Alaska (88 page)

He would require several props: a securely fixed rock at the top of Chilkoot, and there were many of them; two sleds, which could easily be made from scattered bits of timber; a very long rope; and five additional men, the heavier the better. Buck saw quickly that he had available all the ingredients except the very long rope, but he had seen among the household goods discarded along the trail from Sheep Camp to the Scales several skeins of heavy rope, so he left Missy and Tom at their depot and scrambled back down along the trail he had so recently climbed. He did not find the rope he had remembered but he found some of more recent vintage abandoned among the trunks, the furniture and the excessive household goods.

Grabbing the rope, he hurried back to the Scales, where he studied the laboring men about him, settling ultimately upon four likely candidates. Sergeant Kirby had recommended six in all, but Buck believed he could work more effectively with four others besides himself. Assembling them outside his tent, he divulged the plan: 'If we climb to the very top of the Chilkoot, fasten a self-made block-and-tackle to a rock that can't be budged, and build us two sleds capable of carrying us five men, see what we'd have?' And slowly the four listeners began to visualize what the Canadian Mountie had divulged to Missy and Tom: 'Hey, if we five got on one of the sleds and let ourselves slide down the mountain, the other sled packed with our gear would have to go up!'

It worked. They climbed to the top of the pass and found, with Kirby's help, an appropriate rock, to which they at—

532

tached their crude block with the rope tackle passed through the pulley. When the sleds were attached, top one empty, bottom loaded with gear, the five men climbed to the top carrying very light loads, which they quickly deposited at their respective depots on the Canadian side. They then ran to the waiting sled, onto which they placed themselves so that they could push with their hands, and when the sled was eased to the top of the steep incline, Buck gave the signal and the fifth man, in back, started pushing the sled until it gained momentum. With a final shove which sent it downhill, he jumped aboard, and the men had the extraordinary satisfaction of feeling themselves sliding down the mountain while the other sled, loaded with the heavy baggage, crawled up the hill as if pulled by invisible hands.

The experiment was more successful than even Sergeant Kirby had predicted. Said he when Missy and Tom next reached the top of the mountain: 'It takes an American to build a machine,' and he was pleased as he saw how the men had perfected the operation.

These particular Americans were going to negotiate the Chilkoot Pass the easy way.

In the meantime Missy and Tom were making their trips with what might almost be described as joy, for they carried to the top loads that were much diminished but which invariably contained a shovel, and when they unloaded their burdens at the Venn cache and saluted Sergeant Kirby, they moved away from Chilkoot proper, going instead to the very steep slope covered by many feet of snow. Here Missy placed a board on the shovel, pointed the handle downhill, then sat as far forward as possible. Tom, placing himself behind her and resting part on the shovel, part on the extended board, grasped her by the waist and down they sped like children on a painted sleigh.

The ride became so exciting, so refreshing with the cold wind blowing in their faces, that they found themselves actually hurrying up the last few icy steps of the Chilkoot so they could run over to the precipitous drop and hurl themselves downward on their magical shovel. Tom, holding tight to Missy, who half steered the shovel with her heels, felt that this was the most joyous thing he had ever done, exhilarating beyond words, but once when Kirby saw them speed off he became worried, and when they next climbed the pass he took them aside: 'I saw you steering with your heels, Mrs. Venn.

I wouldn't do that, because at that speed, if your heel caught on anything, even a small piece of ice, your leg would bend back and it might even tear off. Surely it would snap.' So after that the rides were a little more circumspect, with both Missy and Tom preventing the shovel from descending too fast.

533

One evening, when Buck's sled and Missy's shovel reached the Scales at the same time, one of the men on the sled told Missy: 'We like the way your husband takes charge of things. You must be proud of him.' And when she talked with Tom during their hikes, up the mountain, she said: 'Have you noticed, Tom, how much stronger your father seems to be? Other men show respect for him. He makes decisions and sticks to them.'

And Tom replied: 'It's as if he was waiting all those years for this to happen,'

and Missy, in a burst of affection for this maturing boy, grasped his hand and added: 'Same thing's happening with you, Tom. By the time we get to the gold fields, you'll be a man.'

