Jason's Gold

by Will Hobbs

  When the fog at last was gone and he remembered who he was, he found himself in a strange room. The girl from the dream was sitting by his bed.

  She had black hair and hazel eyes, a couple of freckles on her nose, and he had no idea who she was.

  TEN

  “You’re going to live after all,” the raven-haired girl told him.

  He groaned.

  The husky stood up beside the bed, nuzzled Jason’s hand, and yawned. Jason stroked the black fur crowning the dog’s head, remembered him from the dream, and realized that some of what he’d dreamed had been no dream at all. This was the dog from the Dead Horse Trail. “Am I still in Skagway?” he asked.

  “Yes, and it’s the most dreadful place on earth. We can’t wait to get out of here. Who’s King? You kept calling the name King. Is that the name of your dog here?”

  Jason remembered the puppy from his dream, the dog he’d never gotten over all this time. His brothers had wanted to replace it with another, but he wouldn’t let them. Losing it had hurt too much.

  He was about to tell her that King was not the husky’s name.

  Then he looked again into the clear eyes of this dog who had awaited death with such calm.

  “Yes,” he answered. “That’s his name. King.”

  “How about your name?” the girl asked.

  “Jason. Jason Hawthorn.”

  She thought about his name, but not for long. “I like that,” she announced. “The thorny part isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could be a good thing. Jason is perfect.”

  What was she talking about? “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m Jamie Dunavant.”

  “Jamie?”

  “That’s right. I’m fourteen years old. My father is Homer Dunavant, and we’re on our way to Dawson City.”

  He sat up straighter. The girl reached for a cushion and propped it behind his back. He was struggling to remember how he had gotten here to this room, but he couldn’t.

  Jamie seemed to read his mind, and explained. “My father carried you here. We weren’t planning to stay overnight in Skagway, but then we came across you. You were real sick. My father wanted to stay with you till you got better, but then he got restless and went out and started playing the shell game.

  “Father’s a poet, and a good one, too. But he has one weakness—he loves to gamble. And guess what? He lost some of our money. There’s so many crooks around here, an honest man is like a grasshopper in a yard full of chickens. My father insists that the eye is faster than the hand, and he does win sometimes, but whenever the stakes are high, he loses. There’s got to be a trick to it. He’s already lost a hundred dollars. Imagine, a hundred dollars! I’m afraid he’s out there right now trying to win it back. I’ll be happy to get over the Chilkoot and into the jurisdiction of the Yellow Legs.”

  Jason was trying hard to make sense of all this.

  The girl went to the window and looked anxiously up and down the street. “It sure wasn’t like this where I’m from.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Swift Water…,” she replied absently as she kept her eye out for her father, “…west of Moose Jaw and east of Medicine Hat.”

  “Oh,” Jason said uncertainly.

  “South of Saskatoon,” she explained.

  “Montana? North Dakota?”

  She wheeled around when she realized how confused he was. “Saskatchewan,” she declared. “Saskatchewan, Canada. My father and I are Canadians. We caught the Klondicitis bad, sold the farm, took the Canadian Pacific west to Vancouver and sailed from there. We were headed for Dyea and the Chilkoot Pass, but everyone from our ship got dumped here in Skagway.”

  “Lucky for me,” Jason said. “Who are those Yellow Legs you were talking about, the ones on the other side of the Chilkoot?”

  “Oh, them. The Northwest Mounted Police. The Mounties. They have yellow stripes down the sides of their trousers.”

  In the morning Jason was recovered enough to board a scow for Dyea along with Jamie and her father. On the ride across the tip of the bay, Homer Dunavant was scribbling lines in a notebook. The poet’s beard was big enough for birds to nest in.

  “Does he sell his poems?” Jason asked the girl.

  “Oh, no, but they’re good enough. He won’t even recite them to people. Too modest.”

  Jason peeked over the poet’s shoulder. The title of the poem was “Lift Up Your Eyes.” As the poet wrote each new line, he would look up to the snow-clad peaks. For inspiration, Jason guessed.

