North

It was just before Christmas, and into Dawson, a straggling camp of tents and log cabins, the sourdoughs were drifting from the outlying creeks and washes. It was in that portentous year of the Yukon when in August, Henderson’s strike on Gold Bottom was followed immediately by Carmack’s strike on Bonanza, and the men of Fortymile and of Circle looked into the blowers and saw coarse gold that had been panned from the grass roots. Whereupon, claims paying “better than wages” were abandoned, outfits hastily thrown together, and in poling boats and in canoes, the sourdoughs stampeded up river. The traders, the saloon keepers, and the girls from the dance halls followed the gold hunters and on the flat in the shadow of Moosehide Mountain the camp of Dawson was born of the life blood of Circle and Fortymile.

But, from the first the new camp differed essentially from the older camps where it had been the wont of the sourdoughs to foregather for a winter of idleness and revelry. For, close upon the discovery of gold in the upper country, came the discovery of the process of “burning in,” and in that year the Yukon saw the first winter mining of her history. These were the days of the unspoiled Yukon, before the stampede from the outside filled the valleys and the creek beds with its hordes of tin-horns and chechakos—the days when a man’s word was as good as his pile and a card would be turned unquestionably upon a finger bet for thousands.

But with Christmas hard upon them, despite the fact of the new found winter mining, and despite the fact that the sourdoughs were gouging in gravel richer by far than the gravel of their fondest dreams, one by one the fires were allowed to die out in the shafts along the creek beds. The sourdoughs were drifting into the new camp. For Christmas is Christmas—and what is a week or two of work, when the bulk of the winter is still ahead, and when each test pan shows coarse gold and more of it than the luckiest of them had ever taken from many test pans? And what is a week or two of work when the white lights are calling—the clang of the dance hall piano, the feel of a woman held close, the smooth purr of the wheel, the run of the cards at the poker tables, the warm grip and glow of the liquor, and the comradery of men who thudded heavy sacks onto the bar from the mouths of which coarse gold was shaken onto the scales?

There had been no prearranged plan for a general celebration at Christmas—no looking forward in anticipation of a grand hurrah. But the spirit of Christmas was in the air. And each sourdough, independent of his neighbor, harnessed his dogs and silently hit the trail, knowing instinctively that at the end of the trail he would find his neighbor. For man is by instinct gregarious, and he will travel far to answer the primordial call of his kind. For a month, a year—longer, he may remain alone. But the passive act of remaining is a distinct effort of will, a continued and continuous throttling of desire, until at last the time comes when desire may no longer be throttled. A man may remake himself, may completely change the sequence of act, the sequence of thought, that has differentiated him from other men, he may thus change what men are pleased to call his nature. But, the fundamental law that has decreed him a social animal he cannot change—and remain a man. The fugitive from justice, though he know himself to be beyond thought of capture in some far fastness of the wilderness will, when the time comes, count prison bars, and even the hangman’s noose, as naught, and will deliberately risk capture in seeking the society of his kind. And the man of the far North will brave the hardships of the long trail, will laugh at the strong cold, will bore through the blinding blizzard, will risk thin ice, and uncomplaining accept the gruelling labor of the snow-trail for no other thing than that he may intermingle with his own kind. It is the law. Men have broken the law and have paid the fullness of its fearsome penalty. The brain that makes man man explodes, and the man of a moment before is a raving insentient brute which in a fume of unreasoning fury seeks only to destroy until in a final paroxysm of malignity he destroys himself. Or, the dissolution of the brain may come gently and the breaker of the law of kind, maundering, and prattling, and babbling, may live on, and on, and on.

