides, in the possible event of their having need for them. Now, know you, that while in summer the moose usually travels alone, in winter a number of them will band together and trample down the snow in a space with their hoofs, and this is called a moose-yard. ”

“ Often they felt that they must push on but they simply could not withstand the temptation of accepting an invite to stay for dinner, supper or breakfast, or as long as they had a mind to, for the men were making their piles and under such auspicious circumstances they craved the company of their fellow kind.
Thus it was that when the boys went into the rough log cabins, which were often no better and sometimes a great deal worse than their own, they saw glittering things lying around loose the like of which their cabin could not boast, and these were nuggets of gold in abundance. ”

“ While gold dust and gold nuggets were to be found in every miner’s cabin in amounts ranging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still the boys were as poor as ever, for nowhere had they found the slightest signs of gold packed in moosehide sacks and corded up like stovewood.
They had gone through valleys, up and down streams, over tundras, into forests and across lakes and they had combed these districts pretty well, but the only visible effect of their efforts was the exeunt of their good grub and they were fast running short of their reserve rations for both themselves and their dogs. ”

“ It was the white man that put an intelligent dog ahead of the team to lead them. You must have noticed to-day that our lead dogs, ’Frisco and Sate, did mighty little real pulling but they kept the other dogs spread out and pulling their level best. And it’s the leaders who ho and mush and gee and haw when we yell at them and impart our orders to the other dogs of the teams. It’s always the white man who puts the finishing touches on things he finds. ”

“ If the weather was not too severe, that is to say below zero, they pitched their tent, but when it got to twenty, forty or sixty below, or a blizzard struck them as it frequently did in mid-winter, they made a better camp by cutting out blocks of snow and piling them up into a dome-shaped shelter like the igloo of the Eskimo, but which Bill, who always persisted in nick-naming everything that was new to him, called a butter-dish. ”

“ Bill allowed that the men in Alaska must all be white except for that rotter, Black Pete, for no one watched the gold to keep it from being stolen, nor would there be any need to watch it until they started back on their long journey toward civilization. ”

“ In the middle they had built up a platform of saplings for Eileen to sit on to the thoughtful end that when the raft struck the rapids and took a notion to dive, like a submarine, the water would not wash over and wet her.
Then Eileen took her seat on the platform, Jack stood on the front end and Bill on the diagonal corner of the rear end and with their long poles they pushed their treasure float off shore. As Jack had said, the huskies followed them and they kept as close to the edge of the river as they could, barking and howling furiously as they ran along. ”

“ So hungry had Bill become that he had marked out the dog he was going to kill to provide provender for them all, but fate was kind to the dog, and to Bill, for he was not called on to do this act of sabotage.
When they at last got to their camp Bill was as good as his word and fed the dogs a dozen rations of fish and moosemeat and having downed this in as many gulps they began to show signs of life and decency again. Jack threw together a real meal, the first that Eileen had eaten in weeks, nay months, and oh, how good those Alaska strawberries tasted! They were indeed a delicious fruit. ”

“ While they were hard at work getting up the sacks, the gold seeker who slept on yonder bunk and the half-breed girl who lay weak and helpless on the other bunk were well nigh forgotten for they were the masters of gold that made them as rich as the ancient Crœsus or the modern Rockefeller. ”

“ After policing up the cooking utensils and setting things to rights a bit they turned the cabin over to Eileen and built a snow igloo of goodly size just outside the door, for their own quarters. Now that the precious metal they had sought for so long and hard was theirs they were keen to start back to the haunts of men, but Eileen did not grow strong as rapidly as they had hoped for and there was naught else for them to do but stay. ”

“ It is no trick at all to shoot a caribou and it is no sport either for if it is wounded it will not put up a fight. Sport in hunting big game comes in only when the hunter is exposed to danger and takes a chance of fighting for his life along with the beast he is trying to kill. And Bill was right when he said that any man who calls himself a sportsman and goes after caribou for the mere sake of killing them ought to be given a spanking and sent back home to his mother. ”

“ It must be admitted that Bill stood at the foot of the pass when it came to knowing anything about these work dogs.
“Tell me this, Jack,” Bill whispered so that no one might learn of his profound ignorance, “what’s the diff’ ’tween a malamute and a husky?”
“More than there is between a broncho and a mustang, though the dogs of a dog team are always called huskies, regardless of the kinds of dogs it is made up of. See those handsome, alert-looking fellows over there with their ears sticking straight up?” Jack nodded toward them; “well, they are the malamutes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jack was, perhaps, a better driver than Bill but in his own heart he gave the credit to his team when they won and win they nearly always did. Bill was a good “sport” though and never got “sore” when he lost a race; he always took the blame on himself for his poor driving and nothing could shake his belief that his was the fastest team, bar none, in all Alaska.
There were a few times though when Bill’s team won. One of these rare occasions was when a snowshoe rabbit ran from a bank onto the ice intending to cross to the other side ”

“ 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.” ”

“ You see, Bill, so much of the country where we are going is low that it is more or less wet all the time and it would make traveling overland in summer with our outfit a hard game. The way I’ve figured it out is that we ought to start from Circle City when winter sets in and travel by dogsled; then we can go up or down rivers, over them, cut cross country, yes, to the North Pole if we want to, and without any hard work on our part. ”

“ Bill said in an apologetic voice, perhaps because he had let Black Pete off so easily the night before.
“Now to get down to business, Mr. McQuesten,” began Jack who was anxious to get things a-moving. “What we want is an outfit of clothes, mess-gear and grub that will carry us through the winter. We’re not going so far away but what we expect to get back before the last ice and first water but we might want to keep on going and we must have an outfit so that we can pull through if needs be.” ”

“ The dying gold seeker raised himself on his arm a little and clutched at the collar of his shirt. His eyes brightened with a kind of preternatural light as he continued:
“Yes, there we found it in a cave deep in the side of a hill, bright and yellow nuggets ranging in size from bits as large as a pea to chunks as large as my fist. The moosehide sacks that held it had long since rotted away and the metal had burst through them and lay in heaps on the ground.
“Then it was I became a hunter of moose, not for the love of hunting, not for the meat to eat, but for their hides to make new sacks of. ”

“ As they came up to it the only sign of life they saw was a couple of gaunt huskies that looked more like starved timber wolves than animals of the domesticated canine breed. They snarled and snapped at the boys, which ill manners made the team dogs furiously mad and had they not been in the traces they would have made short work of them. Bill threw each of the starved dogs a piece of fish and in the hopes of getting more they curbed their tempers a bit. In the meantime Jack hallooed time and again outside the door but there was no response from the cabin. ”

“ The third man stays on top to draw up the buckets and with a wheel-barrow wheels the gold-bearing dirt back and dumps it in a pile where it will be in no danger of getting washed away by the melting snows when spring comes. In the spring when water is plentiful the fun begins for then the clean-up takes place and the men who were as poor as Indian dogs all winter wax rich and take their winnings back to civilization where they can be separated from it. ”

“ The malamute was the only kind of dog we used in the Arctic and we’ll buy all of them there are here—what, only four?—not enough for even one team. Can’t you get us three more of these malamutes, Mr. McQuesten, so that we’ll have at least one team of them?” asked Jack.
“These are all that I know about. It’s a great day when you see any one with a matched team of any kind of dogs. The husky is just as good a dog, or better for these parts, and there are five of them. You’ll have to make out with outside dogs for the others.” ”