The Great Gold Rush Part 6

The party moved steadily along for a mile or two, when the road left the flats and took to the side hill at the right hand of the canyon. A considerable amount of work had been done, and the trail was in good shape; but they had not gone far before they were met by a toll-gate.

"Twenty-five cents each, and two dollars and a half for the dog-team,"

was demanded of them, which they paid. The keeper of the toll-gate seemed happy; he was prospering, and those who employed him were making money. John and George thought the charge excessive, but Hugh was exercising his wits, calculating how much the proprietors made out of what he called their "graft."

Not far beyond the toll-gate they met an old man sitting by a fire under the lee of a wall of rock. He was off the trail in a sort of little cove, and on the much-betramped snow around was a sleigh, and by it five goats in harness. The old man merely looked up as the three friends approached, and went on poking the fire.

"Well, partner, enjoying the scenery?" asked Hugh, in his good-natured manner.

"No--I wish I was dead."

"How's that?"

"These ornery goats here, I can't do nothing with them, an' if it wasn't for poor little Bess, back home, I'd shoot them and meself too."

"What's the trouble?"

"Well, the ornery critters won't pull a pound, and the fellow who sold them to me down in Seattle said they was just the thing for the Pa.s.s--better'n dogs, for I could feed them on birch browse; but I lit out from Skagtown[6] four days ago and could get no further than this. I pretty near had to pull sleigh and goats too to get this far; and I pitched camp here, where I've stayed ever since. You see it's this way--the old woman died last fall, and after she died the poor old farm went plumb to pieces, hard times, and mortgage falling due; so I got a sickening of the old place without the old woman, and I let the farm go and put little Bess to school for a year, and lit out for the Klondike.

Bess ain't Bess by rights; she was christianized Matilda Jane, and we called her Bess for short. Well, the old woman was always building on bringing up Bess a real lady, and afore she died I promised I'd give Bess a good schooling and help all I could, and I took to the Klondike, hearing all a fellow had to do was to get there, and he'd be rich. Here I am now, and I ain't got no more money. I'm just trying to make up my mind to shoot the blamed goats and pull my stuff back to Skagtown and sell it. Then I guess I'll go packing on the Chilkoot along with the Siwashes."

[6] Skagway

The old man seemed to forget the presence of the strangers, and muttered, "Poor little Bess! Poor little Bess! I was hoping to make her a real lady with silks, an' satins, an' diamonds, an' kid gloves, an'

fancy eye-gla.s.ses."

Hugh cracked the whip, John tightened on the cord, the dogs threw themselves into the traces; and the trio was on its way up the Pa.s.s. No one spoke for some time; each was thinking of the old man's tale, and of such as that old man there were hundreds in the Pa.s.ses.

The trail, as they struggled along, proved to be more and more built against the side hill, and frequently the sleigh showed a disposition to slide into the canyon, so that all were compelled to give attention to it. But the three men taking turn at the gee-pole, they had soon crossed Kill-a-man Creek, and were at the foot of Porcupine Hill. The time had pa.s.sed quickly, and the air, though cold, was highly stimulating. George and John voted the parka a wonderful garment.

Arriving at the base of the hill, Hugh quickly undid the fastenings, piled half the load on the side of the trail, and relashed the balance to the sleigh; then he and John set about the task of taking the first load to the top of the hill, while George mounted guard at the base.

Hugh took the gee-pole, John harnessed himself in the cord that was attached to the left-hand rear of the sleigh; so they set out.

The hill made a rise of several hundred feet in the first quarter of a mile, and in some places seemed almost standing on end; but straining, pulling, tugging, men and dogs both, they eventually reached the top.

They soon had the sleigh unloaded, and Hugh was off down again for the remainder of the load. In three-quarters of an hour they were all together again. Then began the descent, which was almost as acute as the rise had been. They adjusted the necessary brakes by tying a piece of rope around each runner.

Before leaving the summit of Porcupine Hill they had a good look at the view. Across the valley in front, set in a basin of the mountains, was a collection of buildings and tents, const.i.tuting White Pa.s.s City. Two long lines of men and teams marked the White Pa.s.s, one on the left side of the canyon, the other on the canyon bottom. The hillside trail was used by horses, mules, and oxen, while in the wedge-like canyon bottom men and dogs toiled. The reason for the hillside trail was that its ascent was more gradual, the lower trail having many abrupt rises up which horses and oxen could not clamber.

The scene of toil and labour, backed by the sublimity of the surroundings, impressed the beholders; but the party came to life again with Hugh's order, "Mus.h.!.+"

The dogs struggled with the load over the brink of the decline down which the sleigh quickly pa.s.sed, and the party was not long in reaching White Pa.s.s City. This was the first depot out from Skagway, and was distant there-from twelve miles. From White Pa.s.s City to Lake Bennett the distance was twenty-four miles, so they were now one-third of the way. But the twelve miles they had pa.s.sed was the easiest part of the journey.

Saloons and restaurants in wide array, and numerous stables in the shape of tents tied down and guyed against the ever-recurring blasts, comprised White Pa.s.s City. And how the wind did blow from the funnel-shaped canyon across the basin in which the town was built!

