Journey (18 page)

On through the silver night the
Sweet Afton
drifted, passing and ignoring one branch of the Mackenzie after another as the river fed off to the east. “We've got to find something leading in from the west,” Carpenter said repeatedly, the edge in his voice betraying his unease, and when the hours from eleven at night through three in the morning passed with no sign of the Peel, even he began to lose confidence: “Could we have missed it?” The others frantically consulted their inadequate charts, as he prepared to turn back and research the west bank.

He was prevented from this mistake by the appearance on the near shore of a group of smallish dark men, apparently Indians, who leaped in the air and made wild noises, which, when Harry steered the
Afton
toward them, turned into the exciting words: “Peel! Peel!” With a deep sigh that revealed the tension under which he had been steering, Carpenter headed for the shouting men, and as the midnight dusk brightened into full arctic daylight Lord Luton's team left the broad and many-mouthed Mackenzie to enter its tributary—the narrow, unknown Peel.

They were in the new river only a few minutes when they came upon the ramshackle Indian encampment from which their guides had come; it was not a permanent village, nothing more than a collection of tents and improvised shacks to which a group of some three dozen Han Indians from the Yukon district had come to barter their furs with the Company men on the trading ships that would soon be probing such gathering sites. From the nervousness of the Indians, both Luton and Carpenter deduced that this might be one of their rare encounters with white men.

“They speak no French,” Luton said. “Probably never traded with Hudson's Bay people. Or traveled with Métis hunters.”

As he stepped forward and away from the
Afton
, the Han uttered screams, raced to gather their women, and fled far from their shacks. Dismayed that he had frightened them, Luton extended his hands, palms upward and empty, and moved slowly toward them, uttering reassuring words in French, hoping that someone among them would understand even one word. He accomplished nothing, for the Han continued to withdraw, but from the direction to which they were addressing their frightened looks he concluded that he was not the focus of fear, and when he looked back over his shoulder, he saw the cause of their anxiety.

Trevor Blythe, hungry for one last sight of the Mackenzie, had taken out the expedition's long black telescope, and after exploring the tangled mouths of the great river had turned it to look up the dark banks of the Peel. The Han, thinking the scope to be the white man's rifle with deadly power, assumed that Trevor would soon be shooting at them. They would have continued to flee had not Luton dashed back, taken the telescope, and held it sideways across his upturned palms above his head.

As he approached the terrified Han he began to laugh, not loudly or derisively but in accents of friendship, and when he had the first cautious Indians about him—all clad in the simplest of leather garments, with dirty matted hair and evasive eyes—he showed first one, then another how the telescope worked, and soon he had them pacified and genuinely friendly.

Everyone wanted to see the distant shore, the white birds on the mud flats, and before the
Afton
was allowed to move on into the Peel, there had to be a feast and dancing and the chanting of good-luck songs. It was a greeting of such amiability, so different from the austerity of the Blackfoot ceremonial at Edmonton, that Luton actually
cried to Carpenter: “Harry, have we aught to give these good people?” and odd bits of cargo were distributed. Fogarty, with his peasant agility in solving simple problems, was soon talking in sign language with the Han, and learned that they had actually come from the Yukon or some other western river to the west as powerful as the Mackenzie.

“Is it far?” Luton asked, and the little men indicated that they had walked it in half of one moon, which caused Harry to say: “They must be talking of the Porcupine.”

His pronunciation of that name excited the Indians, and with a jumble of signs they explained to Fogarty that, yes, it was the Porcupine, but beyond it there was this other huge river, and all members of the Luton party were both relieved and excited to learn that they were so close to the Yukon. They quickly made their departure, but as they poled their way up the Peel, for there would be no more easy downriver drifting, Luton asked his crew: “How is it possible that in a modern country like Canada, or the United States, there can still exist such hopeless savages? Little better than animals, really.” Harry replied: “They knew where they were, and we didn't.”

