Jim Saddler 7

by Gene Curry

  “I must go, Jim,” she said quietly. “I have many things to do before I start tomorrow. So have you. Now you must sleep and get your strength back. Tonight you have given all of it to me.”

  I could see that it was no use trying to persuade her to come with me. She had chosen a strange, lonely life. It wasn’t for me to say she was wrong.

  “I’m sorry to see you go,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry. There is nothing to be sorry about. And don’t say you will escort me home, like a boy in a story. My cabin is only a few miles and there is no danger. Everybody knows me here. They would hang the man who tried to harm me.”

  “You have a pistol in that big coat?”

  “I carry a rifle on my journeys, that is all. Goodbye, Jim. I hope nothing happens to you.” She kissed me and was ready to go.

  “Stay safe,” I said.

  I barred the door behind her and heaped more wood in the stove. Then I lay on the bunk and drank the rest of the whiskey until I was ready to sleep. Tired or not, it was a long time before I closed my eyes.

  The next day I went across the river to Lousetown to look for McClure. Folks in Dawson looked down on the neighboring settlement, though I couldn’t see much difference between the two towns except that Dawson was somewhat bigger. Otherwise they had the same miserable appearance; in Lousetown tents and shacks drifted up the hills from the river, now frozen over and covered with snow. The sky was as clear as it ever gets there in winter, meaning that it was a dull gray and whipped by arctic winds. Gold-seekers were still heading out to the creeks that emptied into the Yukon, but most of the citizens seemed to be settling in, like bears, for the long, hard winter. A man flattening tin cans to make a facing for his shack pointed up the hill and told me I could find McClure in a big cabin with a horseshoe nailed above the door.

  “Mac came back during the night,” the man said. “I heard him yelling at his dogs.”

  McClure was still asleep when I banged on his door. It took more banging to get him to open up, and when he did he was in right bad humor. Like half the men in that part of the country he was Scotch, and he eyed me with the natural wariness of his people. He had hard, blue eyes and the kind of red skin that never tans no matter how much it’s exposed to sun and wind. He lived with his dogs and they came snarling at me when he opened the door.

  “Well come in, for Christ’s sake,” he growled. “Pay no mind to the dogs. They won’t attack you unless I tell them to. Then they’ll tear you to bits.”

  That’s how they are in the Yukon: always full of good cheer. “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “You Duncan McClure?”

  “The same,” he agreed. “You mind telling me what you want so I can get back in my bunk?” He yawned and scratched himself, pushing through the pack of dogs that filled the cabin.

  The cabin had two rooms and there were dogs in both of them. I don’t know how many dogs he had in there. At least three teams. There were even dogs under his two-tiered bunk. The whole place stank of dogs and fish and tobacco and dirty clothes. A pot of coffee simmered on a red-hot stove and the walls were hung with everything that could be hung on them. Snowshoes, dog whips, boots, rifles, a sled harness, other things I couldn’t even place.

  McClure sat on the edge of his bunk and put a match to his pipe. “There’s a chair,” he said, pointing. “Just knock that gear to floor and say what it is you want.”

  “Dogs,” I said. “And a sound sled.”

  “Thought you might,” he said. “Well, sir, one thing I got is dogs. You think you want to go into the freighting business? It’s all spoken for, if that’s what you have in mind. Between me and that Hella woman it’s tied up tight.”

  “She said you had good dogs,” I said. “You want to sell me a team? I’ll give you fifteen hundred for a team and a sled.”

  The Scotchman had a short laugh at that. “You’ll give me twenty-five hundred. Couldn’t take less than that. Dogs are worth more than money up here. You don’t believe me, ask around.”

  After some dickering we settled on two thousand for the whole shebang, and McClure even gave me a cup of coffee to seal the bargain. Now that he had my money in his pocket he was ready to be friendly in a watchful way.

  “You heading for the creeks?” he said. “Tell me to mind my own business if you like.”

  “You know a camp called Dulcimer on the Alaska side of the line?” The air in the cabin was thick enough to make soup, and every time I spoke to McClure the dogs growled.

