Alaska (79 page)

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That accounted for the three principal dogs; the others were lumped together as the team, and sometimes it seemed as if they did the hard work. Each dog had a name, but since these names were in some native dialect, Klope did not master any but Breed's.

He was not an impressive dog when the sled was in motion, and when on three occasions Sarqaq allowed Klope to accompany him on short trips into the countryside, John saw that Breed lacked that strange mixture of respect for discipline and determination to pull regardless of sled weight which characterized the outstanding dogs. Breed was something else, a fierce animal yet one that seemed to crave human companionship, and in John Klope he found a man who had a similar need for animal friendship. A man to whom human associations did not come easily or warmly was developing a powerful affection for this dog.

He was therefore dismayed when, after a poor performance by Breed which caused the lines to tangle, Sarqaq said in disgust: 'No good dog. Maybe shoot.'

'Wait!' Klope pleaded, but that night when they were back at the Fort, another dogsled man who spoke fairly good English explained: 'Husky, malamute same. Good only for hauling sled. No good for that, get rid of them.'

'But would you shoot one of your own dogs?'

'No good, maybe better shoot. Dog's whole life, to be in traces, pulling. Lose that job, maybe dog want to be shot.'

'Wouldn't you keep it ... as a pet?'

The driver, an Athapascan, laughed and called to two other drivers: 'He asks husky sled dog a pet?' And the men roared with delight at this further proof that Outsiders never understood the arctic.

In the days that followed, Klope spent more time with Breed, and with each passing experience he saw in him an animal capable of enormous affection and willing to share all experiences with this man who had taken an interest in him. Now when Klope came to where the dogs were tied overnight for had they been allowed to run wild, they all might have disappeared Breed strained at his link chain to reach him, and when Klope moved close the dog leaped upon him, and pawed him and tried to lick his bearded face. But such behavior intensified Sarqaq's belief that Breed had no place in an orderly string of working dogs.

It became unthinkable to Klope that such an animal should be destroyed merely because it did not serve obediently the whims of some man, and several times he tried to broach the matter with Sarqaq, who dismissed the subject almost scornfully.

As the survivors from the Jos. Parker recovered from their 480

ordeal on the Yukon Flats and their courage returned, some started to think of trying to move south to their destination, but the managers at Fort Yukon dissuaded them: 'That's more'n three hundred miles. And it'll be bitter cold now. You fellers lost three men comin' only fifty miles, in what we call good weather.'

'But if we wait till this damned river thaws, all the good claims will be taken.'

'We wait every year,' the Fort Yukon men said. 'And besides, young feller, all the good claims was taken two years ago. You got plenty time to claim on nothin' land, so stay here where there's a hot stove and somethin' to eat.'

Such advice became more relevant when a dogsled driven by two Indians straggled in from the south with a horror story: 'Starvation in Dawson. People ordered to leave by the Mounted Police. They reached Circle City, pitiful condition. Frozen toes had to be cut off. Fingers gone. One man lost a l
eg.
'

This portrait of conditions in the south so discouraged the Parker men that any thought of trying to reach the Klondike before the thaw made boat passage possible was discarded. That is, it was discarded by everyone except John Klope, who was still tormented by his gnawing mania to get to where the gold lay hiding.

Each new hardship made him more determined to ignore difficulties, so that when the fugitives from Circle asked the authorities at the Fort whether a rescue mission of any kind could be mounted to get food to those trapped there and in Dawson, he said without hesitation: 'I'll go,' and the Indians laughed. They had meant: 'Is there any local dogsled man who will attempt it?' They said that the trip north had exhausted both them and their dogs; they had no intention of volunteering.

Two days after the request circulated, Sarqaq came to Klope: 'You say you go?'

'Yes.'

'You, me, maybe?' When Klope jumped at the invitation, the Eskimo asked: 'You pay?'

and now Klope had to think. Carefully he explained that he had already paid the money intended for his fare to the captain of the Jos. Parker, and with signs he indicated that if he, Klope, wanted to stay in Fort Yukon till the river thawed, the Parker would be obliged to carry him to Dawson for no extra payment.

