Alaska (83 page)

That lunch lasted four hours, and repeatedly the Kernel assured his guests that they were doing him a favor: 'I like to talk, always did, kept my men moving forward in the darkest days of the war.'

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'Were you a general?' the man asked, unable to resist the charm of this amiable man.

'Never higher than a sergeant. But I was the one who led the men.'

Starting in the second hour he instructed his guests as to just what they would find on the gold fields. Asking the waiter, whom he tipped five cents, for a pencil and paper, he drew with remarkable skill a detailed map of the path from the ship's anchorage at Skagway, across the mountains and down the twists and turns of the Yukon: 'Understand two things, my dear friends. In Alaska the ship does not land you. There are no docks to land at. It anchors way out here at the edge of a great sand flat. You have to work like animals to move your goods ashore before the tide engulfs them.

'Then you carry them, piece by piece, nine miles inland over roads that are merely trails. Then you come to this very steep mountain, not even horses can climb it, and in deep snow you lug every single pound of your goods up and over that mountain.'

He shocked them with the angle of the climb: 'Thirty-five degrees. Inhuman.'

The boy studied the drawing and said: 'Any steeper, a man couldn't climb that in snow,' and the Kernel said: 'Even the way it is, many can't.'

Then, when his listeners seemed properly awed, he asked: 'And how much weight are you going to have to transport over that mountain? I mean each of you. You, Mrs.

... I didn't catch the name.' When she offered no response, he accepted the rebuff: 'How many pounds of gear do you think your frail little arms are going to have to carry up that mountain and over?' Somberly he stared at each of the travelers, then said slowly: 'One ton. You will each have to carry one ton over the mountains. You, ma'am, will have to lift up one ton and carry it up an angle like this in the snow.'

Leaving his guests open-mouthed, he got up and started moving about the saloon, asking politely if this man or that would lend him his gear for a moment, and within a few minutes he had accumulated a small pile, with the owners standing in a circle watching his performance. Lashing many of the borrowed articles together, he said: 'I'd judge this to be about fifty pounds, wouldn't you?' and men who were expert at that sort of thing agreed that yes, that was about fifty.

'The reason we use fifty is that's about the best a man can do heading up that mountain.

So if you've got to haul a ton across'

'Why so much?' a watcher asked, and the Kernel turned to face him: 'Son, at the top of the mountain there's a

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Mounted Police station, and they will not let you enter their country unless you bring with you a ton of supplies.'

'Why not?'

'They don't want you starving to death in Dawson City. I went six days without food in Dawson, and some went longer. We buried them.'

He now turned to the boy: 'Young feller, can you divide fifty pounds into one ton?'

'How much is a ton?'

The Kernel stared at the boy's mother: 'Ma'am, don't you teach your son anything?'

She was not awed by this bearded stranger, for she recognized him as a man with a compulsion to talk, to share his experiences, so when he asked loudly, to impress the watchers: 'Ma'am, I'll bet you don't know how much a ton is,' she laughed and said: 'It's a lot, that I do know.'

'Young feller, it's two thousand pounds. Now, at fifty pounds a load, how many trips up that mountain will you have to make to hoist your tons of goods across?'

'Forty.'

'You pass. Grade of C.' And with that he hoisted the load of goods, borrowed a strap, and tied it to the wife's back: 'Now, young woman, I want you to walk out that door, down to the corner and back,' and he shoved her on her way.

When she returned she was not smiling. For the first time since leaving home she had some understanding of the adventure on which they had embarked: 'It's heavy.

I don't think I could climb a mountain with it.'

'How about you, son?' and he strapped the burden onto the boy's back and sent him down to the corner. When he returned he, too, was subdued and willing to learn.

-'I'm not going to send you, Mr. . . . What did you say the name was? Because if you can't handle fifty pounds straight up the face of that mountain, you have no right to leave Seattle.'

