Jason's Gold

by Will Hobbs

  All the confusion had his heart going like thunder. “I don’t know if you ought to sit down,” he said without looking at her. “You’ll get your dress dirty.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said. And then, as if to prove the point, she plopped down on dirt rather than rock.

  Now he felt even more confused, struck by lightning and dumb as wood. He glanced at her hazel eyes, the few freckles on the bridge of her nose. She was prettier than ever. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to tell her how bad she’d made him feel.

  “So how long have you been here, Jason?”

  “Since practically the first of June.”

  “And you never came to see me?”

  “Oh, but I did,” he said quickly. “I saw your show, and it’s fantastic. I thought I was going to die, you were so good.”

  “It’s all Father’s words,” she said, blushing. “But I don’t understand—why didn’t you come talk to me after the show?”

  “I did,” Jason said, “but they told me you didn’t want to see me.”

  “That’s crazy! Who told you that?”

  “A man standing outside your door. I gave him my name, even wrote it down for him.”

  “Oh my gosh! No wonder you’re acting so strange.” Her face lit up. “Well, that explains everything. Nobody ever told me you came to see me. Jason, I didn’t even know you were here in Dawson until just a few hours ago. I found your name written on the back of an old program, on the floor behind some props backstage. Why, just imagine if I hadn’t found it. I might never have known you were here!”

  A crushing weight had been lifted from his heart. He threw his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. He just couldn’t help himself. “Nothing’s like I thought it was,” he said, beaming. “You really are the same—only your hair’s longer now.”

  “So is yours! What did you mean about not getting here until June? When we left you off at Dyea, you started out ahead of us. I thought all you had to do was get over to the other side, to catch your brothers where they were building a boat.”

  “It’s a long story….”

  “And I want to hear every word of it.”

  With a grin, he said, “I saw you and your father run the One Mile River in your canoe.”

  “Really, you did?”

  He gestured as if he were stroking with a canoe paddle. “You were phenomenal—the girl from Swift Water! Did you paddle straight to Dawson, like you planned, and beat freeze-up? What about Miles Canyon and the White Horse Rapids? Did you portage at Five Fingers?”

  She laughed. “We beat freeze-up, but we took our time along the way gathering berries and rose hips, and Father got a moose, which we dried in strips just like the Indians do. We made a smokehouse to dry all the salmon we’d caught. We portaged Miles Canyon, but we ran Squaw Rapids and the White Horse. What a ride! And when we got to Five Fingers, we ran it, down the channel closest to the right shore.”

  “Five Fingers…I know that area well.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “It’s so wonderful to see you, Jason. It’s been a rare day I haven’t wondered how you were doing. And then to find out you and your brothers own one of the new sawmills!”

  “Dawson has a future, Jamie…. We’re going to stick. I’ve got a new home in the North. I didn’t even know what I was looking for until I found it.”

  A bittersweet smile crossed her face. “I love it every bit as much as you do, Jason. But we’re leaving.”

  “Leaving—but why? Your show is so successful. I don’t understand.”

  “That’s just it. The show is so successful, we’re going to do a North American tour: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, then all across the continent, ending in New York City.”

  “That’s wonderful,” he said blankly.

  She’d heard his disappointment. “I’m so proud of my father, Jason. To see the effect that his words have on these audiences…”

  “How soon are you going?”

  “The next steamboat. It should be here within a week.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  These few days were the happiest in his life, but more fleeting than a northern wildflower. Word came all too soon that The Pride of the Yukon had reached Fortymile and was expected in Dawson City within twenty-four hours.

  There was time for one last triumphant show at the Palace Grand Theater. The line for tickets stretched three blocks long and around a corner, but Jason and his brothers didn’t need tickets. They were seated in a special box with Big Alex McDonald, Joseph Ladue, and Edith Van Buren, the niece of the former President of the United States, who’d come upriver as a tourist and erected a lavish pavilion across the river from Dawson.