Notwithstanding the cold, beasts of burden were standing in all directions, tied to posts and rails, while the dogs seemed without number. It being now late in the day, there were more teams returning from the summit and Bennett than were setting out. Amongst those returning they met a man with a dozen pack-mules. Long icicles hung from his moustache, powdery snow was driven into the folds of his parka, his cheeks were alternate patches of blue and crimson. His manner was bl.u.s.tering, because he was glad at having returned, and proud that he had done so without losing any horses.

"h.e.l.lo," said Hugh, "what's it like on the summit?"

"What's it like! Look here, stranger, if I owned h.e.l.l and that summit, I'd sell the summit and live in h.e.l.l, so help me! What's the matter with the summit? Why, if that cursed wind ain't blowing from the north cold enough to freeze h.e.l.l, then it's blowing from the south and snowing as if all the feather beds in the New Jerusalem were being split open and shaken loose. I'll be hanged if the Mounted Police ain't got a stable and store-house scooped out under the snow, and the roof standing up like as if it was a rock. About sixty feet of snow has fallen up there this winter; and how them poor devils of policemen hold things down in tents is more than I know. A fellow can tackle it for a day or two, but these fellows have been up there since early in February!"

"It's a way they have in the Army," suggested George, always an ardent Briton.

"Those fellows are different from any Army fellows I ever seed," was the stranger's reply.

The pack-train was called to a halt. The communicative stranger and his a.s.sistants were taking the saddles off the mules; but for once the dogs were impatient and restless: instinct told them they were near the end of their day's work and the prospect of food. So Hugh let them have their way, and they drew up in front of a restaurant which bore the legend, "Meals, seventy-five cents."

"Better go in and eat, fellows, and I'll look after the dogs," said Hugh.

His friends demurred, but he insisted; so they entered the restaurant.

There was the same motley crowd feeding in the same savage manner as at Skagway. Everybody smoked on the trail--in all places and under any condition--save where the pipe froze and refused its duty.

The hour was between two and three. Berwick and his comrade thought they had never been so hungry. How they relished the hot soup, and the meat, potatoes, and beans! And when they drank ...! George finished his dinner first, and scrambled off to relieve Hugh, whom he found cutting up pieces of raw meat for the dogs.

"Raw meat ain't any too good for dogs, but after they get over the summit they will get down to boiled rice and tallow--and that ain't far off."

Hugh was certainly the favourite of the dogs just then, but soon after George's arrival he put the piece of meat he had been dividing into a sack and threw it on the sleigh, and hurried to the restaurant, saying that he would boil the rest of the meat for the dogs after he himself had something to eat. "Look out for Soapy's gang" was his final warning to George.

After Hugh had his dinner (dinner is the mid-day, supper the evening, meal on the trail) he remarked that he would take a mooch round. When he returned he greeted his friends with:

"Say, I found a fellow I know here running one of these stables, and he has a tent with a lot of hay in it, and says we can sleep in that, which will save us making camp. We can put the dogs inside and run less chances of having them stolen; also the grub."

So Dude was aroused from his sleep; four other doggy noses were withdrawn from under four bushy tails, and to the accompaniment of howls the load was removed to the hay-tent, the dogs unharnessed, the load unpacked. Hugh undid the bedding and spread it on a pile of straw.

"This will be the last bed we'll strike for some time after we leave here," was his remark.

He grabbed the sack with the meat, and went off to see if he could find s.p.a.ce on a stove to boil it. He soon returned with the meat, as well as a bucket in which were canine dainties--kitchen sc.r.a.ps.

"Chuck it into you," was Hugh's remark to the dogs as he threw them the food; "you'll have to work to-morrow."

As there was nothing to do now till that morrow, the three again strolled out to look at the trail, up which the full flow of traffic was now toiling. Profanity filled the air. The travellers cursed the trail; they cursed their horses, cursed their dogs, the wind, the country generally.

They wandered into a saloon, which, as ever, was reeking with tobacco, and vibrating to the notes of "Home, sweet Home," reeled off on a gramophone. Hugh looked cautiously at the company. "Soapy's men!" he whispered; so he and his companions went. John noticed that a good deal of money was being won at the tables; but Hugh told him that the men who were winning were Soapy's staff.

"They seem to run a wonderful system," said John.

"Yes; Soapy pretty nearly owns the whole shop from the Lynn Ca.n.a.l to the summit."

"But why does he stop at the summit?"

"Police."

"But they have police on this side."

"Not the same."

"How do you account for that?"

"Don't know: discipline! The Canadian police are not grafting. Fellows I've met from the inside tell me that Cap Constantine gave records for all the rich claims in Bonanza, and neither he nor any of the rest of the Mounted Police grafted any. That's what I call honest; but now, since the records have been taken away from the police, there's nothing but grafting going on. Fellows have to give up half interest in claims to the officials before they can get record; and even the Government is grafting officially with this ten per cent. royalty. If some of those Members of Parliament back in Canada were here, with this proposition, getting over these Pa.s.ses, they'd think they had a right to all they'd found in this country. And now they are taking part of it away--it's a shame, I call it."