Down the Yukon (5 page)

Dawson's milling crowds were anxious to leave town. At any time of day, a small throng could be found inspecting the maps of Alaska posted at the warehouses of the Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Trading Company. With Nome on my mind, I spent hours among them studying the course of the Yukon across the breadth of Alaska, and the shape of the coastline between the Yukon's delta and the new gold mecca, Nome.

I listened to the talk of hundreds of men. Aside from the word “gold,” the next two mentioned most often were “breakup” and “steamboats.” Breakup on the Yukon would bring the steamboats, and the steamboats would take them from Front Street fifteen hundred miles downriver to salt water, then fifty or sixty miles up the coast to the old Russian port of St. Michael.

Until the news of the new stampede, most of
Dawson's disappointed had planned to ship immediately south to the States from St. Michael. Now, with one last chance to strike it rich, most were planning to try Nome before they headed home. Transfer to an oceangoing steamer wasn't even necessary. A number of the Yukon River steamboats were going to proceed across the Norton Sound direct to Nome. In good weather, riverboats could make that crossing.

There were long lines for tickets, and it soon became apparent that the several dozen steamboats working the river wouldn't be able to accommodate everyone—not as soon as they wanted to go. For me, two hundred dollars for steamboat passage to Nome was out of the question. On top of that, the barest essentials for prospecting and wintering in Nome would cost well over a thousand dollars.

I had ninety dollars to my name, but I couldn't let that stump me. I'd left Seattle for the North with ten dollars in my pocket. If I could somehow make it to Nome and stake a claim, I would have something of value, something to work or to sell.

Some at Dawson who couldn't afford steamboat transportation were building scows or lashing together crude log rafts. In addition, there were hundreds of skiffs at Dawson—handsome rowed boats that had been made from whipsawed lumber at the Yukon's headwater lakes. Not that I could afford a skiff: Suddenly they were valuable. I considered joining with three or four others to buy one, but I'd heard enough about prospecting partnerships to know they usually ended in grief.

I'd rather go it alone. I'd paddle the remaining fifteen hundred miles of the Yukon in the same canoe I paddled the first five hundred, the green Peterborough I'd stowed a year ago behind our cabin. It was an eighteen-footer,
identical to the one Jamie and her father had paddled to Dawson. “The finest made in Canada,” Jamie had called it.

I'd head to St. Michael, then buy a thirty-dollar ticket for deck passage to Nome on one of the big steamers. The last leg across the Norton Sound would be a breeze.

By the time I got to Nome I'd be broke, but a claim stake wouldn't cost me a dime and neither would a rock to pound it in.

All my hopes were pinned on the condition of my canoe. I hadn't inspected it since I'd tipped it over a year before onto three short logs to keep it out of the dirt. The weight of snow could have broken its ribs; a porcupine could have chewed it up underneath.

As I headed home from the warehouse of the Alaska Commercial Company I was remembering what a splendid paddler Jamie was. It came with being a girl of the north country.

After nearly a year my memory of Jamie hadn't begun to fade. Those freckles on her nose were vivid as yesterday; so was her wavy black hair.

I slowed my stride and let my memory drift, and then I was back in Skagway, seeing her for the first time. I'd collapsed in the street and woken in a strange room to her voice and her hazel eyes.

I let my mind drift a little more and found myself perched on the bluff where Lake Lindeman spilled into the roily One Mile River. The scene came back clearly. There were Jamie and Homer down below, paddling their Peterborough expertly into the maw of the rapids.

By the time I was nearing the cabin, my memories had seated me in the Palace Grand, staring up at the stage at the confident wonder of her: Jamie, the Princess of Dawson.

I came back to the present and broke into a run. Behind the cabin, the fireweed was knee-high around the canoe and starting to bloom.

Carefully, I tipped the canoe over and eased it to the ground. My eyes ran up and down its frame. I could breathe easy. It was in perfect condition.

My paddle and my old spare were inside the cabin, cross mounted on the wall for decoration. It was time to put them back to use!

I sat in the grass by the canoe, enjoying the heat of the May sunshine. In addition to the fireweed, all sorts of other wildflowers were blooming around the cabin.