The explanation was painfully drawn out, but finally Sarqaq understood that Klope would not pay, and there the matter rested for two days. But on the third day, just as gold-hungry Klope was about to volunteer a limited fee for the trip, Sarqaq returned with his own proposition: the two 481

men would load their sled with all the food that Fort Yukon could spare; they would hurry it to Dawson; and there they would sell it for a profit. There seemed to be no risk in such a venture: Sarqaq was certain his dogs could make the trip; he knew that he could and he suspected that Klope was the kind of white man who had just as much endurance as any Eskimo; and both men trusted that if they could get the food to Dawson, they would be sure to find customers who would pay for it.

All was set, except for one detail: Klope would have to buy the food from the commissary at Fort Yukon, and he would have to pay cash, relying upon the successful termination of the rescue mission for repayment. He considered this for several days, for unlike Sarqaq he could visualize many reasons why such a daring venture might fail, but in the end he was so determined to reach the gold fields before the rest of that year's crowd that he agreed to put up the money. On 20 November 1897 it was known throughout Fort Yukon that Sarqaq and the American were going to attempt the dash to Dawson, three hundred and twenty miles to the south over trails that were frozen deep and covered with snow, along a river that was filled with block ice. If they made twenty-five miles a day, they felt they could cover the distance, with rests for the dogs, in eighteen days, which would put them on the Klondike well before Christmas.

On the day before departure two things happened which heightened the tension of the men. Klope went to California, whom he admired, and said: 'You want to come along?

You were the best man on the other trip.' But the man who had proved so valiant on the venture from the

Jos. Parker

had not yet regained his courage, or, more kindly, he had spent it all on that disastrous expedition when only his will power had prevented it from ending in total horror.

Now he could do no more than shudder when Klope suggested a repetition. Drawing in his shoulders as if to prevent Klope from getting at his vitals, he shook his head.

He had seen the Yukon in autumn and he could not imagine it in winter.

When Klope warned, 'The gold fields will be all taken,' he looked up in amazement, asking: 'Gold fields?' When the Yukon thawed he intended catching a boat downstream for St. Michael and Seattle; under no circumstance would he go upstream toward Dawson, either in the spring when the river opened or now when it was frozen tight, and only when Klope saw the terror with which the invitation was rejected did he acknowledge to himself the dangerous trip he was about to undertake.

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Sarqaq heard a more frightening story. The two drivers who had reached Fort Yukon with news of starvation in Dawson related what had happened when a boat tried to rush supplies to that beleaguered town: 'Boat got lots of wood for burnin', extra food. Good captain, good Indian pilot through the channels. Everything good. If reach Dawson, save many people.'

'What happened?' Sarqaq asked, and the informant said: 'Him, me, we reach Circle one day before boat. No food there, no medicine. One hell of a time, I tell you.'

At this point he looked to his fellow driver for confirmation, and the man nodded.

'Next day many cheers. Boat come in. But captain say: ”This food for Dawson. People starving in Dawson.”But people in Circle say: ”People starving here, too. We take your food.”Big words, maybe big fight. Men with guns. Captain say: ”Okay, damn you, take food and let others starve.”And men run all over boat, take all food. Boat stay there empty. Pretty soon, boat fast in ice. Never go to Dawson because captain say: ”What the hell?”'

Then the first driver made his point: 'Sarqaq, s'pose you and dog team, food go to Circle, same men stop you. Same men take everything. No food can go past Circle, damn sure.'

The three drivers talked for some time, discussing routes which could be traversed without the men of Circle becoming aware that a dog team was in the vicinity, and on the night prior to departure Sarqaq informed Klope of his strategy: 'Not bad men, hungry men. We go . . .' and with his hands he indicated the town of Circle on the left bank of the river while a dog team headed far to the east on the right bank.

