North

Immediately upon returning to the cabin on Myrtle, Lou Gordon began to put the finishing touches on the training of two handsome young huskies which she intended to add to her team for the big race. Great strong dogs they were, half brothers to Skookum, and they threw themselves into the work with a will. Each day found the girl upon the trail with her dogs, now urging them through loose snow, now on the hard-packed surface of the creek, lying flat on the sled fairly “burning the snow” as she timed off the passing miles, and again, accustoming them to eat rice balls and handfuls of meal in the harness, with only a few minutes of rest.

The day of departure arrived. She had a race team of twelve dogs now, and her father expressed surprise as she proceeded to harness six of these dogs, with six others of only ordinary ability.

“What ye doin’ wi’ them dogs?” he asked. “Ye surely ain’t figurin’ on racin’ them!”

“No, but I’m taking them with me just the same,” answered the girl. “It’s their business to work every day till we hit Nome, and that will let the race dogs have every other day off. I’ll only use half the race dogs each day and let the other half run free.”

“Losh, lass! Wi’ a twelve dog outfit, an’ forty days fer six hundred miles, you wouldn’t be wearin’ out ye’re dogs none. An’ how about feedin’ eighteen dogs on the trail? Ye can’t load grub an’ outfit, besides feed fer eighteen days fer six hundred miles on any sled.”

“I don’t have to, there won’t be any trouble getting dog feed on the trail. There are Eskimos all along the Alatna and the Kobuk, and some white men.”

“Too many dogs, far too many dogs, lass. Ye better leave them trail dogs here wi’ the Siwash boy that’s goin’ to look after the bitches an’ puppies. An’ ye better let me do most of the drivin’ an’ the handlin’ of ’em on the trail, so they’ll be more used to me. I’ll take holt of Skookum an’ learn him that a crack of the whip don’t mean the signal to fight. Because when I drive that big race I don’t want any foolishness about it. The stakes are too high.”

“I think, dad, that I’ll drive this race myself,” answered the girl, as they made fast the lashings of the sled.

“Tush, tush!” exclaimed the man, “What are ye sayin’? Why, if I wouldn’t let yer drive a fifty mile race, how come ye to be thinkin’ I’d let ye drive a four hundred mile race, that takes several days of the hardest kind of trailin’. If a fifty mile race is a man’s job, a four hundred mile race is a man’s job—an’ a gude man! Think no more about it, lass. I won the other race—an’ a mighty close one it was, as ye’ll admit. An’ I’ll win this one.”

It was upon the girl’s tongue to retort that had she been driving the race would not have been close, but she answered nothing. Nevertheless, she had no intention of allowing the old man to drive. She knew that by no possibility could he be argued out of his determination. But she, herself, would drive that race, and she had nearly two months in which to lay her plans. In Lou Gordon’s philosophy there was no use in crossing a bridge till you got to it, and two months is a long time in which to plan. So she smiled when the old man repeated his offer to handle the dogs.

“Oh, I love to drive them,” she said, “They’re used to you, now. It was only at first—before the other race that there was any danger of their not working for you. Come on, let’s go!” And, with a few words of parting instruction to the Indian boy, she swung the team down the creek, and with the old man at the handle bars, they struck out on the long snow-trail.

The first leg of the journey down the Koyukuk was uneventful enough with stops at the roadhouse, at Bettles, and at Alakaket Mission. Upon the Alatna the trail of the returning Kobuks was not deeply snowed under and afforded a good footing.

They were in the Eskimo country now, for the Koyukuk River forms the dividing line between Indian and Eskimo hunting grounds. The Alatna and Upper Kobuk Eskimos, while as typically Eskimos as their brothers of the sea coast, have many of them never seen salt water. Nevertheless, they are as truly maritime in their habits as though they dwelt upon the treeless tundras of the coast. Living in a country that is replete with caribou, ptarmigan, and rabbits, they rarely eat game, contenting themselves with fish which they take in vast quantities from the rivers and inland lakes, and with seal oil that is carried up river and traded by the coastal Eskimos. It is the same with their housing. Living as they do where timber for cabins is plentiful, they build no cabins, but live in igloos built half underground and their clothing consists of sealskin, also an article of trade, instead of caribou skin which abounds within their own territory.

