“Catch a lot more with a fishwheel than a net,” Arvid said. “When the Chinamen came north in the gold rush, they showed everyone how they caught fish in China. Started a big fad. Now we got fishwheels on every river in Alaska. Good ideas spread fast.”
The papas liked to stop at the wood camps or the fish camps every so often to pass the time of day, hear the news. And buy some smoked fish. Smoked fish was Arvid’s favorite thing in the world.
When Jack and Arvid got out of the boat to tie up, people at the camp would stop short for a minute. Surprised. Bo knew that was because they were so big. But they’d have everyone laughing in no time. The papas always joked with everyone.
Some of the children in the camps could speak English, and some spoke only Indian. But Bo and Graf could understand them, and they could understand Bo and Graf.
* * *
WHEN THEY TURNED OFF the wide Yukon into the little Innoko River, the air was warmer, and they were glad to take off their snowsuits.
But suddenly there were swarms of mosquitoes. The papas’ backs were covered with them, hardly an inch of shirt showing, and Bo and Graf had to wear gloves and rubber boots and button their shirts up tight, even though it was so warm. The mosquitoes’ never-ending thin whine—nnnnnn—was horrid.
“I wouldn’t mind mosquitoes near so much if they didn’t make that sound,” Arvid complained bitterly.
They kept a coffee can of Buhac burning on the bow, which didn’t help much, and they rubbed Bo and Graf with citronella oil, which smelled terrible and gave Graf a rash. They’d suffer it awhile, but then they’d dip their hands in the river and scrub the citronella off their faces. So their faces and hands were swollen with mosquito bites that they scratched until they bled. One day Graf’s eyes were almost swollen shut.
“God almighty,” said Jack. “Makes me sick to see you chewed up like that.”
Bo and Graf had been sleeping in the boat, but now they all slept on the sandbars around a big smoky fire the papas made to keep the mosquitoes off. They kept as close to the smoke as they could, but if the wind shifted, they had to get up and move into the smoke again.
Some miners going down the river gave the papas mosquito netting, and Arvid made head nets for all of them. That was better than citronella, but Bo and Graf didn’t like looking at things through the net. It made everything look dark.
They were two weeks on that river, and the mosquitoes were terrible all the way.
“I hate mosquitoes,” said Graf, and that was the only time he’d ever given an opinion about anything.
CHAPTER THREE
GHOST TOWN
AFTER THEY’D PASSED the tiny town of Dementi, they left the Innoko River and turned onto the Iditarod River, which twisted and looped and coiled like a crazy thing.
At first it was fun to go around the river bends craning their necks to see what would be there. Once they saw a huge beaver dam in the brush beyond the river. It was so big they could have all lived in it—even the papas.
And once they saw a family of otters happily sliding down the muddy bank, for all the world like a bunch of children. Bo thought they looked like they were laughing.
The otters dove into the water when the boat came near them, and Bo felt bad to spoil the good time they were having.
Jack slowed the boat so they could look at the slick mud slide the otters had made.
Bo had never wanted to do anything as much as she wanted to try that slide.
“Well, you wouldn’t scoot down like that, slick as butter on a griddle. It’s that silky otter fur makes them slide like that.”
Bo nodded. She could see that was true.
But usually there was never anything to see, just another bend coming. Sometimes the river made a sharp hairpin turn, and they’d be going right back the same way they’d just come.
“It’s like the ribbon candy Milo has at the store at Christmas,” Bo said.
“It’s like running in place,” Jack said with a disgusted face. “You never seem to get anywhere.”
Hundreds of miles of leafy trees stretched beyond the river and crowded around them on the riverbanks. Bo loved the sound they made, shushing and sighing. Noisy trees. The trees around Ballard had been mostly spruce; spruce were quiet trees.
The papas liked that leafy sound too. “Sounds just like the ocean,” Arvid said. “Just the way surf sounded washing on the beach when I was a boy.” He looked happy remembering that.
