Jack Heaton, gold seeker

And so they worked and talked and talked and worked and another month slipped by before they got their log cabin done. The way Bill could swing an ax made Jack envious and while building the cabin was the hardest of hard work, both of these youngsters got a lot of pleasure seeing it go up log by log. And when it was all done they were as proud of it as any millionaire who ever built a mansion on Fifth Avenue.

And furniture! They made mission furniture, table, chairs and all the accessories of home, the like of which no missionary in the heart of lightest Africa ever set eyes upon. And comfortable! With a rousing fire, ham and Alaska strawberries, coffee and biscuits that Jack made so well (I didn’t say so light) they were as comfortable as a husky after a double ration of dried fish, fast asleep under the snow.

“I’m thinkin’ we’ve got to get out and kill some fresh meat,” suggested Bill after a meal in which the spirit of Sing Nook was present, i.e., when the strawberries came on as usual.

“I thought you declared that Alaska strawberries were every whit as good as the spaghetti we used to get at The Black Cat back in New York, when we thought we were a couple of highflyers,” Jack laughed.

“Oh, for a dish of spaghetti,” sighed Bill, and then he came back with this statement: “Ilasker strawberries are all right but after you’ve et them for thirty or forty meals you get a lee-tle tired of them and pine for a young oyster, in a bowl of cracker soup, or a couple of fried eggs—one fried on one side and one on the other—or even a steak from a hoof of a panhandle longhorn.”

“I move that to-morrow we begin ‘prospecting’,” Jack said, paying no attention to Bill’s likes and dislikes. “We’ve been away now for over three months and all we’ve got to show for it is an outlay of more than a thousand dollars, these two mighty good dog teams, our cabin and the fun we’re having.”

“Then let’s go to it,” Bill said.

“We’ll strike out across the river and go due north; then every trip we make we’ll veer round five points until we’ve boxed the compass.”

CHAPTER VIII
ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

While the boys did not expect to be gone longer than a week, or ten days at the most, on any one spoke of their prospecting wheel, and carried good grub to last them for this length of time, they nevertheless took the precaution to stock up with enough alcohol, compressed tea, hard tack and pemmican for themselves, and dried fish for the dogs, to stave off starvation for a month in the event of meeting with an accident, getting stormbound, or wanting to make a longer stay.

With a team apiece of seven dogs and a load of only a hundred and fifty pounds it was possible for them to ride on their sleds a good deal of the time. But this does not mean that they could very often actually sit on them but the way they did it was to stand on the rear ends of the runners and hold on to the handle bars.

The night before they made their first trip out they packed their traveling mess-gear, which consisted of a collapsible stove and alcohol for fuel, grub and the few other necessary things of their outfit, on the sleds, so that they could make a start the next morning at day-break.

They crossed the Big Black River and drove due north over the tundra (a Russian word, pronounced toon-dra,) which is a rolling prairie, without any trees on it; the soil is black and soft, or muck as it is called, and on it both mosses and lichens grow. They drove due north and in the course of time Bill announced that according to the sun, his watch and his stomach there should be a period of rest and of eating. According to Jack’s calculations they had made about twelve miles and were moreover right then on the Arctic Circle.

“After we gets through with the eats, Jack, I wants you to edicate me on this Arctic Circle thing,” said Bill as he threw the dogs their fish.

Jack was busy opening the thermos bottles of hot tea and getting out the sandwiches.

“What do you want to know about it?” he asked absent-mindedly, for he was not a little bit interested in this at the particular moment.

“I wants to know why is the Arctic Circle, and everything else about the bloomin’ thing. The way I’ve doped it out it is like a meridian or the equator, that is, it’s a line that you can’t see and yet it’s there or here just the same. I’m settin’ on it and I know it but I can’t prove it, As man to man, now, I’m askin’ you what is it?” asked Bill with great earnestness.

Jack looked at him and laughed.

“You asked a question and then answered it yourself in the next breath. You’ve said all there is to say about it except that it’s a circle running round the North Pole like an ostrich feather on a lady’s hat, only, different from the latter, it extends on all sides of the pole to latitude sixty-six degrees and thirty-two minutes north.”

“But why is it?” persisted Bill.

Jack thought a moment.

“The chief reason the Arctic Circle is so called is because it is the circle below which the sun does not drop in mid-summer. If we were here on the Arctic Circle in summer we’d see the sun at midnight just above the horizon, and the farther north a person goes in summer the higher he will see the sun above the horizon at midnight. Lots of tourists come up here every summer just to take a look at the midnight sun, and the natives call them sunners.”

“An’ we won’t get to see it then?” kicked Bill; “it’s just my luck. If it ’ud be rainin’ soup I’d be standin’ out in it with a fork.”

“We’re not up here to see the sun at midnight,” Jack came back at him, “we’re lucky if we get a glimpse of it at noon. What we’re up here for is to get the yellow stuff.”

“Oh yes, I kinda lost sight o’ the bloomin’ gold for a minute,” was Bill’s reply.

It was great sport, now that their loads were light, for the young drivers to flourish their whips and crack them in the dry air, while the dogs, fed-up, fresh and eager, raced along, with tinkling bells where the going was good, as though they were making a dash for the pole. The boys and their outfit would have made a capital movie, but there wasn’t a cinematograph camera nearer than Skagway on the south or St. Michaels on the west.

At this time of the year, the period of daylight on the Arctic Circle is very short and as darkness came on they pulled up on the banks of a stream to make camp.

“This must be the Rat River,” said Bill.

