Down the Yukon

by Will Hobbs

  I was in a high panic that these rushers and thousands more would stake all the beaches at Nome that had gold in them before I could get there. All the same I stood fast as a pillar of salt, struck immobile by the possibility, however remote, of Jamie’s return.

  Abe said, “You’re waiting another day or two for the river to be completely ice-free, eh, Jason?”

  “It’s a fragile craft, your canoe,” Ethan chimed in.

  I had to tell them I was waiting for Jamie, for the possibility she would return. So that’s what I did. I told them about the conversation we’d had when she’d left Dawson back in July.

  They already knew about her father’s death. I wasn’t surprised that Abe looked doubtful. “Maybe you should get going while there’s time.”

  Ethan, still a dreamer at heart, said, “You’re doing the right thing, Jason. If you want, I’ll greet the rest if she isn’t on the first one. That way, I can tell her how you were there to meet the first one and are dying to see her when you return from Nome—a conquering hero.”

  “Now you both know,” I said. “I’m a fool for love.”

  “I’m sure there’s no greater cause,” Abe allowed.

  While I was waiting I started to assemble an outfit for my journey downriver. In pawnshops I rummaged among the castoffs from the tens of thousands of stampeders who’d passed through Dawson. My eyes took in rifles and shotguns selling for only a dollar or two apiece; clothing from gum boots to prospectors’ hats; rope, canvas, goldpans, picks, shovels, and mosquito netting; even medicines like Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root, Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure. I bought rope and canvas and mosquito netting, and oilskin sacks for dry storage of flour, sugar, beans, and evaporated foods such as dried fruit and soup vegetables. A bald vendor with a sense of humor threw in Dr. Kilmer’s Cure for free.

  More and more boats were setting off downriver. Watching them go made me sick in the pit of my stomach. After a while I stopped watching. Simply hearing the gunshots as they launched and all the shouts of “Nome or bust!” had the same effect. I was losing my chance at Nome’s golden beaches.

  Within days, the Yukon was threatening to flood Dawson as it had the year before. The entire town, including the three of us—Ethan’s cast was freshly removed—stood shoulder to shoulder sandbagging the top of the riverbank. As we labored, hundreds of boatloads of new Klondike hopefuls pulled in from the lakes at the head of the Yukon—Tagish and Bennett and Lindeman. It was a puny fleet compared to the navy of ’98.

  The river crested as it lapped at the sandbags. Dawson was spared flood on the heels of fire.

  Most of Dawson’s new arrivals stayed no longer than to gawk at the sights and to buy supplies. Most of these gaunt men and women had overwintered in canvas tents along the shores of Bennett and Lindeman five hundred miles upstream. By now they’d heard the news that the rest of us had learned a year before. The rich ground had been staked by prospectors already along the Yukon when gold was discovered clear back in August of ’96.

  In great numbers, the newcomers put Dawson at their backs and rushed downriver. To my dismay almost all of them had their sights freshly set on Nome.

  Eight in the evening on June 12, the Hawthorn brothers were eating supper at our little table outside the cabin. The sun was still high. As ever, I was keeping watch on the farewell bend a couple miles below Dawson, where the Yukon turned a corner and disappeared under a big landslide scar that looked like a scraped mooseskin.

  One moment it wasn’t there and the next it was: a big, bright sternwheeler, plowing its way around the bend and spouting a cloud of white smoke from its stack. I blinked a few times, thinking I was imagining it, until I heard the chuffing of its exhaust. Half a second later came a mighty whistle blast and then two more. Burnt Paw got up from under the table, perked up his ears, and stood facing town and the river. “First boat,” Ethan said. “Big, fancy one—bet it’s the Yukoner. Fastest boat on the river last season.”

  Within seconds, thousands of people streamed out of Dawson’s buildings and onto the streets. I steeled myself against disappointment as I rose and said calmly, “I think I’ll run down there and join the first-boat celebration.”

  Ethan winked and said, “You run along, Jason. I’m off my feet for the day.”