  “I’ll tell you the beginning of one he wrote yesterday,” Jamie whispered. “I know it by heart. Listen:

  “Oh, they scratches the earth and it tumbles out,

  More than your hands can hold,

  For the hills above and plains beneath

  Are cracking and busting with gold.

  “How do you like it, Jason?”

  “It makes me want to get up there and start digging.”

  He didn’t know what to make of this girl, except that he knew he liked her. Unguarded as a baby colt, she always looked him straight in the eye, and burst out with her enthusiasms. She was different from any girl he’d met, a bright new star in the sky.

  When it came to practical matters, Jason couldn’t help wondering about these two Canadians. Their things, which he’d helped to load on the scow, consisted of a sleek eighteen-foot canoe and no more than a five-hundred-pound outfit from food to gold pan. It seemed like the poet and his daughter stood only a slightly better chance of reaching the Klondike than the people he’d read about in the Minnesota newspaper who’d announced they were going to go by balloon. But he wasn’t going to say it.

  He did say, “You sure are going light.”

  “Fast and light,” Jamie replied. “That’s Father’s strategy. We still have enough funds to pay the Indians to pack our canoe and outfit over to the other side. It’s all we have left from selling the farm, less what Father donated to the criminals in Skagway.”

  She added in a whisper, “We only got a thousand dollars for the farm. We have six hundred left.”

  “But how will you eat this winter?”

  “Father’s Winchester will take care of that. He never really was a farmer, you see—we just came out of the North a few years ago, when he got the daft notion that I needed ‘civilizing,’ as he called it. Before that he worked for Hudson’s Bay Company his whole life, trapping and trading. I grew up at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabaska, in the bush.”

  “In a bush, did you say? Excuse me—”

  “The bush, silly. In the wilderness. There’s moose, caribou, and mountain sheep in the Yukon country where we’re headed—we’ll be fine. We can make dry meat, pick berries and make pemmican, gather rose hips for tea. You should do that too, you know—a cup of rose hip tea once a week through the winter and you won’t get scurvy.”

  “What about the Yukon River? Can a canoe handle it?”

  “This Peterborough we have is the best canoe in the world! Father says there’s no more than five miles of rapids in the whole journey. A beginner could paddle the rest of it in a canoe just fine—and we’re not beginners!”

  “That Mountie post, wherever it is—aren’t you worried about it?”

  “It’s past Lake Bennett, at the foot of Tagish Lake. But we won’t have to pay a customs duty like you will, because we bought everything in Canada.”

  “What I was trying to get at is the food requirement…. Isn’t it seven hundred pounds per person? Will the Mounties let you through with no more than you can carry in the canoe?”

  “They’d better…. We’re Canadian citizens! With my father’s experience in the North, he has no doubt he can convince them we’ll do fine. All the Yellow Legs care about is that you’re not going to go up there and die. It’s only a three-week paddle to Dawson City. We’ll be there well before freeze-up.”

  Jason couldn’t help but grin. It made him feel good just listening to Jamie, so filled with confidence, so pr
oud of her father and what they were attempting together.

  When they reached Dyea, the beach was swarming with the arrival of eight hundred Klondikers from the Islander offshore, the converted coal carrier Kid Barker had told him about. The horses, he remembered, were quartered above the first-class berths. He thought better of telling Jamie about those yellow rivers.

  He helped his Canadian friends load their canoe. Then Jamie paddled it a short way up the Dyea River, past the melee of horse-drawn freight wagons and Klondikers on foot shuttling their goods to safety above the high-tide line. She would wait there while her father arranged for packers at the Indian huts just beyond the trading post. Jason called his thank-yous and good-byes to both of them, hesitant to turn away. It didn’t seem right that he’d never see them again. She was pretty, darn it, in addition to being friendly and brimful of spunk.

  With King at his side, Jason finally turned and waded off through the crowd. At the trading post he stood in line to buy a bale of dried salmon for the husky. As he paid, the clerk handed him, without explanation, a map of the trail over Chilkoot Pass, and a second one of the Yukon River to Dawson City. “How long would it take two men to build a boat from timber?” Jason inquired.