A short distance above the mouth of a dry wash that emptied into the wide valley of Bonanza, Burr MacShane threw the last shovelful of gravel onto his dump and methodically kindled his fire on the iron-hard gravel at the bottom of his shallow shaft. An enormous malamute turned with a sneeze of disgust from his contemplation of the shaft as the acrid smoke filled his nostrils, and MacShane laughed: “Surprised as hell, ain’t you, Highball, that fire gives off smoke? Every day you stand there an’ get a noseful, an’ then down goes your tail an’ you sneeze out the smoke. You act like a fool pup—an’ you the best trail dog in the North!” At the words the tail of the great dog snapped erect, and rearing upward he placed two large forefeet upon the man’s chest. The ensuing tussle during which each tried to put the other in the snow was interrupted by the tiny tinkle of bells. Man and dog paused to watch an outfit pass the mouth of the wash far out on the trail. MacShane grinned: “Headin’ for Dawson,” he confided to the dog, “That’s the sixth one in three days, an’ the Lord knows how many that we didn’t see. An’ in a week or so they’ll be headin’ out again. Ain’t men fools, Highball? They ought to stay with the gravel.”

That afternoon MacShane cut cordwood and from the vantage point of the rim saw three more outfits pull by. When it was too dark to see he descended to the cabin, built a roaring fire in the stove and proceeded to fill a tin boiler that had originally been a petrol can, with ice.

“Kind of like to hear how the rest of ’em are makin’ it,” he muttered to himself while the ice melted. “I’d kind of like to know if any of ’em have struck bed rock. That’s what’s goin’ to tell the story of this strike: What’s on bed rock? This shallow gravel is sure shot full, but the real stuff will lay where it can’t work down any farther.”

The ice melted, he added more, and when the tin boiler was half full of water he stepped outside and carried in a piece of old tarpaulin onto which he had shoveled a hundred pounds or so of gravel from the morning’s digging. The gravel was frozen into a solid mass and he set it beside the stove while he stripped off his clothing and took a bath, using the water sparingly. Dressing himself, he proceeded to wash his discarded underclothing, shirt and socks in the boiler. Hanging these garments on the drying rack, he produced a pan and when the gravel had thawed sufficiently, dumped in a batch and filled the pan from his wash water. Squatting upon the floor close beside the lamp which he moved to the edge of the table, he began to work the pan with a peculiar circular motion that threw the lighter dross splashing over the edge onto the floor. The coarser gravel he removed with his hands, tossing it aside. As the gravel and water lowered in the pan he examined the residue carefully until with a final flirt he ridded the pan of the last remaining bit of muddy water. Then he turned the contents onto a piece of wrapping paper spread out to receive it, and sorted the gold from the remaining dross. Flour gold, dust, and nuggets, that single pan weighed in at one hundred and forty dollars! MacShane rose, carried the tarpaulin with the remaining gravel out to the dump and with the water that remained in the boiler he washed his floor. Crossing to his bunk he withdrew from beneath the blankets a buckskin pouch and pouring its contents onto the paper, sat for a while and looked at the yellow pile. He consulted a memorandum book, and added a notation.

“That makes close to eight thousand dollars out of the test pans,” he figured, “an’ at that rate there’s over a hundred thousand on the dump, an’ God knows how much on down. This is sure some strike! Wait till the news of it gets outside! I would like to have a dance or two. I guess most of the girls have hit the new camp by now. This new strike sure raised hell with Circle an’ Fortymile!” As the words unbidden expressed his trend of thought, the man’s fingers abstractedly separated the larger nuggets from the little pile of gold. He returned a handful to the sack and dumped the coarse gold and the dust in after them. Then he prepared his supper and as he ate it he cooked up a meal of tallow and rice for his seven dogs.