The going was slow and tedious, and sometimes they went nearly mad with the sameness of it. They were tired of their records and tired of singing and tired of going around bends and loops and being in the boat. They were tired of mosquitoes. It seemed that they’d been in the boat forever. Even Graf was getting peevish, though he was usually even tempered.
Bo almost couldn’t remember Ballard Creek, her head was so full of river and cut banks and sandbars and willows.
When the river turned into treeless tundra country, it finally straightened out. They were all relieved not to be looping back and forth.
And then, out of nowhere, there was a town in front of them on the right bank. A very big town. Bo could hardly believe what she was seeing. After all the weeks of river and sandbars and willows, how could a town just pop up—a town that looked like a picture from a magazine?
“This is where we park the boat,” Arvid said. “No more rivers. End of our trip. After we catch the tram to Iditarod Creek, we’re done traveling.”
They all stared. Streets, more streets than Bo and Graf had ever seen in their lives, more buildings, street after street, building after building.
All empty.
Arvid saw the way they looked. “I know what you’re thinking, you two. I heard about this place lots of times, but somehow I never pictured it just like this. Just about the most lonesome-looking thing I ever saw.”
Bo squinted intently at the empty streets, looking from building to building, puzzled. “Where are all the people?” she asked finally.
“This is what you call a ghost town.” Arvid stood stock-still, looking around at all the buildings.
Jack was staring too. “Lots of them in Alaska,” he said, “now the gold rushes are over. Not this big, though. This here is uncommon big.” He took his fedora off and fanned his face. “Imagine this place full of people, thousands, come in here on the stampede, all of them looking to get rich. Built this whole town in a few months.”
“Why’d they leave?” Bo asked.
“Same reason we had to leave Ballard. Gold ran out.” Jack looked down at Bo and Graf and shook his head. “If there’s one thing you can count on not counting on, it’s gold,” he said.
Old beat-up stern-wheelers sagged into the bank, and splintered waterlogged boards and lumber scraps—bits of old docks and boardwalks—were scattered around the riverfront.
It was quiet, quiet. No birds because there were no trees, just little willows pushing up here and there in the gravel.
The papas tied up the boat, and then they took Bo’s and Graf’s hands between them and started to walk. They walked up and down the streets, peering into the windows, or the spaces where the windows had been. There were three streets packed with houses and stores, long rotting boardwalks in front of all the buildings, and all the buildings empty.
Some houses were partly torn down so they could see the rooms inside, with scraps of curtains against the windows, broken bits of furniture, wallpaper on the walls. People had lived in those houses, cooked their meals, talked to one another. Empty and silent now.
The stores and businesses had big painted signs on the front, and some of the buildings had tall fronts and short backs. Jack said they built them that way so the building would look like it was two stories, when it was really only one. Bo thought that was very silly, because all you had to do to see that the building wasn’t telling the truth was look behind it.
“Tell me the signs,” said Bo, and Jack read them out: JOHNSON’S POOL HALL. TOOTSIE’S RESTAURANT. ABE AP
PLEBAUM’S MERCANTILE. THE IDITAROD CHRONICLE—a newspaper, Jack said.
After that, there were banks, three of them, which the papas had to explain.
“See, you put money in there to be safe, and when you want to spend it, they give it back to you. And maybe if you need some money to build a house or something, they give it to you. Lend it to you. But you have to pay it back.”
“Did you put your money in a bank?” she asked. The papas looked at each other and laughed.
“Never had it long enough to put it anywhere,” said Arvid.
“Me, I always had the feeling I wanted my money with me all the time, not off somewhere else,” said Jack. “I’d be lonesome without it!”
There were two haberdasheries right next door to each other. Bo and Graf tried to say that word but couldn’t get it right.
“What does it mean?” Bo asked.
“Place you buy clothes for men,” Jack said.
“But why don’t they just put up a sign that says clothes for men? Why do they put haber and what else you said?”
Jack and Arvid looked at each other again. “Beats me,” said Jack with his eyebrows up.
A barbershop, a little hospital, and a lot of saloons were on the last street.