“It is, but it certainly isn’t much at this point. We’re close to its head waters though and that accounts for it. It empties into the Porcupine River about sixty or seventy miles west of here. It might be worth our while to make a survey up and down the river for a few miles, so to-morrow let’s go down stream.”

They had not gone more than five miles the next morning when their attention was attracted by a huge fire a couple of hundred feet back of the north bank and they drove up to see what was going on.

“Bet it’s the Yeehats barbecuin’ a caribou,” suggested Bill who was dying by inches for the want of a caribou steak.

“Look again,” said Jack, and then Bill saw the winter diggings of some miners, three all told, one white man and two Indians, busy with picks and shovels.

“Lookin’ for our gold,” was Bill’s idea of it.

“More likely they are mining for some on their own account. A great deal of placer mining is done up here in the winter—has to be done in winter as a matter of fact—because the ground is so low and wet that they can’t do any digging in the summer time, for the hole fills up with water as fast as the dirt is thrown out.

“The way they work it according to what Rip Stoneback told me, is like this. The miner cuts all the fire-wood he can in the summer, which isn’t a great deal as it is so scarce in these parts, and builds his sluice-box; then when winter sets in and it begins to freeze, he clears the moss off of a small patch. On this clearing he builds a fire and keeps it going until the ground is thawed down a foot or so when he digs it out; then he builds another fire, digs out the thawed ground and repeats the operation until he has sunk a shaft through the muck and gravel to bed-rock.

“Now between the gravel and bed-rock is a layer of gold-bearing dirt called pay-streak and this is hoisted to the surface by means of a windlass on the ends of whose rope are spliced a couple of buckets; and this windlass, of course, sets over the shaft. Usually two men go down in the shaft and pick the frozen pay streak from the ground. The shafts vary in depth from fifteen to forty feet depending on what part of the country the mine is located.

“The third man stays on top to draw up the buckets and with a wheel-barrow wheels the gold-bearing dirt back and dumps it in a pile where it will be in no danger of getting washed away by the melting snows when spring comes. In the spring when water is plentiful the fun begins for then the clean-up takes place and the men who were as poor as Indian dogs all winter wax rich and take their winnings back to civilization where they can be separated from it.

“The clean-up means that the color-bearing dirt is shoveled into the sluice-box, that is, a trough without ends, into which the miner has contrived to keep a steady stream of water running. The water washes away the dirt and leaves the free gold just as it does in the more primitive method of panning.”

The miners were as glad to see the boys as the latter were to see them, yes even more so. They immediately knocked off all work and there was a regular “chin-fest,” as Bill called it, from that time on. They made the boys stay to supper and improvised bunks in their cabin for them to sleep on. After Art Jennings, who, as you will gather from his name, was the lone white man, had heard the news of the outside world they talked about three other things only, the first of which was gold, the second gold and the third gold.

“This placer minin’ is altogether too slow a game for me,” remarked Bill when they were on their way again. “What I wants is to see moosehide sacks of it piled up like cordwood, I do.”

“Well there are moosehide sacks of it cached right here in Yeehatville on the Circle. From the Pacific Ocean on up to the Arctic Ocean there’s gold. In every stream and river, as well as the land between them, this precious metal is found in either particles or in nuggets. Take the Klondike! it’s not much larger than the Rat River here and yet so much gold was found there its name became known all over the world. Every river in Alaska and the Yukon, I suppose, is just as rich but you don’t hear much about them because the Klondike was the first and so outshone all the rest. We’ll get ours yet, don’t worry,” said Jack hopefully.

Each trip the boys made from their base of supplies took them from one to two weeks. Their marches in and out were usually made in a couple of days and when they had worked away from their permanent base as far as they wanted to go they would set up a temporary camp.

If the weather was not too severe, that is to say below zero, they pitched their tent, but when it got to twenty, forty or sixty below, or a blizzard struck them as it frequently did in mid-winter, they made a better camp by cutting out blocks of snow and piling them up into a dome-shaped shelter like the igloo of the Eskimo, but which Bill, who always persisted in nick-naming everything that was new to him, called a butter-dish.

Building a snow igloo was a simple matter after they had put up a couple, and the boys got it down to such a fine point that they could do the complete job in two or three hours. Of course this was largely the result of Jack’s experience in the Arctic which enabled him to go about it in the right way. He had brought his saw-knife with him for this express purpose. This useful tool is about eighteen inches long and one and three-fourths inches wide and while one of the edges of it is sharp like a knife the other edge has teeth cut in it like a saw.

With this saw-knife Jack or Bill would saw out the hard frozen snow into blocks which for the lower layers of the igloo measured about two feet in length and eighteen inches wide and high; as the upper layers were reached they used smaller and smaller blocks. Finally when all of the snow-blocks but one were laid up and the igloo was as hemispherical as the half of a ball, the last block, which they beveled on four sides, was set in the center and this held all of the other blocks out like the keystone of a bridge.

They made these snow igloos about six feet in diameter on the inside of the base so that they could lie down comfortably. To get into the igloo they left one of the snow blocks of the first layer out and through this hole they also took in the grub they needed, the alcohol stoves and the sleeping bags. To close the hole it was only necessary to push in the snow block when they were pretty well housed in.

What, then, with their fur clothing, a log house at their permanent base and these snow igloos at the ends of their trips, they were able to keep quite comfortable. Nearly every one who has never put in a winter in the Arctic, or sub-Arctic, regions seems to think that the extreme cold is a thing to be feared, but it isn’t if one has the right kind of clothes, enough food and if, when outside of the shelter, he does not stop but keeps right on going or working. But the long hours of darkness often get to be mighty monotonous.