He spent the third hour sharing with them the secrets of survival: 'You must take with you two essentials besides the food. A good whipsaw for cutting the logs you'll need to build your boat at Lake Bennett, and be sure to buy the best, because whipsawing logs is the worst job in the world.' When the wife asked what it consisted of, he asked for more paper, tipped the waiter another nickel, and proceeded to draw an excellent sketch in perspective of a log whose bark had been removed. It was perched over a pit, with one man down in the pit holding to one end of an eleven-foot saw, while above him, on a low platform, stood his partner holding on to the other end: 'Up and down you go, the man on top swearing 504

that the man below is not pushing the heavy saw back up, the one on the bottom cursing because the man on top isn't pulling his weight.' He turned to the couple: 'I hope the minister who married you tied a tight knot, because it's going to be tested when you whipsaw the boards for your boat.'

'What was the other essential?' the wife asked, and he said: 'A coal shovel. Because when you climb that mountain forty times, which you'll have to do, there's another route parallel to it, much steeper, so when you get to the top and stow your goods'

'Who watches them?' she asked, and he said: 'Nobody. You make a little pile at the top and mark it as yours. A stick, a flag, stones, anything. That's yours, and as long as you work on that mountain your goods are safe, even though you're at the bottom and they're alone at the top.'

'There must be thieves.'

'Occasionally. Very occasionally.'

'What do you do about them?'

'In my day we shot them. Fifteen, sixteen miners in a cabin. Man in charge says: ”This here fellow, name of Whiskey Joe, he stole Ben Carter's cache, Ben almost died.

What's your verdict?”And we'd all say: ”Shoot the son-of-a-bitch, stealing a man's cache”and two minutes later the thief was shot dead.' One of the men who had gathered near the table to listen said: 'He's telling the truth.'

'You ever shoot a thief?' the boy asked, and the Kernel said: 'No, but I voted to have it done and helped bury the body after. Son, if you ever stole anything wherever it is you came from, don't do it in the Yukon or you're going to be shot dead.'

'What is the shovel for?' the wife asked, and he nodded slightly, his beard brushing the table: 'Thank you, ma'am. Sometimes I wander. Buy the lightest-weight shovel you can find. Carry it up to the top every time. Because after you stow your goods at your cache . . . Now, you understand, there may be a thousand other caches up there alongside yours. It'll look like a Persian market on a busy day, and when the snow comes, it'll all be covered in white six feet deep.'

'So that's why you need the shovel.'

'It is not. When snow hits, people just push and shove and kick and scrape, and pretty soon their goods are uncovered, as good as new if they've been properly packed. The shovel, ma'am, is for coming down. You walk about fifty yards from where your goods are, and before you lies a very steep hill, you couldn't possibly climb it coming up. And you couldn't walk it going down. So what you do, you sit on your shovel, handle out forward between your legs, and you give a push 505

with one hand, and zooooey! You get the damnedest ride down the face of that mountain.'

'Could two ride one shovel?' the boy asked, and the Kernel said: 'If you were both skillful,' and he sent one of the watchers to fetch a shovel, and since there were sixteen or eighteen establishments nearby specializing in the outfitting of would-be miners, a broad shovel was soon produced.

'Too heavy, much too heavy. But the size is right. Ma'am, you sit in front, knees drawn up if you can. Son, you fit this board under your mother's seat and let it stick out a little in back. You sit on it,' and when they were perched precariously on the shovel, he gave them an imaginary shove and cried: 'Zooooey, down we go!'

When the shovel had been returned, he said: 'Two other things are advisable. A good square. Very light, weighs almost nothing, but you'll need it when you build your boat. And at least three good books apiece. Tear the covers off to cut down weight, but get books of substance for the long days of waiting. There's much to be said for a long book.'

With the skill that he had manifested before, he drew a sketch of the boat they must build on the shores of Lake Bennett, and the wife complimented him: 'You draw very well.'

'General Lee said I should've gone into the Engineers, but I had no schooling.'

'You speak so well. You use bigger words than I do,' and he said: 'In the Yukon you read a lot. You might walk forty miles to trade books, and the man you're heading to visit is overjoyed to see you. One man had a dictionary, traded it to me for a novel by Charles Reade. A dictionary can be very exciting when the night is six months long.'

'How long is that boat you're drawing?' the man asked, and the Kernel penciled in the dimensions of a boat he had once used, 23' long 5' 6”in the beam: 'It's got to carry three tons and three people. I do declare, ma'am, you're a slight woman to have a son as big and sturdy as this one.'

