Boy Scouts on the Yukon

  CHAPTER V.

  A NEW MODE OF TRAVEL.

  Their stay in Skagway was brief. It was the point of parting betweenColonel Snow and his young charges, as it was necessary for him to hastena way westward to another part of Alaska on his mission, which wouldoccupy some weeks. The boys parted with him reluctantly and with somelittle feeling of homesickness, but he promised to join them as early aspossible and assured them that he had placed them in safe hands, withample means for their return to Skagway should sickness or accident befallthem.

  Except for the brief glimpses of native and local Alaskan life which theyhad obtained during the stoppages of the steamer at Metlakatla, in theAnnette Islands, a reservation set apart by Congress for the now civilizedTsimpsean Indians, a tribe which, with their devoted missionary head,William Duncan, immigrated from British Columbia to secure, it is said,greater religious liberty, and at Ketchikan, a thriving town, the boyshere gained their first real impressions of Alaskan conditions. They foundSkagway a town of about fifteen hundred people, set in a great naturalamphitheatre surrounded by mountains capped with perpetual snow. It isconnected with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other partsof Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. Afine school building and several churches that reminded the young Scoutsof many Hudson river towns, and wiped out the last remaining evidences ofhomesickness, were among the attractions, and the sight of a real railroadequipped with locomotives, cars, shops and station were among the marvelsfound where they had expected to find a wilderness.

  It was from this town that thousands of prospectors and adventurersstarted in 1897 and 1898 in the rush to the Klondike, and Swiftwater toldthem many stories of the terrible winter trip over the White Pass in thoseyears in which hundreds of men lost their lives and thousands of horseswere killed.

  With Colonel Snow they made one or two trips into the surrounding country,visiting the nearby Chilkat and Chilkoot villages, during two days thatSwiftwater had gone over to White Horse in Yukon territory, at the otherend of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, a distance of 112 miles, to makearrangements for boats and Indian guides and boatmen to carry theirmachinery into the wilderness. The boys were greatly interested in thisfirst near view of Alaskan Indian life in the two villages which theyvisited, and in comparing the natives with the Indians with whom they hadbeen associated in their trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Alaskan Indianswere shorter in build, more squatty in figure and broader faced than theCrees and the other Southern red men. Jack, who had been poking about intothe various corners of the first village, which were composed of huts andsod houses, came back with a look very like disgust in his face.

  "I say, Don," he exclaimed, "for goodness sake don't do anything to getadopted into this tribe," referring to an episode of their journey insearch of the lost mine, when Don had for obvious bravery been made afullfledged Indian.

  "Sure, I'll na do anything to deserve it; it would be naething to be proudof. They do not look much like our friends in Canada."

  "There are two points in which I find they are identical," said Jack.

  "What are those?" asked Rand, "color and clothes?"

  "No," replied Jack, "dirt and dogs. The dirt must have been here when theIndian came onto this continent, but I've wondered whether the Indianfound the dog when he came here or the dog found the Indian. They seem tohave been inseparable ever since."

  "D-d-do you s'pose they have dog days up here so near the pole?" askedPepper.

  "Begorra, it looks to me as if all days might be dog days around here,"suggested Gerald, who was surrounded at that moment by at least a dozen ofthe hundred animals in the village.

  "You would be surprised to know," said Colonel Snow, "that the dog isreally the most important animal, except perhaps the reindeer in ourNorthern possessions. Little of this country would have been explored orsettled except for his good services. There was a time when as much as twothousand dollars has been paid for a good dog up here."

  The Indians were persistent peddlers, offering the handsome baskets, hatsand blankets which they are peculiarly skilful in making, and the boyswould have loaded themselves down with souvenirs had not Colonel Snowsuggested that they would have plenty of time to supply themselves beforethey left for the south again.

  Two days later, Swiftwater Jim, having returned from White Horse, and thefreight having been taken from the steamer's hold, it was placed on carsof the White Pass and Yukon Railroad; the "piano case" as it had come tobe called having been put in storage until their return, and early in themorning of a June day the boys bade farewell to Colonel Snow and boardedthe train for White Horse.

  The journey required nearly six hours, but the first half was a stiffclimb to the top of the pass and through such magnificent scenery ofmountain and gorge that the boys scarcely noticed the passage of time,beguiled, as it was, with thrilling tales by Swiftwater Jim, with thestory of the fight of the Argonauts against the winter horrors of thissame trail in the early days of the great gold rush.

  They arrived at White Horse about four o'clock in the afternoon, and weremet by six halfbreed Indians headed by a well-known guide of that regionknown as Skookum Joe, who spoke good English and greeted Swiftwater as anold friend. He had been charged with securing the crews for the two boatsthat Swiftwater Jim was to use in the trip, and he introduced the men whomJim greeted in the "pigeon" Siwash of that section, used as a means ofcommunication with the natives who do not speak English.

  "I send up river for um," said Skookum Joe, "Dey know dat country. Goodwork when no rum; rum, no work," referring to the prevalence of the liquorhabit among the Indians since they have come into contact with thewhites.

  "This here is going to be a traveling lodge of the Cadets of Temperance,especially so far as natives is concerned," said Swiftwater Jim, "andconsequently everybody will work on this voyage."

  As the cases of machinery were removed from the cars they were opened andthe assembled parts as far as possible taken to pieces. These the Indianswrapped in heavy canvas, making convenient bundles or "packs" forhandling, and obviating the necessity of transporting the heavy materialof the cases. Bundled together the entire freight was transported by teamsto the water front, where were tied up two commodious shallowflat-bottomed boats into which it was loaded. To this was added provisionssufficient for two months, which Swiftwater had contracted for on hisprevious visit to the town, and sundry tents, tools and blankets.