  “I’ve been there,” McClure said. “The other side of Fort Yukon. If that’s where you’re going you’re in for one hell of a journey. And if I do say so, you picked one hell of a time to be making it.”

  “I figure to follow the river most of the way. I know where the fort is. How close to that is Dulcimer?”

  McClure scratched his beard with the stem of his pipe. “About thirty miles, I’d say. But miles don’t mean that much in winter. If you want my advice, which you don’t, Dulcimer is a good place to stay out of. It’s got no law at all and there’s more shooting there in a week than we get here in a year. All the trash the redcoats keep out on this side end up there. And for all the soldiers the fort is near as bad.”

  I was surprised. “You mean there’s a town there now?” In my time Fort Yukon was nothing but a log fort and a trading post. It had the name of being the worst duty in the whole U.S. Army.

  “What passes for a town,” McClure said. “Stores, saloons, even something that calls itself a hotel. Man that used to run the trading post got murdered. Now it’s run by a Canuck half breed name of DuSang. A right bad egg, that feller. But they got plenty of bad eggs besides him. The fort’s got no say in how the town is run, so they keep out of it except when one of the men gets in some kind of trouble. I made a few runs down that way till I decided I’d end up gut-shot or throat-cut. When you get down that way, lad, you’d better sleep with one eye open or maybe you’ll never open them again. Now if you’re all done with that coffee I’ll feed the dogs some fish and crawl back in bed.”

  Well, there I was with my sled and my six huskies. Their names, according to McClure, were Siwash, Horse, Haggis, Blackie, Watson, and Fox. Fox was the lead dog because he was the smartest and the biggest. A man may boss the whole outfit, but the lead dog is his second in command. He keeps the other dogs in line and without him there is no discipline at all. Fox was about a hundred and twenty-five pounds; the other dogs averaged a hundred or so. McClure had no dog meat or fish to sell, so I would have to buy that in Dawson. I was to talk to a man named Phipps, the Scotchman said.

  Crossing the river with the team, I felt the pull of muscles I hadn’t used for a long time. Every kind of work from punching cows to chopping wood uses a different combination of muscles, but I’ll be damned if mushing a dog team doesn’t use every muscle in the body. McClure said the dogs he sold me hadn’t been worked lately and therefore were kind of soft. That was all to the good, according to him, because they wouldn’t set me too hard a pace for the first few days. I knew the dogs would be a bit skittish at first, even with a strong lead dog like Fox, but they were well fed and eager to get out on the trail. Thinking of my snug cabin with its glowing stove I wasn’t half as eager, but there was work to be done and I had come a long way to do it.

  I found the man named Phipps and he charged me fifty cents a pound for dried fish and caribou meat for the dogs. It was about twenty below zero, mild weather for Dawson, and the sky was like lead. This would be my last chance to load up on supplies, so once again I went over what I had. I had food and bullets and whiskey and there wasn’t anything else I could think of.

  It was time to move out.

  Chapter Six

  The river was to be my road to the American side of the border, and though it wasn’t frozen solid to the bottom, I figured the ice was thick enough to travel on. Dawson and all its glories fell away behind me and it was good to get away from the stink of unwashed men and all the babble about gold. Yet in some wa
ys I was sorry to leave it behind, because I am a man who likes company and the sounds of a saloon, the clink of whiskey glasses and the slap of cards. I guessed Hella had started out by now and I smiled when I thought of her mushing behind the dog team, all bundled up in furs with that determined look in her eyes. At first there was a lonely feeling when I thought of her, but that was soon forgotten when Fox, my lead dog, barked furiously and started the team to one side of a weak place in the ice. After that I kept my mind on the business at hand, which was staying alive in a land where anything could kill you. Anything at all.