Being boys, however, nothing could chill their ardor or cast a gloom on their spirits for any length of time and they were always ready for a frolic. Thus it was when they were sledding on streams where the ice was good they had some great races. Each contended that his team was the swiftest that ever pulled a sled and this difference of opinion invariably led to a challenge to prove it.

The dogs entered into the spirit of the races with as much zest as their young masters and when they were abreast and the signal to go was given, the whips cracked and the dogs jumped to get first place. Onward they dashed with an ease and grace that made them seem more like rubber balls bouncing along low on the course, than four-footed animals whose business it was to work.

But the spirit of sport was strangely strong in these living, vibrant creatures and as they fairly flew along over the course they voiced their joy by short howls and yelps when they were in the lead or their anguish by whines and cries when they dropped behind.

Jack was, perhaps, a better driver than Bill but in his own heart he gave the credit to his team when they won and win they nearly always did. Bill was a good “sport” though and never got “sore” when he lost a race; he always took the blame on himself for his poor driving and nothing could shake his belief that his was the fastest team, bar none, in all Alaska.

There were a few times though when Bill’s team won. One of these rare occasions was when a snowshoe rabbit ran from a bank onto the ice intending to cross to the other side; finding himself in front of a terrible pack of running dogs or wolves, he knew not which, that were bent on catching him, instead of going on across to safety he ran straightaway ahead of them.

Sate, Bill’s lead-dog, spotted him first and he ran as he had never run before; the dogs of his team felt this super-burst of speed on his part and as the rabbit paced him, so he paced them with the highly gratifying result, to Bill, that his team jumped ahead of Jack’s by a length. The boys urged their teams on with their “yow-yows,” and the bells jingled joyously while the wild race was on.

The dogs of both teams had forgotten that there were such things as a trace or trail, while the boys had lost sight of the treasure they were seeking and let nothing impede their mad flight toward destruction. At the end of a quarter of a mile Bill’s team was nearly three lengths ahead of Jack’s and he felt the race well won. His dogs had lost all interest in the race, indeed, they did not know they were racing for it was the rabbit they were after now. Then little snowshoe fooled them, for he made a sharp turn and ran up the bank.

Sate likewise turned as sharp as the high speed he was making would allow; the team swerved abruptly, slipped and slid for half-a-dozen yards, the sled upset and everything was piled up in a heap. Jack’s team shot by them like an arrow and they ran for another quarter of a mile before he could stop them in their mad flight. When he got back he had to admit that Bill’s team had won the race but it cost them an hour’s work to make good the damage done. There was no more racing that day.

“You see, Jack, as I always told you, my team is faster than yourn and all it needs to show speed is a rabbit for a pace maker,” was Bill’s comment as he picked himself up.

In their goings and comings they ran across all sorts of wild animal life from the little lemmings, a mouse-like animal with short ears and tail, which looks like a miniature yellow rabbit, to the giant moose. In between these two extremes they saw squirrels, snowshoe rabbits, red and black foxes, lynxes, gray wolves and caribou. They had also seen the tracks of bears, for the species of bear that live in the sub-Arctic regions does not hibernate.

They often shot squirrel, rabbit and ptarmigan (pronounced tar’-mi-gan), a bird of the grouse order, and these served as dishes of great delicacy for the boys, as well as giving the dogs a welcome change from dried fish. Bill declared it to be the open season for bagging some big game and Jack agreed that they must. But it is hard to seek cached treasure and be big game hunters at the same time.

Once while they were moving leisurely along after a satisfying dinner and they were talking about hunting the caribou, moose and bear, the tables were suddenly turned on them when they became the hunted prey of wild beasts, for a pack of famished wolves had scented them out and were headed straight for them.

Pell-mell came the lean, long-legged beasts with ears erect, ribs bulging out of their loose skins, tails drooping and starved to desperation. Instantly the boys halted their teams and had barely time enough to cut the dogs out of their traces before the pack was upon them. The dogs knew they were in for a fight to the death and braced themselves for it, while the boys drew their revolvers and stood on their sleds ready for the attack.

In less than a minute the wolves were upon them and the fight was on. The dogs met the onslaught with the strength and courage the wolves lacked; and in between pistol shots, each of which picked off a wolf, the dogs snapped in two the legs, and broke the necks of their savage ancestors with a crunch of their powerful jaws, or opened their bellies, which let their entrails half out, or severed the jugular veins when streams of blood spurted forth from the rips made by merciless fangs.

But the dogs suffered too, for often three or even four wolves would fight a single one and in this unequal struggle he would go down unless his master took a hand and evened up numbers by a few well-placed bullets. Nor was it easy for the boys to shoot the wolves, for the fight was so fast and furious it was well-nigh impossible at times to send a piece of cold lead into their miserable carcasses without the danger of hitting their dogs.

One of the curious things was that when a wolf got hold of the harness on a dog it mistook it for brute substance instead of inert leather and it would bite it viciously and shake it furiously without getting the living response that it had the right to expect.

When the number of wolves had been brought down to twice that of the dogs, they knew they were beaten and the moment this happened their courage failed them and those that were left with strength enough to take to their heels slunk quickly away.

An examination of the dogs showed that far from coming out of the fight unscathed every one of them was in a bad way and, still more sad to relate, Jennie and Prince, two of the outside dogs of Jack’s team, had to be shot to put them out of their misery. As the dogs were so badly off and the harness cut up and chewed to pieces the boys had to make camp on the spot.

