Alaska (137 page)

With help from Tom Venn, LeRoy had rearranged the interior of his Waco so that an extra seat was provided back amidst the luggage, which meant that he could now meet the commercial planes flying up from Seattle and carry all four Venns out to their lodge, and once when the Seattle plane was late and he was delayed in reaching Venn's Lode he slept over, and in the morning Tom Venn said: 'You know, LeRoy, it's very gloomy to listen to the eight-o'clock news in Alaska.'

'Why? Just like the Lower Forty-eight, isn't it?'

'Not at all. Every morning there's this unbroken litany as to where the small planes have crashed the night before. ”Harry Janssen's two-seater, at Lake This-or-That, west of Fairbanks. Twenty-eight hundred feet in snow. Signals indicate survivors.”Or like the one they just broadcast. Some 833

fellow named Livingston. ”Fourseater at a lodge five miles west of Ruby. Snow. No signals. Plane looks to be severely damaged and on side.”'

'Could that be Phil Livingston?' LeRoy asked. 'He's one of the best. He doesn't crash in a snowstorm. He doesn't even go out in a snowstorm.'

'He seems to have gone yesterday,' and when Flatch flew back to Palmer he learned that it was Phil Livingston, one of the best, and he began to listen to the eight-o'clock news with more attention, and the almost daily notice of which airplanes had crashed, where and at what altitudes, with or without visible survivors, brought home to him just how perilous it was to fly small planes in Alaska. 'Perilous but inescapable,'

a veteran said in the pilots' room at Palmer as LeRoy was waiting for a passenger who wanted to explore the wonderful valleys that nestled among the glaciers streaming down from Denali.

But dangerous or not, bush flying in central Alaska was one of the world's most exciting occupations. The weather systems were monumental in extent, whole continents of air rushing madly out of Siberia. The mountains were endless, great armies of peaks many of them not even named, stretching to the horizons. The glaciers were, as one pilot trained in Texas said, 'not much like what you see on a flight out of Tulsa.' And the diversity of the people who populated the little villages or labored in the mining camps was endless and rewarding.

'Some of the craziest people in civilization,' the Texas pilot said, 'if you care to call this civilization, are up here in Alaska.'

LeRoy met some of them when he was commissioned to fly heavy replacement gear into a hopeless mining camp lost in a back corner of the Talkeetna Mountains north of Matanuska. He had never serviced this outfit before, but with the aid of a penciled map drawn hastily by a fellow pilot who had been there once, he found the place, and when he landed in the snow he saw three typical Alaska mountain men waiting at the edge of their improvised airstrip: an old-timer from Oregon, a relative newcomer from Oklahoma and a young half-breed fellow with jet-black bangs hanging over his eyes. He had been born, LeRoy learned, in another mining camp well to the north, where his grandfather, a 1902 drifter from New Mexico, had married an Athapascan woman who could neither read nor write. Their son had hooked up with another Athapascan, so that their son, this Nathanael Coop, was really only one-quarter white, three-quarters Indian, but it was customary to call such a person a half-breed. His name 834

was an oddity, for his New Mexico grandfather had arrived in Alaska with a name like Coopersmith or Cooper by, but his son was called by all his friends plain Coop, and it was thus that the name appeared on lists when the various head counts were made.

Certainly his grandson was Nate Coop and had never been anything else.

Nate was in his late teens, a silent lad who seemed unrelated to his two older companions; his only friend was a big, surly brown dog named Killer, who had been trained to attack any stranger who trespassed on the mining property. He took an instant dislike to LeRoy, whom he attacked twice before Nate growled 'Down!' whereupon he leaped savagely at the snow skis, trying to grasp first one, then the other in his strong jaws before Nate growled a second 'Down!' Killer obviously loved his master, for at Nate's command he left the plane but positioned himself so that he could keep a bloodshot eye on both LeRoy and the Cub.

After the cargo was unloaded, LeRoy was informed that on the return trip he was expected to drop Nate off at a parent mine farther into the Talkeetnas: 'Nobody told me.'

'Nobody needed to. Ten bucks extra, you make the stop.'

'I have no idea where it is.'