In the fourth hour he reached the core of his advice. Pushing back his chair, he asked: 'Would you good people care for a little food as we approach the real problem?'

and he ordered four more twenty-cent meals. The food was copious and good, but when the waiter asked: 'Drinks?' the Kernel said: 'Never touch it,' and the waiter said: 'For the twenty-cent meal you're supposed to buy drinks, too,' and the Kernel said: 'Give four beers to those men over there and four more that'll cover lunch to those over there.'

He then turned solemnly to his guests, and in carefully chosen words, spread their options before them: 'Now, from 506

what I've said, two things ought to be obvious, the first realistic, the second cruel.'

'Yes?' the wife said, leaning forward. He liked this tough-minded little woman and addressed his two explanations to her: 'First, if you sail to Alaska now, no matter where you go, St. Michael or Dyea, there is no way you can get tb the gold fields this year. The lower Yukon will be frozen, so that way's blocked. And if you did succeed in getting over the Chilkoot Pass before the heavy snows, which I doubt, you'll find Lake Bennett and the others frozen up, so somewhere, at great expense of time and health and patience, you'll have to hole up for the winter.' He paused to let this harsh truth sink in.

'Is that the realistic thing or the cruel one?' she asked, and he said: 'That's realistic.

Now, the cruel fact you must already have figured out for yourselves. When you do reach the gold fields next spring, which is the earliest you can get there, you'll find that every likely spot for digging gold has been staked out. I got there four days after the big strike in 1896, and I had to settle for 91 Below on Hunker Creek. Turned out to be the poorest creek of the bunch. I don't know what the numbers will be next year. Maybe 291 Below, 310 Above,

if there's that much land available. And even if there is, it won't be land with any promise.'

'Then we're too late?' the man asked, his face ashen.

'Yes.'

'But you just said you started with a poor claim,' the wife said, boring in. 'And you came out with a fortune. The papers said so.'

'I started with a bad one on Hunker Creek. Wound up with that good one on Bonanza.'

'How did you do it?'

The Kernel patted her on the cheek: 'So complicated, that trade, I'd be ashamed to tell you.'

'Did you steal it?'

'The other man thought so.' He shook his head, partly in embarrassment, partly in disbelief that he had been able to conclude such a swap.

'Then our chances aren't good?' she asked, and he said: 'They are not, and any honest man who came south on the Portland with me will tell you the same, if he has any interest in your well-being.'

'Then why do the newspapers . . . ?'

'Seattle wants to keep this alive. To keep the stores open. The shipping companies.

The bars like this one.' Then he added a sagacious observation: 'And it's people like you, streaming in, who help keep the rush alive.'

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'Is it all a lie?' she asked, and now the Kernel rocked back and forth before his plate of savory stew. He wanted to explain an intricate fact, and he wished attention to be paid: 'Oh no! It's not a l
ie.
It's just that the facts are different from what they say.'

'How do you mean?' she asked, and he explained: 'You'll not get any gold up there.

Believe me, if you took a hundred men like me who knew the fields like a book, men of enormous experience . . . Only two or three of us out of a hundred found any gold to speak of.'

'But they came off the Portland in dozens, I saw the photographs.'

'They didn't photograph the hundreds who stayed behind, the old men in the tiny cabins, the young men freezing at the bend of the creek.'

Rapping the table with her spoon, she demanded: 'Tell us what you're trying to say.'

He bowed: 'Ma'am, you deserve a straightforward answer. You'll find no land worth claiming at the diggings, but smart people like you, if you have courage and even a little nest egg, you can find the real gold mine in Dawson City.'

'You mean a store? A hotel?'

'I mean opportunity unlimited. Men like me will be out there digging for gold. You and your husband can be waiting in Dawson to take it away from them. This may sound ugly, ma'am . . . Damn it all, what's your name?'

'Missy. My mother named me Melissa, and this is Buck, and this is Tom.'

'Pleased to meet you good folks. I don't mean to be harsh or mean-spirited. But Dawson is a tough place, except that the Canadian police do try to enforce some kind of limits. That gives bright people like you and Buck a fighting chance to earn a real fortune.'