bought many a drinkin the old and palmy days. And from him John Tarwater borrowed a dollar.Finally, he took the afternoon train to San Francisco.
A dozen days later, carrying a half-empty canvas sack of blankets and oldclothes, he landed on the beach of Dyea in the thick of the greatKlondike Rush. The beach was screaming bedlam. Ten thousand tons ofoutfit lay heaped and scattered, and twice ten thousand men struggledwith it and clamoured about it. Freight, by Indian-back, over Chilcootto Lake Linderman, had jumped from sixteen to thirty cents a pound, whichlatter was a rate of six hundred dollars a ton. And the sub-arcticwinter gloomed near at hand. All knew it, and all knew that of thetwenty thousand of them very few would get across the passes, leaving therest to winter and wait for the late spring thaw.
Such the beach old John Tarwater stepped upon; and straight across thebeach and up the trail toward Chilcoot he headed, cackling his ancientchant, a very Grandfather Argus himself, with no outfit worry in theworld, for he did not possess any outfit. That night he slept on theflats, five miles above Dyea, at the head of canoe navigation. Here theDyea River became a rushing mountain torrent, plunging out of a darkcanyon from the glaciers that fed it far above.
And here, early next morning, he beheld a little man weighing no morethan a hundred, staggering along a foot-log under all of a hundred poundsof flour strapped on his back. Also, he beheld the little man stumbleoff the log and fall face-downward in a quiet eddy where the water wastwo feet deep and proceed quietly to drown. It was no desire of his totake death so easily, but the flour on his back weighed as much as he andwould not let him up.
“Thank you, old man,” he said to Tarwater, when the latter had draggedhim up into the air and ashore.
While he unlaced his shoes and ran the water out, they had further talk.Next, he fished out a ten-dollar gold-piece and offered it to hisrescuer.
Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water had wet himto his knees.
“But I reckon I wouldn’t object to settin’ down to a friendly meal withyou.”
“Ain’t had breakfast?” the little man, who was past forty and who hadsaid his name was Anson, queried with a glance frankly curious.
“Nary bite,” John Tarwater answered.
“Where’s your outfit? Ahead?”
“Nary outfit.”
“Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?”
“Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend. Which ain’t so important as awarm bite of breakfast right now.”
In Anson’s camp, a quarter of a mile on, Tarwater found a slender,red-whiskered young man of thirty cursing over a fire of wet willow wood.Introduced as Charles, he transferred his scowl and wrath to Tarwater,who, genially oblivious, devoted himself to the fire, took advantage ofthe chill morning breeze to create a draught which the other had leftstupidly blocked by stones, and soon developed less smoke and more flame.The third member of the party, Bill Wilson, or Big Bill as they calledhim, came in with a hundred-and-forty-pound pack; and what Tarwateresteemed to be a very rotten breakfast was dished out by Charles. Themush was half cooked and mostly burnt, the bacon was charred carbon, andthe coffee was unspeakable.
Immediately the meal was wolfed down the three partners took their emptypack-straps and headed down trail to where the remainder of their outfitlay at the last camp a mile away. And old Tarwater became busy. Hewashed the dishes, foraged dry wood, mended a broken pack-strap, put anedge on the butcher-knife and camp-axe, and repacked the picks andshovels into a more carryable parcel.
What had impressed him during the brief breakfast was the sort of awe inwhich Anson and Big Bill stood of Charles. Once, during the morning,while Anson took a breathing spell after bringing in anotherhundred-pound pack, Tarwater delicately hinted his impression.
“You see, it’s this way,” Anson said. “We’ve divided our leadership.We’ve got specialities. Now I’m a carpenter. When we get to LakeLinderman, and the trees are chopped and whipsawed into planks, I’ll bossthe building of the boat. Big Bill is a logger and miner. So he’ll bossgetting out the logs and all mining operations. Most of our outfit’sahead. We went broke paying the Indians to pack that much of it to thetop of Chilcoot. Our last partner is up there with it, moving it alongby himself down the other side. His name’s Liverpool, and he’s a sailor.So, when the boat’s built, he’s the boss of the outfit to navigate thelakes and rapids to Klondike.
“And Charles—this Mr. Crayton—what might his speciality be?” Tarwaterasked.