'Nate'll show you,”and with the stub of a pencil the Oregon man added a few squirms and squiggles to the map and asked: 'Nate, you think you can figure it out?' and the young fellow said: 'I guess so.' With such preparation LeRoy prepared to fly deep into mountains he had never negotiated before.

'Hop in, Nate. If you know the landmarks, I'm sure we'll make it,' and Nate said with no concern: 'Never seen 'em from the air, but I guess they can't be much different,'

and then to LeRoy's astonishment, Killer jumped in too.

'Now wait! I can't have a dog . . .'

'Stays on my lap, no trouble ...”

Apprehensively, LeRoy allowed the dog to stay even though he could see that the hostility between them had not abated. As the plane climbed up off the snow, he happened to look sideways, and noticed how similar the dog and his master appeared, each with hair in his eyes: Nate and Killer, boy, they're a pair! When the plane achieved altitude, he warned the young miner: 'That dog still has it in for me. We could be in trouble if he tried to bite me,' but Nate said reassuringly: 'He's just protective.' But how Killer interpreted this commission, LeRoy could not guess, for although the evil-looking beast did stay on his side of the cockpit, secured in Nate's arms, he also kept his nose close to LeRoy's right wrist that he could clamp down at the first false move.

Killer'

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was not a good passenger, and when the plane flew into rough mountain air which tossed it about, he started to whimper.

With two sharp taps on the dog's forehead, Nate said: 'Shut up, Killer,' and the complaints stopped.

In this uneasy posture Flatch flew deep into the mountains, his attention diverted by the snarling manner in which Killer maintained watch on him, and after some minutes of purposeful flight he told Nate: 'I'm lost. Where's the camp we're looking for?'

Nate, no more worried than his pilot about being astray among great mountains in snowy weather, for that was an ordinary Alaskan experience, said blithely: 'It's got to be over here somewheres,' and, seeking to aid LeRoy, he opened his right-hand-door window to look down as they flew extremely low over a pass. But as he did, Killer saw the kind of chance he often leaped at when on the ground, an opportunity to escape from wherever he was being held, and with a powerful thrust of his legs he turned his back on the pilot he despised, left Nate's arms, uttered a triumphant bark, and jumped right out the open window.

LeRoy, on the left-hand side of the plane, did not see him go but he did hear the bark and Nate's anguished shout 'My God! There he goes!' and as the plane twisted in its course, the two occupants watched as big Killer, afloat in the cold air, intuitively spread out his legs to slow his fall and bring it under control.

'He'll be kilt!' Nate screamed. 'Do somethin'!' but there was nothing LeRoy could do except circle the plane and watch Killer smash onto the rocks below. However, the dog seemed to have some miraculous guidance system, for, with the bulk of his body parallel to the ground, and the fierce pull of gravity somewhat abated, he drifted and glided toward a snow-filled crevice, a kind of enclosed valley, high in the hills.

When the men saw him land, lie stunned for a moment, then rise and start to snarl, Nate said weakly: 'It's a miracle.' But now the problem became: 'How we gonna get that dog outta there?'

Even a moment's study convinced the two men that landing in that tight valley was an impossibility, for even though the plane did have its skis on, there was not nearly enough space for an approach or takeofF. Killer was marooned high in the Talkeetnas, and for the time being, there was no way to rescue him.

But they stayed over him for some minutes, loath to leave a pet, even an ugly-spirited one, in such a forlorn condition, and during one flyover LeRoy remembered the packet of sandwiches Flossie customarily put in the back of the plane whenever she knew her brother was off on one of his expedi-836

tions where food might be scarce, and now he directed Nate: 'Find that bundle. Paper tied with string. Break it loose.' And on their last flight over the bewildered animal, who had apparently landed uninjured, for he was thrashing about, Nate adroitly dropped the package not far from where the dog stood in the snow, his ugly face turned up toward the plane.

'I told you Killer had the brains of a man,' Nate exulted when the dog spotted the descending object, took note of its landing area, and ran to retrieve it. This was an act of such intelligence that LeRoy shouted: 'That dog's gonna live!' With Nate's guidance he turned the plane toward the camp.

By that evening all Alaska had been alerted to the drama of the 'parachuting' dog, and by the next day several determined outdoorsmen resolved to make a rescue effort, but the valley in which the dog was penned was so inaccessible that he could be kept alive only by food drops delivered from the Cub. Though overland hikes were clearly not feasible, suggestions poured into the camp from all parts of the territory.

