Down the Yukon

by Will Hobbs

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Didn’t I predict we’d meet down the Yukon, in Alaska? The border is only hours away.”

  “That was more like a threat, as I remember it.”

  “Oh no, you misunderstood. I must have been cautioning you about Alaska’s lawless reputation. It’s not like Canada, you know, with a Mountie behind every tree. From what I hear, half the Alaskans you meet are fleeing from the law. Maybe you should stick close to us, for protection.”

  Jamie scowled at them and started paddling.

  “We can take care of ourselves,” I said, and applied my own paddle. Burnt Paw yapped at them as we pulled away and took the lead.

  They made no immediate push to catch us. They merely drifted with the current until we were out of sight.

  “That was our canoe,” Jamie said, her eyes welling up. “My father’s and mine. Did you see the arrow drawn on the bow, in red?”

  “I did.”

  “I painted that myself, after Father had written a poem entitled ‘My Canoe Sings like an Arrow.’ He sold the canoe shortly before we left for the States. When did those two scavengers descend on Dawson?”

  “After you and your father left in July. I remember Ethan saying that Brackett arrived by steamboat shortly before ice-up. Donner got here by dogsled, around Christmas. Hired a team from Skagway.”

  “Father would turn over in his grave if we let ourselves get beaten by that canoe,” Jamie said through gritted teeth. “If we keep them behind us from now on, that would suit me. They have more muscle, but they have to paddle their own weight, so it comes out even.”

  “Brackett doesn’t seem quite right in the head,” she added after a few minutes. “Too many punches, I bet. And Donner, he reminds me of the manager Father had the misfortune to hire to arrange our tour. J. P Putnam was his name, or so he claimed—trustworthy as a viper.”

  “He sounds like a salesman for Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root, Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure.”

  “He could sell sand to Egyptians. My father was completely taken in. As it turned out, Putnam had been embezzling from us since San Francisco, where he leeched onto us. I suspected him for a thief, but Father would never look into our books. My father had no appetite for accounting. He was a typical Canadian frontiersman—honest as an elephant and possessing a child’s faith in human nature.”

  “Honest as an elephant?”

  “I’ve never met a dishonest elephant, have you? At any rate, Father assumed that every man he met was as honest as himself. When he died, I was left to deal with Putnam by myself. It was distressing—it was awful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He proposed marriage to me.”

  “Marriage!” My breath caught short, I was so taken aback. I was boiling. “You don’t mean it. The cad…and you were only fifteen!”

  “I told him I planned to return to the North, as Father and I had told him right along. ‘All of that’s changed now,’ he told me. ‘I love you; I’ve loved you from the start. I see no reason why you shouldn’t go on with the tour. We’ll hire someone to play the part of your father—it’s not a speaking part anyway.’”

  “That weasel…I can hardly believe this!”

  “Neither could I. And all of this only hours after I’d buried my father. I told Putnam that as far as his affections were concerned, I had in no way misled him. I’d never given him the slightest encouragement.”

  I was so relieved. My head reeled at the image of Jamie with this Putnam. I wanted to knock him down for even thinking of Jamie that way.

  “In regard to the tour,” Jamie said, “I told him I had no heart for giving voice to my father’s poetry now that he was gone. ‘Never mind that, then,’ Putnam told me. ‘You have a brilliant future as a dramatic actress.’ I told him I’d heard that before, from well-wishers in every city we’d visited. ‘Fame is your destiny!’ he insisted. ‘Only if I choose it,’ I said. I told him that an actress is a bird in a gilded cage, and I’d rather have my freedom.”

  “It sounds like that’s the way you truly feel.”

  “It is. I told him I might write for the stage one day, but he didn’t want to hear about that. There was no money in that for him.”

  “You were to be his Sydney Mauler. That’s why Donner reminded you of him.”

  “Exactly. Half an hour later it struck me like a bolt from heaven that Putnam was on his way to the bank. I caught him there, trying to withdraw the balance of our account. I asked the teller to call the police at once. Putnam fled on foot into the street. I never saw him again, thank goodness.”