All winter, on account of Jamie, I'd been waiting for them. How many times in the last ten months had I recited that last stanza from her final performance? As she'd thrilled the house with the conclusion of her father's new poem, “My Heart Remains in the Northland,” Jamie had kept her eyes on mine. Afterward, she'd confided that she'd written the stanza herself:

Now I lay back in the lush green grass, and I looked up at the first billowy clouds of summer sailing by overhead. I reached out for a wildflower—a bright blue lupine—plucked it, and put its stem between my teeth. A fragrance I decided must be Jamie herself wafted through my nostrils to my imagination, and I allowed
myself to remember her in all her coltlike glory, intelligent and impulsive and direct as an arrow. I admitted to myself how much I'd counted on her fulfilling her promise, how devastated I'd been to learn that her father had died.

Arizona Charlie was right. Jamie would pursue a new life on the stage among her new acquaintances. It stood to reason that a girl of fifteen wouldn't travel alone to the ends of the earth because of a stanza she'd written for a poem, because of a boy she'd met on the stampede to the Klondike. She'd have a manager who'd have plans for her. They'd have offers from every theater she'd performed in across the country. Jamie's radiance was as genuine as a June day north of the Arctic Circle, and her effect on all those audiences would have been electric. By now she was undoubtedly performing as a dramatic actress on the stage, in what city I couldn't begin to guess.

No, I had no reason to hope that Jamie would return to Dawson City now that her world had turned upside down. I had no reason to hope that she was still “counting the time till winter fades and breakup nears.” What were the chances that at this moment she was on her way back to fulfill her promise?

The honking of geese, the first of the season, brought me out of the gloom. I located the flock, a noisy V of forty or more, winging north down the river. The wild joy with which they were announcing their return stirred my heart and provoked my memory.

When it was just the two of us, Jamie had told me, “I'll be back for the summer season as surely as the swans and the geese.”

“I'll be standing right here on the dock,” I had promised.

Suddenly I realized that I had a problem. I was planning on pushing off for Nome as soon as it was safe to paddle. The first boat into Dawson from the Pacific couldn't possibly arrive until a week or ten days after that.

“I'll be on the first boat, and it will feel so grand—”

No, I couldn't follow the ice down the Yukon on the heels of breakup, at the head of the new stampede. I had to wait at least for that first boat. I wouldn't break a promise to Jamie for all the gold in Nome.

The prize money for the North American Trading Company's Second Annual Breakup Lottery was fourteen thousand dollars and growing. I bought six chances at a dollar apiece—not that I mentioned this first fling at gambling to Abe. If I won he wouldn't fault me. I would quickly arrange the purchase of the sawmill, then launch my canoe and point it downriver: Nome was a magic word, and I wasn't going to miss the pure adventure of it. I'd be back on my own hook.

Everybody knew that breakup happens in the last two weeks of May or the first couple days of June. The person who guessed closest to the day, the hour, and the minute of the beginning of breakup would collect the prize money. On a hunch, I guessed it would be a few days later than the previous year; I put all my eggs into May 29's basket. For the exact time, I devised a system. Burnt Paw was my audience as I was thinking it up. We
were outside the North American warehouse, on their dock, where I had a good view of the river ice.

“Listen carefully, Burnt Paw. For the hour, I'm going to put all six tries on six
A.M.
” His ears stood up high and his bent tail beat a rhythm on the planking.

“You know why? The six stands for June, the month that the steamboats from the Pacific first arrive. Now for the minutes. I'll spread out my six chances. For starters, I'll pick three for the number of legs you like to stand on. You look dubious, my friend.”

I rubbed Burnt Paw behind the ears the way he liked, and scratched his belly. Burnt Paw spent as much time with me these days as with Ethan, maybe because I talked to him so much.

“I'll pick seventeen because I turned seventeen last month; twenty-three for Ethan's current age; thirty for the number of days in the month Jamie was born, which is April; forty-five for the number of states in the Union; and fifty-six for the minimum number of years I'd like to spend in the North with Jamie.”

 

Breakup indeed came on the twenty-ninth day of May. We were on our way to work, taking it slow on the hill below the cabin—Ethan was still on his crutches. That first crack from the river ice came loud as the shearing gates of eternity.

“Breakup!” I exclaimed. “Abe, quick—what time is it?”

Abe was the keeper of the gold watch that had been our father's. That old piece was as dependable as a ship captain's.

Disapproval written large across his face, Abe slowly pulled it out of his pocket by its chain, then hesitated. “Open it!” I said. “There's no black widow spider in there!”

By now half of Dawson had poured onto Front Street. Finally Abe opened the watch.

“Thirty-three minutes after six!” I declared. I knew I had a ticket that was awfully close.

Abraham glared at Ethan. “You didn't gamble on that breakup lottery?”

With his hearty laugh, Ethan declared, “For God's sake, no.”

I took off running toward the North American warehouse.