  “Think I’ll stay with Ethan,” Abe said. “You go with Burnt Paw. Good luck, Jason. You never know—she might be on that boat.”

  I grabbed my broad-brimmed prospector’s hat, the one I’d worn coming over the Chilkoot, for good luck.

  I walked a bit, then broke into a run. My heart was in my throat. All the while came the booming blasts of the steam whistle. I couldn’t see the sternwheeler anymore for the buildings as I ran through the back streets. “Faster, Burnt Paw!” I yelled, and the mutt ran in front of me, looking back, ears flapping. At one point he got tangled up underfoot and I almost went down.

  A brass band was playing a march as I reached Front Street. On the river side of the street and spilling down the Yukon’s bank, thousands jostled for a good view. Burnt Paw lent his shrill voice to the canine cacophony. People were shouting, children running back and forth….

  Burnt Paw and I squirmed our way across Front Street to the embankment.

  Now I could see the lettering—it was the Yukoner—and passengers on all three decks crowding the rails, waving their hats. I could see plenty of dresses, but I couldn’t see faces.

  The fancy white sternwheeler nosed into the dock and the boat was tied up. At last I could see faces. Passengers began to come down the gangplank. I studied every woman’s face, suddenly doubting I’d be able to recognize Jamie’s.

  It took only a matter of minutes for the Yukoner to empty out. I fell in a heap to the ground, realizing the damage my hopes had done me.

  Then there was one more passenger, under a straw hat in a bright summer dress. A young woman? A girl? I stood up, watching closely as she struggled with a large leather suitcase.

  The young woman looked at the crowd up and down the bank, her eyes searching, darting this way and that.

  Her hair was black as a raven’s wing.

  Our eyes met.

  “Jamie!” I cried.

  “Jason!” she called. “Jason!”

  TEN

  Jamie stepped off the gangplank and we embraced. I kissed her on the cheek, two, three times as she heaved a sob and I recognized, close-up, those few precious freckles on her nose. We held each other. Jamie was trembling and so was I. When she broke away, tears were streaking her eyes. In one hand was a roll of parchment; her free hand searched a dress pocket. “Oh, where’s my handkerchief? My kingdom for a handkerchief!”

  Not finding one, Jamie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and then she reached out and dabbed my tears from my cheekbones. “I told myself a hundred times coming up the river that I wouldn’t fall apart,” she began. “Look what I’ve done. It’s not like me.”

  I wasn’t even sure I could speak.

  “I knew you’d be here, Jason. Right here waiting for me, like you said you would. Who’s this? It looks like you’ve found a friend.”

  For a moment I was confused, then I followed her eyes to the bent tail rapping the ground. “That’s Burnt Paw,” I replied.

  “I can see he’s favoring that front right paw. You little ragamuffin,” Jamie cooed as she swept him up in her arms. Burnt Paw rolled his eyes. His quick tongue caught her chin.

  “I love your half-and-half face. And those ears, where’d you get them? Off a flying fox from Borneo? This paw, did you burn it? Is that how you got your name?”

  I reached for her suitcase. “In the Dawson fire,” I said. “Late April.”

  Jamie set Burnt Paw down. “I heard about the fire….”

  “How? How did the news ever reach a telegraph?”

  “By dogsled to Skagway, by boat to Seattle. What a sight coming around the bend to see Dawson already rebuilt!”

  With these words Jamie took three bounding leaps to the top of the em
bankment, no matter that she was wearing a dress. “Come up, Jason. Look, here’s a bench over the Yukon. The Golden City is even more splendid than I remembered!”

  I sat down beside her, took her hand. “Jamie, I can’t believe I’m not dreaming.”

  Her voice was etched with sadness as she replied, “‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ I came across that in one of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve discovered it’s true.”

  “I’m so sorry you lost Homer. Arizona Charlie told me this spring.”

  Her father’s name spoken out loud brought fresh tears to her luminous hazel eyes. “It was so sudden, Jason. I had no chance to ask his blessing or what I should do without him. We never had a chance to say good-bye.”