“I’ve lost count of the saloons,” Jack said.
The biggest one had the biggest sign—IDITAROD SALOON—printed in fancy red and black letters with curlicues. Bo stopped to admire it. Those letters were so beautiful.
“When I learn to write, I want to write like that,” she said. “All fancy.”
They carefully lifted open the saloon door because it was hanging on only one hinge. For a minute, they stood by the door and listened to the thick, heavy quiet.
A long table in the middle of the room had a green cloth on it.
“That’s a funny table,” Bo said.
“It’s a pool table,” Jack said. “That’s a game. Used to be good at this,” he said, giving her a smug smile. “Don’t see any balls or cues.” Jack bent over the table and pretended to hold a long stick. “See, you got to hit the balls into those little pockets.”
Bo thought it looked too easy to be a good game.
The green cloth was shredded in places.
“Shrews,” said Arvid. “It’s their town now.” Bo got a picture in her head of busy little shrews bustling up and down the streets, in and out of the stores, shopping.
When they came out of the saloon, they stopped short. They heard hammering.
“Someone still here,” said Jack.
They walked toward the sound, and when they came around the corner of a tall half-wrecked building, they saw a skinny man in overalls. He was clawing boards off an upright stud with a crowbar. The nails and the boards squeaked and groaned so loudly that the man didn’t hear Jack when he called out.
But he stopped working when he saw them and grinned.
“Welcome to Bonanza City,” he said, making a funny little bow. He walked up to Jack and Arvid and craned his neck back to look into their faces. “Big guys,” he said, almost to himself. Then he shook hands with both of them. “Zeke’s my name. Hardy at the hotel said you’d be coming.”
The papas told him their names and then Jack said, “Guess you’re the wrecking crew.”
“Righto. I pull the houses down, take the wood to Iditarod Creek. No trees around here to speak of, so the lumber is much appreciated.”
Jack was still staring around him, as if he couldn’t take it all in.
“This must be the biggest ghost town in Alaska,” he said.
“By far, by far,” said Zeke. “Was the biggest town in Alaska after the stampede in 1910. Lasted two years, that’s all. Two years. Gold was too deep. And it cost too much to get it out. Then they found gold at Iditarod Creek, just eight miles away.” Zeke pointed his thumb over his shoulder to show them where that was.
“Shallow ground there, gold just about popping out of the ground on its own. So everyone in Bonanza City was off and running to get in on it. But that didn’t last long. When they brought the dredges to Iditarod Creek, most of those men were out of work again. Dredge takes the place of a hundred men, you know.”
“Bedamned,” Jack said, shaking his head. “A hundred men.”
“Some of the boys went to Nome for the big strikes, some to the Kantishna. Some back home.”
Jack and Arvid knew how it was. “Mining life’s sure not something you want to depend on,” said Arvid.
“Which outfit you working for?” Zeke asked.
“Petrovich,” said Arvid.
Zeke smiled. “Good. He’s a good one. Wouldn’t want to work for Eller’s outfit.”
“How’s that?” asked Jack.
Zeke made a raspy sound in his throat. “His wife runs it, that’s why,” he said. “A right old battle-ax, her.”
The papas grinned at each other. Bo knew she mustn’t interrupt grown-ups when they were talking, but when Zeke went to the shed to put his tools away, Bo whispered, “What’s a right old battle-ax, and what’s a dredge?”
Jack burst out laughing. “You’ll see both of them when we get where we’re going, I guess. Hold on to your britches until then.”
The papas told Bo and Graf that they’d be riding the tram to Iditarod Creek. Trams were really just big wagons that ran on train rails across the tundra.
“And the tram’s pulled by horses,” Jack said.
Bo looked around wildly. “Where are the horses?”
“Take it easy.” Jack laughed. “You’ll see them when you see them.”
When Zeke came back, Arvid asked, “When’s the tram running?”