“Did you, Jason?” Abe called after me.

I noticed the mutt's ears flapping at my side. “No,” I called back, “but I couldn't stop Burnt Paw!”

By the time I reached the river, thousands were crowding the embankment watching the Yukon's yearly reminder of how puny all our efforts were compared to Nature's.

Burnt Paw barked at the colliding shards of ice as if they were animate beings. Many of them were house sized, and all were in motion. Their movements were chaotic but generally downstream. The hissing and grinding and cracking made a deafening din.

Accompanied by Burnt Paw, I made my way to the warehouse office to learn my fate. I had a very strong feeling that the mill would be ours again by nightfall.

A throng had gathered. By the office window of the warehouse, a sign had been posted with the heading
EXACT TIME OF BREAKUP—DAY, HOUR, MINUTE.
As I arrived, a clerk with a thin mustache and a grave expression had written a large 29 under
DAY,
and now he wrote 6
A.M.
under
HOUR.
Shouts went up from a dozen or so throats, one of them mine.

Now for the telling minute…All my hopes were on my ticket for May 29, 6
A.M.
and 30 minutes.

The clerk paused tantalizingly with his marker in midair.

“Out with it, you donkey!” someone yelled.

Under
MINUTES
, with a quick flourish, the clerk jotted down 32.

I felt as if I'd been hit with destiny's golden bolt. I was only two minutes off. Surely I'd won!

As I reached in my pocket for my tickets, a woman shrieked from the back, “It might be me!”

The crowd parted, revealing a woman gray before her years who was picking up her skirts and starting forward.

The lady was telling people at her elbow what her number was, but I couldn't hear for all the commotion. Seconds later her number passed through the throng like wildfire and left me jubilant as a fish on a drying rack. Hers—31—was one minute closer than mine. One minute!

A minute later the clerk verified that no one had bought a ticket for thirty-two minutes after the hour. “We have a winner!” he declared.

Word was passed, to much approval, that the woman worked at a dressmaking and millinery shop. A check for $17,463 was waiting for her at the bank! At least a rich man wasn't going to pocket the prize, I consoled myself.

Suddenly I saw a flash of silver from the corner of my eye. In the same instant came a yelp from Burnt Paw. He'd been struck!

“Donner!” I yelled, recognizing the rogue in fancy clothes behind the silver cane. “Why did you do that?”

I lifted Burnt Paw up so that he wouldn't be trampled by Donner or anyone else.

“Because the cur was in my way, everybody's way.”

Burnt Paw, whose face was now nearly level with the eyes of his tormenter, began to growl.

Donner lifted his cane menacingly; Burnt Paw growled even louder.

I held tight, not knowing what Burnt Paw might do. “You knew he was ours.”

“I didn't. I didn't even see you until after I'd struck him. But now that you mention it, I have seen the mongrel before. I have a keen memory…. When was it…? Yes, on the street, the day your brother defended the dog's right to the boardwalk.”

Burnt Paw was still growling. “It seems like he has a keen memory, too,” I said. “Something tells me you should make an effort to stay out of his way.”

Donner burst out laughing. “You're no wrestler, Hawthorn, but you're a fine comedian.”

 

Within two days the river was spotted by only occasional floes. To the cheers of hundreds and cries of “Nome or bust!” and “Hurrah for Nome!” dozens of parties started downriver on scows and log rafts, smart-looking skiffs too. The
W. K. Merwyn,
a creaky little steamboat that had dry-docked in Dawson for the winter, set off with standing room only.

I was in a high panic that these rushers and thousands more would stake all the beaches at Nome that had gold in them before I could get there. All the same I stood fast as a pillar of salt, struck immobile by the possibility, however remote, of Jamie's return.

Abe said, “You're waiting another day or two for the river to be completely ice-free, eh, Jason?”

“It's a fragile craft, your canoe,” Ethan chimed in.

I had to tell them I was waiting for Jamie, for the possibility she would return. So that's what I did. I told
them about the conversation we'd had when she'd left Dawson back in July.

They already knew about her father's death. I wasn't surprised that Abe looked doubtful. “Maybe you should get going while there's time.”

Ethan, still a dreamer at heart, said, “You're doing the right thing, Jason. If you want, I'll greet the rest if she isn't on the first one. That way, I can tell her how you were there to meet the first one and are dying to see her when you return from Nome—a conquering hero.”

“Now you both know,” I said. “I'm a fool for love.”

“I'm sure there's no greater cause,” Abe allowed.