  “You were all alone. What did you do? How did you manage?”

  “I took a job in a laundry and moved in with the woman who owned it. She paid me extra to take her children to the park. The park was the only part of the city that appealed to me. I bided my time until late April, when I took the Great Northern to Seattle. All that time, I was thinking about the days getting longer in the North. I was like a Canada goose ready to fly home, believe me.”

  “Fancy dinners, fancy clothes, fancy people didn’t suit you?”

  “Look at the light reflecting off the Yukon, Jason—that’s what suits me. Being with you again suits me. This glowing northern sky. That moose swimming the river downstream…”

  Jamie was pointing. Sure enough, the branchlike object several hundred yards ahead was the antlers of a bull moose swimming for the left shore.

  “All of this is what suits me.”

  We paddled close, so close I almost could have reached out and touched the animal’s back. It was an immense bull with velveted antlers as wide as my outstretched arms.

  Burnt Paw tried to stay as far away as he could manage without sliding off the far side of the canoe.

  Movement slightly behind us caught my eye. Over my shoulder I was surprised to find the other Peterborough almost upon us. Donner’s dark eyes were locked on the moose in the river.

  A few seconds later and their canoe had slipped between us and the moose. Brackett, at the stern, reached for a rifle. “Moose steaks, mate!”

  By this time we’d drifted thirty or forty feet away from them and the moose. Donner and Brackett were acting as if we weren’t there, which suited me fine.

  With the moose rolling its eyes back at them and swimming hard for the shore, the boxer seemed about to fire. Donner said, “That hardly seems sporting, Sydney. Let me see…paddle me close. Go on, do as I say.”

  My eyes met Jamie’s. We had no idea what he was about to do.

  “Closer, Sydney—right alongside.”

  Donner set his hat aside, peeled off his shirt, shucked his boots and his socks, and was making as if he was about to go over the side of the canoe. “Keep that rope handy.”

  Brackett looked just as baffled as we were. “Whatever you say, mate.”

  With one smooth motion, Donner was out of the canoe, into the chilly water, and onto the great moose’s back. He had ahold of the antlers and was going for a ride!

  “Yes sir!” Donner shouted. “Ride ’em, eh, Sydney?”

  “He’s a lunatic,” I heard Jamie mutter.

  The moose was fully aware of the man on his back, but there was nothing the animal could do about it. The whites of its eyes rolled back in fear and it shook its great antlers, but ineffectually.

  It was then I saw Donner’s right hand go to his hip, which was underwater. When his hand came back in view, it clutched a long-bladed sheath knife.

  With his left hand Donner pulled himself onto the shoulders of the great beast, and with his right hand reaching around, he plunged the knife to the hilt in the moose’s throat.

  I gasped at the sight. The next I saw was a quick, fierce push with the knife hand.

  The knife came out crimson. With an aborted groan and a wrenching wheeze, the moose was in the throes of death.

  The river was turning red all around him as Donner swam for the canoe. “Lean the opposite way as I get in,” he commanded of Brackett. After d
ropping his knife inside, Donner climbed hand-over-hand into the canoe.

  Jamie and I watched dumbfounded as Donner ordered Brackett to paddle back to the moose. Donner was making ready a length of rope, which he proceeded to tie to the base of the antlers.

  By this time we’d drifted well downstream of them, a hundred yards or more. Jamie was keeping us pointed upstream in order to see the conclusion of this strange stunt. We continued to drift, transfixed, as they paddled their prey to shore. “What kind of man is that, who would do such a thing for sport?” Jamie wondered aloud.

  “Every time I see him, it gets worse.”

  We watched as they beached their canoe. Evidently they meant to stop, no doubt to build a fire and roast steaks. By this time the two were barely in sight upriver. We were close to shore, rounding a slight bend, losing sight of them. Suddenly Burnt Paw, looking downriver, perked up his ears and gave a strangled sort of warning bark.