  The sun came out, if you can call it that, in the middle of the day. It looked like runny egg yolk against the leaden sky. I was sorry to see it weaken and vanish, because in the days to come it would not appear at all. In time to come there would be nights that were brighter than the days. On such nights, if the sky wasn’t overcast, the moon, stars and Northern Lights would shine with a brilliance that could almost hurt the eyes. There was no one else on the river, not that day anyway, and though my arms ached, I was beginning to get the feel of a dog sled again. In my army days I had done a considerable amount of it, and whenever I got leave I explored the Canadian side of the line. It wasn’t that I liked it so much but it gave me a chance to get away from the fort. I learned a lot about the country and unbeknownst to the post commander, or any of the men, I built a shack under the lee of a cliff in a deep draw. There I would spend time with an Indian girl and a bottle from the trading post at the fort …

  I decided that McClure was an honest man after all, for Fox was all the dog the Scotchman said he was. The big bastard had intelligence that went far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in an animal; that takes in a lot of men too. I’ve never been one for dogs, not having the need of one, but I was beginning to like that barrel-chested husky.

  The miles passed in swift silence on the river and soon daylight was gone. I fed the dogs dried meat and we all rested, me most of all. Then we traveled on in that strange light that comes in the early hours of night in the Northland. Day changes to night in a way that is hard to explain; one shade of gray replaces another. Just when it should be getting dark it gets bright again, if the clouds aren’t heavy, and if it gets bright enough, you can travel far into the night, or all night if you feel like it.

  I didn’t feel like it. That night I made camp in a stand of trees, and got a fire started with the kindling I’d brought along. There was plenty of dry deadwood under the snow and I fed the dogs before I ate. I had several hundred pounds of dog meat on the sled and they were putting it away at the rate of two pounds a day per dog. I cooked up a supper of fat bacon and beans and made a pot of coffee. The night was cold and clear, but I didn’t feel too bad sitting by the fire all wrapped up to the eyebrows. Of course this was the easy part of the trip; I didn’t have an old man in a coffin to worry about. It was not my intention to return by way of Dawson and Skagway. There was something about Soapy Smith that still made me uneasy. There was another port, a little place called Valdez, higher up the coast. The only trouble was it was on the other side of the Alaska Range. If the mountains had been crossed by any white man I hadn’t heard about it. Maybe Indians had done it, but I hadn’t heard about that either. But I couldn’t see that there was any other way to go if I wanted to avoid Soapy and his gunmen. If I did make it to Valdez, it would be clear sailing after that.

  The huskies had made burrows in the snow and were curled up for the night. Contrary to what you might think, a hole in frozen snow makes a warm place to sleep. I built up the fire, then dragged a dead log to top it off. The log would burn all night and I wouldn’t have to fuss with the fire in the morning. Except for the wind and an occasional whimper from the dogs, it was as quiet as the first day of Creation. I hurt all over, especially in the upper arms and shoulders. I’d be stiff in the morning, but a few hours on the trail would take care of that. In a way it was a good feeling to test myself against the wilds. For months I hadn’t done much of anything but buck the poker tables; there had been too many all-night sessions with too few dollars at the end of them. I hadn’t suddenly got religion, nothing as drastic as that. What I mean is, I was breathing clear air and I was bone-tired from hard work. I think I fell asleep before you could count to ten.

  I was up and off at first light, holding steady to a five-mile trot for the first hour. Then I slowed down to four and held steady at that pace. Along the banks of the great river the woods were still dark, sort of blue-colored as the morning light faded from one shade of gray to another. The sun was weak when it came, yet it did take some edge off the cold. I traveled all day without seeing another human being. Nothing broke the stillness—not a wisp of smoke, not a sound. But I was getting used to that by now. In a way, traveling in the frozen North is like traveling in the desert. Both are places of great danger, but the sense of desolation is the same.

  I made about thirty miles by nightfall, if that’s the right word to describe the changing of the light. Once again it was a bright clear night and I could have journeyed on. In time to come I would travel at night; right then my tortured muscles were begging for mercy. I cleared a campsite using a snowshoe for a shovel, then I built a fire to cook food for the dogs. The dogs always come first even if you have to go hungry yourself. The dogs do the real work and without them you’re in a real bad fix. So far my dogs were working well, thanks to Fox, and I figured I wouldn’t have any serious trouble with them. Yet you can’t ever be completely sure how it’s going to be. Sometimes a team starts out fine, then one or two dogs start acting up. Or a well-behaved dog will turn vicious without warning. Huskies are half wild after all, and only a fool will try to treat them as anything else.

