Down the Yukon

by Will Hobbs

  Abe and the men at the river burned their way to running water. The pumps were started at last. But as the hoses slowly filled with ice-cold water, they froze solid before the water even reached the nozzles. Normally, boiler-fired warm water opened the hoses. I ran along the line trying to straighten the kinks, wildly hoping it would help. Before long came the sickening sound of the hoses ripping as the water inside expanded and burst the casings.

  I turned, straightened my aching back, and watched the tinder-dry frame structures of Front Street go up in tall sheets of flame that crackled like lightning as the heat met the superchilled air. The collision of temperatures created an ice fog that settled ominously over the city as the fire raged out of control. Hundreds were racing this way and that, many with axes in hand. Abraham had disappeared.

  I fell to helping the firemen who were trying to save Belinda Mulrooney’s famous Fairview Hotel. Fast as we could, we soaked blankets in the puddles that were forming in front of the nearest burning building. Without a note of panic, the young Irishwoman called for hammers and nails and directed us to nail up the blankets to the front of her hotel and the side facing the onrushing fire.

  The inferno was about to reach the Pioneer Saloon just down the street. A man was surveying the shower of sparks between him and the front door and appeared to be on the verge of going inside.

  “Gather up the money, McPhee,” called Belinda Mulrooney. “The whole town’s going to go!”

  “Forget the money!” he shouted back, and ran inside. He appeared half a minute later staggering under an immense, antlered moosehead. “My good luck charm!”

  It was chaos. The Dominion was up in flames, the Opera House, the Northern, Jamie’s Palace Grand…. Inside the tottering Bank of British North America, the vault burst open. Its heavy iron door was glowing red as the guts of a forge.

  “What’s to be done?” cried a man in front of the Aurora.

  “Blow up the buildings in front of the fire!” commanded Captain Starnes of the Mounted Police. “Yours included!”

  The Mountie dispatched a dog team to the Alaska Commercial Company warehouse for fifty pounds of blasting powder. I turned to work alongside thousands who’d showed up to help carry items of value from the buildings in harm’s way out to the marsh behind the business district.

  At one point I heard something yelled about Irish Nellie’s boardinghouse, about it burning. I took off at full sprint.

  The windows were all spouting flames when I got there; the back of the building was engulfed. Nellie and her terrified residents, many of whom were feeble or crippled, watched in disbelief from the street. When Nellie saw me she screamed, “Your brothers!”

  “Where?” I yelled.

  With a grimace, she pointed into the building. “Ethan—then Abe—brought everyone out. We heard Mrs. Jeffries’s cries inside. Ethan went in after her, Abraham went after Ethan. Neither has come out!”

  It might be only minutes, I knew, before the building collapsed. I scanned the onlookers gathered around and spotted one with an ax. I seized it and ran for the front door as Nellie screamed at me not to. A locomotive couldn’t have dragged me away. On my hands and knees, I crawled in under the smoke billowing out the door. “Ethan!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. “Abraham!”

  No reply, only groaning from upstairs.

  Coughing, trying to hold my breath, I crawled up the stairs with the ax and bellied onto the oven-hot landing. I saw no one, nothing but smoke. At the end of a straight run, the hallway branched in two directions. Suddenly Nuisance appeared from the hallway on the right. The dog recognized me and started barking, then disappeared where he’d come from. I followed to the fork in the hall and turned right, keeping low.

  There they were, barely visible through the smoke. Ethan was pinned by a blackened timber, and so was a woman he’d shielded with his bulk. Abe was trying to pry the timber off Ethan with an ax.

  “Jason, get out of here!” Abe ordered.

  I kept bellying toward him.

  This time he screamed, “You’re going to get yourself killed!”

  How could I turn and flee? I kept going.

  Together, with both our axes, Abraham and I were able to pry the timber off and drag Ethan and the woman clear. “His leg’s broke!” Abe yelled.

  Ethan’s face was a mask of pain. The woman had passed out.

  Ethan started to rise on his good leg. “Stay down!” Abe ordered.