They dressed the wounds of the dogs as well as they could and gave them half-a-can of pemmican apiece—a food that the dogs liked above all else. While the dogs laid down and rested and nursed their hurts, their masters built an igloo, for they couldn’t tell when they would be able to move on. While the igloo was going up there was nothing but kind words and praise for the dogs and it could be seen by the looks in their eyes and the expressions on their faces that they knew every word which was said to and about them, and enjoyed and appreciated it all. As Bill saw them now he was more thoroughly convinced than ever that these particular dogs were endowed with human brains and not just common dog brains.

“I always told you my team could outrun yourn and you’ll have to admit they out-fought yourn too,” said Bill boastfully after the gloom had somewhat worn off.

“I don’t see how you make that out,” Jack flared up.

“Well, two of your dogs will never mush again pullin’ a sled after them here on earth—though they may haul a little red cart with angels in it when they go tearin’ along the trails o’ heaven.”

“That’s no argument at all,” returned Jack soberly, “and you can’t get away with it either. Why, I saw ’Frisco rip the throats open of one wolf after another when four of them were at him at once. Prince and Jennie went down in a fluke—in a fluke I tell you—and that is the only reason they lost out.’”

“This is soitenly tough luck,” said Bill as he was going over the wounds of the dogs before they turned in.

“And I’m two dogs short,” moaned Jack, “though I’m mighty glad they were not the malamutes.”

“Never youse mind, Buddy. I’ll give youse one of mine and we’ll still be even.”

“I don’t want any of your dogs, Bill, I’ll just drive my five dogs along until we strike an Indian village or some camp and then I’ll buy a couple of Siwashes. But I’m sure sorry to lose Prince and Jennie for they were a couple of dandy dogs to say the least.”

Just the same when Bill had fixed the harness and hitched up the dogs preparatory to making a fresh start, Jack saw with grim pleasure that the teams were even and that Bill’s best dog, next to Sate his leader, was in the traces of his team.

Jack didn’t say anything about it then but he made up his mind that when he went ’round the world on a pleasure jaunt, or anywhere else, Bill could go with him however crude his speech, and rough his manner.

They limped back to their base of supplies and stayed there for a week until the dogs got into shape again.

CHAPTER IX
THE LAND OF THE YEEHATS

On the various trips they had made from their base of supplies on the Big Black River the boys had kept a sharp lookout for marks or signs or other visual evidence which might indicate in some way the location of the treasure they sought. Jack’s hunch was responsible for his belief that so great a store of gold would not, in fact could not, have been abandoned without some clew which would serve as a key to its recovery.

They often dug off the snow from a pile of dirt which they thought might cover the sacks of gold; as wood was frequently hard to get, they couldn’t thaw it out and, consequently, had to work like “niggers” with their picks and shovels to penetrate it. And to what purpose?—usually only to find it was the dump of some discarded mine. But a gold seeker wots not of either hardship or work if his efforts give promise of bringing about the desired result. And they hoped great hopes.

Again they would find a cache (pronounced cash) but it was not of the kind that is formed of a hole in the ground, or a cavity under a pile of stones, but a box-like structure erected on poles set in the ground. Some of the better ones had notched logs which served as steps and these were set up at an angle on one side so that access to the cache could be made with greater ease and lesser agility. These caches were used by prospectors and miners who transported their outfits on their backs, or hauled them on sleds, and who had to double back on the trail time and time again before they got to their journey’s end.

In nearly all of these caches the stores were of ancient vintage, a few of them dating back to the pioneers of ’94 or perhaps a little later, and those who made the caches never returned to claim their contents either because they found they could get along without them, or were killed or died, or grew disheartened and made their way back to the river towns of the Yukon. In only a couple of them did they find fresh stores and in one of these, curiously enough, there was a poke5 of gold nuggets. Its owner, in all probability, had laid it down when he was stocking the cache and forgot to take it with him when he went.

Neither did the boys take it, nor disturb the stores in any of the caches they found, for it is an unwritten law in the barren north that no man shall touch anything cached which belongs to another.

On the fifth trip out they drove east, or more accurately east by south, crossed the International boundary line and headed straight for Mount Burgess forty miles away. As Jack had said, they cared not whether they found the gold in Alaska, in the Yukon Territory or on top of the North Pole, as long as they found it. After they had covered about thirty miles they ran into a scrub forest and the first thing Jack spied was a pair of moose antlers lashed to a tree.

Both he and Bill thought this a very strange circumstance but they presently concluded that it had been put there by some hunter though for what purpose they could not guess. After going half-a-mile farther into the woods they came to another pair of moose antlers likewise lashed to a tree; this interested them in dead earnest and they began to investigate accordingly. Ordinarily when a trail is blazed through the woods a bit of the bark of the trees is chipped off at short intervals so that those who go or come cannot go astray but must find their way there and back, let come whatever may.

But here was a trail blazed differently from any they had ever seen or heard of, in that at considerable distances apart the antlers of a moose lashed to a tree pointed the way, but what that way led to neither Jack nor Bill had the remotest idea. Sometimes the antlers were so far apart, or led off at such angles, that they had to hunt for an hour or more for the next one.

“What, I’m askin’ you as man to man, does it mean? Are we gettin’ near it?” questioned Bill, blinking his blue eyes.

“I don’t know,” replied Jack soberly, though hoping against hope that it was the sign they sought; “but it is queer, isn’t it?”

“Let’s keep right on,” was Bill’s solemn advice.

“Mush on there, you huskies!” yelled Jack; “double rations of fish for you if we find it.”

“Ten rations of fish, three times a day fer life if we finds it, says I,” came from Bill.