While I was waiting I started to assemble an outfit for my journey downriver. In pawnshops I rummaged among the castoffs from the tens of thousands of stampeders who'd passed through Dawson. My eyes took in rifles and shotguns selling for only a dollar or two apiece; clothing from gum boots to prospectors' hats; rope, canvas, goldpans, picks, shovels, and mosquito netting; even medicines like Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure. I bought rope and canvas and mosquito netting, and oilskin sacks for dry storage of flour, sugar, beans, and evaporated foods such as dried fruit and soup vegetables. A bald vendor with a sense of humor threw in Dr. Kilmer's Cure for free.

More and more boats were setting off downriver. Watching them go made me sick in the pit of my stomach. After a while I stopped watching. Simply hearing the gunshots as they launched and all the shouts of “Nome or bust!” had the same effect. I was losing my chance at Nome's golden beaches.

Within days, the Yukon was threatening to flood Dawson as it had the year before. The entire town, including the three of us—Ethan's cast was freshly removed—
stood shoulder to shoulder sandbagging the top of the riverbank. As we labored, hundreds of boatloads of new Klondike hopefuls pulled in from the lakes at the head of the Yukon—Tagish and Bennett and Lindeman. It was a puny fleet compared to the navy of '98.

The river crested as it lapped at the sandbags. Dawson was spared flood on the heels of fire.

Most of Dawson's new arrivals stayed no longer than to gawk at the sights and to buy supplies. Most of these gaunt men and women had overwintered in canvas tents along the shores of Bennett and Lindeman five hundred miles upstream. By now they'd heard the news that the rest of us had learned a year before. The rich ground had been staked by prospectors already along the Yukon when gold was discovered clear back in August of '96.

In great numbers, the newcomers put Dawson at their backs and rushed downriver. To my dismay almost all of them had their sights freshly set on Nome.

Eight in the evening on June 12, the Hawthorn brothers were eating supper at our little table outside the cabin. The sun was still high. As ever, I was keeping watch on the farewell bend a couple miles below Dawson, where the Yukon turned a corner and disappeared under a big landslide scar that looked like a scraped mooseskin.

One moment it wasn't there and the next it was: a big, bright sternwheeler, plowing its way around the bend and spouting a cloud of white smoke from its stack. I blinked a few times, thinking I was imagining it, until I heard the chuffing of its exhaust. Half a second later came a mighty whistle blast and then two more. Burnt Paw got up from under the table, perked up his ears, and stood facing town and the river. “First boat,” Ethan said.
“Big, fancy one—bet it's the
Yukoner.
Fastest boat on the river last season.”

Within seconds, thousands of people streamed out of Dawson's buildings and onto the streets. I steeled myself against disappointment as I rose and said calmly, “I think I'll run down there and join the first-boat celebration.”

Ethan winked and said, “You run along, Jason. I'm off my feet for the day.”

“Think I'll stay with Ethan,” Abe said. “You go with Burnt Paw. Good luck, Jason. You never know—she might be on that boat.”

I grabbed my broad-brimmed prospector's hat, the one I'd worn coming over the Chilkoot, for good luck.

I walked a bit, then broke into a run. My heart was in my throat. All the while came the booming blasts of the steam whistle. I couldn't see the sternwheeler anymore for the buildings as I ran through the back streets. “Faster, Burnt Paw!” I yelled, and the mutt ran in front of me, looking back, ears flapping. At one point he got tangled up underfoot and I almost went down.

A brass band was playing a march as I reached Front Street. On the river side of the street and spilling down the Yukon's bank, thousands jostled for a good view. Burnt Paw lent his shrill voice to the canine cacophony. People were shouting, children running back and forth….

Burnt Paw and I squirmed our way across Front Street to the embankment.

Now I could see the lettering—it was the
Yukoner
—and passengers on all three decks crowding the rails, waving their hats. I could see plenty of dresses, but I couldn't see faces.

The fancy white sternwheeler nosed into the dock
and the boat was tied up. At last I could see faces. Passengers began to come down the gangplank. I studied every woman's face, suddenly doubting I'd be able to recognize Jamie's.

It took only a matter of minutes for the
Yukoner
to empty out. I fell in a heap to the ground, realizing the damage my hopes had done me.

Then there was one more passenger, under a straw hat in a bright summer dress. A young woman? A girl? I stood up, watching closely as she struggled with a large leather suitcase.

The young woman looked at the crowd up and down the bank, her eyes searching, darting this way and that.

Her hair was black as a raven's wing.

Our eyes met.

“Jamie!” I cried.

“Jason!” she called. “Jason!”