  I dragged the woman on her back, by her collar, down the hallway; behind me came Abe, dragging Ethan.

  The heat was overpowering and I couldn’t breathe any longer. I thought I was about to black out. I grabbed up the woman, rose, and made my way down the stairs, the fury of the fire all around me.

  In the street I laid the woman down and raced back inside. Halfway up the stairs I met them staggering down in the smoke. Leaning on Abe, Ethan was hopping down one step at a time, but neither one could breathe.

  I took hold of Ethan on his other side. We lifted him and carried him into the street, where Nuisance, on three legs, was barking furiously.

  A minute later the building was a skeletal tower of flame. It shortly tottered and collapsed. We were burned, but not too badly. The Hawthorn brothers were torn up, but we were alive.

  SIX

  The entire business district of Dawson City lay in ruins. One hundred seventeen buildings had been destroyed. On Front Street, Belinda Mulrooney’s Fairview Hotel stood intact at the southern limit of the devastation, while the surviving landmark on the north end was the badly scorched Monte Carlo. The Palace Grand was nothing but cinders.

  Miraculously, only one person died. In the ashes of the Bodega Saloon were discovered the badly charred remains of its co-owner, H. L. Watson, a known drinker. His demise went unmourned. The investigator for the Mounted Police named Watson as the lout who’d accidentally caused the disaster.

  Only an hour before the blaze began, Watson was so drunk he had to be assisted upstairs to his apartment, one of several on the second floor. The bartender who’d undertaken this same assignment on a number of previous occasions dropped Watson, unconscious, in bed. As the bartender explained to the Mounties, he was able to manage inside Watson’s room by the light of the lamp in the hallway, and he did not light the candle at Watson’s bedside.

  It was this candle, thoughtlessly mounted in a crude block of wood, that must have started the fire, the Mounties said. Watson had revived long enough to light the candle, then collapsed once more into his drunken stupor, never to wake again.

  Before the ashes from the great fire had even cooled, the Golden City was rising once again like the phoenix. This time, the edifices of Front Street were going to be rebuilt on a grander scale. Some had been insured, like Donner’s Bodega Saloon and Arizona Charlie’s Palace Grand, but in many cases owners were left penniless. They had to sell their bare ground to rich men from the creeks eager to build commercial properties on prime Dawson real estate.

  The boardwalk was going to be replaced by a concrete sidewalk, the street paved with macadam.

  From the window of the hospital where Abe and I sat with Ethan, we could hear the orchestra of hammers and saws. We could see the freight wagons hauling the debris out and the fresh lumber in.

  Ethan had a cast on his leg and was bandaged heavily on his back, arms, and face. Abe had burned both arms and scorched his eyebrows; I was burned some on my arms and the back of my left hand. The dog, in the corner, was worrying the bandage on his paw. “Stop that, Nuisance,” I told him. Just as quickly I said to my brothers, “After what he did, I can’t call him Nuisance anymore.”

  “Suppose not,” Ethan said with grave cheerfulness. “Sounds like if you picked the wrong hallway, you wouldn’t have reached us in time. Give him a real name, Jason.”

  I thought about it. “It should have to do with staying with you two and burning his paw.”

  With three pairs of eyes on him, the dog yawned self-consciously. I was looking at his bandag
ed paw, the front right one. “What about Burnt Paw?”

  “I like it,” Ethan said. “Tells a story and sounds downright dignified.”

  Ethan proceeded to heave a huge sigh. “Brothers, I’ll never touch another drink or place a nickel on green felt as long as I live.”

  “Amen to that,” Abe said.

  “Abraham…Jason…I have a confession to make.”

  “Out with it,” Abe said. “After what we’ve been through, only suspense can kill us.”

  Ethan groaned like a man in hell. “I signed a document when I needed money…. I put up my third of the mill as collateral for a three-thousand-dollar personal loan from Cornelius Donner.”

  Abe went pale. “You couldn’t have.”

  “I did. Now Abraham, what’s done is done.”

  Abe reached for his hat. “I’m going to find our lawyer, the one who drew up our ownership document with Ladue. This can’t be legal.”