Sergeant Kirby, watching this energetic team move its goods so adeptly, told his fellow Mounties one night: 'We've seen some pretty horrible Americans come up that slope. But have you noticed those three Venns? They make up for a lot of the others.'

One of the Canadians asked: 'Why do you look after them so much?' and he said: 'I have a boy at home, about half their boy's age. I'd be happy if he grew up as responsible.'

He reflected on this for some moments, then added: 'And I have a lot of respect for a man like Venn who keeps things moving. Who maintains order,' and one of the older Mounties asked: 'You also have quite a bit of respect for Mrs. Venn, don't you?'

And there the conversation ended.

The Chilkoot Pass had its photographers, too, men of daring and endurance who lugged huge cameras and heavy glass plates to the most remote locations so as to take three minute exposures of tiny figures set against vast snowfields. One such bold experimenter was a twenty-one-year-old man born in Sweden but reared in Wisconsin, where at the age of fifteen he had opened a full-time professional photography studio. Mesmerized by the magnitude of the Klondike gold rush, he was one of those prudent men who perceived that his fortune was to be made not washing sand in some mountain stream but in making pictures of the men who were.

He seemed to be present everywhere, his industry combining with good luck to put him in the right place at the right time. For example, on that fatal Sunday when the avalanche struck, he was not far away, and three of his shots show Buck Venn and son Tom, among hundreds of others, digging for bodies. But one of his most memorable pictures, taken on that same day, shows Missy Peckham looking small, determined and appealing against the snow. She stands erect, in heavy boots, a jaunty Russian peasant's cap on her head. Her skirt is extremely full, falling in neat folds to her boot tops and gathered at her waist in a circle so tiny it seemed to 534

divide her into two different halves. Her blouse, not unusually heavy despite the snow, fits very tight across the middle but is voluminous at the shoulders and topped by the neatest possible little collar. Six bright buttons adorn the front, but even such features are obscured by the determination that glows from her face.

It is not a pretty face, in the advertiser's sense, but it is so marvelously controlled that it is almost heroic. The young woman who stares from this photograph intended getting to the gold fields.

On the day that the five-man team hoisted the last of its supplies into Canada, and the duties had been paid, the men parted, each following his own vision of how best to reach the gold fields. As the Venns prepared to take their cargo downhill in nine or ten easy sled loads, Sergeant Kirby took them aside for a curious message: 'When a man dies on the slopes, if he's alone, I have the job of looking after his belongings, and if he carried an address, we send his money and his papers home.

His goods we sell . . . whatever we can get for them. An old man died up here the other day. Must have been sixty.'

'What's the problem?' Buck asked, and Kirby said: 'He didn't leave much but he did have this very good sail. He may have been connected with ships, because the sewing on the canvas is special.'

'I don't follow.'

'Mr. Venn, hasn't anybody told you? It's a long way to Lake Lindeman. When you get there it'll be frozen, and when you finish with it, there's a far distance to Lake Bennett, where you must build your boat for the river trip to Dawson. But if you mount a sail on your sled, what with the strong winds around here, you'll skim all the way to the lake.' He added: 'I'll sell you the sail for two dollars, and I advise you to take it.' When Buck handed over the two dollars, Kirby asked for a signed and dated receipt: 'We like to keep things strictly legal, seeing two different nations are involved.'

Descending the Canadian side of Chilkoot Pass was almost a pleasure; leaving Tom at the top to help with loading the sled, Buck took Missy down to the bottom of the steep incline to assemble the goods as he brought them down, and he traveled so fast that he often became airborne when vaulting over some bump in the snow.

Missy, watching him come around the corner as he approached the rapidly building store of goods, cautioned him: 'Sergeant Kirby warned me not to stick my legs out at the speed Tom and I were going. You're coming down twice that fast. Be careful.'

Once the goods were down off the mountain, the nine miles to Lake Lindeman consisted of a gentle, easily negotiated

535

slope, and now the dead man's sail became invaluable, for Buck built a small wooden box into which the bottom end of the mast could be stepped, and guyed with ropes to keep the top erect. With a yardarm in place, he could expose a huge amount of sail, and thus impelled, could almost sail over the packed snow.