  My muscles were so sore I found it hard to cut wood for the fire. After the dogs were fed they dug their burrows and slept. I was falling into the routine of the trail, doing exactly the same things day after day. Cooking supper was the best part of all; the day’s work over, with nothing ahead but a big hot meal and grateful hours of sleep. The routine never changed. First the slab of bacon was put on to fry, then the flapjack was cooked in the bacon grease. The beans came last. As soon as the coffee boiled supper was ready.

  It snowed during the night, but I didn’t know it until I woke up. The new snow was deep and soft and I knew there was going to be trouble with it. I had to mush ahead of the dogs, breaking trail with my snowshoes. This cut down our speed by about half. It snowed again in the afternoon and there was nothing to do but make camp and wait for it to clear. I was clearing a campsite when I saw a big lynx watching me from atop a snow-covered boulder. The dogs howled when they smelled the cat, but that was the only excitement.

  One day followed another. Early on the morning of the fifth day the dogs set up a howling that woke me from a sound sleep. I knew it could be the lynx still following us in a search for food. I rolled out and grabbed my rifle, thinking I might as well put an end to the pest, if that’s what it was. If it hung around too long the dogs would be nervous and maybe taken a notion to chase after it. I eased my way into the trees holding a chunk of raw meat in my hand. I was about to throw it when far off I saw a tall figure moving along fast on snowshoes. Snow was blowing from the top of the drifts and at first I couldn’t make out much. Then the snow cleared for a moment and there was Hella. She had a rifle and a pack and that was all. I yelled when I saw her and before the echo had gone she unlimbered the rifle. There was something wild and desperate in the way she did it that I knew something was wrong. I yelled again, this time calling her name, and then she recognized me and came ahead as fast as she could move. She would have fallen if I hadn’t caught her.

  “Easy, don’t talk yet,” I said, helping her to my camp. There was a bruise on her cheek, another on her forehead, and her eyes had lost their calm look. I got a bottle of whiskey from the supplies and made her drink half a cup before I filled up the rest with black coffee.

  “I thought you were so far ahead of me I would never catch up,” she said. “I trave
led all last night to find you.”

  “Drink the rest of it,” I said. “Then tell me what happened. Who marked your face?”

  “Men came to my cabin looking for you,” she said. “They thought you had hired me to work for you. To bring out the body. I said I did not know you, but they had been talking to people in Dawson. They knew about the two men who tried to rob you. They took me by surprise. They grabbed my rifle before I could get at it. I had no chance against them. There were five of them. One, the leader, chewed lemon candy all the time.”

  “Lemon drops,” I said. “That’s Sullivan. They all work for a man named Soapy Smith in Skagway.”

  “The criminal?”

  “That’s the one. Tell me the rest of it, Hella. They beat you. What else did they do?”

  “They raped me, all but the leader. Then they killed my dogs so I could not follow you. They said if I tried to follow you they would kill me. What does it all mean, Jim?”

  Quickly, I told her what I knew. “Smith must have changed his mind after I left Skagway. Smith may be working on his own or the Slocum brothers sent a man to talk to him. You see any sign of Sullivan and his men on the way here?”

  “I saw them on the river. They were not making such bad time. I passed their camp in the night. We must move on and keep on moving. I am all right.”

  Hella stared at the embers of the fire. “What happened to me, will that make a difference to you?”

  I kissed the bruise on her cheek. “What do you think?” I said. “Before this is over I’m going to make them pay for it.”

  “Good,” she said. “And I will help you.”

  She ate while I harnessed the dogs. “You will sleep in my bag on the sled,” I said. “Don’t argue about it. You’ve been traveling night and day with no sleep and hardly anything to eat. Get in my sleeping bag and sleep. Sleep all day and we’ll keep going through the night.”