  Ethan heaved another huge sigh. “I hope to God you’re right.”

  With a glance over my shoulder at Ethan, I hurried after Abe, who was halfway out the door of the hospital. His limp was worse than usual, yet I could barely keep up with him on the way to the lawyer’s office.

  Our lawyer had already seen the document Ethan signed. Two lawyers Donner had sent earlier in the day had given him a copy of it. “In plain English, I’m afraid that all three of you are out,” George Templeton told us. “Cornelius Donner has taken possession.”

  “Impossible!” Abe stormed.

  I could scarcely breathe.

  “It’s all in the fine print down at the bottom there, I’m afraid. Donner secured the loan not merely with Ethan’s third, but with yours and Jason’s as well. Ethan may have been drunk when he signed it, and the value of what he signed away is far greater than the three thousand dollars he borrowed, but neither of those points constitute a defense, and it was properly witnessed. Remember when we first drew up the ownership papers, with Jason being absent, you wanted it stipulated that one could sign for all three.”

  Abe had to sit down. “I remember,” he said. “But Ethan wasn’t paying attention.”

  We left the law office in a state of shock and went directly to the mill. As we arrived, a new sign was being nailed up where the one with our name had stood. The new one read DONNER ENTERPRISES. The men gathered around us and wondered if we were really out of ownership. “Such appears to be the case,” Abe admitted, still stunned.

  The men said that they would have quit their jobs in sympathy if jobs weren’t so hard to come by. They told us that their wages had been reduced from fifteen dollars a day to a hundred dollars a month.

  “That’s Dawson wages this spring,” growled a burly man we didn’t know.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “The new foreman of this mill. You were paying too high.”

  Abe and I were allowed to gather our hand tools and Ethan’s, nothing more, not even a chair. Lock, stock, and barrel, the mill didn’t belong to us anymore.

  Donner appeared from inside the mill office with silver cane, Prince Albert coat, and every hair in place. Henry Brackett appeared at his elbow protectively, his eyes still a bit puffy from the beating Ethan had given him.

  “I thought you were Ethan’s friend,” I said to Donner. “How could you do this to him?”

  Donner ignored me. To Abraham he said with that phony, soothing baritone of his, “The little log cabin on the hill is still yours. I do hope you’ve put some savings by.”

  “We put everything back into the mill,” Abe said flatly.

  Donner touched the brim of his bowler with his gloved hand. “A pity. I congratulate you on your heroism of yesterday. You’re the talk of the town—I’m sure you’ll find employment.”

  Abe gave him a look that might have killed. For a moment it seemed Abe was thinking of the claw hammer in his hand as a weapon. Shoving the hammer instead through the loop in his nail apron, he said, “Let’s go, Jason, before we give Dawson City something else to talk about.”

  I was burning up inside. As I turned on my heel, I made a vow to myself. We were going to get our mill back.

  SEVEN

  I worked the endless daylight hours of May as a carpenter, on Irish Nellie’s new boardinghouse at first. One of the kings of the Klondike, Big Alex McDonald, had put up a generous amount for labor and materials to have her home for the downtrodden rebuilt as soon as possible.

  If a man knew plumb and level and square, there was plenty of work in Dawson City. Not only was the entire business district under reconstruction, but so were the back streets, where frame houses for families were springing up in place of log cabins. Hundreds of women had traveled north the previous season to join husbands and sons. There was already a small legion of young children in town.

  Abe and I were able to frame up one of these family houses every ten days. We seldom talked except about the work. Living in the shadow of our former life was a grim business. Dawson prices devoured our wages—a hundred dollars a month each.

  Ethan wouldn’t be able to join us until his leg mended. In the evenings, he tried to dispel the gloom inside the cabin. “We’ll get back in the game, boys,” he would say. “Our tide will come back in.”

  Despite the brave talk, I could hear it in Ethan’s voice: His spirit was broken. He’d lost the mill for us, lost the dream of being our own bosses.

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Abe would agree stolidly, but in his eyes I could see the stamp of defeat.