Again the three Venns were separated: Tom guarding the cache at the foot of the mountain, Missy at the delivery point, and Buck either sailing happily downhill with a load of gear or trudging back with the empty sled.

On the last sail downhill from the top of Chilkoot Pass, Buck brought Tom with him, and when the careening sled pulled up where Missy waited, the boy saw that their goods were now stashed beside the first lake, a beautiful body of water whose shores contained a blizzard of white tents housing an informal town of thousands, with snowy roads and two improvised hotels which served hot meals. Gazing in awe at this improbable sight, Tom cried: 'The whole world seems to be white.'

The Venns were now at the spot where the Yukon River was supposed to begin and where Soapy Smith's route from Skagway joined. The repeated cargo trips down Lake Lindeman, about six and a half miles each way, were a dreamlike adventure, for the surface was frozen smooth, allowing the sled to skim along. The surrounding hills were deep in snow, the air was crisp, and there was a constant wind blowing away from the Chilkoot and directly toward where the travelers wished to go. 'This is the best journey we'll have,' Buck predicted as they moved through this world of winter beauty, modified by a strong hint of coming summer in the air.

On his third trip down Lindeman, Buck allowed his sled to slide rather far to the right, which threw him onto an unexpected rough patch in the ice. Wind, or the inflow of water from some unseen stream debouching from the mountains, had caused blocks of ice to erupt, marring the smooth surface. He tried kicking his sled away from them, and sprained his right foot. It was not serious, but he wished to avoid such a problem on his remaining trips, so when he dragged his sled back to the western end of the lake he asked Tom to see if he could find some kind of pole which could be used to maneuver among the ice blocks, and the boy found one about nine feet long and stout enough to protect the sled. On subsequent trips, the wind continued to push Buck toward the right bank, but with the pole he was able to shove the sled away from the blocks.

On his last trip he packed the sled with the remaining eight hundred pounds of gear and perched Tom on top. Lying 536

back, guiding the sled by tugging on the lines holding the sail, they glided speedily down toward Lake Bennett where they would build their boat for the Yukonas Tom cried with glee: 'Not a single hill between here and Dawson. We can sail right to our gold mine.'

Then the boy suddenly shouted: Top! Rough ice ahead!' and Buck called back: T see it. I know how to get past.' He swung his pole out, but this time the load was so heavy and the speed so great that the end of the pole caught in a huge block of ice, then wedged itself in a crevice.

When the pole began to bend in an alarming arc, Tom shouted: 'Pop! Let go!'

Too late. The pole snapped, the near end dangling uselessly from Buck's hands, the other, jagged and torn, springing forward like an arrow shot from some giant bow.

It hit Buck in the middle of his chest, not like a sliver of steel but like the shattered end of a lance, tearing a hole big and crude and brutal.

When Buck saw the blood spurt out, he looked helplessly at his son, and Tom saw his father's wind-hardened face grow ashen. His hands left the pole and reached up, and he clutched at the wound. He looked once more at his son as a pulsating flow of blood gushed from his mouth; then he collapsed as the sled, sail aloft, sped serenely down the lake.

WILL KIRBY WAS POLICING THE SEVEN THOUSAND BOATS being built along Lake Lindeman and the waterway leading to Lake Bennett when he heard that yet another prospector had been killed coming down from Chilkoot Pass, and with a sense of irritation with Americans who barged into dangers they did not comprehend, he hurried up to where reports said the accident had occurred. He was shaken to find that the dead man was Buchanan Venn, who had proved himself so reliable on the pass, and when he came upon the woman Missy and her son and found them shivering beside the lake, bereft and unable to focus upon the manifold problems that now confronted them, he felt great pity for them and did what he could to help.

'We'll look after you. We don't allow women to suffer disadvantage on this trail.'

Taking Tom aside, he said firmly: 'Now we see whether you're going to be a man or not,' and he was gratified to watch the boy respond by taking charge of the sled that had killed his father.