“I expect Horse Face Joe come up along with the rest,” he mused as he washed and dried his dishes, “He sure is a doleful bird, but he can make the piano talk. Reminds a fellow of—I don’t know—sort of just lifts him up an’ out of it all. From about the fourth drink on, he’s a wonder. It’s a gift—music like he makes is. When he’s feelin’ right he can just play on an’ on, makin’ it up as he goes, an’ all of it’s better than anything that’s be’n wrote down—somehow it gets right to a man.” He apportioned the dog food into seven separate dishes and carried them out the door, then he returned and lighted his pipe. “Noticed the tea was gettin’ a little low, an’ another hundred of flour wouldn’t hurt. She was two dollars a pound when I come in, chances are she’ll go an ounce to the pound by spring.” Ensued a silence during which MacShane’s pipe went out. “That mitten I burnt the end of ain’t goin’ to last long either. Horse Face would be just about hittin’ his gait by now.” He stepped to the door and glanced toward the mouth of his shaft where the red glow proclaimed that it was time to throw on more wood. Closing the door he put on cap and mittens, but instead of going to the shaft he pulled off his mittens, filled his pipe and sat down. “They’re sayin’ that this is the last big strike,” he mused, “That when this peters out there won’t be any more poor man’s gold—but hell! There’s always another strike. There always has be’n, an’ there always will be.” He jerked the cap from his head and tossed it onto his bunk. “To hell with the fire! I’ll pull in the mornin’. Got to get that tea, an’ flour, an’ another pair of mittens. You can’t trust burnt moosehide.” He fired up the stove and put on another batch of dog food. “I’ll hit the trail early tomorrow, an’ I’ll burn her up!” While the dog food cooked, MacShane sat and stoked the fire and thought. Most men would have passed the time by reading, but not Burr MacShane. He preferred to think, to envision long trails—trails he had mushed alone with his dogs, and trails no man had ever mushed.

Just turned thirty years old, he was chiefest among all the sourdoughs of the mighty North. And he knew the North as no other man ever knew it. Cabin boy on a whaler, he deserted at the age of fourteen at St. Michaels, and for several years he knocked about the Russian settlements and the Eskimo villages of the lower Yukon, gradually widening his circle of adventure until in the eighties, and early nineties, men who thought they were exploring virgin territory were continually crossing his trail. Indians who had seen no other white man knew him by name, and little, isolated tribes there were who years afterward still called all white men Burrmacshane, believing it to be the name of the whole white race. He was the first white man to explore the Kuskokwim, and the first to traverse the mighty waste eastward from Kotsebue Sound up the Kobuk and down the Koyukuk to the Yukon. Always he played a lone hand, and among the sourdoughs he was regarded as a super man. No boasting of adventure where men foregathered but what some adventure of Burr MacShane out-topped them all. Yet, of these adventures MacShane, himself, never talked. For no adventure could there be in the North of which MacShane had not tasted the fullness. He had fought starvation, strong cold, blizzard, thin ice, rotten ice, fire, famine, water, and disease, and always he had won. By the very force and indomitable nerve of him he had won, and by the strength of his iron-hard frame. Every camp in the gold country had at some time or other boasted his habitat, but none had boasted for long. The wild, restless spirit of him forever goaded him on. The long trail beckoned, and he would hit the long trail. The strong cold descending upon a camp would drive men to the shelter of their fires, and MacShane, defying the strong cold, would throw his outfit together and mush a thousand miles. Men whispered that every safe in Alaska and in the Canadian Yukon held some of MacShane’s gold. But not for his gold was he held in regard, for no man ever thought of MacShane as rich. His deeds outshadowed his gold—in a land where gold is God.

So MacShane mused, half dozing by the fire while the dog food cooked. “She’s a great strike, all right, but she ain’t the last great strike—by a damn sight. An’ next year this country won’t be fit to live in. When the news gets outside there’ll be fifty thousand chechakos pilin’ in here. The damned fools! Most of ’em will go broke, an’ a lot of ’em will die, an’ a few will take out some dust—but what good will it do ’em? They’ll go back outside an’ buy ’em a chicken ranch. The big country will never get to ’em. They’ll think they’re skookum, but it’ll all be luck. The strike’s be’n made, an’ all they got to do is shovel out the gravel. I’d rather be a Siwash than the best of ’em—a Siwash has got a chance to see something new, to follow a trail that ain’t packed, to tear his meat from the teeth of the land, an’ not buy it at the tradin’ company’s store. Damn chechakos! But I won’t be here to see ’em. There ain’t anyone tried the Colville river yet, an’ even the Koyukuk ain’t be’n scratched. God, but she’s bleak up there, with the long night, an’ the strong cold. But she ain’t b’en scratched, an’ combed, an’ raked, an’ the cricks ain’t be’n punched full of holes. I’ve got a hunch. North, it says. North!” and with a smile on his lips the man removed the dog food, blew out his light, and rolled between his blankets.