It is not known positively whether Sate could count up to ten or not but he gave Bill an awful look which in husky language meant “cut out that loose talk and maybe each of us will get a piece of fish for supper anyway,” and with that he and his mates mushed on as fast as their masters could pick out the trail.

They kept this up the best part of the day when their quest ended at a log cabin not unlike their own, and over whose door was the largest pair of bull-moose antlers the boys had ever seen. The boys, who had been building high their hopes on something far less tangible than a clew, were disappointed to the quick but they had the right kind of stuff in them and so never batted an eye.

They were greeted by the barking and howling of many dogs and what with the noise their own teams made it sounded as if pandemonium had broken loose. Then Joseph Cook, hunter, trapper, Indian Agent and sometime gold seeker, otherwise familiarly known as Bull Moose Joe, for he had brought down more moose than any other living man, appeared at the door and gave them a warm welcome.

“But why all the antlers lashed to the trees?” Jack queried after they had established comrade-like relations.

“I have blazed the trail to my cabin with antlers so that he who chances this way with his eyes open can find me.”

Bull Moose Joe was a man who stood six foot in his moccasins, was of medium build and as straight as an Indian. He looked as if he might have stepped out of the great West in the days of the fifties for he wore his hair long, had a mustache and a goatee. As usual with white men up there he must needs have the news from down under, no matter how stale it was, and then, also as usual, the conversation just naturally drifted over to the channel of gold. It was then that Bull Moose Joe gave the boys the greatest jolt they had had in all their varied but brief career in the gold fields.

“I take it you boys are looking for the same thing I came up to look for ten years ago,” he said in an off-hand way.

“Yes, it’s gold we’re after,” replied Jack.

“Gold in moosehide sacks piled up like cordwood!” he added, watching the effect of his words on the boys.

And the effect was truly electrical for their faces became rigid, their eyes glassed over and they felt the very blood in their arteries congeal into water-ice.

“And—and—did you find it?” asked Jack when he had recovered his powers of speech a little.

“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” Bill gurgled as if his gullet was choked up.

Bull Moose Joe pulled a couple of times on his pipe, watched the hot smoke ascend and dissolve away just as had his dreams of gold. He laughed softly. He was in no hurry to answer but to the boys the moments seemed like an age.

“No,” he said finally, “I never found it though I searched diligently for it winter and summer for the first five years I was here. I speak the Hupa tongue which is the tongue of the Athapascans and I learned to talk it so that I could find out what the Indians knew about it.

“There was once a tribe of Indians, who lived hereabouts and they were different from any of the Indians that are living in the Yukon or Alaska to-day, for they were as fierce and bloodthirsty as the Apaches down under. Among our natives here there is a legend about a pocket of gold that was found by these Indians long before the gold seekers came on to it.

“Then hunters and trappers from the Hudson Bay Company pushed their way across the desolate wastes of upper Canada and coming upon this tribe they killed them and took the gold from them. Before they could get the metal out of the country they were attacked by the Yeehats, another band of Indians, and, in turn, lost their lives. These latter Indians cached the gold in a pile of stones but how long it remained there it is hard to say for the Indians now living seem not to know.

“Many years after, when men swarmed over Chilcoot Pass and White Pass like so many black flies, floated down the Yukon River and on to the Klondike, a miner named John Thornton and a couple of pards, left the others and pushed farther north. And then, like the fools for luck they were, they discovered the cache and in it the pile of nuggets that is worth millions.

“How to get it over to the Yukon River and down under in safety were their only worries but they were big ones. They were rich beyond the dreams of the wildest stampeder and so to lessen the chances of loss by any means they took their time and laid the most painstaking plans.

“First they hunted the moose and made sacks of the hides; into these they packed the gold nuggets fifty pounds to the sack, and there were five hundred sacks which were worth millions. No sooner had they started than the Yeehats swooped down on them and although Thornton and his men put up a desperate fight they fell before the larger number of Indians and the moosehide sacks of gold stayed right where they found them.

“In a few years the Yeehats as a tribe were practically exterminated by starvation and disease and so the gold is still here, but exactly where, no one knows. But sometime it will be found again and if those who strike it are luckier than the others they will get it out; but that time has not yet come. To keep me going I began to trap and hunt and a year or so ago the Minister of the Interior made me Indian Agent for this part of the Yukon.”

“How did you come to take up moose-hunting?” Jack asked him.

“I calculated that when I found the gold I wouldn’t want to wait until I killed the moose needed to make the new sacks I should need, so I began to hunt them long ago and there they are,” and he pointed to a pile of finished sacks over in the corner. “You see I took time by the forelock.

“There’s only one other man up here that has any kind of a reputation as a moose-hunter other than myself and that’s Moosehide Mike who lives somewhere over in the Klondike River district. I met him a few years ago at a potlatch but as soon as we found out that each was looking for the same pot of gold we didn’t hit it up very well together.”

When the boys left Bull Moose Joe’s cabin they were on pins and needles, for their thoughts were of the most conflicting nature. Their belief that the gold was there was now for the first time fixed to a certainty; on the other hand what ghost of a chance had they of finding it when an old timer like Bull Moose Joe who had lived there for years and covered the ground in winter and summer had not unearthed it?

“We won’t be quitters anyway,” announced Jack, “we’ll keep right on as per schedule.”

“You said it,” affirmed his partner.

As they had met with quite a few Indians during their sojourn at Circle and had since run into several Indian villages, the boys had acquired a fair vocabulary of the Chinook jargon; which is a simple universal language formed of a lot of heterogeneous words which every Indian and white man understands and by which they are able to hold intelligible though limited conversation.

