canyons. But before he wentto bed that night, Young Liverpool was out over the camp. He returned tofind his whole party asleep. Rousing Tarwater, he talked with him in lowtones.
“Listen, dad,” he said.—“You’ve got a passage in our boat, and if ever aman earned a passage you have. But you know yourself you’re pretty wellalong in years, and your health right now ain’t exciting. If you go onwith us you’ll croak surer’n hell.—Now wait till I finish, dad. Theprice for a passage has jumped to five hundred dollars. I’ve beenthrowing my feet and I’ve hustled a passenger. He’s an official of theAlaska Commercial and just has to get in. He’s bid up to six hundred togo with me in our boat. Now the passage is yours. You sell it to him,poke the six hundred into your jeans, and pull South for California whilethe goin’s good. You can be in Dyea in two days, and in California in aweek more. What d’ye say?”
Tarwater coughed and shivered for a space, ere he could get freedom ofbreath for speech.
“Son,” he said, “I just want to tell you one thing. I drove my four yokeof oxen across the Plains in Forty-nine and lost nary a one. I drovethem plumb to Californy, and I freighted with them afterward out ofSutter’s Fort to American Bar. Now I’m going to Klondike. Ain’t nothingcan stop me, ain’t nothing at all. I’m going to ride that boat, with youat the steering sweep, clean to Klondike, and I’m going to shake threehundred thousand out of the moss-roots. That being so, it’s contrary toreason and common sense for me to sell out my passage. But I thank youkindly, son, I thank you kindly.”
The young sailor shot out his hand impulsively and gripped the old man’s.
“By God, dad!” he cried. “You’re sure going to go then. You’re the realstuff.” He looked with undisguised contempt across the sleepers to whereCharles Crayton snored in his red beard. “They don’t seem to make yourkind any more, dad.”
Into the north they fought their way, although old-timers, coming out,shook their heads and prophesied they would be frozen in on the lakes.That the freeze-up might come any day was patent, and delays of safetywere no longer considered. For this reason, Liverpool decided to shootthe rapid stream connecting Linderman to Lake Bennett with the fullyloaded boat. It was the custom to line the empty boats down and toportage the cargoes across. Even then many empty boats had been wrecked.But the time was past for such precaution.
“Climb out, dad,” Liverpool commanded as he prepared to swing from thebank and enter the rapids.
Old Tarwater shook his white head.
“I’m sticking to the outfit,” he declared. “It’s the only way to getthrough. You see, son, I’m going to Klondike. If I stick by the boat,then the boat just naturally goes to Klondike, too. If I get out, thenmost likely you’ll lose the boat.”
“Well, there’s no use in overloading,” Charles announced, springingabruptly out on the bank as the boat cast off.
“Next time you wait for my orders!” Liverpool shouted ashore as thecurrent gripped the boat. “And there won’t be any more walking aroundrapids and losing time waiting to pick you up!”
What took them ten minutes by river, took Charles half an hour by land,and while they waited for him at the head of Lake Bennett they passed thetime of day with several dilapidated old-timers on their way out. Thefamine news was graver than ever. The North-west Mounted Police,stationed at the foot of Lake Marsh where the gold-rushers enteredCanadian territory, were refusing to let a man past who did not carrywith him seven hundred pounds of grub. In Dawson City a thousand men,with dog-teams, were waiting the freeze-up to come out over the ice. Thetrading companies could not fill their grub-contracts, and partners werecutting the cards to see which should go and which should stay and workthe claims.
“That settles it,” Charles announced, when he learned of the action ofthe mounted police on the boundary. “Old Man, you might as well startback now.”
“Climb aboard!” Liverpool commanded. “We’re going to Klondike, and olddad is going along.”
A shift of gale to the south gave them a fair wind down Lake Bennett,before which they ran under a huge sail made by Liverpool. The heavyweight of outfit gave such ballast that he cracked on as a daring sailorshould when moments counted. A shift of four points into the south-west,coming just at the right time as they entered upon Caribou Crossing,drove them down that connecting link to lakes Tagish and Marsh. Instormy sunset and twilight—they made the dangerous crossing of GreatWindy Arm, wherein they beheld two other boat-loads of gold-rusherscapsize and drown.