For two days the trail held to the river. Each night they pitched their tent close beside an igloo, Lou after one glance into the reeking interior of the first of these huts, declining as gracefully as possible, the urgent invitations of the occupants to share their hospitality. On the high plateau of the Alatna-Kobuk portage they experienced the first difficulty in following the trail. Rim Rock’s map showed that it held straight west for nearly fifty miles, but a new fall of snow had obliterated every vestige of trail. The timber on the plateau was exceeding sparse and consisted of straggling patches of stunted spruce widely separated by level stretches of snow. One not versed in Arctic winter trailing would think that the exact location of the trail under such circumstances would be a matter of small moment, but the sourdough who does the winter traveling knows differently. Once off the trail, he must fight the deep snows of all the winter which means intolerably slow travel with no footing for the dogs. No matter how deeply buried under new snow, where the old trail is there will be found a hard bottom which furnishes the footing that is necessary for the dogs to exert any traction. And no amount of trail breaking without the old trail underneath will afford anything like a bottom.

The first few miles of the long portage were reasonably easy, for the trail was blazed on the trunks of a straggling stand of spruce. When the spruce gave place to open country the girl cut a slender sapling, sharpened it, and walking ahead of the dogs, prodded the point down through the foot and a half of new snow, locating the trail by the increased resistance of the packed snow. They took turns trail breaking, which of itself is no light job in loose snow. The broad snowshoe is useless for this work so one must resort to the narrow trail shoe that packs down the snow rather than overrides it. The trail breaker must walk ahead locating the trail as he goes, then return to the team, and walk ahead, again, thus traversing every foot of the distance three times, while his companion follows at the handle bars. Ten to fifteen miles of this is a big day’s work, and it took the two four days to make the fifty miles, including one-half day spent resting on the head waters of Hog River.

The evening of the fourth day found them at the cabin on Lake Noyutak that Rim Rock had marked on his map. All Alaska even to the remotest outland, is dotted with these decaying cabins, mute monuments to dashed hopes. Some lone prospector forces his way far beyond the outposts, builds his cabin, works like a slave in the muck for a year—two years, swallows his disappointment and moves on to build another cabin until at last the North claims him—drains him dry of everything but his vision of gold—starves him, freezes him, and when at last he falls a mottled, marbled thing into the snow, she feeds her wolves with his bones. Years later some traveler of the wastes, fighting the strong cold and the shrieking wind, stumbles upon the cabin, and in the blessed life-giving warmth of its shelter, gives fulsome thanks to its builder—but the builder never knows.

Another day’s trail breaking took them well onto the Kobuk, and early the following morning a small party of Eskimos mushing up river gave them the benefit of a trail. The trail shoes were returned to the sled, and that day they made thirty miles. The third night on the Kobuk brought them to another cabin which they shared with two Eskimo boys who were journeying up river with sealskins to trade. The sun, so long in seclusion, shone every day, and travel on the good trail of the river ice became a pleasure rather than a hardship. At Shungnak they replenished their supplies and a week later rested for two days at Squirrel River native village.

They were now well into the coastal country, and the trail ceased to be a matter of supreme importance for the reason that the hard, wind-packed snow was crusted to a degree that gave good footing anywhere upon its surface.

At the delta of the Kobuk they bore southward, crossed Hotham Inlet, and following the Choris Peninsula to its southmost extremity, crossed the wind-swept ice of Eschscholtz Bay and camped that night at Kiwalik. The next day they made Candle, and it was there that Old Man Gordon found the vindication of his much scoffed theory. At Candle, they were thawing with steam! “I told ’em! I told ’em it would come!” cried the old man excitedly, as he fairly dragged the girl to the Candle Creek workings. “I told ’em in Dawson before the big rush, an’ I be’n tellin’ ’em on the Koyukuk ever since! An’ they wouldn’t believe me! An’ now ye can see fer yerself!”