Two days later, as they sweated their way up the sluggish, unpleasant Peel, which seemed such a mean river after the clean, swift-moving Gravel, they were faced by one of those moments that determine human destinies, but it did not present itself with any sounding of trumpets or a glowing sunset at end of day. On the starboard side of the
Afton
, that is, the left bank of the Peel, they saw two men, heavily bearded and bare to the waist, engaged in sawing their small boat in half.

“What's the plan?” Carpenter called out as he headed his own boat for shore.

“Strippin' down so we can portage over the pass just ahead.”

“What way you taking?”

“Rat, Bell, Porcupine. Quickest route to Dawson.”

Lord Luton, hearing this conversation and not liking it, broke in peremptorily: “You're wrong about that. The Peel is much shorter.”

“But not quicker,” the men said, “not by a long shot. Join up with us, more hands, more speed.”

Luton stared at them with distaste, prodded Carpenter, and said: “Let's move her up the Peel, Harry,” but Carpenter felt that he must in obedience to common sense argue once more for what he knew to be the saner route, since all knowledgeable hands had recommended it.

Speaking quietly and using once again a formal mode of address to emphasize the gravity of his message, he said: “Milord, we shall never find a better spot to penetrate the Rockies than by the pass at the headwaters of this little river.”

“Harry!” Luton snapped almost peevishly. “It's been decided. The pass at the headwaters of the Peel takes us much closer to Dawson,” and he was correct. It would be closer, but over a route much higher and much, much more difficult.

He grasped the tiller and headed the
Sweet Afton
southward up the Peel. For half an hour he steered the rugged little craft in that direction, his jaw grimly clamped. At the end of this arrogant performance he handed the tiller over to Carpenter and said: “We're well started, Harry. Keep her steady.”

As they left the Rat behind, Carpenter closed his eyes and for some moments did not breathe, knowing that a decision of terrifying importance to him and the others had just been made. Then he opened his eyes, sighed deeply, and saw ahead of him the uninviting Peel, a river of little grace or character whose once-sluggish current now ran far too swiftly for its banks, signaling that rapids lay ahead. Furling the sails and directing Trevor to stow them neatly, for they would no longer be of use, he reached for one of the long poles and started pushing the boat upriver.

—

By July 1898, a full year after having left London, Lord Luton's party was far into the Peel, all hands poling fourteen or sixteen hours a day and covering so many miles that even Carpenter was beginning to think that transit by this route might prove possible, but that dream was short-lived. Early one morning, when Trevor Blythe had been put on shore to run ahead to scout what the
Sweet Afton
would soon be facing, he came back ashen-faced, to shout from the shore: “Oh, Lord Luton! Worst possible news!” And as the three aboard strained to hear, he delivered the foul message that would characterize the remainder of their trip up the Peel: “Heavy rapids and canyon, no shoreline from which to drag.” As the import of these dreadful words was absorbed, all hands began wondering what to do.

First they took Blythe back aboard, then they poled ahead to where the rapids ended their cascade down a fairly steep incline, and there three facts became inescapable. Harry, scrambling ahead, shouted back the reassuring news: “Enough water beyond the rapids
to keep us afloat,” but Trevor confirmed his earlier report: “Absolutely no shore footing from which we could pull.” Luton recalled with a shiver the warning of one of the Schnabel brothers: “When there's no path, you catch your breath, step down into that cold mountain water, and hike right up the middle of the Rat…” At the reappearance of that fated name his breath really did catch, and he thought: Oh God! Should we have taken that little one after all? But he dismissed such self-recrimination, telling his men with a show of confidence: “We'll have to tow and push whilst wading, but we can't do that with a boat so big. Haul her ashore, break out the saw, and let's get started.”

There was, of course, another option and a sensible one: don't cut the boat, turn around, drift back with the current, go up the Rat, and cut the boat there as everyone had advised. But since the others realized that Luton would not hear of this, the possibility was not discussed. Instead, the trustworthy little boat which had given such excellent service was hauled ashore, unloaded, and sawed in half, following exactly that red line painted by one of the Schnabels back in Athabasca Landing. When they saw how wee the half they proposed using was going to be, Carpenter said: “Not much sailing in this one. Pushing and pulling.”