  Twenty years from now, I realized, my brothers could still be chafing under the bonds of what our father called “wage slavery.”

  For the time being I was keeping my vow concerning the mill to myself. I had a plan of sorts, and I was ready to take the next step.

  I swallowed my pride and went to the mill to talk to Cornelius Donner. I was told to find him at his saloon, the New Bodega.

  After being announced to Donner, I waited an hour amid the din of reconstruction before I was frisked and ushered up the stairs to the second floor of his saloon. In a plush chair in an unfinished room with a view onto Front Street, Donner was trimming his beard. With mirror in one hand, scissors in the other, and barely a glance in my direction, he said, “Close the door; I can’t tolerate the sawdust.”

  Donner laid the scissors aside, lit a cigar, and began to draw on it. “Remember the Maine,” he said sardonically. The smoothness of his voice grated on me.

  “Cuban tobacco?” I guessed.

  “The finest…worth fighting for, I’d say…. Now, what brings the Hawthorn pup? Your brothers have sent you?”

  Punctuating his thick sarcasm, Donner blew a cloud of smoke my way. I sat up straight, reminded myself why I was here. “I don’t imagine that you care to run a sawmill,” I said. “I came to find out what you’d sell it for.”

  The peacock was amused. After only a moment’s reflection, he said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  We both knew he’d just pulled the figure out of the air. I said, “You must be forgetting that you have only 51 percent of the mill. The rest is owned by the heirs of Joseph Ladue, the founder of Dawson City, who set us up in business.”

  “Thank you so much for the history lesson. Yes, yes, Ladue’s heirs will continue to be paid. Their lawyer here in Dawson has already seen to that.”

  “Even ten thousand for your 51 percent would be generous. Nobody else would pay you that much.”

  “Why are we having this discussion?” Donner snapped. His voice, suddenly harsh as a hacksaw blade, sounded nothing like the one he usually employed.

  Next moment, he was back to his acid-smooth baritone. “Have you brought your pocketbook? Did you leave a suitcase full of nuggets downstairs?”

  “I’ll get the money. I just needed to know if you would sell.”

  “Now you know, but where will you get it? A rich aunt, perhaps?”

  There was a smirk on his face, as if he were talking to a six-year-old.

  I b
ristled. “I don’t have an aunt—I’ll get it in Nome.”

  Donner leaned back, blew a smoke ring, stroked his beard. “Ah,” he said. “Nome.” He began to chuckle softly.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” I told him.

  “I won’t, then, until you’re out of sight. Oh, by the way—I hear your brother Ethan broke his leg. Tell him I send my regards. It’s a shame he’d never agree to another fight. Perhaps he’ll reconsider once his leg mends, now that he is, shall we say, short on funds…. He’s the Hawthorn I want to see.”

  “Maybe if he ever gets back in the ring it should be with you.”

  Donner laughed. “You’re as insolent as that mongrel of yours! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the gym to sign a new fighter.”

  “Some rob with a gun, others with a fountain pen.”

  The scoundrel laughed again. “Pup, you can get away with speech like that only because we’re in Canada. Don’t push it—we might meet down the Yukon one day, in Alaska.”

  Still, I wouldn’t leave. “Have you ever had calluses on your hands in your life, Donner?”

  With a sly smile, he replied, “You assume I’m soft because I dress well. Appearances can be deceiving, as they say.”

  Donner leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, a contemptuous grin lighting his features. “Would you care to wrestle for my mill, right here, right now?”

  “Of course I would. Is this a trick? What kind of wrestling?”

  “No tricks—simple arm wrestling. On my desktop here.”

  “You swear you’ll keep your word….”

  There was a devilish glint in his dark eyes. “Why would you doubt me?”

  We knelt down on opposite sides of an end table and clasped hands. His grip was nothing less than powerful. But then, he outweighed me by thirty pounds, and he was in the prime of life.

  “Whenever you say go,” he said.

  I thought I had a chance. Our forearms were the same length. I was strong. The trick was giving it my all immediately.