“Oh, he’ll be here soon. I know he was needing to shoe Goldie. That’s his best horse,” Zeke explained to Bo. “He thinks the sun rises and sets on his Goldie. He’s got twelve horses altogether, but Goldie’s his favorite.”
Across the tundra they could see the wooden rails of the tram, and before long they could see the tram coming closer and closer. Six big horses, hitched by twos, and six flatcars to ride in and carry their freight.
Bo took Graf’s hand when the horses got nearer, in case he might be afraid. Which he was.
The tram man was named Charlie.
“There’s nine Charlies in Iditarod Creek,” he said to Bo. “What do you think about that?”
His name was Charlie Ross, but he said they called him Charlie the Tram.
“The other Charlies is called different things so you could tell us apart. Little Charlie and Charlie One-Eye—like that,” Charlie the Tram explained.
Bo and Graf looked at each other wide-eyed. A one-eyed man!
Charlie smiled down at them. “Want to sit up here on Goldie?” He looked at the papas to see if they’d allow it. “She’s good as gold, that’s why I call her that.”
Jack looked at Bo. “Want to?”
“Yes,” she whispered, too pleased to say it out loud. The scow man had never let the children at Ballard Creek near his horses. He said children spooked horses.
Jack scooped Bo up and set her on Goldie’s back. Goldie turned her head and looked calmly at Bo. Bo could see she liked children.
“You hold on tight, now,” Charlie said.
Graf hid behind Arvid’s big leg and peered out. Arvid looked down at him. “You?”
Graf shook his head hard. No.
Bo was up high, her head level with Jack’s. She gently smoothed the rough hair on Goldie’s neck.
“She’s so warm, Papa. I wish we could have a horse.”
“Used to have plow horses like this down South,” said Jack. “Just the smell of a horse puts me in mind of home. But this country’s no good for horses. All the horses I ever seen since coming into the country had hard times. Most didn’t live long. Died like flies on the Klondike.”
“I was on the Klondike,” said Charlie. “Break your heart, the lives those horses lived. But my horses got it good. I give them the best of everything, always got six resting while the other six work. I can’t abide a ma
n mistreats his animals.”
Jack ran his hand over Goldie’s rump. “I can see she’s well treated,” he said to Charlie.
Bo sat on Goldie while the papas and Charlie and Zeke brought their things from the boat and piled them into the open tram cars.
Horses smelled different from anything she’d ever smelled before. And she could feel Goldie’s powerful muscles move when she stamped her heavy foot or turned her head.
When Bo talked, Goldie laid her ears back as if she were trying to hear every word.
“Look, Papa, she knows her name.”
“Oh, horses is smart,” said Charlie the Tram.
The papas pulled the boat into the big shed down by the old dock. Charlie said everyone from Iditarod Creek left their boats there to keep them out of the weather.
Bo felt strange for a moment, seeing the empty boat disappearing into the shed. It had been home for a long time.
When all their things were loaded up and they were ready to go, Jack gave Bo her hat. “Pull down that net if the mosquitoes get bad,” he said.
Bo was almost too excited to notice anything, but after a while, she could see that the tundra they were passing over so smoothly was just like the tundra back home in Ballard Creek—humpity tussocks and all the little white flowers, reindeer moss, little baby spruce trees here and there, and far away a row of tall spruce trees edging a creek.
So that was at least one thing that would be the same in their new place—the tundra.
CHAPTER FOUR
IDITAROD CREEK
BEFORE THEY COULD see the town of Iditarod Creek, they began to hear a dreadful rumbling. The closer they got, the louder the noise became, now with piercing high screeks of metal grating and scraping, squeals and roars, growling, slamming, terrible crashing. Bo turned her head to give a horrified look at the papas, so Jack got out of the tram and walked beside her and Goldie.
“That’s a dredge, for sure,” said Jack. “Never heard one myself, but can’t be anything else. Make your blood run cold, if you didn’t know what it was, sounds so terrible. It is terrible, if you think of it. Like a big monster eating up the earth. And they got four of them. Four dredges around here.”
Bo at Iditarod Creek Page 2