With good heart, now that the worst of their position was known, the four men laid out the driftwood they had been collecting, cut timbers from it, boarded and caulked the gaping hole left by the sawing, and carefully stowed their diminished cargo, discarding nothing. As a last gesture to the half not taken, Lord Luton saluted her and turned his face resolutely toward the waiting canyon and Dawson City, which lay only a hundred and ninety miles to the west.

A new routine was quickly set. Two teams were established: Luton and Fogarty in front hauling ropes, Harry and Trevor in back pushing. As might have been expected, Lord Luton was first in the water, and although he must have winced inwardly at the sudden coldness, not much above freezing, his face revealed nothing. “Heave, men! And with good heart, we'll make it.”

That first day in the water was horrible, for the bouldered footing allowed no steady progress and the depth of the river in places plunged the men to their necks in icy water. Since they had to waste half their energy fighting to remain erect, forward motion was minimal, and all hoped for a sudden ending to the canyon so that they might find solid footing ashore and a decent chance to tow in an
organized manner. But most of the day passed with no shore available, and Carpenter thought: This is going to be pure hell if night falls and we're stuck in here, but that fearful emergency was avoided, because the canyon did end and good footing was available on the left bank. By this time the men were so exhausted they could not avail themselves of it, and as night approached, they dragged their half-boat ashore and pitched their camp.

Before they fell asleep they conducted a fascinating conversation, for as men of sturdy will they were interested in such matters. “I say, Carpenter, how do you figure?” Luton asked. “Who had the more difficult task out there, we pullers or you pushers?” Without a moment's reflection Harry said: “You men,” and when Luton asked “Why?” he received the correct answer: “Because we in the rear had the boat to lean on to steady our feet amongst the boulders,” and Luton said: “I wondered. From now on we'll alternate at intervals.”

Of course, when there was no canyon eliminating the shore, the four could make a respectable day's run, and then their hopes quickened as they visualized a short but demanding portage over some mountain pass and a swift descent into Dawson. But with appalling frequency, rapids, usually less formidable than that first one, impeded, and then the men had to grit their teeth, plunge into the frigid water, fight the boulders and haul-push their half-boat westward, but the worst punishment came when they climbed out of the water, drenched, and had to shiver in the increasing cold until they slipped awkwardly out of wet and into dry clothing.

One day in mid-August, when they still faced one hundred and sixty miles on the river, Trevor Blythe was in the pushing position when he suddenly awakened to the hideous fact that they could not possibly be able to cross the Rockies before oncoming winter froze the Peel and piled snowdrifts over all the passes. “Dear God,” he whispered to himself as he struggled along the rocks. “Another winter holed up. And we have so little food to see us through.”

He said nothing that day, but he did begin to scan the faces of his companions, trying to ascertain whether they appreciated the impasse into which they had quite literally stumbled and in which they were continuing to stumble day after taxing day. He could not deduce their inner thoughts or their fears, but he did notice they talked less and in the evenings were too exhausted to do anything but collapse in their crowded tent. The seminars were held no more. Now it was a matter of survival.

During the last week of August, Lord Luton broke the silence. At supper one night—beans and no meat—he said abruptly: “I suppose you realize we shall soon have to pitch permanent camp.”

“No other way,” Carpenter said. Fogarty remained silent, and Trevor, too, said nothing, relieved that at last their predicament was in the open.

By mid-September, when the upriver poling and dragging was at its worst, the men put on extra bursts of effort to get through this horrendous part of the Peel before the fall of snow and while they still had time to select a livable spot. They succeeded, breaking into an inviting plateau at the foot of the Rockies. During the second week of October, when the temperature was close to zero, they dragged the half-boat ashore, emptied it of the pitiful amount of gear they still had, leaned it against rocks to form a protection from the northwest winds, and began to search for trees or scraps of riverborne timber that could be used to build a kind of cabin, well aware that it would not duplicate the first, comfortable shelter they had enjoyed the previous winter.