  Jamie and I swiveled around to look downstream and caught the fright of our lives. Extending far from the shore, to which it clung by its roots, was a living tree, a tremendous spruce tree lying on its side, sawing up and down in the river.

  “Sweeper!” Jamie cried, and began to spin the canoe fast as she could. I helped with wide, shallow strokes until we were faced downstream, and then we both paddled with all our might.

  Could we get around that sweeper?

  I didn’t think so. The tree was coming on nightmarishly fast. We couldn’t reach the shore and we couldn’t get around the tree.

  “Not going to make it!” Jamie cried.

  THIRTEEN

  In every nerve of my body I knew this might be our death. The current was too strong, there was too little time. The big spruce loomed so close its branches seemed to fill the sky. What a foolish way to die, I thought, and then I realized that the sweeper itself was our only chance. I yelled, “Jump onto it!”

  “Hit it broadside!” I heard Jamie yell back, and I felt her swinging the canoe around. For a moment I thought she was doing exactly the wrong thing, but then I understood—she was giving us both the chance to leap out.

  The moment came in a dreamlike blur. As the tree was bobbing upward I rose, leapt onto the trunk, and grabbed a branch. I saw that Jamie—thank God—had done the same, saw the canoe below us pinned against the sweeper and tipping on its side, saw Burnt Paw leap at the last moment onto the trunk between us.

  His claws scratched for a hold and they caught, but it was apparent he wasn’t going to be able to withstand the rocking-horse motion for long. Working my way toward him, I snatched him up with my free hand. Jamie clung tight to a branch and reached into the surging white water for her paddle, which was riding up and down against the trunk of the tree. Mine was nowhere to be seen.

  As the tree trunk was on an upswing, I noticed huge branches sticking straight down into the river. I shuddered to realize that one of us could have been pinned underwater, impossible to reach, against those branches.

  The canoe, at times mostly underwater and at times mostly above, was on its side with its hull facing upstream in a froth of white water. It was pinned against the sweeper with a tremendous amount of force. Branches spoking underneath the canoe kept it from being swept under the tree. I wondered if there was any way to get at our gear or to free the canoe.

  “The tree could turn loose of the bank!” Jamie shouted over her shoulder. She was already working her way along the trunk toward the shore. It was a gradual climb, but upright branches along the route provided secure holds to counter the up-and-down motion of the tree. I followed with Burnt Paw, hoping the sweeper’s roots wouldn’t lose their grip on the bank before we could get there.

  Up ahead, Jamie was stopped. The last fifteen or twenty feet had no limbs at all and would have to be walked like an inclined tightrope. Fortunately the trunk was massive and the tightrope wide.

  “It’s barely rocking at this end,” Jamie reported.

  Paddle in hand, she negotiated the crossing. At the last she climbed to the bank across the largest of the roots. I held my breath and followed with the dog, and then I collapsed in the grass beside Jamie. Burnt Paw was in a frenzy, dancing around us and licking our faces.

  “I know, Burnt Paw,” Jamie told him, fighting tears. “We’re very lucky to be alive.”

  “You did well,” I said. “If you hadn’t—”

  “Jason,” she corrected me, “I’ll never forgive myself. I can’t believe I let this happen!”

  “We both let it happen.”

  “I was in the stern.”

  “We’re safe, that’s all that counts.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t know to be on guard for sweepers. I just couldn’t keep my eyes off those two and the moose. It was all so strange. I just didn’t think.”

  “Think of it this way: All that I can tell we lost is your hat.”

  Her hand went to her head. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “The canoe,” I said, struggling to my feet. “There’s an awful lot of current holding it. Looks impossible to work it around the tip of the tree.”

  She nodded her agreement.

  “Maybe if it were empty—if we could pull everything out of it. It’s a wonder it isn’t broken.”

  With a rueful laugh, Jamie said, “It’s Canadian-made.”

  “Look how well anchored the tree is. A lot more bank would have to wash away before it turns loose. We could go back and forth…unload the canoe one piece of gear at a time.”

  “If we were extremely careful, maybe we could.”

  “We could get back in the race.”