  Much of the clothing with which the boys had provided themselves had beenleft at Skagway as it was not needed for the present season. As it wasnecessary to pay duties on the machinery which had been brought from theUnited States into the Canadian territory, and to give bond for the twoarms and personal equipment which was to be taken into the woods, buteventually returned to American territory, Swiftwater visited the CustomHouse, and while there introduced the Scouts to the Commissioner ofCustoms, who spent part of the remainder of the afternoon in showing theboys the town and the natural beauties surrounding it.

  Among other places they visited the barracks, where they were introducedto the small squad of Northwestern Mounted Police, the splendidorganization maintained by the Canadian Government for the preservation oforder in its western and northwestern possessions. Its members arerecruited from among ex-soldiers of the British army, with a reputationfor hardihood and intrepidity second to none.

  The station squad, composed of four members, received the boys cordially,and showed considerable interest in the organization of the Boy Scouts inthe United States. Major McClintock, head of the station, apologized forthe necessity of registering the young men at the barracks as policeregulations required.

  "This is a vast and wild territory, and we police, who are responsible forlaw and order here are few and far between. It is necessary for the safetyof all that we know as far as possible just who the people are who comeinto Yukon territory. Besides, this country is a refuge for hundreds ofmen who find life unpleasant in more civilized sections, and w
e must keepthem under supervision. By the way, I have just received notification fromthe United States marshal at Ketchikan that three queer characters droppedoff the steamer from Seattle there and were heading for the Klondike, andwould probably pass through here, and he asks us to keep an eye on them.Thus far I have seen nothing of them."

  "Dublin, Rae and Monkey," exclaimed Rand.

  "Oh; you know them, do you?" said Major McClintock.

  "Jack here knows them very well," said Dick with a grin.

  "Chance for more detective work, Jack," urged Rand.

  "Faith, he might join the Mounted Police," cried Gerald. "Major, won't yougive Jack a chance with your troop?"

  The boys joined in the laugh, and Jack, who had begun to enjoy the joke onhimself, told Major McClintock of their various encounters with the threemen, and all that was known of their careers.

  "Well," said the officer, "we'll keep a sharp eye out for them."

  The head of the Mounted Police, who seemed very familiar with the BoyScouts of Great Britain, told them something of the great organization inEngland headed by General Baden-Powell, with whom he himself had served inSouth Africa.

  As they bade him good night the Major said that the jurisdiction of hispost extended over the territory to which they were going, and that sometime during their stay there one of his patrols would call on them.

  At an early hour the next morning, Swiftwater and the boys went down tothe boats, aboard which the Indian crews had passed the night, and werethere joined by Skookum Joe, who was to go with them as far as the mouthof the confluent upon which Colonel Snow's land was located, at whichpoint he was to join a steamer running on down the Yukon River to Dawson.

  They floated out upon the swift current of the Lewes River, which manymiles further away is joined by the Pelly to make the Yukon, the BehringSea, some eighteen hundred miles away.

  The passage down the Lewes was comparatively easy except for the rapidsthrough which the Indian boatmen guided the flat-bottomed craft by longsteering oars, one at each end and one at the side. Swiftwater had placedhimself and Jack, Don and Gerald in one boat, and assigned Skookum Joe andRand, Pepper and Dick to the other.

  The run through the small canyons and the rapids was an exciting one tothe boys, who were unused to such rough waters, where it seemed almostimpossible at times to avoid the dangerous rocks that reared their headsabove the current. By Swiftwater's direction the boys were allowed to takea hand at the oars at times, beside the Indian oarsman, to accustom themsomewhat to the ticklish navigation of the rivers. While they found thenavigation something new, their previous experience in canoe work hadtaught them sufficiently "the feel of the water" to make them fairlyuseful.

  Pepper, who always threw a good deal of enthusiasm into anything heattempted to do, was barely saved from going overboard several times, andwhen once left alone with the side oar, succeeded in dipping the bladeunder a piece of hidden rock and was thrown by the swift motion of theboat high in the air, alighting somewhat breathless on the mass oftarpaulined freight in front of him, luckily without serious injury. Theoar, however, went by the board and was lost.

  "Wh-wh-what was that?" gasped Pepper, as he got his wind again and beganto caress his ribs where the oar handle had struck him.

  "I've only got one guess," laughed Dick, "but I should say it was thebottom of the river," while Rand sarcastically suggested that it wasn'tpart of the business of this expedition to try and clear the channel ofthe Lewes.

  It was eight o'clock in the evening, and the sun in that high latitude wasstill visible when the boats reached the mouth of the stream known as GoldCreek, which entered the Lewes from the southeast. It was some miles upthis confluent that Colonel Snow's land lay, and by direction ofSwiftwater the Indian boatmen skilfully rounded the batteaus out of thecurrent of the Lewes into the Creek and into a little backwater formed bya projecting sandy point between the two streams. Here the water wasfairly deep, and as no trees came down to the water's edge two of theIndians held the boat up to the bank, while the third sprang ashore withcoils of rope and two long iron stakes which he drove deep into the graveland sand, and tied the stern and bow of the boat to the bank. The otherboat was fastened the same way, and Swiftwater, springing ashore andstretching his long legs, cried: "All ashore; we'll make camp here,tonight."