  For the occasion, Homer had written a new poem, entitled “My Heart Remains in the Northland,” which Jamie recited as their finale. Though Jamie’s eyes seemed to encompass every Klondiker in the house, they came to rest on Jason for the last stanza:

  “For though I roam in far-off climes,

  In my heart, dear friend, I’ll be counting the time

  Till winter fades and breakup nears.

  So look for me when first flowers appear,

  I’ll be on the first boat, and it will feel so grand,

  Because, don’t you know—

  MY HEART REMAINS IN THE NORTHLAND!”

  With her last line of the season, Jamie threw up her hands in her inimitable fashion, and the audience rose, shouting “Bravo! Bravo!” and tossing bouquets of wildflowers onto the stage.

  As The Pride of the Yukon’s whistle blew the following morning and Jamie was about to board, she confided that she’d written that last stanza herself. “We’ll be back for the summer season as surely as the swans and the geese,” she promised.

  “And I’ll be standing right here on the dock,” Jason told her.

  “Who knows, maybe then we’ll stay….”

  “Who knows,” he repeated bravely. It seemed such a long, long time.

  A few minutes later he watched The Pride of the Yukon disappear around the bend. So much was slipping away—Jamie and Charlie, Jack London, the trusting amber eyes of King, the chain of Klondikers ascending the Chilkoot….

  Jason lifted his eyes to the mountains towering above the Golden City. He’d come so far, and he’d made it.

  He turned back to the sawmill and broke into a run. Everyone at the mill was racing to make the lumber for a new hotel. He was needed there.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Jason’s Gold goes back to my childhood in Alaska in the 1950s—my memories of the winter darkness and the northern lights and rusting gold dredges. In the three decades since, I’ve recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” countless times around wilderness campfires and have felt the powerful pull of what its author, Robert W. Service, called “the Spell of the Yukon.”

  In the midnineties I finally saw the settings of the fabled Klondike gold rush for myself, from Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, in Canada’s Yukon Territory. I didn’t know then that I would write a Klondike story, but as my wife, Jean, and I were hiking, rafting, and visiting museums, the jade green waters of the upper Yukon River were seeping into my subconscious, as were the personal histories of those who took part in what Canadian historian Pierre Berton calls “one of the strangest mass movements in human history.” In 1997, stirred by the centennial celebrations taking place in the North, I was taken with the idea of going on the rush imaginatively, one hundred years later, while dramatizing it for my readers.

  I am particularly indebted to Pierre Berton’s extraordinary history, Klondike—The Last Great Gold Rush, first published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart in 1958. Another “gold mine” was Chilkoot Trail, by David Neufeld and Frank Norris (Lost Moose Publishers, 1996). It has a fine text, accompanied by numerous Eric Hegg photos of the rush. I would also point interested readers to Women of the Klondike, by Frances Backhouse (Whitecap Books, 1995); to The Miners, by Robert Wallace (Time/Life Books, 1976); and to The Book of
Jack London, by Charmian London (Mills & Boon, 1921).

  Many of the characters in Jason’s Gold are actual historical figures. They include Soapy Smith, “Old Man” Tripp, “Reverend” Charles Bowers, “Slim Jim” Foster, Captain William Moore, Eric Hegg, Robert Henderson, George Washington Carmack, Skookum Jim, Tagish Charlie, Col. Sam Steele, Jacob Jackson, Joseph Ladue, Big Alex McDonald, Edith Van Buren—and, of course, Jack London, as well as his partners, Captain Shepard, Merritt Sloper, Fred Thompson, Jim Goodman, and the latecomer, Tarwater.

  Twenty-one-year-old Jack London sailed from San Francisco on the Umatilla on July 25, 1897. He was grubstaked by his sister, Eliza, and her husband, sixty-year-old Captain Shepard, who was accompanying London. At Port Townsend, Washington, London and Shepard transferred to the City of Topeka, bound for Juneau. For the last leg they hired Indian canoes to take them to Dyea, as reported by Fred Thompson, who kept a diary.