The person who became most deeply concerned about Killer's fate was not his owner, Nate, but LeRoy's sister, Flossie, who had lost her tame moose so cruelly but whose considerable affection for animals was undiminished. So it was natural that the next day, when her brother and Nate were going out to feed the prisoner, she asked to go along, and they rigged a seat for her.

Killer had been in his mountain prison for three days when Flossie, on one of the routine flights, saw something that thrilled her: 'Nate! Look! He's heading over that hump and down into a better place.' And after LeRoy circled several times, they saw that the dog was indeed following the stream that led to the end of the valley, and they watched him cross over the divide and start down another stream that led to a snow-filled surface. Then LeRoy said: 'I think I could land in that one.'

That night avid listeners heard the heartening news that Killer, the marooned dog, had moved into an area from which it might be possible to rescue him, and newspapermen chartered an airplane at Palmer to interview LeRoy and Nate at the camp.

It was on this hectic night, when the mining camp was full of extra men, that LeRoy became aware that his sister was developing an unusual interest in Nate Coop. Impressed by the young man's devotion to his dog and his love for animals in general, and excited by his manly good looksraven-dark hair, strong face with sunken spots beneath his cheekbones,

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gleaming white teeth when he smiled, flashing dark eyes she could not hide her growing preoccupation with this young fellow who was becoming a hero, and she had even begun to speculate on what life would be like with such a man. She confessed to herself that she was seriously attracted to Nate, and once this was admitted she found herself powerless to hide the fact from her brother.

'He seems so decent' was all she said, to which LeRoy replied: 'He's a half-breed.'

'Aren't we all?' she asked, and there the philosophical part of the discussion ended, for LeRoy added a practical note: 'We better get you out of here, Floss. We're heading into a mountain blizzard.'

He now had an extra reason to speed the rescue, so on the morning of the fourth day they unloaded every bit of gear the Cub could spare and took off for the mountains.

When they found Killer he was, as they had expected, down at a much lower level where there were areas of snow extensive enough for a ski plane to land, but the quality of the snow was dubious. 'It doesn't look packed,' LeRoy told the others as he circled not far from where the dog waited, 'and it's certainly not flat.'

'You can do it,' Flossie said, and it was good that she spoke first, for Nate was quite sure that the snowbanks were so sloping that the plane could not land, while LeRoy was uncertain. In the silence that greeted her enthusiastic endorsement, Flossie said nothing. She was only sixteen that year, a quiet girl not given to expressing her ideas boldly in front of strange men, but now when it appeared that they might turn back, she repeated her verdict: 'You can do it, LeRoy. Over there. You've landed on worse,' so in silence the three adventurers approached the more-or-less-level space she had indicated, but when they saw it close up, even Flossie began to doubt that they could make it.

But at this moment Killer, aware that something special was under way, since no food had been dropped, began to leap and bark in wild excitement, and although they could not hear his cries of encouragement, they knew what he was doing, and Nate said: 'Let's go down.' Breathing very deeply to settle his nerves, and adjusting three or four different times to his pilot's seat, LeRoy asked quietly: 'Nate, you strapped in? Floss, you tied in with those ropes?' Clearing his throat and swinging his shoulders about to ensure that he would have relatively free movement if required, LeRoy brought his plane in for a mountain landing that would have daunted the average practiced pilot and frightened even the best Alaskan bush pilots.

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Over a crest of rocks he brought the Cub down across a heavily rumpled field of snow and onto the fairly flat space where Killer waited. As the plane neared the ground the occupants saw that it was much more tilted to the right than they had anticipated from aloft, and for just a moment LeRoy judged that he ought to abort this dangerous landing, but from the rear Flossie shouted: 'It's all right! Better spot on ahead!'

and with just a bit more gas her brother kept the plane aloft until he saw the place where he could land.

With a whoosh that terrified Killer waiting below, the plane's two skis reached for the snow while the Cub tilted perilously to the right, as if it were going to tumble down the slope, but then better levels were reached, the plane righted itself, and the skis glided to an easy stop. Before even the doors were opened, Killer was leaping upon the struts and barking his delight at seeing once more a thing he had despised.