  “I’m glad I knew him, Jamie. I never told you this, but I used to imagine birds nesting in his beard.”

  “I love that. What kind of birds?”

  “Bluebirds. No, Canada geese.”

  “Yes, it was that enormous.” I’d made her laugh.

  “He was a great poet,” I added, “but an even better man.”

  “Thank you.” Jamie sniffled, finding her handkerchief at last in another dress pocket. “Father always said he was a simple cobbler of verses, not a real poet. He’d say, ‘Leave immortality to the Bard of Avon, Bobby Burns, Lord Tennyson, and such. I’ll always be able to skin a moose and paddle a canoe better than I can write a line of poetry.’ People loved him, Jason. He was kind.”

  She took her hand from mine and petted Burnt Paw behind his head.

  “You look older,” I began again. “Grown-up. And more beautiful than ever.”

  “I just turned sixteen.”

  “On the last day of April.”

  “More recently, on the last day of May.”

  I was jolted. “How many days are there in May?”

  “Thirty-one, last time I checked.”

  “I would have tied, if only I’d remembered your birthday!”

  “Whatever do you mean, Jason?”

  “There was a lottery on the beginning of breakup.”

  “I remember last year’s.”

  “Well, I had a system of sorts. If only I’d remembered your birthday, I would have split the prize with a seamstress. I’d have nearly nine thousand dollars!”

  Understandably, Jamie was still confused. “That’s a shame, Jason…. I suppose my birthday will be unforgettable now, eh?”

  “That’s for sure, but enough of that! Breakup is spilt milk, water under the bridge, and there are no bridges over the Yukon.”

  “I could listen to you mix metaphors all day.”

  “How long was your journey?”

  “Fourteen days up the Yukon from St. Michael, after an ocean voyage of three weeks, on the Ohio. We sailed the fourth of May.”

  “Where did you sail from?”

  “Seattle—I was thinking of you.”

  “Were the seas rough?”

  “Don’t I still look green? Imagine a steamer with seven hundred souls aboard tossed around like a toy! We were caught by a spring storm in the Gulf of Alaska and thrown off course. It’s a wonder we didn’t end up in Japan.”

  “Seven hundred people? Where were they going—not to Dawson City?”

  “To Nome! Stampeding to Nome!”

  “Stop, I’m ill. Seven hundred to Nome—I was hoping to stake a claim on the beach.”

  “It had better be a long beach. A tent city has sprung up—I saw a photograph—and prospectors are at work with sluice boxes and rockers along the beach and all the nearby creeks. I was tempted just to go see it. It’s like the Klondike all over again, only no need to cross mountains and build boats and float a river.”

  “They don’t talk about Dawson City anymore?”

  “Except to say it’s no place to get rich. This time last year, people wore buttons that said YES, I’M GOING. This year, the word ‘Klondike’ is synonymous with folly. To brush someone off, instead of saying something like, ‘Go peddle your papers,’ people say, ‘Aw, go to the Klondike.’”

  “But you came….”

  I meant to say it full of feeling, but it came out like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. I wanted those three words to say that I loved her. I was half certain that in response she would profess that she’d come these thousands of miles solely for my sake.

  I thought she might take my hand, but she didn’t. Jamie glanced at me, avoiding a full meeting of the eyes, and her gaze went out onto the river, where the swells of the Yukon rolled swiftly downstream. “My heart remains in the Northland,” she said with an enigmatic smile, and stood up briskly.

  I was left with the awful uncertainty of wondering if it was the North she’d returned for, or for me. If it was both, what percentage of her heart did I have a claim to?

  At a loss, I asked, “What’s that parchment in your hand?”

  “Oh, this! It was posted on the boat. By now they must be plastered all over Dawson City.”

  It was a poster that she unrolled. Its headline proclaimed THE GREAT RACE.

  “What is it, Jamie?”

  “A race from Dawson City to Nome. It’s the Alaska Commercial Company’s answer to the N.A.T.’s breakup lottery. Isn’t it exciting? Here, I’ll read it to you. I know it almost from memory:

  “The Alaska Commercial Company announces the Great Race from the riverbank at Dawson City, Canada, to its warehouse in Nome, Alaska. Attention, all those who would compete in the greatest marathon the world has ever seen, from the established gold capital of the North to its new twin on the Bering Sea.