For instance, in the Chinook jargon the word English is called Boston; to go toward the shore is called Friday; a big lot of anything is expressed by saying hi-ya; a vile native alcoholic drink is known as hootchenoo, and from this latter word comes the word hootch which is used by the frontiersmen everywhere. Do you understand, or you do understand, is kum-tux; anything to eat is muck-a-muck; a strong person or animal is skookum; a friend, tillacum, and so on.

With a vocabulary of a couple of dozen words of Chinook the boys were able to get along fairly well with any of the Indian tribes they happened to meet. In all of the Indian villages they came to everything was quiet and peaceful excepting the fiendish howling and barking of the half-starved dogs. There was nothing to indicate the cruelty and ferociousness that marked the Yeehats and the Indians who lived in these parts before them.

Jack and Bill easily made friends with the Indians they came in contact with for they bought dried fish of them for their teams, gave them a few provisions where the need was great and Jack always carried his medicine case and treated the sick for such ailments as were not beyond his poor ability. These latter he had to leave for the medicine man, or Shamen, as he is called, to kill or cure.

One afternoon as they neared an Indian village of considerable size near the head waters of the Tatonduk River they met with whole families of Indians and on scraping up an acquaintance with some of them the boys gathered the information that they were going to a potlatch.

Now about all that the Indians of this region of Alaska do, outside of trapping and hunting, is to eat, drink and be merry, provided of course, they have the food and hootchenoo to do it with, for lacking these integers the resultant product, that is, unalloyed joy, could not be had. Among the Indians who were going to the potlatch was a half-breed boy who spoke English a little having learned it from Bull Moose Joe and other white hunters and trappers, and Jack promptly annexed him with the gift of a knife.

When Jack asked the lad his name he said that the white men called him Kloshsky, but that his right name was Montegnard. Now Klosh in Chinook means good but where the sky came from was not so easy to guess, unless he was nicknamed by some one of Semitic persuasion.

Kloshsky told the boys that the potlatch was a hi-yu feast with hyas fun, and that it was going to be given by a big man of the Yikyak tribe who wanted to be chief. The word potlatch, he explained, really means gift and that after much feasting, drinking, dancing and wrestling the man-who-would-be-chief and whose name was Montegnais, would give away everything he owned to his guests.

“Let’s declare ourselves in on this potlatch thing,” said Bill.

“Not a bad idea at all,” admitted Jack. And so they followed the crowd.

Friends and relatives of the man-who-would-be-chief came from miles and miles around and the journey finally ended at an Indian village in the center of which was a big log house nearly as large as that of the Grand Palace Hotel back at Circle. Into it the visitors made their way and Jack and Bill went with them.

Talk about the decorations for a Halloween party! why, boy, nothing a white mind ever conceived of could begin to come up to the embellishments of this great hall. In the middle there was a wonderful bird that reached from the floor to the ceiling, nearly, and the like of which nature had never made in all her seven million years of experience. From the ceiling there hung curiously shapen birds, beasts and human beings that for fearsomeness outdid anything the boys had ever seen. As Bill said, “it was enough to scare a fellow half-to-death.”

On poles, which were arranged in a circle around the giant bird, the finest blankets, the costliest furs and other articles prized by the Indians were displayed and these, Kloshsky told the boys, were the presents which the man-who-would-be-chief was to give away.

When all had assembled the potlatch came to order. The big man was gorgeously dressed in ceremonial clothes and carried a long wand. Around him gathered his lieutenants (they would be so called down under) and they were also outfitted in ceremonial clothes.

Then came the orchestra which consisted of half-a-dozen men with their tom-toms. Finally followed the guests who moved about talking among themselves like society folks at a church fair. From the man-who-would-be-chief on down to the poorest Indian, all wore the richest kind of furs, some of them made of the silver fox, and they were ornamented with various decorations and natural jewelry. Many of the men and women wore necklaces and belts formed of gold nuggets as large as hickory nuts and these at once caught the eyes of the boys. Lo! the poor Indian!

Of all those present there were only two poorly dressed ones and these were a couple of rank outsiders who had come from down under and now saw for the first time what Indian high-life really meant. Jack and Bill felt like a couple of hobos who had tumbled out of a box-car and landed in the midst of a fancy dress hall in progress on Fifth Avenue.

When all were assembled the man-who-would-be-chief opened the potlatch with a recital of the wonderful deeds his ancestors had done, that his family had done, and especially those that he had done.

“It’s the same old stuff the politician who wants to be mayor, or governor, or president pulls in the States,” Bill pointed out.

Then the players began to beat their tom-toms and when the rhythm of this bombastic music had stirred the souls of the guests to their very depths, it got them going and they danced for all they were worth. Most of them carried huge wooden masks that were a nightmare to look at. Different from our dances their movements were not regulated by art but by the simple history of their lives and of those of their ancestors; in other words they were folk-dances.

“I could do that dance as good as any of them if I only had a false-face,” spoke up Bill, who could see nothing whatever in the energetic but solemn performance.

“What do you want a false-face for? What’s the matter with the one you have on?” said Jack, laughing heartily.

“I knew it was purtty bad but I didn’t know it was as bad as all that,” retorted his partner.

The dance over, the man-who-would-be-chief began to talk to the spirits of his ancestors. Getting no immediate response he called upon his guests to wake them up that they might hear what he had to say to them. He started them off with a large assortment of terrifying yells and this was augmented by cries, shrieks and screams of the others until it sounded like a band of renegade savages rushing to the first onslaught of battle.