Charles was for beaching for the night, but Liverpool held on, steeringdown Tagish by the sound of the surf on the shoals and by the occasionalshore-fires that advertised wrecked or timid argonauts. At four in themorning, he aroused Charles. Old Tarwater, shiveringly awake, heardLiverpool order Crayton aft beside him at the steering-sweep, and alsoheard the one-sided conversation.
“Just listen, friend Charles, and keep your own mouth shut,” Liverpoolbegan. “I want you to get one thing into your head and keep it there:_old dad’s going by the police_. _Understand_? _He’s going by_. Whenthey examine our outfit, old dad’s got a fifth share in it, savvee?That’ll put us all ’way under what we ought to have, but we can bluff itthrough. Now get this, and get it hard: _there ain’t going to be anyfall-down on this bluff_—”
“If you think I’d give away on the old codger—” Charles beganindignantly.
“You thought that,” Liverpool checked him, “because I never mentioned anysuch thing. Now—get me and get me hard: I don’t care what you’ve beenthinking. It’s what you’re going to think. We’ll make the police postsome time this afternoon, and we’ve got to get ready to pull the bluffwithout a hitch, and a word to the wise is plenty.”
“If you think I’ve got it in my mind—” Charles began again.
“Look here,” Liverpool shut him off. “I don’t know what’s in your mind.I don’t want to know. I want you to know what’s in my mind. If there’sany slip-up, if old dad gets turned back by the police, I’m going to pickout the first quiet bit of landscape and take you ashore on it. And thenI’m going to beat you up to the Queen’s taste. Get me, and get me hard.It ain’t going to be any half-way beating, but a real, two-legged,two-fisted, he-man beating. I don’t expect I’ll kill you, but I’ll comedamn near to half-killing you.”
“But what can I do?” Charles almost whimpered.
“Just one thing,” was Liverpool’s final word. “You just pray. You prayso hard that old dad gets by the police that he does get by. That’s all.Go back to your blankets.”
Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with snow thatwould not melt for half a year. Nor could they lay their boat at willagainst the bank, for the rim-ice was already forming. Inside the mouthof the river, just ere it entered Lake Le Barge, they found a hundredstorm-bound boats of the argonauts. Out of the north, across the fullsweep of the great lake, blew an unending snow gale. Three mornings theyput out and fought it and the cresting seas it drove that turned to iceas they fell in-board. While the others broke their hearts at the oars,Old Tarwater managed to keep up just sufficient circulation to survive bychopping ice and throwing it overboard.
Each day for three days, beaten to helplessness, they turned tail on thebattle and ran back into the sheltering river. By the fourth day, thehundred boats had increased to three hundred, and the two thousandargonauts on board knew that the great gale heralded the freeze-up of LeBarge. Beyond, the rapid rivers would continue to run for days, butunless they got beyond, and immediately, they were doomed to be frozen infor six months to come.
“This day we go through,” Liverpool announced. “We turn back fornothing. And those of us that dies at the oars will live again and go onpulling.”
And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by nightfalland pulling on through all the night hours as the wind went down, fallingasleep at the oars and being rapped awake by Liverpool, toiling onthrough an age-long nightmare while the stars c
ame out and the surface ofthe lake turned to the unruffledness of a sheet of paper and frozeskin-ice that tinkled like broken glass as their oar-blades shattered it.
As day broke clear and cold, they entered the river, with behind them asea of ice. Liverpool examined his aged passenger and found him helplessand almost gone. When he rounded the boat to against the rim-ice tobuild a fire and warm up Tarwater inside and out, Charles protestedagainst such loss of time.
“This ain’t business, so don’t you come horning in,” Liverpool informedhim. “I’m running the boat trip. So you just climb out and chopfirewood, and plenty of it. I’ll take care of dad. You, Anson, make afire on the bank. And you, Bill, set up the Yukon stove in the boat.Old dad ain’t as young as the rest of us, and for the rest of this voyagehe’s going to have a fire on board to sit by.”
All of which came to pass; and the boat, in the grip of the current, likea river steamer with smoke rising from the two joints of stove-pipe,grounded on shoals, hung up on split currents, and charged rapids andcanyons, as it drove