  “If you would brave all comers and conditions for the prize of $20,000, register with the Alaska Commercial Company in Dawson City anytime up to the firing of the starting gun at noon three days after the first steamboat bearing this news reaches our representatives at the mouth of the Klondike River, namely Dawson City.

  “To enter, contestants must contribute a $50 nonrefundable entry fee to the prize. Any shortfall between fees collected and the $20,000 prize is to be paid for by the sponsor, the Alaska Commercial Company.

  “Rules are as follows:

  “1) Two-man teams only. If more than the two who are registered for the race are in the craft, they may not assist locomotion of the craft.

  “2) The same pair that begins the race must finish, with no substitutions en route.

  “3) Contestants may travel by water, land, or air.”

  “Land!” I interrupted. “There are no roads between here and Nome. I doubt there are even trails. And what could they mean, ‘by air’?”

  Jamie laughed. “By balloon? The fellow who wrote this was so full of hot air, he could have inflated a fleet of them. Here, I’ll finish it up:

  “4) Teams need not finish with the same craft they started with, but at no time is any form of assist from motor craft, such as a steamboat, permissible.

  “5) An official of the A.C.C. from Dawson, bearing the list of entrants, will travel to Nome to serve as the judge at the finish line. The decision of the judge is final.

  “Hear ye, hear ye, join the Great Race across Alaska and thence to Nome!”

  Jamie rolled up the parchment. “The trip down the river is a journey of epic proportions. Of course, there’s still the Norton Sound to deal with after that.”

  “What a race!”

  We looked into each other’s eyes, asking the same question.

  Jamie said it first. “What do you think, Jason? Did I hear you say you were headed to Nome anyway?”

  “I still have my Peterborough,” I replied. “I’ve paddled the first five hundred miles of this river, but that’s the sum total of my experience. I once knew a girl who was an artist with a canoe paddle….”

  Jamie was beaming. “We’d be lunatics!” With that, she stifled a sudden yawn. “I’m exhausted. Let’s see how we feel tomorrow, Jason. I should think about where I’m going to stay.”

  “Belinda Mulrooney’s Fairview?” I suggested, pointing.
“Where you lived with your father?”

  She looked long at the hotel. I saw anxiety creasing her forehead.

  “I should have realized, Jamie. The Fairview would only make you sad.”

  “It’s not that…. My first night back in Canada, I’d prefer to sleep outdoors, if that’s possible.”

  I was delighted, and I already had an idea. “How about our storage tent in the yard outside the cabin? It’s under a big spruce, which will help to darken it enough for you to sleep. We can move out a few things. We’ve got a cot and a sleeping bag for you.”

  “That will do it. I’ll sleep like a stone, midnight sun or no.”

  Jamie looked all around, at the river and the town and the landslide scar like a moosehide on the mountain that towered above Dawson. “I’m home. Lead on, Jason.”

  ELEVEN

  Jamie slept through the arrival of four sternwheelers the following morning. My brothers had gone to work, and Burnt Paw and I were watching the swarming activity all along the Yukon’s bank. The steamboats from the Pacific added color and size to the flotilla of hundreds of boats assembling for the assault on Nome.

  My eyes kept darting over to the tent where Jamie was sleeping, not twenty yards away. My mind was racing with unanswered questions, the first being, Would Jamie really join me in the race to Nome? The two of us, down the Yukon? The prospect was too exciting to be believed.

  If we did try it, what were our chances with the canoe?

  Suddenly Jamie appeared in the grass next to me.

  “Your dress…,” I said.

  “I slept in it. Would you look at what’s going on along the river! Boats from up at the mouth of the Klondike to clear past town.”

  “It’s like the word ‘Nome’ is written large across the sky.”

  “We have to decide about the race, don’t we? But first, I’m starving! There’s only one meal I’ve been craving all this time.”