  “Been done in two weeks,” the clerk said impatiently. “That was in the days before all this, though, by men who knew what they were doing. For most of these cheechakos coming through here now, two months would be a miracle.”

  “What’d you call them?”

  “Cheechakos. Means greenhorns. Means you. If you survive your first winter, you’ll be a sourdough.”

  Jason stepped outside, inspected the map. It was twenty-seven miles from the trading post, up and over the Chilkoot Pass and down to the first big lake on the other side, Lake Lindeman. Four miles long, Lindeman was connected to a much longer lake—Lake Bennett—by a mile of river. At the head of both lakes, an X was marked, with the inscription BUILD BOATS. His brothers would be building theirs at the head of Lake Bennett, where the trail over White Pass came in. People coming over the Chilkoot would build boats at the head of Lake Lindeman, then float to Bennett and beyond.

  He’d lost twelve days, he realized. Twelve days ago he’d waved good-bye to Jack London only a few hundred yards from this very spot where he now stood.

  He’d chosen wrong. If he’d gone over the Chilkoot, he would have arrived at Lake Bennett about the time his brothers got there over White Pass. But how could he have known?

  Still, he should be okay. It was August 13, and his brothers had gotten to Lake Bennett on the fifth. He had a twenty-seven mile hike to Lake Lindeman, another six miles to reach his brothers. Without doubt he could reach them before they’d been at their boatbuilding for two weeks. He could still make it before they left. He had to.

  ELEVEN

  Jason whistled to King and quickened his step as they started out along the wagon road from Dyea. It was crowded with Klondikers carrying loads on their backs and pulling hand sleds. To his surprise, he saw more than a few strings of packhorses, as well as horses pulling freight wagons and sledges. Hadn’t he heard that horses couldn’t go over the Chilkoot?

  There was room to skirt the slow spots and nobody minded that he was trying to go fast. This trail didn’t have the stench of defeat and death all over it. Everyone was talking about how hard the pass was going to be, especially the last, straight-up pitch called the Golden Stairs, but nobody was saying it couldn’t be done.

  The wagon road wound through meadows blazing with waist-high fireweed, crossed and recrossed the gravelly river among groves of cottonwood, birch, and spruce. Five miles up the valley the road crossed the river at the limit of navigation. The far shore was thick with Indian canoes. The packers—Tlingit men, women, boys, girls—were loading the packs they were going to carry over the pass.

  Within a mile Jason passed through an encampment called Canyon City, and beyond that he entered the narrow canyon of the Dyea River, no more than fifty feet wide and cluttered with boulders and driftpiles. It was gloomy in the gorge with a drizzle setting in and the daylight going down, but after two miles the canyon was behind him and he landed in a busy place called Pleasant Camp. It had obviously been named by someone with a sense of humor—it was swampy and infested with mosquitoes. He pitched his tarp, cut spruce boughs for bedding, and brought out his dry supper as well as a dried salmon for King. The husky curled up next to him, happy to be scratched and petted.

  At first light Jason was moving again, anxious to catch a glimpse of the infamous Chilkoot Pass. By midmorning he’d reached another tent and hut metropolis, Sheep Camp, at the end of the wagon road. Here the thick coastal forest gave way to knee-high spruces, tundra, and rock. Here the endless line of Klondikers and hired packers ascended the steep push up Long Hill—four miles long—that would lead them to the bottom of the Chilkoot and the final climb.

  Up, up, Jason climbed in pursuit of the snow line. Klondikers stepping out of the trail to rest spared the breath to admire King. “Now, that’s a dog.” “How much is he carrying?” “Is your husky for sale?”

  The last question was the most frequent. “Nope,” Jason would say, “he’s my partner.”

  At last Jason crowned the top of Long Hill. Here was yet another tent city in a bowl at the foot of the encircling peaks. Directly across the bowl was the sight of a lifetime—a stream of stampeders marching straight up for the sky, through rockslides and snowfields, at an angle that seemed impossible. The procession was aimed for a towering notch between two peaks, so high above that it seemed he’d fall backward looking at it. “The Golden Stairs,” he heard someone say. “The stairs to the gold.”