Bill wasn’t the least bit afraid of anything happening, because Jack had told him all of the people in Alaska and the Yukon country, whatever the color of their exteriors might be, were white at heart. But his excess of caution just naturally led him to fold his arms so that his hand wouldn’t be more than half-a-second away from his six-gun should he need it.

The yelling kept up at a pitch so that a white man could not have heard himself think and it lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes. Neither Jack nor Bill took very much stock in what they were yelling for but (it is sad to relate and hard to believe) the primitive instinct in these boys overpowered the civilizing influences to which they had been subjected and time and again they both let loose the awful and heartrending yi-yi, yi-yi, of the cowboy.

“Oh, Harlem flat, where is thy sting?” said Jack when the yelling was over.

“You’d think they was a lot o’ cliff-dwellers in Noo York tellin’ the janitor in soothin’ tones down the dumb-waiter to put on a little more coal,” commented Bill.

Then came the wrestling matches between those who had been enemies and, without regard to which one won, when the bout was over they were good friends again.

“I could throw the two o’ them with me right hand tied back o’ me, see?” Bill sneered with evident disgust. “Let’s you and me show these Injuns what a real wrestling bout is, what say, Jack?”

“Don’t get peeved, Bill. This is their game. If you saw a bout in the New York Athletic Club, or back of the gas-house, you wouldn’t want to jump in and show the onlookers how it ought to be done, would you? Just remember that we are only innocent bystanders.”

Next came the big feast and although there were caribou and rabbit, geese and ptarmigan, still that old standby without which no Indian feast would be complete had the place of honor.

There was a team of ten roast dogs all hitched up and going to fill the great void in the principal organ of digestion which existed under the belt of each redskin. They were hot-dogs in very truth.

“I think I’d better go an’ find out if all our dogs says ‘here’ when I calls the roll,” said Bill, and not withstanding Jack’s assurances that these edible dogs were not their sled dogs, Bill went out and counted up the members of their teams just the same.

After every one had gorged himself, or herself, the man-who-would-be-chief began to distribute the presents. One of his lieutenants would call out a name, another would hold the gift before the person who answered to it, Montegnais would strike the floor with his wand indicating his pleasure and the gift would be made.

The boys came last and the man-who-would-be-chief asked them their names. Kloshsky interpreted his wishes to the boys and through the linguistic ability of this half-breed lad they made known that they answered to the cognomens of Jack and Bill, the latter from “Noo” York. Then it was they knew the man-who-would-be-chief for a gentleman, even if he was a red-skin, for he gave them each a most wonderful blanket.

When he had given away all of his possessions the potlatch was over; it was then very near morning but as the boys were tired they stayed over at the village until the following day.

“Old hatchet face can have my vote, anytime,” proclaimed Bill, as he admired his trophy.

“You’re a nice American, you are,” said Jack; “selling your vote for a blanket, eh!”

“There’s a big difference,” proclaimed Bill; “this man-who-wants-to-be-chief is a heathen savage politician while down in the States the politicians are civilized Christians. An’ besides they’ve got jails down there. Get me?”

Just as they were ready to start back Kloshsky, the half-breed boy, told them it is the custom to return all gifts to the man-who-would-be-chief within a month and that they must bring his blankets back by the next moon.

Jack and Bill reluctantly handed over their presents to Kloshsky and told him to give them back to the man-who-would-be-chief with their best wishes and kindest personal regards and other nice felicitations that are usually found on the ends of business letters.

“Mush, you huskies!” yelled Jack and Bill simultaneously while the Indians, less cheerful than on the night of the potlatch, waved them their adieus.

“Indian giver,” said Jack when they were beyond earshot.

“I wouldn’t vote for that stingy guy now if he gave me all the blankets he owns,” groused Bill.

But while they soon forgot the blankets they could not forget the necklaces and belts of nuggets the Indians wore and they had more reason than ever to believe they were at the rainbow’s end where it dipped into pots of pure gold.

CHAPTER X
ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD

“Well, how is old Potlatch this nice, bright, beautiful morning,” Jack jocularly inquired of his partner after they had started and their grouches had somewhat subsided.

“No more o’ them things for me,” replied Bill almost amiably. “We’ve wasted a whole day and we haven’t even got a blanket between us to show for it. What I was thinkin’ about, though, was the sacks Bull Moose Joe has made pertainin’ to an’ anticipatin’ the findin’ of the gold. My one best bet is that we gets the gold first off and the sacks arterward.”

“Now you’re talking sense, Bill. It just goes to show how all-fired over confident a fellow can be. Confidence is a good thing but some people have so much of it they fool themselves. Of course I’ll admit that it would take a long time to kill enough moose to make twenty or thirty sacks but a few months more or less wouldn’t make much difference after we’ve got the metal. Of course if we accidentally stumbled onto a moose-yard that would be different.”

The boys had hunted the caribou for their fresh meat supplies, in fact caribou were so plentiful in some districts of the country through which they passed they seldom had to use their stock provisions, such as bacon and Alaska strawberries, and as for the dogs, they waxed fat on the excess of meat they were given and grew sluggish. There was no need for them to die to get to the happy hunting grounds—they had attained all that their canine souls could wish for under these youngsters of great hearts and high courage who were their masters.

It is no trick at all to shoot a caribou and it is no sport either for if it is wounded it will not put up a fight. Sport in hunting big game comes in only when the hunter is exposed to danger and takes a chance of fighting for his life along with the beast he is trying to kill. And Bill was right when he said that any man who calls himself a sportsman and goes after caribou for the mere sake of killing them ought to be given a spanking and sent back home to his mother.