“But, they burn coal here, dad,” objected the girl.

“Aye, they burn coal because they ain’t got the wood! An’ if it’s coal ye need, which it ain’t, there’s plenty coal on the Koyukuk, an’ better coal than this ice-clogged stuff they’re shovelin’ under their b’ilers, here.” For two whole days the girl was forced to remain in Candle while the old man haunted the workings, asking innumerable questions, and boasting to anyone who would listen that he, himself, was the father of “b’iler thawin’.”

When at last Lou succeeded in persuading him to resume the journey, it was to find that the dog race had been entirely supplanted in his mind by the astounding fact that he had actually seen frozen gravel thawed with steam. “An’ they tell me they’re usin’ b’ilers at Nome, an’ pilin’ up dumps as big as mountains!” he burst forth as he paused on top of a great mountainous ridge, that overlooked Candle, “I’ll find out all about it, an’ when we go back I’ll fill the valley of Myrtle from rim to rim, an’ I’ll reckon’ my gold by the pound!”

Lou answered nothing as the outfit fairly flew over the hard trail but as she ran beside the dogs, she smiled. Here, possibly was the solution of her difficulty. She would encourage the old man to devote all his time to the study of boilers on the chance that he would entirely forget the dog race. Foolish hope, as she was soon to realize. Because, for weeks before the great event Nome talks nothing but dogs, and the Alaska Sweepstakes.

The going on the wind-packed snow of the Seward Peninsula was the fastest of the entire trip. The fastest, and by far the most trying and disagreeable, for the wind never for a moment ceased to harness and to buffet them. Nowhere in the known world does the wind persist with such malevolent, devilish force as upon the treeless waste of ridges and flats that lie between Nome and Candle. Forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred miles an hour it roars down upon the struggling traveler, seemingly endowed with intelligence and a certain devilish ingenuity for the annihilation of his outfit. To pitch a tent, or indeed to erect a shelter of any kind is an absolute impossibility. And there are times when the whole outfit is pushed, skidding and sliding off the trail to bring up with a crash against the first natural obstruction. Luckily, during the three days’ traverse of the one hundred and thirty miles to Council, the Gordons had the wind at their backs, so that on numerous stretches both father and daughter rode the sled with the dogs tearing along at full speed to keep from being run down. At Council Lou again had hard work to persuade her father to push on, for here, as at Candle, they were thawing with steam. After one day’s rest, which was no rest at all for Old Man Gordon, who visited every steam boiler within five miles of town, they pulled out early in the morning on the last lap of their long journey. “Only ninety miles to Nome!” cried the girl, as they flew over the crusted snow. “Soloman tonight, and tomorrow night—Nome!”

“Aye,” answered the old man, “But ’twill be too late to see the big dumps. They tell me they’re several miles out. I’ll have to wait till next day to go out there.”

At Topkok the two got their first view of the vast Pacific, its deep blue waves tossing their white manes high in the everlasting wind. The dogs were halted, and for a long time both stared in awed silence upon the mighty vastness of the scene. The dazzling whiteness of the snow in the bright sunshine, the cold green glitter of the great ice crags that reared their heads along the coast, and the warm blue of the ocean beyond held them in rapt admiration until the stinging wind tugging at parka hoods, and forcing its cold breath beneath their clothing, caused them to push on.

The wind was at their side now, and the difficulties of the trail were innumerable, the heavily loaded sled turning over every few miles, or crashing sidewise into the telephone poles that lined the trail.

The following day the wind blew even harder and it was not until long after dark that the weary travelers pulled into Nome, where too tired to even attempt the exploration of her brilliantly lighted wonder city, Lou Gordon gave her dogs into charge of the hotel dog keeper, and retired to her room where a few moments later she crept between the first white sheets she had ever seen, and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.