  London himself did not keep a journal of any kind, it seems, until he was floating out on a scow from Dawson City to the Pacific in June 1898. From his own accounts, it was only as he was leaving that he thought of turning his failed attempt to strike it rich into grist for his literary ambition. I have endeavored to portray Jack London’s history as accurately as possible, down to the scarlet long underwear he wore while toting his one hundred and fifty-pound loads up the Chilkoot Pass on a sweltering day in late August. Jack disposed of Captain Shepard’s outfit after the older man turned back, for health reasons, before ascending the pass. It occurred to me that in my novel, Jack London could convey his brother-in-law’s outfit to my protagonist, who would be in need of one.

  London and his partners launched their Yukon Belle onto Lake Lindeman on September 16, as in my story, and barely escaped ice-up on Lake Laberge. He was the steersman when his party ran Miles Canyon and the White Horse Rapids. That Jack London lingered to earn money by taking dozens of other boats through, as reported in some of the histories, is probably a myth. His wife and biographer, Charmian London, reports that he took one other boat through the rapids, and not for profit. London and his partners were in a deadly race to cover the next several hundred miles before ice-up and find winter quarters. A voracious reader, Jack London packed along books by the authors I mentioned. One of the volumes was Das Kapital—in addition to being an individualist, London was a passionate socialist. During the winter he borrowed Rudyard Kipling’s The Seven Seas from someone; the record doesn’t say who that was. Clear as day, I pictured my protagonist giving it to him.

  Fictional characters in Jason’s Gold include Jason Hawthorn and his brothers, Abraham and Ethan; Mrs. Beal; Kid Barker; Charlie Maguire; and Jamie and Homer Dunavant. As the reader might guess, Homer Dunavant was inspired by Robert W. Service, though at the outbreak of the gold rush, Service was headed for Mexico, and wouldn’t arrive in the Yukon until the next decade. Charlie Maguire is based on William Byrne, a teenager who froze his feet, had both legs amputated at the knees, and was abandoned by his uncle and others as they made a desperate upriver retreat from Dawson City in October 1897. Byrne survived the winter, alone, in a shack near Five Fingers.

  The cabin where Jason and Charlie wintered in this story—also near Five Fingers—was a real cabin that had been occupied years before the rush by George Washington Carmack. His library there included issues of Scientific American.

  Several of the elements of my story that might seem pure fiction are based closely on research. The two frozen men Jason encountered on the Little Salmon are based on an account of two corpses discovered on the upper Porcupine River, a far northern tributary of the Yukon. These men and many others died attempting one of the “back door” routes to the Klondike.

  Jason’s desperate struggle with the wounded moose, as well as the specifics of his den-hunting experience, are based on actual incidents. To this day, Athabaskan natives in Canada and Alaska still continue their ancient practice of hunting black bears in their dens. I learned that the depth of a bear’s sleep, as well as its willingness to leave the den when roused, varies a great deal. I would recommend Hunters of the Northern Forest and Make Prayers to the Raven, by Richard Nelson (University of Chicago Press, 1973 and 1983, respectively).

  I hope that some of my readers will want to discover the upper Yukon country for themselves. Dawson City today is a thriving year-round town of two thousand. Though a mother lode of gold was never found, small placer mining operations continue. Visitors might buy a nugget, but they come to marvel at the compelling and epic human drama that was played out there.

  The Klondike gold rush, which began with Henderson’s and Carmack’s discoveries in late summer of 1896, continued through the summer of 1899. Of the approximately one hundred thousand people who set out for the Klondike, around forty thousand made it to Dawson City. Of those, only half are thought to have even looked for gold. Of those, only four thousand are thought to have found gold. Of the four thousand, only several hundred struck it rich.

  Durango, Colorado

  July 1998

  Don’t miss Down the Yukon,

  the exciting sequel to Jason’s Gold.

  From Down the Yukon

  It was ten minutes before noon when Jamie stowed the shotgun under the lashing that crisscrossed the oilskin tarp covering our gear. “All set,” she said, giving her wide-brimmed hat a good tug on her forehead. She’d braided her hair into a lively black rope that swung back and forth as she worked.