  Jamie’s face flashed red and tears welled. “We could have lost our lives! We still could, out there. Don’t even think about the race!”

  Abashed, I could see it. If we rushed, we were going to get hurt or killed. “You’re right,” I said, and I meant it. “We don’t have to win the race, but we still want to go to Nome, don’t we, and get there on our own?”

  “That we do.” She was still angry with me.

  “We’ll be as cautious as can be. What if I’m tied to a short piece of rope? We can use the bow rope…short enough so I couldn’t fall in. I could hand things to you, and you could work them to shore one piece at a time.”

  Jamie brushed her tears away. “It might work.” A moment later, full of determination, she said, “Let’s try it.”

  With Burnt Paw barking from the shore, we went back out on the sweeper and began to pick our way through its branches toward the canoe.

  Burnt Paw wasn’t barking any longer. I turned around, half afraid he was following us. Indeed, he was practically at my heels. “Get back!” I yelled at him. “Don’t you remember it’s a bucking horse out there?”

  The rocking motion was already such that he didn’t need convincing. Burnt Paw ran back along the trunk to shore, then started barking up and down the bank.

  “Now it almost looks like he wants to swim to us,” Jamie said.

  “He’s not that crazy,” I assured her.

  A second later, on the downstream side of the sweeper, the mutt leapt into the river and swam twenty or more feet into the calm water down there before he turned around and paddled for shore.

  “He’s got something in his mouth,” Jamie reported.

  “What in the world?”

  Burnt Paw came onto shore and shook himself out, still hanging on to some crumpled black object.

  “My hat!” Jamie exclaimed. “He’s rescued my hat!”

  Burnt Paw wagged that bent tail of his as we praised him for being a hero. Making our way out to the canoe, we found it still unscathed. We’d lashed the oilskin tarp well enough that so far none of our gear had escaped. The shotgun was still held by the ropes—barely. With my free hand I reached down to untie the bow line that we were going to use for my safety rope. “This is all going to take a lot of doing,” I said, and as I spoke, my eyes caught a motion out across the river and slightly upstream—rowed boats, a dozen or more, pulling hard.
r />   “What race?” I said with a laugh.

  In the hours to come, every single skiff and scow passed us by. Those who floated by close enough to see us mostly quit rowing, stopped and stared, then started rowing again as they passed us by. We understood. They were in a race with so many contestants it could be decided by seconds. Some, nevertheless, hollered out, “Are you okay?” or “Do you need help?” We hollered back, “Thank you! We’re okay!” and watched them go by. In truth, more people on the sweeper would be dangerous.

  At the very end of the parade came the green canoe. Strange, but I’d forgotten that Donner and Brackett even existed.

  At first they just stared at us, assessing our situation. Then the boxer yelled, “Hey, Hawthorn, the river’s half a mile wide! Crafty boating, mate, crafty boating!”

  I felt like telling him and his bloodthirsty partner to consign themselves to eternal hellfire, but I held my tongue. So, I noticed, did Donner. Even from a distance of thirty yards I was chilled by his calculating stare.

  In the twilight between eleven and one we were still working. The sun was rising as we pulled the canoe out of the water and onto the trunk of the tree. We tied on with our long rope, floated the canoe on the downstream side of the tree, then bit by bit passed our end around the branches as we worked it to shore.

  We wrung every drop of water we could from our sodden clothes and bedrolls, then spread them out to the sun on racks we improvised from driftwood. Inventorying our foodstuffs, we separated what could be salvaged from what was ruined. We set our dried fruits, jerked meats, and bacon out to dry and counted our flour, baking powder, biscuits, and dried vegetables a complete loss. There would be a trading post at the Alaska gold camp of Eagle City, just across the border, where we could at least buy bannock makings—flour and baking powder—with our last five dollars.

  Fortunately we had a quantity of tinned foods, mostly salmon. We had our knives, the saw and the ax, our tarp and our tent. The match safe had kept our matches dry. All we’d lost to the river had been my canoe paddle, and thanks to Jamie’s foresight, we had the spare.