CALIFORNIA AND MONTANA WERE UP EARLY TO HELP finish last-minute preparations, and by the time dawn arrived, almost the entire Fort was present and making predictions: 'They'll never make it' and 'No white man can go that far in winter' and 'If anyone can make it, Sarqaq can.' Klope, growing impatient at any delay, was about to stride off when an old woman, daughter of some early Canadian miner and an Athapascan squaw, came pottering out to stop him yet again. She brought with her an object which she obviously considered precious, a crock made of clay, inside which lay something wrapped in a damp cloth. A widow now, she served as cook for one of the merchant dormitories, and as she handed Klope her treasure she said, with the wisdom of decades in the north: 'It can never be a house without this. God would not allow.'

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Klope thought the gift must be a Bible, but why have it in a damp crock? 'What is it?' he asked, and proudly, with fingers gnarled from much labor, she loosened the cloth, and when Klope peered inside the crock all he could see was a loose round ball of what looked like the dough from which his mother had baked German cookies.

'What is it?' he repeated, and the old woman said: 'Sourdough. Keep warm. Keep with you. It will make life ...” She hesitated, for she could not think of one word that could describe the difference between having a good strain of sourdough and none.

Her family of sourdough dated back to 1847, when the Hudson's Bay people built the fort in which her grandmother had worked as cook. The dough had reached the Yukon after a perilous trip from eastern Canada, where its ancestry had come after a similar trip from Vermont, where the strain had already been kept alive for forty years, dating back to 1809. It was a gift of antiquity and civilization and love which the old woman was turning over to Klope, and it was a responsibility, too. In crocks like this, under damp cloths like this, the women of Vermont and Quebec and Fort Yukon had kept the strain of yeast viable, and now she was turning the job over to a new caretaker.

Weighing the crock in both hands, Klope said: 'I can't carry this all the way to Dawson,' but she warned him: 'Gold comes, goes.' With a sweep of her hand she indicated all the men of Fort Yukon: 'They look, they look. S'pose they find? Gamble it away.

Pretty women.' Pressing the crock into Klope's hands, she said: 'But good sourdough ... it goes on forever.' In the world she had been able to observe from the lonely fort on the Yukon, gold had accomplished very little, but a family with a reliable crock of sourdough was on its way to happiness.

This crock was obviously too heavy to lug all the way to Dawson City, but Sarqaq, immensely reverent where a strain of proved leaven was concerned, solved the problem.

Calling for one of the little glass jars in which California farmers were now packing their cooked vegetables, he transferred the sourdough, and showed Klope how to carry it close to his body so the precious yeast did not freeze.

With the old woman's blessing and cheers from the men, the two daring travelers set forth, and as they pulled out of the Fort they presented sharply contrasting appearances.

Klope was tall and thin, dressed in an American's version of what an arctic explorer should wear, which was about the same as what an American farmer in Idaho should wear: heavy clothes, heavy leather boots, heavy cap with very 484

heavy earflaps. It was good clothing, appropriate for a day's hard work in cold weather, and he presented an impressive figure when he stepped behind the sled. An observer would have said: 'He's not one to fool with.' But how the clothing would serve for eighteen days when it could not be taken off at night, one could not guess.

Sarqaq, a short butterball of a man, wore clothing which his people had developed over thousands of years of arctic living. No item was heavy; all seemed to be composed of many layers of the thinnest and lightest skin possible. His boots were made of caribou leather, tanned to perfection, and lined not only with caribou but with the almost weightless fur of baby seal. His trousers were miracles of lightness and durability, stiff when he put them on, supple as he began to move. He wore five shirts and jackets, each seemingly thinner than the preceding one, and his hood was a marvel, a capacious cavern in which his head could hide from snow and sleet, and from whose edges he would gain both protection and warmth, for it was trimmed with wolverine hair that had the mysterious quality of not allowing ice to form along its tips.

The Eskimo's arctic costume had one further advantage, not a minor one: it was completely watertight, and would, if its wearer were suddenly pitched into some ocean wave or river, keep him dry for up to an hour. It was formidable gear, in which a man could work all day and sleep all night with the maximum comfort available in the arctic.

One would suppose that with this advantage in clothing and with a superior knowledge of dogsleds and river trails that Sarqaq would outdistance Klope in everything, but that was not to be, for the big man knew how to husband his strength and how to pull 'courage from the gut,' as he phrased it.