  Abe and Ethan were watching, their eyes twinkling. The men on either side were equally entranced—we were wedged between two skiffs, each of which had two rowing stations. “What do you aim to do with that shotgun, miss?” a grizzled fellow asked her. “Blast your competitors?”

  “If we run out of grub,” Jamie told him good-naturedly.

  “Cannibals in the race, Harry. What is the world coming to?”

  “How do you aim to cross the Norton Sound in that wee bucket?” called an Irishman from the skiff on the opposite side.

  “We’ve got a balloon in our outfit,” I volunteered. “We aim to inflate it, tie on with the canoe, and fly to Nome. It’s legal, I hear. You watch for us—we’ll wave.”

  There was laughter all around.

  Jamie and I shook hands with my brothers. They wished us Godspeed. Burnt Paw seemed to know exactly what was going on, and was leaping around us like a jack-in-the-box. Anticipating the starting gun, I snatched up my paddle and made ready to board. Suddenly Burnt Paw launched himself into the canoe.

  “I’d say he wants to go with you,” Ethan observed.

  The men on either side were now seated in their rowing stations and poised for the gun. They barely cracked a grin at our foolishness.

  I grabbed Burnt Paw and set him down on the bank. He immediately lifted the one paw up, with the wrist slack. “You be a good boy,” I said.

  He whined and he whimpered.

  “Take him with you for good luck,” Ethan insisted. “You never know when he might come in handy.”

  “One minute!” a voice from upriver boomed.

  I boarded and, keeping low, made for the bow. Standing in six inches of water in her gum boots, Jamie pushed off enough to float the canoe free. She stepped carefully into the stern; then we paddled a few strokes until we were abreast of the bows of the neighboring skiffs.

  Jamie took a look around. She gave me a smile more golden than the midnight sun. “Take a deep breath, Jason.”

  I heard Burnt Paw’s shrill bark. I heard my brothers calling “Good luck!” and “Ho for Nome!” The starting gun went off, loud as a cannon.

  Amid the shouts and the cheers and the splashing of oars, it was pandemonium.

  “Watch our smoke!” I yelled. “Nome or bust!”

  Jamie and I started paddling in earnest, and our canoe shot forward. With a glance over my shoulder toward my brothers, as I freed a hand to give them a last wave, I saw Burnt Paw in the river. Waterworthy as any muskrat, he was paddling after us with all his might.

  I stopped
paddling, I was laughing so hard. “Jamie!” I cried. “Look behind us!”

  Here came that mongrel, with only his black-and-white face above water, his ears hinged forward with determination. The shore was slipping away; my brothers were bent over laughing. We were about to be swept into the boils at the edge of the main current.

  Jamie spun the canoe sideways so that Burnt Paw would have a wider target. I stowed my paddle and made the catch. “Down the Yukon!” Jamie shouted. “Three for Nome!”

  About the Author

  WILL HOBBS is the award-winning author of ten previous novels for young readers, including FAR NORTH, GHOST CANOE, and THE MAZE. Seven of his books have been chosen by the American Library Association as Best Books for Young Adults. In addition to his novels, Will has published two picture books for younger children, BEARDREAM and HOWLING HILL.

  As a child in Alaska, Will was fascinated by the lore of the gold rush days. While rafting in Canada’s Yukon country in the 1990s and visiting historic sites from Skagway to Dawson City, he was inspired to write a novel dramatizing the Klondike gold rush. The result is JASON’S GOLD.

  A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives near Durango, Colorado, with his wife, Jean. To learn more about Will and his books, visit his website at www.WillHobbsAuthor.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Awards for JASON’S GOLD

  ALA Best Book for Young Adults

  ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers

  ABA Young Adult Pick of the Lists

  1999 Books for the Teenage

  (New York Public Library)

  VOYA Books in the Middle:

  Outstanding Title of 1999

  Junior Library Guild Selection

  Other books by Will Hobbs

  CHANGES IN LATITUDES

  BEARSTONE

  THE BIG WANDER