“He’s the business man. When it comes to business and organization he’sboss.”
“Hum,” Tarwater pondered. “Very lucky to get such a bunch ofspecialities into one outfit.”
“More than luck,” Anson agreed. “It was all accident, too. Each of usstarted alone. We met on the steamer coming up from San Francisco, andformed the party.—Well, I got to be goin’. Charles is liable to getkicking because I ain’t packin’ my share’ just the same, you can’t expecta hundred-pound man to pack as much as a hundred-and-sixty-pounder.”
“Stick around and cook us something for dinner,” Charles, on his nextload in and noting the effects of the old man’s handiness, told Tarwater.
And Tarwater cooked a dinner that was a dinner, washed the dishes, hadreal pork and beans for supper, and bread baked in a frying-pan that wasso delectable that the three partners nearly foundered themselves on it.Supper dishes washed, he cut shavings and kindling for a quick andcertain breakfast fire, showed Anson a trick with foot-gear that wasinvaluable to any hiker, sang his “Like Argus of the Ancient Times,” andtold them of the great emigration across the Plains in Forty-nine.
“My goodness, the first cheerful and hearty-like camp since we hit thebeach,” Big Bill remarked as he knocked out his pipe and began pullingoff his shoes for bed.
“Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?” Tarwater queried genially.
All nodded. “Well, then, I got a proposition, boys. You can take it orleave it, but just listen kindly to it. You’re in a hurry to get inbefore the freeze-up. Half the time is wasted over the cooking by one ofyou that he might be puttin’ in packin’ outfit. If I do the cookin’ foryou, you all’ll get on that much faster. Also, the cookin’ ’ll bebetter, and that’ll make you pack better. And I can pack quite a bitmyself in between times, quite a bit, yes, sir, quite a bit.”
Big Bill and Anson were just beginning to nod their heads in agreement,when Charles stopped them.
“What do you expect of us in return?” he demanded of the old man.
“Oh, I leave it up to the boys.”
“That ain’t business,” Charles reprimanded sharply. “You made theproposition. Now finish it.”
“Well, it’s this way—”
“You expect us to feed you all winter, eh?” Charles interrupted.
“No, siree, I don’t. All I reckon is a passage to Klondike in your boatwould be mighty square of you.”
“You haven’t an ounce of grub, old man. You’ll starve to death when youget there.”
“I’ve been feedin’ some long time pretty successful,” Old Tarwaterreplied, a whimsical light in his eyes. “I’m seventy, and ain’t starvedto death never yet.”
“Will you sign a paper to the effect that you shift for yourself as soonas you get to Dawson?” the business one demanded.
“Oh, sure,” was the response.
Again Charles checked his two partners’ expressions of satisfaction withthe arrangement.
“One other thing, old man. We’re a party of four, and we all have a voteon questions like this. Young Liverpool is ahead with the main outfit.He’s got a say so, and he isn’t here to say it.”
“What kind of a party might he be?” Tarwater inquired.
“He’s a rough-neck sailor, and he’s got a quick, bad temper.”
“Some turbulent,” Anson contributed.
“And the way he can cuss is simply God-awful,” Big Bill testified.
“But he’s square,” Big Bill
added.
Anson nodded heartily to this appraisal.
“Well, boys,” Tarwater summed up, “I set out for Californy and I gotthere. And I’m going to get to Klondike. Ain’t a thing can stop me,ain’t a thing. I’m going to get three hundred thousand outa the ground,too. Ain’t a thing can stop me, ain’t a thing, because I just naturallyneed the money. I don’t mind a bad temper so long’s the boy is square.I’ll take my chance, an’ I’ll work along with you till we catch up withhim. Then, if he says no to the proposition, I reckon I’ll lose. Butsomehow I just can’t see ’m sayin’ no, because that’d mean too close upto freeze-up and too late for me to find another chance like this. And,as I’m sure going to get to Klondike, it’s just plumb impossible for himto say no.”
Old John Tarwater became a striking figure on a trail unusually repletewith striking figures. With thousands of men, each back-tripping half aton of outfit, retracing every mile of the trail twenty times, all cameto know him and to hail him as “Father Christmas.” And, as he worked,ever he raised his chant with his age-falsetto voice. None of the threemen he had joined could complain about his work.