While Jack was something of a naturalist and knew all about caribou and their habits Bill was the expert when it came to dressing them. Bill shot the first caribou and when he brought it into camp he examined it closely for it was the first one he had ever seen at close range.

“It looks like a reindeer to me, pard,” he said after eyeing it closely.

“It is a reindeer, for caribou and reindeer are one and the same animal; the only difference is that reindeer are domesticated and caribou are wild. Then again there are two kinds of caribou; the one you’ve brought in is the kind that lives north of sixty-four and this is called barren ground caribou, while the kind that lives farther south is called woodland caribou.

“You see the winter coat of this caribou is thick and almost white, but in summer it takes on a reddish-brown color except underneath and that stays white. As summer comes on the caribou goes north and in winter he comes down here to the woodlands. While he is quite shy yet his curiosity is so great it often gets the best of him and he will stand and give a fellow the once over until it is sometimes too late for him to retreat.

“As to speed, why he can beat a dog or a horse all hollow and so when he is running nothing but a target shot will bring him down.”

“We must get some moose afore we start back for little ole Noo York. I want to take back the head and antlers of a big un to me goil, see,” reflected Bill, who was evidently beginning to think of home.

Jack allowed that it might not be a bad scheme to bring down a moose or two, not merely for trophies of their prowess as big game hunters, but for the purpose of using their flesh for food, as well as their hides, in the possible event of their having need for them. Now, know you, that while in summer the moose usually travels alone, in winter a number of them will band together and trample down the snow in a space with their hoofs, and this is called a moose-yard.

Finally, one day, the boys came across tracks leading to a moose-yard, then quickly made a temporary camp, and struck out to stalk it. They came upon it just as the moose, of which there were about a dozen, had reached a small lake. In the yard were two old bull moose, half-a-dozen cows and the rest calves. The boys crept up on them until they were within bullet range. The bull moose were magnificent specimens of wild animal life and must have weighed more than a thousand pounds apiece.

The boys chose their quarry and then two bullets speeded forth though the cracks of their Winchesters sounded like a single shot. They ran toward the moose but the bullets which had crashed into their great bodies did not kill them or even drop them to the ground. Instead, the wounded beasts bellowed with rage and as the boys came up they charged them with mighty fury, their great antlers cutting the air like so many sabers.

As fast as they were able to get out of the way of one of the bulls, the other was upon them and they were kept busy dodging, side-stepping and in devious other ways eluding them. In the skirmish between the boys and the bulls, the cows and the calves stood off at some little distance looking on but without the slightest show of any intention of joining in, for their belief in the power of the bulls to look after themselves was absolute.

Just as the larger of the bulls was making a final desperate charge on Jack, he pulled the trigger of his rifle three times with lightning-like rapidity; the monster moose came to a dead-stop and toppled over, when a fourth bullet ended him and Jack had his first and only moose to his credit.

In the meantime Bill was having a hard time of it, for the other bull pressed him so close he not only could not use his gun but he had to drop it to save himself. Bill had seen bullfights in Mexico, but a toreador dodging a bull of the bovine species was as mere child’s play, he opined, as he afterward said in telling me about it, when compared with getting away from this mighty animal of the genus Cervus.

He had also seen, yes, had even performed, that seemingly superhuman feat known in the cattle country as bulldogging a steer, which means that a cowboy throws a steer to the ground by grasping its horns and twisting its neck until the animal falls, but he knew that this trick would not succeed with the monster he was now pitted against.

The struggle was going on away from where it started as far as powder will send a bullet and the moment Jack had killed his moose he ran to help his partner. Before he got within firing range he saw a sight that he would not be likely to forget, no, not if he lived to the century mark. The bull moose had made a terrific lunge at Bill but instead of pinning him on his horns, or catching and tossing him a dozen yards or so as is the way of these enraged beasts, the New York boy had grasped his antlers as he lowered his head and with the agility of an acrobat, plus the desire to aid and abet the first law of nature, when the bull’s head went up Bill went with it with his feet straight up in the air.

In another instant he turned completely over and landed on the moose’s neck and there he gripped the coarse thatch of hair and held on with a tenacity of purpose that all of the bull’s cavorting around could not shake off. Then it was that Bill drew his six-gun and emptied the contents of it into the head of the great beast, while a bullet from Jack’s rifle brought him down. Finding their leaders were no more, the cows and calves turned and fled.

The next thing on the list was to skin the moose, and this was a very arduous job. Both of the boys, but especially Bill, could almost out-Indian an Indian when it came to skinning a caribou but out here where the icy wind was cutting across the lake it was a very disagreeable task. Before they were through with the work the day had slipped into night and they had to make their temporary camp their quarters. After a supper of moose-cutlet they felt much “sorensified” as Bill expressed it, and he was not so badly off but that he could play a few chunes, as he called them, on his mouth organ. They piled the hides, both of which were as large as the largest buffalo hides, on their sleds, together with as much of the meat of the carcass of one of the moose as they could carry; this they took back with them to their permanent camp, and it solved the meat problem for a very considerable time to come.

While Jack could clean the skins quite as well as his partner, still the job didn’t agree with his finer sensibilities and he balked on doing it in true Indian style. Bill was not so particular and he would squat squaw-like on the floor, lay the skin on his lap, hair-side down, grip the edge of it with his teeth, and with his left hand under it he easily and quickly cut and scraped away all the flesh and fat from it with his knife in the right and never once make a miscue and cut the skin.