  “Chilkoot Pass,” Jason said under his breath. It was worse than he had pictured.

  This last encampment before the summit, all congested with stampeders and mounded outfits, was called the Scales. Here the packers weighed everything and raised their rates for the foot traffic over the pass. The packhorses, mules, and burros were turned around. From this point on, everyone walked.

  Jason found a spot to unpack the husky and himself, then lay back in the wildflowers and the sunshine for a few minutes. He drank from the creek, ate some jerky and dried apples. His shoulders felt like pincushions.

  “Ready, King? This is it.”

  At the foot of the slope Jason joined the human lockstep up the Chilkoot—Klondikers lined up heel-to-toe. Within a minute his lungs were burning and he was gasping for air. He was afraid for the man in front of him, bent double under the weight of a gargantuan load that was heavy enough without the seven-foot sled that was lashed to the outside. The man’s every breath sounded like a death wheeze.

  Before long the trail left the rocks and started up the arrow-straight gully through the dirty snow remaining from the previous winter. The August day was hot despite the snow underfoot.

  With so many coming behind, no one dared to stop moving. The lockstep proceeded at a snail’s pace up, up, and up. To Jason’s right, stampeders returning from the pass for another load were sledding down vertical chutes on their rumps.

  Finally, a place to step out of line, breathe all the air he wanted, slow his heart, admire the view of the Scales far below and the peaks all around. King’s tongue was lolling, but his eyes were burning bright.

  Back in line. “We’re halfway up,” he encouraged the husky while he still had the breath. “Halfway up the Golden Stairs.”

  With every staggering step he took, his brothers came more clearly into focus. It had been over eleven months now since he’d seen them.

  How much farther can the top possibly be?

  Took off with my $500, did you? Nice boat you’ve fashioned here. Oh, I forgive you. Let’s go find that gold in the creekbeds, thick as cheese in a sandwich.

  And here, finally, was the summit! ENTERING CANADA, a small sign proclaimed.

  Jason’s heart was hammering, his lungs screaming for air. He reached to stroke the dog’s head. “We made it,” he gasped.

  The summ
it was cluttered with mounds of gear, packing crates, and sleds. He stepped aside, and King with him, and watched the human highway go by: a Tlingit girl no older than he, bent under a heavy load; a man with one arm pulling a hand sled; a woman who looked seventy, speaking German. She was wearing a long dress, miraculously clean, with a lace apron.

  Below on the Yukon side lay a mountain lake surrounded by rocks fallen from the peaks. Crater Lake, his map said. Still a ways to go before Lake Lindeman. “All downhill from here to Dawson City,” Jason told the husky.

  The weather was turning, and fast. A wall of sleet was sweeping through the pass and down onto the lake. Jason pulled out the oilskin suit he’d found in Skagway and put it on, then battened down the canvas flaps over the husky’s panniers.

  A minute later the sleet caught him, but he was ready.

  He put Crater Lake behind him, then Long Lake. Finally he could see trees again, down below. Dusk was gathering as the tip of Lake Lindeman came into view. The tents around the inlet far below were thick, like a flock of seagulls.

  Along the creek rushing toward Lindeman, Klondikers were carrying logs on their shoulders despite the late hour.

  Jason walked through the tent city and approached the lakeshore. Men were still in the saw pits whipsawing lumber in the rain. Along the shore, skeletons of boats, dozens of them, were taking shape. Jason planned to walk the distance around Lake Lindeman to Lake Bennett, where he expected to find his brothers building their boat.

  He kept going until the dark stopped him a mile around the east shore of the lake. There, under spruce cover, he pitched his tarp and slept soundly, knowing that only five miles remained.

  At first light he was racing along Lindeman’s shore with King on his heels. The lake was pointed north like an arrow and so was he. Nothing could stop him now. Finally Lindeman was pinching shut, and here was the One Mile River flowing out of it down to Lake Bennett, down to where his brothers would be.